Regeane the silver wolf followed the river. It led her in a winding course over heavy cobbles. It wasn't deep and most of the time covered only the wolf's paws. To Regeane there was no sight or smell other than that of damp air and a pleasant almost-rain smell that she associated with green, growing plants. She regretted that she'd eaten the red thing. That was a problem. But it had attacked her and the wolf was hungry. She wondered if it might poison her, but after a few hours of her trek, she decided that if it hadn't bothered her by now, it probably wouldn't. The only other animal life she'd run across had been small creatures that let out a small, bell-like sound when disturbed, then flew off, vanishing into the misty aisles of the fern forest that stretched out from the river for an unknown distance on either side.

Near what she surmised was noon, the river widened and expanded into another marshy lake. It was lined with water plants. Some she knew: the large, purple-pink Egyptian lotus, flowers borne high above the water; the blue spires of pickerelweed blooming in massive clusters near the giant tree trunks. Yellow cress abounded, and Regeane turned human for a few moments to make a meal of some.

She found a tree festooned with the long creeping plant covered with small, soft leaves. She took hold of one of the vines and discovered that at the terminal of each long furry stem, there were fruits. She tried one. The taste exploded in her mouth. Rich, tangy, and then sweet. She knew she would never be able to describe this to anyone. As with most things, they tasted of themselves alone.

She noticed while she was making a meal of cress and fruit-the sort of meal the wolf was ill adapted to make-that the clouds had begun to thicken menacingly. She let go of the vine and let herself drop back into the water. Wind moved over the surface of the water, ruffling it slightly. Reeds and sedges began clicking their stems. Regeane noticed they were bent, as shore grasses often are, molded by the prevailing winds. So this rain must come often. High above, lightning zigzagged across the sky.

Using the ferns as stepping stones, Regeane climbed back up the tree. The epiphytal plants grew everywhere on the deeply fissured bark, and the long soft stems of this particular plant, the one that grew the fruits, were stronger than they looked.Higher up than the drooping creeper grew a giant fan-shaped fern with big, lacy leaves. It looked as if it lived on rain. A broad, leafy holdfast tied it to the tree, and the fronds spread out from its center.

When she reached a spot among the ferns, she looked down and found she could see through the clear water to the lake bottom. It, too, was covered by the massive roots that formed the forest floor. The life in this place seemed to be a gift of the great trees. They were quite literally everywhere.

The water plants that didn't drift on the surface were rooted among the trees, and she saw the long shapes of some sort of fish sculling along the drowned tree trunks. The sky was almost black now; the whole world as far as she could see was wrapped in the green gloom that presages a rainstorm. Above, lightning flashed and a terrific thunderclap shook the water forest. Not far away one of the giant trees burst into flame. Then the wind hit and the rain battered her body. She was blinded for a second when the wind forced a mixture of smoke, steam, embers, and smoldering bark toward her, en-gulfing her body in the debris of the burned tree.

Regeane closed her eyes and ducked her head against the lace fern to shelter herself from the wind-driven rain. Only a few hundred yards away, in spite of the rain, the giant tree burned like a torch, hissing and spitting as the fire consumed the resin-filled heartwood.

It seemed to Regeane that some dark tower burned, be-cause the tree was tall enough to carry the fire into the dark, rolling clouds high above. All around Regeane heard a rising cry of grief, a moaning shout of bottomless sorrow. The wind, she tried to tell herself. The wind. It must be the storm wind. But then the wind ended, the rain pounded straight down, ex-tinguishing the fiery tree, and Regeane was surprised to find she was looking out at the world through an enclosure of fern fronds. She was wrapped in the soft fronds of the fern she rested against.

For a second she was frightened but then realized the fern fronds offered no more resistance than a fine lace dress. In fact, they covered her like a piece of clothing, warming her against the chilling rain. For a time she rested, dozing against the fern's supporting clasp until the sky cleared and the over-cast broke up into puffy, white shapes.

The fern released her, spreading its fronds to catch the in-termittent sunlight. Regeane jumped down. Her momentum carried her to the bottom of the lake where she pushed off from the silt-covered roots. Just before she broke the surface, a school of fish swam by, their bright scales a flash of mir-rored light in clear water. She felt a sudden knifelike chill, and when her head broke the surface she found herself wolf in the shallows of the river that ran out of the mountains past a fort and its town. The air was cold and the sun was going down.

Before dawn Hugo was pulled out of bed. He landed on the floor.

"I have him," his guest shouted in his ear.

"Who?" Hugo asked.

"The wolf," his guest shouted again. "Maeniel, the gray wolf."

"No," Hugo said, clutching his head.

"Yes!" His guest was jubilant.

"Did you kill him?"

"No. Why would I do a stupid thing like that?""Because he's dangerous," Hugo snarled. "Big, strong, and very dangerous. There was at least some truth in the tale I told Armine. I know. I saw him."

"I don't care who or what he's killed, I want him. And besides, he will make your reputation at this court in Pavia. No small matter. Don't worry. I will tame him."

"Don't worry," Hugo muttered, beginning to dress. "That's just what Gundabald said before he visited them the last time. They killed him and then one of them probably ate him."

