The king moved close to Zinder. A red blade seemed to dance inside the stone of his staff and Crespin moved this stone just under Zinder’s chin. A word of magic and a flick of his wrist would have cleanly sliced open the wolf’s jugular vein, but Zinder did not bow his head.
“You are brave,” the king said. “And you have scouted well through these treacherous lands.” The king looked northwest, the muscles of his mouth stretched in tight lines. “What you say is most true. Poison, sickness, and madness have followed us through this journey. However, I see them only as reasons to follow this quest to its end. There is one who seeks our destruction. I will not rest until she is found and killed. Do you understand?”
“Yes, my lord,” Zinder replied.
“Good. Then I leave the healing to you, and the killing to one who is more suited to such work.” He turned to Wolrijk who—with bleeding scratches along his face and body—looked every bit his part.
“May the God of the Red Sun grant you speed,” Zinder said, bowing again. The king snorted at the sentiment. He and the general were soon out of sight.
A few minutes later, Zinder found the leaves and thin branches of the willowmeier bush. He tore the leaves into tiny bits with his teeth and dropped them along his companions’ wounds, careful to avoid contact with the flesh that had been affected by the root—a root that had afflicted one wolf with pain and the other with madness. After that, Zinder sat off several paces by himself and waited.
Chapter 19
Wolrijk scouted slightly ahead of the king, running into the afternoon as though chasing the sun, which sat on the horizon like a mouth that gaped open, waiting for a meal. Wolrijk salivated at the thought. The day had been unusually hot and the path they’d taken wound through beds of red rock that seemed to pull the rays of the sun into them, making it even hotter. Wolrijk’s extra-thick skin made the temperature even less bearable. As the sun melted into the horizon, Wolrijk reached a meadow just in front of a forest. Out of the wood and flanked by two willow trees ran a small stream which collected in a pool, clearer than any they had seen. “We can make camp here,” Wolrijk said, turning to the king who followed close behind him.
As rock gave way to dead leaves, then moss, then the outer trees of the wood, a scent invaded the air that was distinct.
“She wishes to be found,” the wolf said.
“Yes,” the king murmured, pressing his long nails against his chin.
Wolrijk sat down and chewed bits of bramble from his fur. The king turned away and Wolrijk smiled to himself. Crespin could never look at him long before turning away, and Wolrijk liked that—liked that he could repel even a bloodthirsty king, enjoyed the power his hideousness gave him.
A squirrel scampered past. Wolrijk reached out faster than an arrow and grabbed it, breaking its neck in the same motion. “We will need our strength,” he said, passing their supper to the king. “I’ll go for water.”
Wolrijk walked to the pool of water and for the first time that day, he paused. The water was so clear he could see each rock at the bottom, even where the water was quite deep. The rocks were of all colors—blue, orange, rose, quartz. They appeared to dance in their liquid basin. Normally, Wolrijk could not have cared less about the color of a few rocks, but somehow these were different. Thoughts of his older brother crept into his mind. He shook them off as he always did, but this time they came back. He and his brother used to skip rocks, right over the surface—like magic the way they flew from water to air. His brother had been fast and bright, and Wolrijk had loved him as he had loved no one before or since, but in a bloody political plot his brother’s life had been cut short. Wolrijk leaned forward, running his marred paw through the clear waters. The gentle chill of the water seemed to erase the pain of his brother’s death, the loneliness of the past many years. It seemed to erase everything.
Crespin heard the splash too late. He ran to the pool and when Wolrijk’s head bobbed out of the water, he grabbed him by the nape of the neck and pulled him out.
Far from being drowned, the killer Crespin had chosen—the fiercest, strongest, most deformed, blood-thirsty wolf in his entire kingdom—lay curled into a tight ball; asleep. When Crespin attempted to wake him, he only rolled to the other side, murmuring sounds that rocked like nursery tunes. The posture, the slight smile on the wolf’s lips—they reminded Crespin of his old friend Draden—that face he had taken such pains to forget.
