Ice Wolves

by Amie Kaufman

  NOTE: Does not work in the dark. Does work on opposite coasts of Vallen, not tested at greater distances. Make sure you don’t swap the telescopes or you won’t see anything.

  And then, in another person’s handwriting, the letters written by someone pressing down very firmly indeed:

  Seriously, be careful. The telescopes look annoyingly similar.

  “Drifa was a dragonsmith,” Lisabet said. “One of the most famous. And you know Hayn already. I don’t know who Felix was.”

  Anders’s eyes widened. Hayn had worked with the dragons?

  The next page showed a metal plate with ornate etchings of storm clouds all around the edges, about a foot across according to the measurements written beside it. The text was in someone else’s handwriting, a little messier:

  Place the plate in the area where you would like rainfall to occur, and leave overnight. Does not guarantee rain, but makes it more likely rain will occur. Useful for new crops that require early rainfall. Designed by Hayn. Forged by Tilda.

  NOTE: The rain you’re attracting is coming from somewhere that probably also needs it. Do not overuse. Be cautious when using alongside artifacts designed to raise or lower temperature. The Snowstone, for example, will bring down the temperature, but combined with this plate, it will probably just cause hail. Which is terrible news for your crops.

  Facing it was a sketch of a pair of handcuffs, along with a metal belt with an ornate buckle at its front.

  The wearer of the handcuffs is not able to move more than ten feet from the wearer of the belt. Originally intended for law enforcement, these were to be replicated for widespread use by all patrolling pack members, however this was put on hold due to wolf-dragon conflict. Designed by Kaleb. Forged by Eliot.

  NOTE: Handcuffs are only equipped with ONE key. Given no dragons are available to release the essence forged into these devices, it is vital the key not be lost when the cuffs are being used. VITAL.

  They kept on reading together, soaking up artifacts far more complex than any Anders had ever seen outside the Academy—and more complicated than most he’d seen inside as well. They flipped backward to check their theory that the artifacts were listed in order of their invention, and decades earlier, they found another Anders recognized. It was a sketch of the wind arches at the port, the blueprint drawn carefully, lines of runes listed underneath. Designed by Sylas, it said, giving the name of some long-ago wolf. But then: Updated by Hayn. Interesting.

  They returned to more recent artifacts, and eventually they realized only the lamps were now lighting the library, and it was dark outside. Anders had been right—this was a lifetime of reading, and no promise of an answer.

  Looking up, Lisabet seemed to notice the darkness as well. “One more,” she said, turning to the next page. It held a picture of a water bottle with an ornate metal lid, and a spout through which to drink.

  Water bottle can be filled with water of any quality, and if drunk through the spout, it will be potable. Designed by Felix. Forged by Drifa.

  NOTE: It is important to clean out the filter in the neckpiece regularly. This bottle will purify the water, but it will not cause chunks of debris to disappear. These must be cleared by hand.

  Anders stared down at this final picture. A tickle in the back of his mind told him it was familiar, and he squinted sore eyes at it, waiting for his brain to present an answer.

  Then the puzzle clicked into place. He’d seen this exact water skin on a shelf in the Fyrstulf’s office. He remembered it distinctly, tucked between two books.

  Lisabet said she had to put the book away and declined his offer of help—which made him wonder if she, too, was keeping secrets, so he gathered up his homework and set off for their room.

  He could barely wrap his mind around what he’d learned. Wolves and dragons working together? Lisabet’s questions felt dangerous.

  And they didn’t change the fact that the dragons had kidnapped Rayna. Or that he still had no idea how to rescue her.

  Viktoria wasn’t back in their room yet either, so Sakarias gave Anders another lesson in ice spears while nobody was looking. But Anders still couldn’t understand what Sakarias tried so hard to explain. He couldn’t sense water around him in the air, or under the earth, let alone imagine how to summon it or freeze it.

  “Do I just . . . think at it?” he asked, frustration washing over him. “How does that work? I have about as much chance of talking to you with my mind as talking to water.”

