Battle Born

by Amie Kaufman

  “She deserved worse,” Sigrid said, with a horrible matter-of-factness. “I never believed the collaboration with the dragons was wise. They’re unreliable, unpredictable. Undisciplined. But it was necessary, though we always had to treat them with caution. Dragons have never been trustworthy. This one, though . . .” And now her expression hardened. “I found her with a wolf. There was something wrong with her. With both of them.”

  “There was nothing wrong with them,” Rayna snapped. “They were in love!”

  “That’s not possible,” Sigrid shot back. “He was a fool, and a traitor to his pack. The two of them claimed to have grand ideas about a peace, a truce, but she was deceiving him. No dragon has ever believed in peace. If we’d let our guard down, they would have had the victory they’d wanted for so long.”

  “Did you . . . ?” Anders could hardly bring himself to ask it. A part of him didn’t want to hear the answer, and a part just as painful knew that Lisabet must be out there listening to them. “Did you kill the wolf?”

  “He defied me,” Sigrid replied, and though she didn’t say it, the unspoken answer was perfectly clear: yes. “But in death, he served our pack. He showed everyone that the dragons weren’t to be trusted.”

  “What do you mean?” Rayna spluttered. “You wanted them to hand Drifa over for a trial, but you were the guilty one! And she couldn’t tell anyone the truth, you’d trapped her here.”

  “Please,” Sigrid replied, rolling her eyes—as if Rayna were being hysterical, as if she needed someone calm to explain the truth to her. “The dragon always wanted war. She was taking advantage of him to learn about the wolves. If she loved him, why did she abandon him? Her plan had failed, and she fled.”

  Anders blinked at his old pack leader, and Rayna caught her breath.

  “You don’t know,” Anders said quietly.

  “Know what?” Sigrid’s voice was sharp.

  “She didn’t run until you’d killed him,” Anders said. “But then she had to. She had to protect her children.”

  Now it was Sigrid’s turn to gasp, her pale-blue eyes wide with horror. “Her children? Children of a wolf and a dragon?”

  “Hi,” said Anders. “Pleased to meet you.”

  Sigrid took a quick step back, as if he might be somehow infectious. “You have dragon blood in you,” she whispered. “And we let you inside Ulfar?”

  “We let him inside Drekhelm too,” said Rayna, folding her arms across her chest. And your daughter as well, she might have said, but like Anders, she let Lisabet remain quietly in the shadows. Sigrid’s daughter would speak when she wanted to. If she wanted to.

  “The silver flame,” Sigrid realized slowly. “That was icefire. I couldn’t understand how it was created. It’s only ever been a theory.”

  “Not anymore,” Rayna replied. “All we’ve ever wanted is peace. All you’ve ever done is fight for war, from before we were even born. You killed our father, you trapped our mother here.”

  “You tried to rule Holbard through fear,” Anders said. “And when that didn’t work, you lit fake fires so people would be scared of dragons who weren’t even there. You’ve been waiting to take charge of the whole city, maybe the whole island, all this time.”

  “To keep us safe,” Sigrid insisted. “Nobody’s been paying attention. The wolves grow lazy, the humans don’t listen, and the dragons will come. I refuse to cower out on the plains with the rest of the pack. I have survived here with nothing, sacrificing everything for this chance!”

  She flung out one arm, and Anders followed her wild gesture—she was pointing at a makeshift camp back in the shadows, a blanket tucked in beneath a rock ledge, a single cooking pot, a small, dead fire.

  “You’ve been down here since the battle,” he realized.

  “I knew I had to come back and finish what I once started,” Sigrid replied. “I showed my pack the danger of the dragons once before.”

  “By killing our father and framing our mother!” Rayna shouted. “That was the danger of you!”

  Sigrid continued as if she hadn’t spoken. “They didn’t listen. I fought my way up to Fyrstulf, the better to protect them. If they don’t see it now, I’ll take the fight to the dragons myself.”

  “The last great battle was because of you,” Rayna said, her horror growing.

  “We lost our parents,” Anders said, “because of you.”