Cursing the enchanted waters, Crespin kicked the wolf hard in the side. Wolrijk only muttered a sleepy sigh. Crespin left the general on the ground and faced the wood. As he did so, he heard a voice, lilting like the stream that fed the bedeviled pool of water.
And now, o king, we meet at last.
Shadows all and ghosts long past.
A cat appeared at the edge of the wood—larger than most of the she-wolves of Crespin’s kingdom. The cat’s face was a ruddy orange with a coat of different colors that streaked along her back like golden-toned lightning bolts. Crespin stared at the extinct animal. She smiled.
Consider yourself honored, Wilhelmszon.
Most feel my breath and then I’m gone.
You get to see, though but a moment.
Some that comes at prophecy’s fulfillment.
“All this,” the king said, gesturing to his slumbering general. “It is your doing?”
The cat laughed, a humming purr,
All that you have recently seen.
It is the doing of my mistress queen.
“Now,” she said, breaking from her rhyme. “Come.”
Crespin had no intention of obeying the animal, but when he turned his back on the cat, a wall of trees had grown up where clear meadow had been only moments before and Crespin found himself weakened to the point that he struggled to keep from shifting into his flesh form. The cat walked ahead of him and he grudgingly followed, gripping his staff and allowing it to glow with all the ferocity of the red sun.
When at last they came to a clearing in the impossibly dense wood, Crespin noticed a small, crude hut surrounded by flowers, herbs, and vegetables of every sort. In the midst of it, facing away from the king, sat a tall chair fashioned of twigs, branches, and flowers that had been bowed and bound together to form shapes and designs of birds and butterflies—as ornate as any he had seen in his kingdom. Next to the chair sat a small table and on it a tiny teapot carved from the narrow trunk of a dogwood tree and stained at the tip from much use. Two white cats rested on either side of the chair, enjoying the last rays of the day’s sun.
“Good evening, dear king,” came a voice from the chair. “Won’t you sit down and have a cup of tea?”
The king did not move.
“Well, then,” the voice said. “Manners were never really your strongest suit.” From the chair a girl stood up, as tall and thin as the willow trees at the edge of the forest. Her skin was perfectly pale, except for two round pink cheeks. Her teeth were square and straight and too large for her mouth, and though it was clear that she had only just entered into womanhood, her hair hung long and gray past her waist. The king took in her features, assessing her from head to toe, meeting her gaze last.
Two eyes blinked at him. They were as distinct from each other as the red sun was from the white. The right eye was a copper disc—the same Crespin had seen in his dreams; the other was a green circle streaked with gold—the eye of the gardener he had known too well. To see both at once was disconcerting; to see only one was worse. Each eye brought out different features of her face, so that every time she turned, you got the impression she’d just become someone else.
Crespin looked at her for a long time before noticing a gangly staff that rested next to her, a staff which she occasionally touched with affection.
“Come now, good king, and kiss my cheek; it has been long since you have known of my presence and surely we have much to talk about.” She leaned forward, turning her green eye to him, as though she truly believed the king would kiss her.
Instead
he spat upon the ground at her feet and held his staff firmly in front of his face.
“As I was saying about the manners,” the girl said. “I’m sure your dear Loerwoei never would have approved.”
“How dare you speak the name of my departed queen,” Crespin whispered, his voice as taut as a hangman’s rope.
“Come. She was an old friend to my beloved mother. Almost as sisters, those two.”
“You will stop with your frivolous, blasphemous talk of the queen,” the king said, lowering his staff so that the round crystal was at the girl’s eye level. “You know nothing of her.”
“Do I not?” The girl turned her chair to face him and sat back down, pouring a cup of tea. “You know they say that reunions are always awkward events. I guess they’re right.” She placed a saucer of milk and several small fishes on the table for the cats. “It was my mother who helped to keep your beloved Loerwoei alive all those months. Your magic of course was useless. A pity my mother had to leave. Do sit down; I’ve got muffins in the oven; they’ll be ready soon.”
