The Olde Wolf had corrupted even himself in using the great magic this way. Hans stared at the lynx. He did not even know how to speak to it, in the language of the cats.
But it was a human. He could speak in human words.
“Come with me. I know who can help you,” he said. He motioned forward with his left hand, the one not yet touched by darkness. The other hand still held the sword.
The lynx hesitated a long moment. Then it moved with Hans.
Now Hans was moving through the dark animals with a dual purpose. He had to help cleanse them, and to protect the lynx. Soon, there was another human in disguise, a hawk. And then another, a moose.
The hawk tried to attack the animals in their path and Hans had to work hard to convince it that he did not want them killed.
The moose simply followed Hans, and was nearly killed when a bear attacked and the moose did nothing to defend itself.
Hans saw the moose fall. He turned to deal with the bear, using his sword to cut through to the heart and take the darkness to himself.
When he turned back, the moose was still unmoving on the ground. He stood over it, and the hawk dived down, using its claws to rake across the moose’s hind leg. But still the moose did not move.
Should he leave it behind? He could not lift the moose. He did not have the strength for that.
But he could not bear to leave a creature behind that had a chance for true freedom. So he bent over and spoke softly to it, then pushed it from behind. Not because he thought he could lift it, but in encouragement.
As he worked, he could hear a fierce battle raging with the Olde Wolf. He glanced up and saw the king fall. Ina’s father. Her true father. He was dead, and Ina had never had a chance to be held in his arms and told that he loved her truly, far more than the Olde Wolf had ever been able to pretend he loved her.
The loss was heavy in Hans’s heart. He felt he had failed her.
But he stayed with the moose until it was upright and able to move forward again.
He would bring these animals to Ina. She would use her great magic to change them back. He only wanted a kiss from her in thanks, and then he would leave her be. He would go back to the Order, or back to the forest, or anywhere that was away from her.
She had kept herself untouched by the darkness after all her years with the Olde Wolf. To his mind, that was a far greater magic than any power of transformation. She had remained herself, despite all the changes in shape. She had fought the darkness again and again and had pushed it away.
The Order should send its people to learn from her, he thought. If there was any need for the Order at all, once she was finished with the Olde Wolf.
Chapter Twenty-six: Ina
King George was dead now at the hand of the Olde Wolf. Her true father, a man she had never seen before today. Now the queen—her mother—was weeping over him.
Captain Henry looked as stricken as the queen herself was and for a moment Ina wished that she had loved the king as much as either of them had, so that she could mourn him as well.
But she only knew that he had tried to find her, and he had given his last breath to fight the man who had taken her. That would have to be enough for now, until she was able to sit at leisure and hear more stories of his life that she had never known.
“Is it time now?” Ina asked, her teeth clenched and her palms hot with sweat.
“If it is not now, there will never be a time,” said Captain Henry with a nod. “We must kill him and end this or the king’s death will be in vain.” He nodded to Lord Morlieb.
“Father,” she said, grinding out the word. It sounded so false now, so wrong.
Lord Morlieb turned to her. He smiled so easily. “The little princess who has lost her magic,” he sneered. “And now her father, and her life is soon to follow. But what life has she ever had? It was all a lie, wasn’t it? And she never had a hint of it. Poor, little, useless creature.”
Ina changed herself into her wolf form even as she was moving forward to Lord Morlieb.
“Golda, what a beautiful wolf you make,” said Lord Morlieb. “You should always remain a wolf. You should have been born to this shape.”
Ina threw herself at his back, then clung to it, her head bent to his neck so that her teeth could hold tight to his spine. She could feel him thrash at her grip, trying to get her to fall off, but he had taught her too well how to fight humans as a wolf. Now it was turned against him.
He could not change back because she kept her magic to herself, now that she knew to do it. And he had told the animals to hold back, so they did not intervene. Her attack made it impossible for him to use his voice to give any new commands with the old magic.
Ina used her claws on his backside, digging into his ribs and hip bones. She did not work swiftly. She wanted him to feel pain.
She could smell his blood and his fear, and then for a moment she remembered him holding her when she was afraid at night, after she had dreamed of humans, of his soft wolf’s voice, lulling her to sleep. He had used the old language on her, but how she had loved him at that moment.