  “I did all this for you,” Sigrid replied, her voice rising. “You were the next generation. You had to be protected. And how did you repay me? You filled my daughter’s ears with lies, you betrayed our pack! I knew when I froze the dragonsmith that I could use her to power the warriors, to rule Vallen for its own protection, but I couldn’t find the way. This time, I won’t fail.”

  And now Anders saw clearly, with a pang for Lisabet that nearly broke his already bruised and damaged heart. “You’re insane,” he whispered.

  “I’m the only one who sees the truth and is prepared to act on it,” Sigrid whispered in reply.

  In an instant she’d slipped into her wolf form, baring her teeth in a snarl as she slammed her paws down onto the ground. A sheet of ice began to ripple out from her at lightning speed, spreading across the cavern and into the distance, covering the floor.

  And everywhere it reached, one by one, the warriors began to lift their heads.

  Chapter Thirteen

  THE ROWS OF ARTIFACT WARRIORS CAME TO LIFE, shifting and clicking as the ice reached them and gave them Sigrid’s instructions.

  An instant later the warriors were lumbering toward them, arms outstretched, unseeing faces turned toward the twins.

  “Quick, transform!” Rayna cried, throwing herself into dragon form. She was far too big for the space, and she collided with rows of warriors as she grew in an instant. She trumpeted her defiance as she swung her tail at another row of them, sending them tumbling into one another with a series of crashes.

  Anders was only a moment behind her, the ice all around them only strengthening him as he shifted.

  I exiled you from the pack, Sigrid growled behind him. You should have stayed away.

  Rayna swung her tail again, and Anders ran underneath her for shelter as the first warriors reached him, one leaning down to clumsily grab at him. There were so many of them—hundreds, thousands, and there was no way he could fight them all.

  But his sister had nowhere to hide, and she bellowed in pain as the warriors began to swarm her, grabbing at her legs, one reaching up for her far more delicate wing.

  It was that sound—her pain—that mobilized him. He ran out from beneath her with a snarl, launching a wave of icefire without a second thought, and sending a row of warriors tumbling backward. They lay still where they fell, their runes melted, their power gone.

  But there were more behind them, and more behind them.

  How long could the twins possibly hold on?

  Another warrior made a grab at him, and he skittered sideways, then threw another gout of icefire toward it. He couldn’t do this a thousand times—he’d exhaust himself, or one of them would grab him, and then . . .

  Suddenly there was a howl from the far side of the cavern, and Lisabet was racing toward them. The ice! she howled to Anders, her ears up, her tail flying back and forth as if to propel her faster. Melt the ice!

  He instantly turned his silver flame on the ice surrounding his mother. A moment later Rayna joined him, not understanding their howled communication, but trusting the wolves.

  Anders had seen chunks of ice fall from the cart of the ice man onto the streets of Holbard in the summer. On hot days, the street children ran after him and picked up the pieces that were left behind. The ones that weren’t picked up, though, those pieces of ice shrank as the pools of water around them grew larger, and then, eventually, they were gone.

  That happened now, the great square of ice dissolving, the dragon within it slipping lower and lower until she finally lay on the ground.

  For a moment, she was perfectly sti
ll. And then she seemed to vanish.

  It took Anders a moment to realize that she had simply shrunk from fifty feet in length to six. She was human again.

  Her mop of curls lying wet around her still face, their mother was motionless on the rock.

  And so were the warriors, their power source suddenly cut.

  He, Rayna, and Lisabet shifted back to human form, three small figures amid a pile of debris that had once been an army of artifact warriors.

  Sigrid transformed back to her human shape even as she ran forward, grabbing hold of two of the leads that were no longer connected to Drifa. She gritted her teeth, throwing her head back, the muscles in her neck taut as the outermost warriors began to power up again, the glow growing.

  “Let go of them,” Anders said urgently, “it will drain you dry.”

  In that moment, it was hard to care what happened to Sigrid, but he was thinking of Lisabet.

  “She can’t hear you,” Rayna said quietly.

  But Anders thought perhaps she could. She was staring at him, mouthing words he couldn’t make out.

