A starling, and a snowy hare. A hawk, a cat, a mouse. An owl. An ermine.
The First Ones, the part of Quicksilver’s mind that was still her own whispered. And their monsters.
A scream began, somewhere deep and muffled, and rose higher and higher until it pierced Quicksilver from gut to skull, and threw her back onto the hard ground.
She lay there, dizzy and gasping, feeling as though she had been pounded in the stomach by marble fists.
Across from her sprawled the Wolf King, looking just as disoriented as she felt. Light leaked out of his ears and nose and mouth, and then the light gathered in a quivering puddle at his feet, and then it became a dog—Fox, limping over to Quicksilver.
Quicksilver buried her face in his coat. Fox, what did you do?
Only what you instructed, master. Fox’s legs buckled beneath him. I gave it one more try.
The Wolf King shook his head and staggered to his feet. His wolves hurried to him, their tails between their legs, yipping and whining. When the Wolf King’s eyes cleared, he spotted Quicksilver in the dirt, and in that moment he seemed not a fearsome king but merely a boy. He backed away, his face waxen, his dark hair plastered to his skin.
It almost looked like he was afraid of Quicksilver.
The two shadows wrapped themselves around the Wolf King like scarves, hissing indecipherable words. The Wolf King called to his wolves, “To me,” in the voice Quicksilver remembered from the convent—a choir of voices, and buried within them, the clear voice of a boy. The wolves circled around him, faster and faster, becoming a swirl of indistinguishable colors. Then they disappeared altogether, and took the Wolf King and his two shadows with them.
In the booming silence that followed, Quicksilver could hardly breathe, her mind working furiously.
“What happened?” Olli rasped. He sat nearby, cradling Pulka in his arms. One of her wings looked broken, but her owl eyes were sharp and clear.
“I saw his thoughts,” said Quicksilver slowly, which sounded ludicrous, even though she knew it was the truth. “Fox went into his mind, and through him, I saw . . . I saw the Wolf King when he was little. His family. I saw the First Ones. I saw . . . I saw their monsters. . . .”
Olli stared at her. “But how?”
“Anastazia!” Quicksilver jumped to her feet. Despite her shaky legs and pounding head, she was smiling. Fox wasn’t dead, and neither was she, and look what they had done! “You won’t believe it—I know where they are! The skeletons! It makes no sense, but—”
Then Quicksilver lost her voice, for there was Sly Boots, kneeling on the ground with a hopeless expression on his face, and beside him, completely still, lay Anastazia.
.25.
MIND MAGIC
Quicksilver ran to them, her throat choked with fear.
“She’s not dead,” said Sly Boots, rubbing his forehead with a grimace, “but she’s bad off.”
“Anastazia?” Quicksilver took the old woman’s face in her hands, wiping away specks of mud. Dry skin flaked away at Quicksilver’s touch. “What happened? Are you all right?”
“She broke the link,” said Olli, limping over to them. Pulka crawled up to Olli’s shoulder and gingerly tested her wing. “I saw her run over like . . . well, like a much younger witch, if you don’t mind me saying so. She shoved you to the ground, and it must have severed the connection between you and the Wolf King. It threw her back from you, though, hard. Magic flew off everywhere, like shattered glass. I barely missed getting hit myself.”
“What did you see?” Anastazia’s eyes fluttered open. “Quicksilver . . .”
“Don’t speak,” said Quicksilver, settling Anatazia’s head in her lap. What a strange thing it was, she thought, to hold yourself in your own arms. “Just listen.” She glared up at Olli. “Do you mind?”
Olli inclined his head and hurried to help the others. Quicksilver saw Freja cradling a broken arm, her monster snake hanging forlornly about her neck. Quicksilver grabbed Sly Boots’s hand to keep him there beside her.
“Stay, Boots. Please?”