  “You don’t talk to it,” Sakarias said, uncertain. “You just sort of . . . open up your mind. Sense what’s there, then imagine it doing what you want it to do.”

  If just wanting something was enough to make it happen, Anders had a lifetime of practice at that—as long as he could remember, he’d wanted something more to eat, somewhere safe to sleep. He’d wanted to be as quick or as smart as Rayna when he was in a jam, or just to be good at something.

  But wanting had never helped him before, and it didn’t help him now.

  They had to stop when one of Sakarias’s spears actually chipped the stone wall. “We’ll just cover it up with one of my sketches,” Sakarias said, hastily repositioning a pencil drawing of Lisabet surrounded by stacks of books taller than she was. “We’ll figure it out tomorrow, don’t worry.”

  When Anders finally lay in bed, he could barely believe it was only the end of his first day at Ulfar Academy. Last night’s meal with Lisabet, Viktoria, and Sakarias seemed like weeks ago.

  He wished he had more to show for his first day, but he hoped he was moving in the right direction. The events of the day swirled together—from thumping to the ground in Combat class to Sigrid and Lisabet’s fight in Military History.

  Then he thought of the artifact map Sigrid had shown them in class, and the giant Skraboks full of lists of artifacts.

  More and more he was sure that somewhere out there, there had to be an artifact that would help him search for Rayna.

  It was up to him to find it.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  THE NEXT DAY IN GEOGRAPHY, ANDERS pored over the map of Vallen in his textbook, trying to memorize every possible location of dragons. He might not be that good at reading, but he knew how to learn from a diagram, and every piece of information helped.

  The dragons were to be found in all three mountain ranges in Vallen—the Westlands, the Icespire which ran down the center, and the Seacliff Mountains on the east coast. But where exactly they were in those mountains, nobody knew.

  The city of Holbard was on the coast in the southeast, depressingly far from those mountains—though he acknowledged with a dark smile that he was probably the only non-dragon to wish the dragons were closer.

  There were dozens of dragon communities, called aeries, that much the wolves knew. Scorch dragons didn’t live in one big pack but preferred to spread out through the mountains.

  “Though we don’t know where to find them,” said Professor Rosa, his Geography teacher, “we have ideas on where to search, if we need to take the battle to them. Wherever there is volcanic activity, you’ll find the dragons. A scorch dragon’s flame is most powerful in the mountains where the lava flows beneath.”

  Anders’s heart was starting to sink. If there were dozens of aeries, none of which were even marked on the map, how could he possibly know where to start searching for Rayna? Even if he found one, it might not be the right one.

  The more Professor Rosa talked, the more downhearted Anders became.

  He made himself raise his hand. Professor Rosa turned her attention to him—she had bright blue eyes that stood out against her golden brown skin, and wore glasses that magnified them larger than anyone’s he’d ever seen, so her stare was really quite something.

  “If we don’t know where the aeries are,” Anders asked, “does that mean we don’t have any way to detect them? We have so many artifacts, and none of them are for finding dragons?”

  A shiver went through him at asking such an obvious question—would
anyone suspect why? But he remembered how Lisabet had read his body language the day before, and forced himself to take a slow breath and sit up straight.

  “Unfortunately, not anymore,” the professor replied.

  Not anymore? What did that mean?

  Turning to the map, she tapped a spot in the Icespire Mountains, the craggy range that ran down Vallen’s spine. “For instance, we know this used to be Drekhelm, their lead aerie. The only large gathering place for dragons. After the last great battle, the dragons moved. They relocated Drekhelm to somewhere else new, but our scouts have never found it.”

  Anders nodded, repeating the name silently to himself. Drekhelm. He might not know where Rayna was, but he would start by searching for their capital, unless he found some better clue soon. Perhaps they would keep a prisoner there. Until the equinox, at any rate.