The king pounded his staff upon the ground just as he had in the dogs’ territory, expecting the same result, but in the dense woods it did not even make a noise, much less scar the ground.
“Goodness. Don’t be so sour. I’ll pour the tea. One lump or two?”
As she reached for the sugar dish, the king shot a blast of heat from his staff, which knocked the dish to the ground. “You will cease your careless talk of she who was dear to me, and you will bow as all do who stand in my presence. I am Crespin—king of humans, dogs, wolves, and those who shift shape. I am king of all.”
“Oh dear,” she replied, casually stirring her tea. “I am Zinnegael—and you see I don’t quite fit any of those definitions, so you’ll pardon me if I stay sitting and just sip my tea.”
The king growled and leapt at the girl, only to find his legs immediately entangled in morning glory vines. He stumbled forward, falling before the witch girl.
“I didn’t say you needed to bow to me, though it is finally a bit of politeness,” Zinnegael laughed. With a wave of her staff, the vines at his feet were gone. “These weeds can get out of hand so quickly.”
“Who are you?” King Crespin demanded, rising slowly and watching as an insolent cat in front of him casually flicked its tail, cleaning a paw.
“Do you not know? Really? Now I thought you’d have it figured out by now,” the girl replied. “You know I think you really have guessed it, although—” She paused, her voice losing its playful tone. “—you do, of course, wish that you hadn’t.”
The king made no reply though his eyelid twitched.
“Perhaps you will recall my mother. She was very tall for a human, almost as tall as the Veranderen and ten times more beautiful, although I admit to acquiring many of my looks from my father’s side.” She tossed a course, gray lock over her shoulder and turned the copper eye toward Crespin. “My mother’s hair was as red as the sun and she worked in the gardens of the king. She grew things of all sorts—beautiful, deadly, useful. And she became an expert in potions, an art so close to actual magic that it could catch the attention of a Verander, even a king.”
Zinnegael fixed both mismatched eyes on King Crespin. “Her parents lived in a hovel outside the werewolf capital.” The king growled at the word ‘werewolf,’ but the girl ignored it. “In order to keep them safe and well-fed, my mother learned to be fiercely, perhaps we could call it desperately, obedient.”
The witch walked from the front to the back of the king, pacing like a cat. “My mother gardened with the queen, helped her when she fell ill, and loved her dearly. But she did what her king commanded her. In all things. Even those that were surely distasteful to her.”
With that a vine topped with a flower of deep purple and streaked in black grew up before the king. The blooms multiplied, forming themselves into delicate cups shaped like the bellabud flowers from which hummingbirds drank. One flower climbed to the king’s lips and when it did, he could smell not sweetness, but the poison stench of the purple-black nectar within.
“Will you not drink, my lord?” laughed the witch.
He twisted his head as the nectar came to his lips, the smell foul and strong and oddly intriguing in the beautiful chalice.
“When it became clear that my mother was expecting a child, a child that sprang—as the king well knew—from his own loins, he ordered her to concoct a potion that would destroy the unborn babe.”
The king’s lips were stiff and deadly white. The poison flower tipped its nectar to the earth where it sizzled.
“Perhaps you remember the story now,” she said, taking a sip of her tea. “When my mother refused—an act of insolence new to the king—he banished her. Though we both know that banishment wasn’t quite enough, was it? No, he sent wolves to her village. They hunted her parents, burned huts to the ground. And then they chased the garden servant deep, deep into these woods.”
Zinnegael paused in her story to add a drizzle of cream to her cup. “Your wolves are excellent hunters, Lord King. They found my mother and attacked. First they tore at her hair, and then they maimed her gardener’s hands. At that point they intended to finish their work, but something unexpected happened. Have you guessed it?”
The king looked to the cats in front of him. One of the felines licked its lips.