Sly Boots blinked, and then Quicksilver had to blink, too, because it had looked, for an instant, as though his eyes had changed color, as though something fundamental about his face had shifted. But then he smiled and sat next to her, and he listened closely as she told Anastazia everything—the images she had seen while connected to the Wolf King, and how frightening they had been. How she hadn’t meant to perform mind magic, but how it had just sort of happened, because she had been prepared to die and had thrown everything she had at him, and how she had seen the First Ones, it must have been them, and their monsters too, and—
“I think I know where to go next,” Quicksilver said. “Well, at least I have an idea.” She frowned, working through the chaos of the last few minutes. The images she had seen while connected to the Wolf King’s mind still stormed within her, and she shuddered to look at them. That burned village, those people, covered in blood. The night-haired boy, doing such horrible things . . .
Fox placed a reassuring paw on her leg. Quicksilver found her courage and continued. “I suppose it does make sense,” she said. “The First Ones are using the Wolf King’s body, so when I was connected to the Wolf King, I was also connected to them. Right? So of course I saw them, and pieces of their thoughts and memories, and their monsters, just like I did the Wolf King’s. And . . .” She trailed off. Fox? I don’t know how to explain.
“We feel pulled by the skeletons of the First One’s monsters,” said Fox. “We did before, in the Rompus’s cave, but that was just the feeling of big magic nearby. It was confusing, jumbled. This is more than that. More focused. Before it was like . . .”
“Like hearing a shout in a crowd,” said Quicksilver, “but not recognizing the voice.”
“Yes! And now we know the voice. We know the monster it belongs to. And it’s much easier to hear.” Fox fixed his warm brown eyes on Quicksilver. “We need to go to the Belrike–Falstone border. Beyond that, I’m not sure yet. But that’s where the nearest skeleton is, I’m sure of it.”
Quicksilver looked hopefully at Sly Boots. “That makes sense, doesn’t it?”
Sly Boots appeared to be navigating an impossible maze. He blinked several times and then rubbed his eyes. “I . . . think so? You both talk very fast. It’s making my head hurt something awful. Perhaps if you start over—”
“That’s right.” Anastazia wheezed. “You’re . . . right. Quicksilver. My good girl.” Two tears slid from Anastazia’s clouded eyes. She kissed Quicksilver’s hand. “You frightened me, running off like that. Please, you must be careful.”
“I promise you I will.” Quicksilver leaned down, her shimmering red hair forming a curtain around them. “I didn’t mean to, Anastazia, I swear I didn’t. I was just so angry and afraid, and . . .” She paused, grinning. “It was fairly excellent, what I did, wasn’t it?”
A hint of a smile tugged at the corner of Anastazia’s mouth. “You still . . . have the skeleton?”
Quicksilver nodded, patting her pack. “Will you be all right?”
The hint of a smile became a full-fledged one. “I’ve had worse, believe me.”
“Then we’ll go north?”
Anastazia clasped her hand around Quicksilver’s and squeezed, and Quicksilver was relieved to feel some of Anastazia’s old strength return.
“North we will go,” Anastazia agreed.
While Sly Boots helped Anastazia to her feet, Quicksilver hurried to Olli, who was helping Lukaas construct a splint for Freja’s arm. Lukaas’s face had been slashed by claws; remarkably, he still had both of his eyes, but blood streaked his skin. Three other witches lay unmoving beneath the trees. Bernt and his badger monster, their fuschia hair and fur spotted with blood, moved between the fallen witches, tugging their cloaks up over their faces.
Quicksilver hardened herself against the sight—only four witches left of the coven’s original fifteen. She could spare no feeling for them, or she would sit r
ight there and cry, and she couldn’t do that. She needed to move.
“We have to leave you,” she said to Olli, once they had stepped away from the others. “I’m sorry, but it’s for the best. Our group is too big to travel safely, and where we’re going . . .”
To be honest, she thought to Fox, we don’t know where we’re going, exactly. Yet.
They’re better off without us, Fox reminded her. If we’re right, and we start finding these skeletons, the Wolf King will be after us, not them. They’ll make it to the mountains safely.
A tiredness overcame Quicksilver as she thought of chasing and being chased, perhaps for the rest of her life. I wish I had never seen those memories. Now that I have . . . I can’t do nothing anymore, can I, Fox? I can’t keep living like you and me and thieving are the only things that matter. The Wolf King is dangerous. He’s evil, he’s . . . She trailed off, shivering.