  “Mother, stop!” Lisabet cried. “Please!”

  Sigrid dropped to her knees, letting out a ragged breath.

  “If you don’t let go, it will kill you,” Rayna insisted as noise began to start up all around them.

  The warriors were beginning to move, flexing their arms and legs each in turn, as if stretching after a long rest.

  “Please!” Lisabet sobbed, running over to grab her mother’s arm, only to be thrown back by the force of the essence crackling through her now.

  Sigrid had turned whiter than white.

  “Let go!” Anders cried.

  “I won’t,” she insisted through gritted teeth. “They have to be powered. Vallen has to be protected!”

  But a moment later she did let go, her hands flexing and opening as she collapsed on the ground.

  Anders kicked first one cord and then the other away from her, afraid to touch them with the bare skin of his hands.

  Then he dropped to one knee, and leaned down to hold his fingers in front of Sigrid’s slightly open mouth, afraid of what he would find.

  No breath came from it.

  He rose slowly to his feet, and—more reluctantly than he’d ever done anything in his life—he met Lisabet’s eyes.

  She gave a quiet cry of pain, and around them, the artifact warriors slowly began to settle once more, growing still, becoming silent.

  For a very long moment none of the three elementals moved. Then there was a soft noise from nearby.

  It was Drifa.

  Anders was running toward her before he knew he was moving, and he dropped to his knees in the pool of water around her, carefully lifting her head to cradle it in his lap as Rayna took her hands.

  Drifa’s brown skin was tinted gray, and when her lashes fluttered, Anders saw that her brown eyes had been washed the palest of blue. But his heart soared to see her lashes move—she was alive, if only just.

  She looked up at them, drinking in first his face and then Rayna’s, and her lips moved to an exhausted smile.

  “My darlings . . . ,” she whispered.

  “We’re here,” Anders told her, choking on a sob. “We’re both here.”

  “We love you,” Rayna murmured, her voice breaking.

  “You have to finish it,” Drifa managed. “What Felix and I tried to begin. What even Sigrid wanted, in her wrong, twisted way. There has to be peace.”

  “There will be,” Anders promised. “We’ll do it together.”

  “I know you will,” she breathed. “Finish our work, then live happy lives, my darlings. I’m so proud of you. Your father would have loved every inch of you.”

  She let out a long, slow breath, and then she was still.

  She was so completely motionless that Anders knew she was gone. His throat closed, and his heart beat too hard in his chest, and everything around him seemed to come into perfect focus. He could have counted his mother’s eyelashes in that moment. He could have described every stitch of her clothes in perfect detail. He could have done anything, except speak the truth out loud.

  His heart was breaking—his mother was gone, the leader of his pack’s urge to protect those in her charge had pushed her to this. Everything was upside-down, and everything was wrong.

  Sigrid was gone.

  Drifa was dead.

  Chapter Fourteen

  THE CAVERN WAS QUIET ALL AROUND THEM, THE artifact warriors unmoving, the twins crouching by their mother. Lisabet stood near them, Sigrid still on the ground. Anders heard a soft dripping as the ice that had surrounded Drifa continued to melt, then a soft crack as a piece split away.

  As if the sound had released her, Lisabet let out another sob, and without a word, both the twins gently laid down their mother, then walked over to fold their friend up in their arms.

  “We’ll come back,” Anders said softly. At first, he meant it as a promise to their mother. But somehow, after a moment, he knew it was a promise to Sigrid as well. “We’ll come back and get them both.”

  He didn’t know where the right place would be to lay either a wolf or a dragon to rest. But someone would know. And it wasn’t here.

  Their tears still flowing, the three of them turned, hand in hand, to find their way back to Cloudhaven once more. Ache though they might, they couldn’t let their friends down. There was work to do, and not much time to do it.

  Beyond Sigrid’s makeshift bed they found a tunnel leading out to the mountains at the base of Cloudhaven. There, Rayna shifted to her dragon form, and Anders and Lisabet climbed up onto her back in silence. Anders wrapped his arms tightly around his best friend as his sister took off, launching herself up into the mist.

