The changeling wolf’s fur returns to gray, his body rippling into existence out of seemingly nothing. The river take me. Peeku may be adept at camouflage, but the wolves here are practically invisible when they choose to be. Before I can decide how to react, this one makes a quick appraisal of me and Wes, then vanishes into the undergrowth with his prey clamped between his jaws, tail streaming through the brush.
It’s over so quickly, my thundering heart is still catching up when I turn to Wes and rise. “Can you stand?”
He shoots to his feet, wincing at the jolt to his wounds. “What was that?”
“Changeling wolf,” I reply. “And he did us a favor; the peeku’s cry can be deadly.” Wes looks at me like I’m speaking a different language. “Let’s go.”
“What if there are more?”
I turn back to the trees, peering into the morning haze. “If there are, we won’t see them. The only thing to do is carry on. That peeku was small prey, though; I imagine he was hunting alone.”
Take heart, the world is at balance—that’s what Father would say. But I don’t see how that could possibly be true in a world where Helos is gone.
I insist on carrying Wes’s pack again despite his protests; he’s assuredly in an enormous amount of pain right now, and I wonder how much effort it’s costing him to not complain. At least he’s able to keep a fairly steady pace, though he still limps a little.
It doesn’t take long to reach the spot where the trail dropped off. I recognize it by sight, even without the aid of my lynx eyes. This is the place I lost all trace of my brother. Its features are branded into my brain.
We pace around the clearing for a while, then beyond, then back again. Looking for any echo of disturbance. A speck of dried blood, maybe, since that man with the torn legs disappeared with the rest of them. There’s nothing.
Any hope the morning dug up is severed at once. I have no idea what to do.
Right when I’m about to suggest I shift back to lynx to see if there’s anything those heightened senses can pick up, Weslyn suddenly stops, standing straight as a rod.
“What is it?” I demand.
He doesn’t reply right away, just backs up a few paces, then walks forward again. Halts at the same spot. Jumps a little on his good leg.
“What are you doing?”
He steps to the side and bends down, tugging at the grass and roots covering the place he just vacated. I’m at the point of questioning his sanity when his hand yanks on a particularly knobby root, and the ground opens up.
Adrenaline courses through me. There’s a hole about as far across as my arm, right there in the forest floor.
The entrance to a tunnel.
“You did it,” I breathe, hardly able to believe my own eyes.
Wes appears just as stunned as I am. “This explains why the trail went underground.”
For a few moments more, we linger there, staring into the pit. A wooden ladder descends into its belly, though it’s too dark to make out the bottom. I ready myself to shift at the slightest sign of movement within, but there’s no sound, no light, not a single human head surfacing to investigate.
Cold trail.
“Are you sure you want to go down there?” Wes asks, without any real conviction to the question. “We don’t know how far it goes, or what might be waiting on the other side.”
I take in the tight mouth. The curling hair. The dark honeyed eyes creased in concern. “He’s my brother,” I reply. Then I plunge into the darkness.
TWENTY
Some darkness is familiar. Gentle and warm. Safe. And I am not afraid of it.
This darkness is the thieving sort. It robs me of my vision and my courage. Of rational thought. It’s the kind of darkness that blinds me, that makes the sky and the world feel infinite, and me, very small.
I can’t navigate the tunnel like this.
“I’m going to have to shift,” I whisper to Wes, who’s right behind me. I made it only three or four steps past the bottom of the stairs before stopping.
My words have a slightly muffled quality to them, which makes me suspect that the cavern doesn’t stretch too far above our heads, and that it isn’t lined with stone.
Wes mutters his agreement. “I can carry the bags with my left arm.” When I say nothing, he senses my hesitation. “It’s okay. Really.”
I’m sure his injured leg would disagree, but since there’s no other option, I remove my shoes and clothing—he certainly can’t see me here—and stuff them into my bag. I hand him his first, then Helos’s and mine. As soon as I can feel he’s gripping them tightly, one slung over his back, I let go and pull from the air around me, body shrinking and stretching out as the tunnel comes into focus.
The scents of those men and, yes, my brother, break upon me like a wave against the crags. The track is long and narrow, probably no broader than an arms-width apart. As I suspected, the walls and ground are made of packed earth.
There’s no telling how far ahead it stretches, but this is the way my brother came and the only way is forward. I pad on, my lynx paws silent against the dirt.
It quickly becomes apparent that Wes is not moving at a good pace, even accounting for his injuries. I double back and touch my nose to his free hand, and he flinches so forcefully that he swears, no doubt having jostled the arrow wound.
“Sorry,” he whispers. “I can’t see a thing.”
I position myself close enough to his side that he can rest a hand in my fur. When he gets the message, I lead us through the tunnel.
It’s impossible to tell how long we’re there for. Hours, maybe, or so it feels. Between the gaping emptiness ahead, the total silence other than our halting movements, and the hand burning into my back, my nerves stand fully on edge. I push past the uneasiness, driven by the knowledge that each step brings us closer to Helos, and each minute wasted might well lessen our chances of saving him. His captors must have had lanterns or torches of some kind to guide their way, because the tunnel smells faintly of smoke.