  Their next class was Law. Wolves had to know all of Vallen’s laws when they were on patrol. The professor spoke at length about different types of theft and showed them an artifact that could be set to recognize members of a family but to ring a loud and angry bell when somebody other than the family entered a home, which made an excellent antitheft device, unless you wanted visitors.

  Thinking of antitheft artifacts reminded Anders of the zippers Rayna had saved him from touching, the day of their transformation. What would have happened if they’d been caught that day and not gone up to the dais? Would they have avoided all this trouble?

  Or would he have gotten sick like Det? Anders could have gotten worse and worse—nobody would ever have thought to check if a boy from the streets needed the Staff of Hadda. Some of the others had made clear enough with their whispers and glances that they didn’t think a student who hadn’t named a single wolf ancestor belonged at Ulfar.

  As the professor kept on talking, Anders sketched the map he’d just seen in Geography to help fix it in his mind. Drekhelm. Drekhelm. Where on this map was the new location of Drekhelm?

  But try as he might, though, he didn’t learn anything more over the next several days. He ate huge meals, practiced his transformation and took his classes, and quietly had tutoring sessions with Lisabet in the evenings.

  She didn’t mention the artifacts again, though secretly Anders wished she would. Maybe she thought she’d gone too far during their first homework session. Anders found it difficult to sneak to the library without her to look in the Skraboks, and even when he did, his reading was far too slow.

  No matter what he tried, his task felt more impossible each day.

  * * *

  It was most of the way through Anders’s second week when he and his classmates ran into Hayn, the wolf who had brought him to the Academy. They were making their way back to lunch when Anders saw a familiar silhouette and the square, black, thick-rimmed glasses through the crowd, and the idea came to him in a flash.

  Hayn’s name had been in the Skraboks as the designer of so many of the recent artifacts. If Anders could steer the conversation in the right direction, perhaps the big wolf would tell him something about an artifact he could use to find his sister.

  “Hayn!” he said, before the man had a chance to walk by.

  Hayn pushed his glasses up his nose and took a look at Anders, then broke into a smile as he recognized him. He was juggling a huge pile of Skraboks—even for an adult, they were difficult to carry.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Anders saw some of his companions tilt their heads a little, and the wolf in him recognized that they were showing their throats to a senior member of the pack, instinctively making clear they weren’t a threat.

  Hayn waved away the shows of respect, hefting the pile of books. “Our newest recruit,” he said. “How are your classes going?”

  “G-good,” he said, wincing as he stumbled over the word.

  “He transforms straightaway almost every time these days,” Sakarias said cheerfully, and Anders winced all over again. He’d have preferred his roommate leave out that “almost.”

  Still, he couldn’t afford to let Hayn continue on his way, so for once he was bold in speaking, jumping straight in before anyone else could sidetrack the conversation. “I saw the Skraboks in the library,” he blurted out. “Your name was in lots of them.”

  “So it would be,” Hayn agreed with a quiet smile. “I’m a designer. You’ll learn more about that in third year, I think that’s when the artifacts class is. Study hard in the meantime, plenty to learn.”

  Third year? Anders’s heart sank. He couldn’t afford to wait that long. So instead, he waited as everyone politely said good-bye to Hayn and hung back as his classmates made their way down the hallway toward the dining hall. Then he turned to hurry after the big wolf.

  The designer blinked to find Anders still at his elbow, keeping pace with him as he made his way along the hall. “Is there something else?” he asked.

  “I . . .” Anders’s words stuck in his throat. How did he ask what he wanted to ask—about an artifact for tracking dragons—without rousing suspicion?

  And then Lisabet’s voice sounded from behind him. “Can we help you carry those Skraboks back to your workshop?”

  Hayn smiled again. “That’s kind of you, thank you.”

  Anders and Lisabet took one giant book each and followed him down the hallway. Anders wasn’t sure if Lisabet was just being polite or if she’d sensed he wanted to keep talking to Hayn, but he didn’t question his luck. He just set his mind to thinking about how to stay once they were in the workshop.