“Yes,” the witch girl said. “More ghosts from your past. A race you thought you had eliminated sprang from the trees and attacked your wolves. Attacked and fought until the wolves retreated.”
“The hunting of the cats was not my doing,” the king said.
“You gave your permission.”
“The wolves found great sport in it.”
“Ah, a game was it? Well, I do love a good game. How exciting. A population almost extinct in the name of sport.” With that, one of the cats arched its back as though to stretch—the black pupils of its eyes like daggered slits.
The girl continued, “The wolves told you their task had been accomplished—the woman with child was dead. You can hardly blame them. To have failed would have meant execution at your hand. Besides, it was almost true. My mother was very nearly dead. The cats carried my mother deep into the forest and laid her on a bed of soft bark, expecting her to die. But bark was something my mother knew. The cats brought her water to drink and the nectar of honeybloom to ease her mind. But instead of drinking, she formed a poultice of bark and tears and sweet nectar. She drank the liquid from it and put the softened bark paste on her hands and wounds. She was no longer quite so beautiful, but for several years she lived. And so, as you can see, did I.” With that, the witch let out a coarse laugh.
“When my mother finally did die, it was her wish to be buried under the gardens.” The witch gestured to the trees, flowers, herbs, and vegetables all around her. “Even in death, she grants life to me. While you—even in life—you wish to evoke death.”
The king met her eyes—both of them, then spoke. “Half-bloods do not belong in the kingdom. It is not in the natural order.”
“Indeed,” she said, laughing and tapping her staff to the ground so that a bright flame, flickering with green sprang from its tip. “Indeed it is not.” She threw the flame at the king. It clipped off the hair on either side of his cheeks.
“It might create creatures expert at both potions and magic.”
“She devil,” he hissed.
“What?” she asked innocently, burning the cut hair into dust. “You know I could have done much worse than that. You saw what I did to your party of ridiculous wolves.”
The king growled.
The witch looked at him mildly. “Do you wish to fight me?” she asked, her eyes laughing.
“No,” he responded calmly. “I wish to destroy you.” With a mighty effort his nails and teeth grew longer and he leaped at her.
Just as quickly a wall of roots formed in front of her. He hit the wooden barricade and fell to the earth. The king groaned and tried to stand.
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“Oh, but you can’t destroy me,” she said, smirking as he unwillingly sank back to the ground. “Someone saw to that.”
Slowly, thick roots began to grow from the ground around the king.
“Do you see this staff, dear king? Or perhaps you would prefer it if I called you ‘father.’”
Crespin growled, but did not move. Indeed he could not as the roots were now beginning to grow around his chest and legs.
“This staff,” she said calmly, causing the roots to thicken. “I formed it from the same bark that healed my mother. The wood and I—we go rather well together, don’t you think?”
“Do you plan to kill me then?” he asked, feeling the weight of the roots press down on his lungs.
She laughed, just like the girl she was and said, “Oh, I don’t have to.” And then in a voice that was her own, but wasn’t, she hummed,
He who eleven did defeat,
shall find in the twelfth his life complete.
The first born of the surviving foe,
Shall hunt the king like lion to doe.
Conqueror conquered now descends,
To meet his own most bitter end.
The witch Zinnegael paused, her posture relaxing, and tapped her staff against the earth.
With that, the roots tightened across the Crespin’s chest until the mighty king gasped and fainted.
When he woke, Crespin was in his flesh form and his mouth tasted of oak, cedar mushrooms, and lemoned mint. His interview with the witch came to him in misaligned pieces. He had come with only dreams and he left with much the same. He did, however, remember her divination perfectly. “The first born of the surviving foe/Shall hunt the king like lion to doe.” Tomar—the elder who had escaped when Crespin had killed the council—his son would hunt Crespin. The king smirked. The witch surely meant to undermine him with her bit of verse. But Crespin had gone against prophecy before, and won.
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