When at long last we reach the opposite set of stairs, hunger is raking the walls of my stomach. I halt and shift back to human, grabbing my pack from an unsuspecting Wes and dressing as quickly as I can in the black.
“The stairs are just ahead,” I tell him when I’m ready to go. “I don’t know where they let out, or whether anyone will be there. It will probably be dangerous.” I hesitate before making the offer I think I must. “You don’t have to come. You’re not bound to Helos like I am. And if we don’t make it out of this, there will be no one to bring the stardust to your people.”
“I wouldn’t make it back to Telyan without you, anyway,” Weslyn replies. “And if you think I’m staying behind, you really don’t know me at all.”
With that, he brushes past me and leads the way up the stairs, feeling each step with his foot, judging by the sound. I am desperately afraid for him, but I can’t deny that I’m relieved I don’t have to face this alone. I bump into his back at the top.
“I’m going to push and hope that it opens,” he explains, so quietly the words are almost lost. “As soon as we’re out, make for cover.”
I sort of want to point out that I’m the last person who needs instruction on avoiding detection and seeking shelter, but I simply murmur my assent. We wait for a few moments, straining to hear any movement above, but nothing reaches us.
“On three,” he says at last. “One, two—”
The flap above the stairs flies open, and Weslyn and I explode from the tunnel. The sunlight is blinding after our time underground, and it’s a battle to keep my eyelids open long enough to find refuge. We’re still surrounded by trees, thank fortune. As soon as he shuts the entrance, I grab his hand and pull him behind the nearest trunk.
We stand there in silence for an indeterminate amount of time, listening hard for any signs of an approach. As the seconds tick by and it becomes clear that no one is coming after us, I realize how closely we’re pressed together—and that he ha
sn’t let go. A blush rises to my cheeks.
“I think we’re safe,” he whispers. His breath seems to be coming a little quicker, but I suppose that’s from our mad dash out of the tunnel.
I nod and drop my hand. “I’m going to scout around.”
Leaving him to hold Helos’s pack, I peer around our tree, listening hard for more people. The firs here are spread farther apart, and many of them are too thin to hide behind. I spot a good one a short distance away and brace myself, then dart around it to try to catch my bearings.
We’re close to the edge of the woods; the tree line is just ahead. Beyond and underfoot, the grassy land slopes upward, cresting into the rolling hills that blanket the base of the Decani Mountains. We’ve shifted north, farther so than the scene of the caegar attack. I locate my next tree at the top of the knoll ahead and sprint up the rise, breath hitching in my throat as I lodge myself against the bark. Then I look out.
A vast stretch of open land sprawls before me, undulating in gentle curves that ought to be occupied by herds of caribran, their velvety summer antlers arcing high. Instead, the hills are empty, sparsely vegetated, and overwhelmingly brown. The hue is out of place in a wilderness as lush and overgrown as the Vale, and it definitely wasn’t here when Helos and I were. In fact, judging by the position of the mountains straight ahead to the north and west, and the slice of the river just barely visible far, far to the east, I’d estimate we’re close to where … where …
My muscles lock up as the truth seeps in.
This is where Caela Ridge used to be.
The ancient trees and overgrown greenery. The ghost town of wooden houses and bridges that haunt my dreams in half-baked form. All of it is gone.
This tree line I’m hiding among isn’t natural. The woods should reach a little farther out. My gaze comes to rest on a dark rectangular structure crowning a low plateau in the distance, seated closer to the base of the mountains. It’s tiny from here, but the fact that it’s visible at all suggests that it must be quite large in actuality. Creeping along the forest’s edge, I scan the dirt for boot prints until my suspicions are confirmed.
There are tracks, so subtle I would have missed them if I hadn’t spent my life learning to recognize disturbances like these. The men went this way, which means that whatever that structure is, is most likely where we’ll find Helos.
I pop up to tell Wes—and find myself facing a bow with the bowstring pulled taut, an arrow two handsbreadths from my nose.
Fur pokes through the skin along my back as I stare at the wooden tip, mouse instincts yanking on my core. The figure wielding the weapon has a freckled, ivory face framed by blond ringlets streaked with silver and gold. She studies me through silver eyes, the irises shiny as stardust.
She’s a whisperer, which means I can’t shift to animal—she’ll be able to persuade me to do what she likes.
“What do you want?” I choke out, and her lips squeeze together in warning.
The ground pulses through the soles of my boots as weighty footsteps thud to a halt somewhere behind. I risk a glance over my shoulder, and my fists tighten further at the sight of the massive timber bear hunched a short distance away. It must be her companion. Its paws are as big as my head, the claws as long as my little finger. The whisperer quirks her chin toward it.
I shake my head. In a heartbeat, she fires the arrow just past my ear and pulls another one into place. Her chin jerks toward the bear once more.
My boots feel heavy as lead as I force one in front of the other, the bear tracking my funeral march through hooded eyes. It circles around and leads us away from the tree line, no doubt receiving instruction from the whisperer through whatever channel she has tapped into in its mind.