"Yes, the two women nearly got me," Hugo's guest said.

Hugo's face froze. "You met them?"

His guest laughed.

"Oh, yes, we met. They killed my votary. She-the bitch- and a friend. I almost got her again, but that time she came with another woman. They took the cringing human that I was torturing away from me.

"Now I want my revenge. She will certainly come looking for him, but I will possess the lord Maeniel-and her in the bargain. Wait, see if I don't."

"No," Hugo said. "Kill him. Or he'll find a way to kill you."

"Pig." Hugo's guest exerted all his strength again, but this time he failed. He'd wasted much too much of his energy on last night's sexual encounter, and besides, Hugo was in mortal terror of Maeniel. That lent him strength he had no idea he possessed.

They began wrecking the room.

Hugo's guest started hurling everything he could lift at Hugo. Hugo's contribution to the brawl was to run madly from place to place, tripping over the furniture and yelling at the top of his lungs.

His guest snatched up the bedclothes and made a credible attempt to smother Hugo with them. Hugo escaped by crawling under the table. His guest then dropped the linens, snatched up the wine pitcher, and tried to dash the contents into Hugo's face. He needn't have bothered: it was empty. But the same could not be said of the chamber pot...

Hugo stood up and gave vent to a howl of fury and disgust that rattled the rafters, then he seized the table and threw it in the general direction of his guest's voice and actions. At this point in the proceedings, Chiara opened the door.

"Are you both out of your minds?" she shouted. "My father is in terror, as is everyone else within earshot. I'm sure someone has called the watch."

There was a sound of feet pounding, and a few seconds later a half dozen armed men dashed past Chiara into the room. Hugo had managed to get himself quartered in the palace and did not want to lose his place at the center of the action. He at-tempted to fob off the captain of Desiderius's personal guard with a story about getting out of bed and falling over the chamber pot.

It was a story the grim-faced old soldier did not believe, and he gave a stern warning that the king kept an orderly house and to please minimize such disturbances in the future.

Chiara told the captain that she had heard the noises and ran to see what was the matter. This he did believe, since she was dressed in the four layers of clothing required by her vir-ginal status and the verycold mountain nights. However, he did accompany Chiara back to her rooms and saw her safely inside.

She ducked back out as soon as he was gone.

Hugo reeked of stale urine and his guest was still furious. "You cowardly bastard. You whimpering, sniveling excuse for a human being. You cock-sucking louse. You-"

"Stop," Chiara whispered. "Abusing him won't get you anywhere. Well, at least nowhere you want to go. If you rouse that old iron-pants martinet again, you can both look forward to spending the night in the street."

This was true. Both creatures subsided.

"God!" Chiara whispered to Hugo, "You stink. Go bathe and remember you took-" She glanced around."-his money and you made some promises." She stamped one small foot. "Don't tell me you aren't prepared to keep them."

"He'd better be," Hugo's guest said.

"Well," Chiara said to Hugo. "What have you to say for yourself?"

"He-he-he's captured that thing."

"What thing?"

"The man-wolf," Hugo said, and spat. "And he won't kill it."

Chiara looked taken aback. "Why not?"

"Because he, the lord Maeniel, has great powers, and I want control of him... and them."

"And of his beautiful wife the lady Regeane," Hugo supplied.

"Yes, there's that," Hugo's guest stated flatly. "I fought her in Rome over a silly, sullen drab. Then again with my priest. She killed him, she and her kinsman, a Saxon lord. Though she doesn't know him, he is her kinsman. And then in Charles's camp, I was nearly bested-extinguished, I sup-pose you would put it."

"Killed?" Chiara asked.

"Yes. I do not die, at least not the way you do, but I can be de-stroyed. And she and her woman Matrona nearly succeeded.

"Now... now I have him and want her." He shook Hugo the way a dog shakes a rat.

Chiara stepped back because he splattered a little. There had been a lot of pee in the pot, and Hugo's hair and clothes were wet.

"Wash yourself, pig."

"I think you better do as he says," Chiara told him.

Hugo whispered something really vile under his breath.

"Shut your filthy mouth," Hugo's guest said.

"You're both against me," Hugo moaned."No, I'm not," Chiara said. "I, too, think it might be wiser to do away with this creature Maeniel, as you call him, but, but... you and I have accepted his favor and so bound our-selves. As I see it, we have no choice in the matter."

Hugo received a shove, a hard shove, in the direction of the baths. "Go, wash yourself."

Cursing the whole world and everything in it, Hugo stag-gered away.

He was still there. Chiara knew she was not alone.

"Is this wise?" she asked. She was surprised at the reply. It was thoughtful, even judicious.

"Yes, I do believe so. In the first place, creatures such as Maeniel are very difficult to kill and have resources even they are unaware of. If I tried and failed, he might win his freedom and, once free, he would be a terrible enemy. I can, as you have seen, do some things, but I am not as strong as this man-wolf is. Hugo..."

"Don't bother," she said. "I wouldn't trust him to go to the market and buy onions. I see, or I believe I see."

"Good," was the reply.