  The dawn turned the world pink and gold as she beat her wings against the cool air, and Anders tried to let go of his sadness, at least for now, and focus on what the next few hours would hold. That was what Drifa had wanted him to do.

  Sigrid would have wanted the war that might begin today, and if they didn’t do everything exactly right, it would still happen just as she’d hoped.

  As he, Rayna, and Lisabet made their way in through the archway from the landing pad, they found their friends awake and debating what to do.

  “Perhaps we should try to go after them,” Det was saying.

  “But how?” Isabina asked. “We don’t have the keys.”

  “No need,” Anders said, and though he was quiet, somehow they all heard him, swinging around and breaking out into exclamations of relief.

  “Are you all right?” Ellukka asked, hurrying forward.

  “What did you find?” Jerro asked.

  “The answer to both of those is . . . complicated,” Anders said. “And we’ll tell you all of it later.”

  “For now,” said Lisabet, her voice steady, “we have a war to prevent.”

  Ellukka studied her, head tilted to one side, as if she sensed something had happened to Lisabet. But then she nodded, and didn’t press for details. “Let’s eat breakfast and make a plan. We don’t have much time.”

  Jai hurried back to the fire to begin filling bowls, but when Anders took his and looked up, he realized everyone was watching him. Waiting for him to make the plan. At least he’d had a little time to think on the way back from Tilda’s and Kaleb’s aerie.

  “We can use the Staff of Reya to block their elemental powers,” he said, a part of him noticing that he didn’t find it difficult to speak to the group anymore. He didn’t find it difficult to . . . lead.

  “And the mirror will make sure they all see the person they trust the most,” Rayna said. “Themselves.”

  Sakarias frowned. “The problem is getting them all in the same place, at the same time, without any of them killing anyone before we can use the artifacts,” he said. “That’s going to be tricky.”

  “And dangerous,” Mikkel agreed. But his voice was quiet, and calm. He wasn’t refusing or backing away from the task. He was just statin
g a fact.

  “It will be dangerous,” Anders agreed. “If any of us are caught, I don’t know what will happen. They’ll imprison us, at best. Exile us, maybe, I don’t know. The stakes for Vallen are even higher, though. If anyone doesn’t want to be a part of this, I understand. One of the dragons can take you somewhere safe, maybe to a village somewhere.”

  Everyone around him was silent. Eventually it was Sam who spoke. “This needs all of us,” he said. “And we’re in.”

  “That’s right,” Jerro agreed. “Sam and I can find a way to get the mayor to the meeting spot. It’ll need to be walking distance from the Holbard camp, though.”

  “I have some ideas,” said Rayna, and Jerro shot her a nervous look. Rayna’s escapades were famous among the street children of Holbard.

  “We’ll need to be the ones who bring the Dragonmeet,” Theo said. “We’ll have to fly to Drekhelm.”

  Ellukka grinned suddenly. “And when we get there, we’re going to offer them exactly what they want the most.”

  “What’s that?” Anders asked.

  She grinned wider. “You.”

  Sakarias and Viktoria were talking quietly, and looked up. “We can lead the wolves to a meeting,” Viktoria said. “If they see us, they’ll follow.”

  “Chase us,” Sakarias corrected her, grinning.

  “Let’s not eat too much breakfast then,” Jai said wryly. “We’re going to need to be able to run really fast.”

  Ferdie was studying Anders. “Do you know what you’re going to say when they all arrive, Anders?”

  Anders blinked. “Me?”

  There were nods all around the circle. He took a moment to think it over.

  “I’ll . . .” He studied his friends, and slowly it came to him. “Yes,” he said. “I know what I’m going to say. I’m proud you’re all my friends—wolf and dragon and human. I’m honored to be your friend. I’m going to find a way to show them all what this is like. The strength in it. I’m going to tell them about us.”

  Anders’s thoughts were still whirling as Rayna launched from the landing pad at Cloudhaven, turning southeast to skirt the bottom of the Icespire Mountains and head across the Great Forest of Mists, crossing the Sudrain River and making for the spot near the Holbard camps that they had chosen for their meeting place.