It’s still your choice, master. No one here can make you do anything you don’t want to. We could sell that skeleton and use the coin to live out our lives in peace.
And when the Wolf King finds us, when everyone else is dead?
Fox had no answer to that.
It would be easier to take the skeleton and run, to abandon Anastazia’s fight—but that, Quicksilver thought, might not be the sort of life worth living. She wished, for an instant, that she weren’t so terribly clever, and could go through life without having to consider such things.
You’re not clever as all that, Fox teased.
Quicksilver let out one small laugh, her eyes nearly spilling over with exhausted tears. “Olli, take your coven and hurry west. Don’t worry about us, and don’t look back.”
Olli’s gaze moved from Quicksilver to Anastazia to Fox and back to Quicksilver. “What’s this all about, Quix? How did he know to find us here?” He paused, ducked his head to look her straight in the eye. “What are you and the old woman up to?”
You don’t have to tell him anything, Fox warned.
But the weight of what had happened pushed hard on her shoulders—what she had done, how fragile Anastazia now looked, how the Wolf King’s blood-soaked memories sat heavy within her like festering heaps of rot. She turned away from the others and opened the pouch in her pack that held the skeleton.
Olli frowned at it. “Bones?”
But Pulka, still cradled in his arms, let out an alarmed squawk. “Is that . . . ?” The owl fluffed her feathers in distress. “Child, what have you done?”
Olli’s eyes widened—as Pulka’s thoughts came to him, no doubt. “You mean, that’s really the skeleton of—”
“Yes,” said Quicksilver, and then she explained everything to him—their mission, collecting the bones, Anastazia’s many lives. Traveling through time, again and again. How Anastazia had found them in Willow-on-the-River, back home. The longer she spoke, the more easily she could breathe, as if by getting out the words, telling her story, she was also letting out some of her fear.
When she had finished, she waited, weary and sore, her head aching, her throat dry. The mind magic had indeed left her mind feeling scrambled like an egg on a skillet, just as Anastazia had said it would, that first night in Willow-on-the-River.
Olli ruffled a hand through his hair and looked away.
“I don’t think we need to tell you how important it is that this information stays secret.” Fox growled, baring his teeth.
“Oh, your secret is safe,” Olli replied, “and even if I did want to tell anyone, no one would believe me. Quix.” He knelt, took Quicksilver’s hands in his. “You don’t have to do this. You can come with us.”
Quicksilver laughed faintly. “Over a mountain we’ll die crossing?”
“I believe that, together, we stand a good chance of surviving even those mountains. I must believe it. The Star Lands are lost. Witches have tried to fight the Wolf King before, and they’ve failed. He may have gotten scared off this time—and I don’t blame him, considering what you did—but he won’t scare so easy next time. You know that, don’t you?”
“I have to try,” she said, but even to her own ears, she didn’t sound convinced. “I saw . . . Olli, when I was in his head, I saw terrible things. I didn’t realize . . . I didn’t know—”
Olli nodded. “Yes, the Wolf King has done terrible things, and he’ll do many more. But it isn’t your responsibility to stop him. You’re just a girl, Quix. You’re not a hero. None of us are. Heroes are for tales and bedtime stories.” He touched her cheek softly. “I know the old woman—er . . . the older you, I suppose—has this grand plan, and it’s admirable, truly. Powerful she may have been—and you certainly are. I’ll give you that much. I’ve never seen mind magic done like that before, especially not by such a young witch. But you’ve never succeeded, in all of your lives. Isn’t that right? What makes you think you’ll succeed this time?”
The bones in Quicksilver’s pack shifted and grumbled. A sensation of thorns prickled against her back.
They’ll need some attention soon, Fox suggested. And perhaps a song. Unfortunately.
Quicksilver took hold of her fear with a long, steady breath, and welcomed it into her heart. “I am not the sort of witch who runs away from evil,” she said to Olli in a firm, clear voice. “I am the sort of witch who hunts it down.”