"By the by," she said, her eyebrows lifting. "Do you have... Hugo accused you of wanting this Maeniel's beautiful wife."

"Go back to bed," Hugo's guest said sharply. "And don't trouble me with any more questions."

Gimp wasn't a bad man, and in his own way-because he was used to doing as he'd been told-he was more efficient than Hugo. He'd been told to fish this stranger out of the river and chain him up. And Hugo's guest told Gimp exactly how to chain Maeniel up, and Gimp did it, being afraid to disobey. He went in mortal terror of Hugo and his guest, only hoping to somehow be free of them both. The one had killed him and the other had in some incomprehensible way saved his life.

He chained Maeniel to a staple on the wall of the cave, put another pair of fetters on his hands, and then a separate set on his feet. And since he was not cruel, he gave the prisoner an old tunic and covered him with a blanket.

Maeniel held off the change. He didn't dare. It didn't take him long to figure out that Gimp was only slightly smarter than the average tree stump, and he didn't want to unsettle his captor's mind. Minds.

Actually there were two or three others, but they were, if possible, even slower than Gimp.

They sat looking like owls lined up on a log, watching him, appearing very much as if they expected him to turn not into a wolf but at least a dragon. He decided he'd best disappoint them. So he vomited water, twice, and then somehow fell asleep.

Near dawn the sound of Hugo's arrival woke him. Gimp, accompanied by the rest, got up and went outside. A very loud argument ensued and Gimp returned, as it appeared, alone.

"You can tell Hugo to come in," Maeniel said. "I heard him, and I can smell him. I know he's here. He has a rather distinctive aroma even when he's as freshly bathed as he is now."

There wasn't much light outside. Gimp pushed another log into the fire at the cave entrance, and Maeniel saw him more clearly for the moment and knew this wasn't Gimp. He would have been hard put to tell someone not endowed, as he was, with wolf as well as human senses how he knew, but he did."Who are you?" he asked. Even chained as he was, he managed to sit up and set his back against the stone wall.

"The bear," came the answer. "I am the bear." Then Gimp-not-Gimp laughed. It was a distinctly unpleasant one.

"We fought," Maeniel said.

"Probably more than once," the bear answered. "If you have the same kind of memories that I do."

"I do," Maeniel said, "but more recently."

"Yes. I was the bear then and, as always, in the past. I am the bear, and once we contended for the world."

"Yes," Maeniel said. "But I was the wolf then and not part of the fight."

"Oh, yes," Gimp-not-Gimp said. "You even then were part of their bands, though you followed them through the snow and begged scraps from their feasts. They relied on you and you were welcomed at their fires."

"I suppose that's true," Maeniel replied slowly. Then he said, "The bear, all the bear, remember you, though they will not admit it. They remember when you hunted almost as equals and they felt honored to take your name.

"Even these Romans," Maeniel continued, "called them-selves sons of the wolf, suckled at a bitch wolf's teats. They, the sons of the wolf, left their tracks across the world, and these wild barbarians still take names from you and, some-times yet, challenge you.

"Yes," Maeniel said. "If you say you are the bear, then your people are long gone, forgotten. The trees, the grass, the wide starry sky know them no more."

"Yes," Gimp-not-Gimp said. "And I will never be done mourning them. Even if I alone am left to remember, I will al-ways yield them the tribute of my everlasting sorrow. But this is more difficult than I thought, because you seem to understand."

"I cannot say I am without understanding," Maeniel an-swered. "But what is it that you want from me?"

"You, yourself. I wish to join you, join you the way I have possessed Hugo and others."

"Possess? One possesses a slave. I am no one's possession."

"My choice of expression was poor," Gimp-not-Gimp protested. "For once, after all the ages of preying on these gibbering half-apes who replaced my own kind, I would have an equal partner, one who could share my mind, my will. We could brush aside these quarreling kings and rule the world. Rule it our way.

Return it to what it once was: forests without end, savannas where a million wild beasts roamed, deserts bejeweled with flowers that leap from the stems by day and starlit skies by night, oceans that caress clean, white beaches, snowfields that flare with a thousand colors when the northern lights glow in the heavens.

"Remember, wolf, remember when your ancestors roamed free in packs that numbered hundreds and ruled without ri-vals the long winter night?"

"Yes, I remember," Maeniel said. "And I remember when the others came, bearers of fire at first, thenstone and steel. We struggled then as we do now sometimes, but it was never war. Not as you propose it."

"Well, look around you. War is the only thing they under-stand. Look at these kings, ready and willing to spend how many lives-even their own-to control what? I ask you, what? An iron crown made from a nail used to crucify a man who would have despised them both."

"Yes, I think you may be right," Maeniel said. "But it is also said, 'What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his soul?' Is it my soul you want?"

"Yes. What could withstand us, joined together?"

"I must think on this."

"Fine. I will see you this evening. This-" He gestured toward Gimp's body. "-servant of mine will feed you. I await your decision."

Gimp sat down and slumped against the wall, his face void of expression. A few minutes later he awoke, scratched his head, rose, and stumbled toward the fire at the mouth of the cave.