Seven more whisperers are standing where I left Wes, each with silver- and gold-streaked hair, each human in appearance except for the silver eyes. Their forest-colored tops are cut with no sleeves, revealing the glimmering, golden rings that surface on their left arms like a second skin for every new species they learn to compel. Some have only two or three encircling the wrist, about the width of a fingertip; others have rings extending all the way up to the shoulder.
Those are the ones to fear the most.
“I found another one,” calls my captor as I stumble into their midst. Her voice has a brusque quality to it, not unlike the clipped speech of Eradain. An older-looking man with a partially shaved head shoves Weslyn in front of the group and signals to my captor, whose face falls as the bear lumbers away. Wes clutches his injured leg and scans the length of me as if checking for damage.
“That’s far enough,” says the man, raising a palm. I stop.
At first, nothing happens. Then a rope slides over my boots, and I look down to find it’s a snake.
In fact, there are several snakes, a dozen at least, all milling about the ground where Wes and I have gathered. Their stone-patterned bodies are capped with two heads; the blue-striped one has the ability to spit fire, the red one venom. The one on my shoe curls itself around my calf, and bile rises in my throat.
“Let me explain how this will work,” says a short, large-waisted woman, her warm beige face marked by thin brows, a broad nose, and a small, wary mouth. She steps toward Wes and me as her comrades form an outer circle. “You will tell us everything you know about the building beneath the mountains. What it is, why your people have come, and what you aim to do.” Pausing for obvious effect, the whisperer curls her long, streaked raven hair behind her ear. “If you don’t, the snakes will scorch your legs until they char. If you do, and I think you are lying, I’ll sink an arrow into one of your limbs.” She strokes her bow rather lovingly. “I warn you, I’m a terribly good shot.”
“We don’t know what it is,” I begin.
She raises the bow.
“We don’t! We came to find out.”
Wes stares at me pointedly. What building?
“And why would humans take sudden interest in the Vale?”
“I’m a shifter,” I say. “I used to live here, at Caela Ridge.”
Her eyes narrow. “Those shifters were massacred.”
My stomach curdles at the pronouncement. Pulling from the earth beneath her boots, I lengthen my hands and feet, stain my hair yellow with streaks of silver and gold, extend my torso, reshape my nose—on and on, until I know I’m a perfect replica of the whisperer who brought me here.
“You are a ghost,” the short woman murmurs, her pupils dilating as she stands a little lower in the hole I’ve created. To the side, my captor swears loudly at her stolen image as several others raise their bows once more.
“I am just as real as you are,” I insist, returning to my natural form. “And you’re slowing us down. We’re looking for someone who was taken from us.”
“Typically it’s best not to provoke armed captors,” Wes cautions under his breath.
“And this one?” the man asks, kicking a smattering of forest debris in Wes’s direction. The snakes hiss at the disturbance and undulate closer to us. “Are you a shifter, too?”
“Human.”
The bows pivot in his direction, and someone spits at his feet.
“Stop that!” I demand.
“Why?” The man with the shaved head closes the distance between us in slow, deliberate strides. The serpents part before his feet. “Is this the kind of friend you’re searching for? Another human?”
I swallow the lump crawling up my throat. “My brother. I think he might be in that building you spoke of.”
Wes peers toward the top of the knoll I climbed.
After a long pause, the short woman mutters a few words, and the rest of them lower their weapons, some visibly reluctant. “We have lost people, too,” she says. “Ones who have gone out alone. Normally, you can hear the humans’ stomping from far away. Somehow, they have figured out a way to move in silence.”
“We found a tunnel,” says Wes. “That may be how they’re getting around.”
“Show us.”
“How long has that building been there?” I ask.
The short one fingers her bow, the movement etched with tension. “A few months, perhaps.”
“A few months?”
“You did not know?”
I steal a glance at Weslyn, who’s surveying our surroundings with appraising eyes. “I live east of the river now.”
“You stay with them?” spits my captor, her lip curled in disgust. “Even now?”
Wes rubs his bandaged arm but says nothing.
“What of it?” I say.
“Forestborn do not belong with humans. Not anymore.”
“Forestborn?”
She narrows her eyes. “People like you and us. You were born with magic in your blood, were you not?”
The word tugs on the deep recesses of my memory. A term from childhood, maybe, or perhaps the flicker of recognition I feel now is only imagined.
“You still have a home here, a community—family and friends you can turn to,” I counter at last. “We had nothing.”
“We?”
I bite my lip. “My brother. The one I’m trying to rescue, and yet I’m wasting time here talking to you!”
“It is folly to try to enter that building,” says one that looks younger than the rest. His arms are all corded muscle, his dark brown hair tied into a knot at the nape of his neck. A black-tipped caw is perched on his shoulder, its blade-sharp feathers precariously close to the boy’s rich brown skin. “None of our scouts have ever returned. My cousin, for one.”
“What about the animals you control? Why don’t you send one of them?”
His eyebrows raise. “We’ve sent birds,” he admits. “They are the only ones that returned. But they do not have sufficiently complex language to describe what they see. They can only report simple words: humans, shelter, hunters, danger, death.”
Weslyn appears bewildered by all this talk of bird words, but I’ve latched on to only one.
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