Olli’s face fell. “Quix—”
“I’ve made up my mind. So let us leave peacefully. You’ve seen what I can do. Don’t test me.”
Then Quicksilver held out her hand, refusing to meet Olli’s eyes. After a moment, he slapped hands with her, and she endured a hug from him, and heard him say quietly, “You’re a brave witch, Quicksilver, and we won’t forget you.” She ignored the sudden tears in her eyes, and how frightened and tired she felt. She muttered good-bye to Freja and Lukaas, who surely noticed her flaming cheeks and bright eyes, but did not comment on them.
“Only four left,” Sly Boots observed as he, Quicksilver, Fox, and Anastazia turned off the road and into the forest. “Do you think they’ve really got a chance, like Olli hopes?”
“That isn’t our concern, boy,” said Anastazia, with a sputtering cough. “They were fools before we met them, and they’ll be fools yet again.”
Quicksilver did not want to think about Olli and his now-tiny coven any longer. Each step she took away from them was difficult enough, even though she knew she was doing the right thing.
Wasn’t she?
“Here, Boots,” she said harshly, tossing her pack at him. “Sing it a song or recite poetry or something. The Wolf King got it into a nasty temper.”
While Sly Boots sang, Quicksilver kept her eyes on the bright blue star she could see through the treetops—the eye of Valkar, the White Bear, which pointed the way north.
.26.
RATS, MOST ASSUREDLY
In the kingdom of Belrike—which sat to the south and west of Quicksilver’s home of Lalunet—there lived a king named Kallin.
His castle was squashed and gray, perched precariously on the side of Silverhair Mountain. Five tiny villages dotted the foothills below the castle, linked by several slender bridges, for the mountainside glittered with a web of tiny rivers. King Kallin had a queen and five beloved daughters—the youngest of which, Tatjana, would soon turn thirteen.
On the very day that Quicksilver, Fox, Anastazia, and Sly Boots entered his kingdom by way of the forest known in those parts as the Skullwood, King Kallin was preparing to hold a grand party in celebration of his daughter’s accomplishment—that is, having survived thirteen years without being eaten alive by the numerous skeletal remains housed in the catacombs beneath their castle.
The king and his wife, Voina, sat in the royal dinghy as it glided across the still black lake at the bottom of Silverhair Mountain.
“My dear,” said Queen Voina to her husband, and not for the first time, “don’t you think you’re worrying yourself into a fit over nothing? Must we really do this again?”
King Kallin rubbed his bald head and scanned the w
ater for any signs of disturbance.
“In two days the castle will be crawling with well-wishers,” said the king. “Do you want to risk their lives unnecessarily?”
Queen Voina raised one bored eyebrow. “Well, I wouldn’t mind terribly much if your cousins disappeared under mysterious circumstances. Now there’s a good use for the royal witches’ talents. Never mind spells and traps and—”
A fish jumped out of the water and plopped back in. King Kallin yelped and drew his cloak tightly about his body. “What was that?”
“A fish, my darling husband. No haunted skeletons chasing us tonight.” Queen Voina smiled slyly. “Not yet, anyway.”
“Don’t even joke about that!” snapped the king. Then he drew himself up and attempted to look regal as the boat approached the castle’s three massive sewer pipes, which drained into the lake. The king’s guards lifted a man out of the boat’s bow, untied his hands and legs, and shoved him into the nearest pipe.
The man picked up his shoe to inspect the bottom and wrinkled his nose. “So all I have to do is get up through the catacombs and into the castle proper, without dying . . . and you’ll let me go free? You’ll pardon me?”
“Of course, young man,” said King Kallin, with a magnanimous flourish. “Consider it penance for your crimes. The way is hard. Long and dank. Lots of sewage and the like. Rats, most assuredly.” The king twiddled his fingers, recoiling as the water nudged the boat closer to the pipe. “Good luck!” he called out to the prisoner, and then hissed to his guards, “Back off, back off! Return to shore, for the love of all the stars in the skies!”
Queen Voina rolled her eyes and splashed water at her husband. The king screamed and flung himself at one of his guards, who patted him on the shoulder and settled him back into his seat.
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