  Hayn opened a wooden door a minute later, leaning against it to hold it open for the two students. Anders followed Lisabet in and stopped short when he saw the room waiting for them.

  Packed shelves lined the dimly lit room from floor to ceiling, stuffed full of books, old pieces of machinery—artifacts, Anders supposed—and all kinds of mess. There were twisted pieces of wood, a bowl of apples shoved between two theater masks, sketches and diagrams pinned to almost every available surface, half-assembled artifacts suspended from the ceiling.

  Hayn did something to a dial by the door, and the strings of lamps around the room all brightened at the same time, as though they were linked. Some kind of artifact, Anders guessed. There was no window, so the room had been almost dark without them.

  “Just over here is perfect,” Hayn said, leading the way and balancing his books on the edge of his cluttered desk while he moved two empty mugs, a chisel, and a pile of maps out of the way.

  First Anders, then Lisabet put the books down. Anders groped for another question, a reason to stay now their task was done. “Are the maps part of an artifact?” he asked, nodding at the pile on the table. Perhaps he could steer the conversation around to locating things.

  “They were once,” Hayn replied. “Not anymore.”

  “How do you make something like that?” Anders asked.

  Hayn glanced around the room at the half-assembled artifacts hanging from the ceilings and stuffed into the shelves. “We don’t talk about it anymore,” he said quietly. “And with good reason. Our partnership with the dragons is over.”

  “But look at all these artifacts,” Lisabet pressed, waving her arms to indicate the whole room. “You just said it yourself, they’re breaking, one by one.”

  She was here to satisfy her endless curiosity, Anders realized. If Sigrid wouldn’t answer her questions, perhaps Hayn would. Well, that was fine—as long as she didn’t get them thrown out.

  Anders could tell that arguing wasn’t going to move Hayn—though he was a big, broad-shouldered man, there was a gentleness about him. So he matched Hayn’s quiet voice instead. “We won’t tell anyone you told us,” he promised. “But we really are interested.”

  Hayn hesitated, looking first at Anders and then at Lisabet. And then, as if coming to some internal decision, he nodded. “There are two parts to making an artifact,” he said. “The design and the forging. Do you understand how essence is channeled?”

  Lisabet nodded at the same time as Anders shook his hea
d.

  “Essence is the magic that’s found all around us,” Hayn said. “In nature, in the earth itself. When we transform from human to wolf, we channel it instinctively so we can make the change. Wherever they’re from in the world, elementals always have gifts linked to nature, because nature is where we find the essence that gives us our power. But essence can also be forged into artifacts. Wolves and dragons worked together to achieve this, according to their strengths.”

  “What is a dragon’s strength?” Anders made himself ask. It felt wrong even to think about dragons in that light—he could tell why Hayn didn’t talk about it anymore.

  “Well,” said Hayn. “We wolves are a family. We are organized, we operate as a pack. We are well-suited to keeping clear records on the uses of various runes and their combinations and researching new combinations. There’s no set formula for the runes on any artifact—it’s like inventing new words. Say, for example, you were the person that invented the very first door handle. It wouldn’t have a name, would it? So you’d have to take the word ‘door’ and the word ‘handle’ and put them together, and there are other combinations you could have used. You could have called it an ‘entrance maker’ or a ‘door opener.’”

  “And if you used the wrong combination of runes on an artifact, what happened?” Anders asked.

  “At best, nothing,” Hayn said. “It just didn’t work. At worst . . . well, once I caused an explosion that left me deaf for a week. But we wolves are careful with our records, and we don’t mind the hard work of researching. Dragons, on the other hand, are quite different. Where we are a family, they are individuals. Many dragons even live alone. They are artistic, fanciful, often inconsiderate.”

  “But, Hayn,” Lisabet protested. “You can’t just say one thing about all of them. We wolves aren’t all the same. I mean, even our class isn’t all the same. Sakarias isn’t careful with his records, he loses his notes every second week. Viktoria’s organized, Jai’s funny, Mateo’s strong, Det knows how to help people get along.”