Her desire to cause him pain disappeared in an instant, and she focused herself on killing him. He had to die, for he was wrong and he would not stop doing what he believed would give him power. But she would not enjoy it.
She let a small portion of her magic slip from he, just enough for him to change back to his wolf form. Because that was his true form, and it seemed to her that this was the last thing that she owed him. Her last gift to the father he had been, all those years ago. Then she closed the exchange of magic and held the rest of it tightly to herself. He would have no more of her.
But now they were both wolves, each with their own magic. Still, his magic was enough to survive thousands of years and she did not know hers well at all. She had not trained to use it. He had made sure of that. But it was raw power and she was not afraid to turn it back against him.
His blood dripped from his neck, where she held him with her teeth. She could smell it and taste it as it fell down her throat. She did not want to swallow it, but she could not help herself. He had to die, and she had to be the one who killed him.
She jerked him from one side to the other, stabbing him in new places each time with her claws. He winced and let out tiny mewling sounds like a human’s cat, and she wished he would simply die so that she did not have to hear him.
Then suddenly, she felt him throw her backward against a tree. She could feel the bark scraping down her fur, and then she felt the bruise that was caused by a sudden burst of energy as he thrust her against it once more. She had given him too much. And for that, she knew he would not show her mercy.
But Captain Henry threw himself at the wolf then, though Ina she shouted out to him to run away.
The Olde Wolf used one claw on the captain’s leg and blood spurted and he fell down, unconscious. Ina could not tell if he was alive or dead. She had wanted him to tell her stories of her father. Those were all that was left of the king.
But he had wasted himself instead.
And she was wasted, as well.
She closed her eyes and fell back to the ground and the last thing she saw was the face of Hans, kissing her as if she were a princess in a story who would come back to life.
“Sorry,” she muttered, and she let herself go.
Chapter Twenty-seven: Dagmar
She was the real princess, and Dagmar let her fight the Olde Wolf as a wolf for as long as she lasted. She was the one who had the magic like the king who was her real father. She looked like him, too, when she was in her human form. And like her mother. She had the red hair of her mother and the freckled complexion, but she had the square jaw of her father.
When she was in her wolf form, she had a look of determination and a power in her motions that was so much like the king’s. Dagmar knew it well. She had seen it every day of her life. But that was part of the reason it was so painful to her. At long last, the princess had been found. Th
ere could be no doubt of her identity in the minds of any human who watched her now.
But when the golden she-wolf lost her momentum because of Captain Henry’s foolish attack, she fell backward and her eyes rolled back in her head. She was unconscious and changed back into her human form once more. There was a human man who held her in his arms, but he seemed too exhausted to do any more than that.
Dagmar did not know if Princess Ina was alive or dead, but she knew that it was her chance now. Her magic was nothing compared to the great magic that changed animals and humans back and forth, but she would not let the Olde Wolf go without trying it against him.
She limped forward as the Olde Wolf looked up to her. She had to move quickly. She could not allow him to turn into a human once more or her magic would be of no use at all. “Now I see you as you truly are,” she said.
The Olde Wolf preened himself, licking at his wounds and holding his head high. He whispered something in that strange language of his, but she had inured herself against that now. She felt no desire to fall before his feet—or his paws.
She began to murmur her own nonsense words, calming, soothing words like a lullaby. She closed her eyes and did not think of the blue wolf before her, nor of Lord Morlieb who had betrayed her so badly.
She thought of Pakira, her horse, and of the hounds from the stables that her father had loved so much, though he had refused to allow them in the castle after his daughter went missing and there were signs that animals had helped to take her away.
She thought of the cat that one of the maids had tried to smuggle into the castle when she was a little girl, and how much she had loved the feel of its soft fur on her cheek, and how she had wished she could keep it in her room with her, a better warmth than a fire or a blanket in the winter.
But her father had smelled it on her, and demanded to know where it had come from, and called for the trembling little girl, to chastise her for what she had done, and to tell her never to bring the animal back to the castle.
She had not. But she had not come back to the castle herself, either, and so Dagmar had been missing two friends then.
Now as she put a hand out to touch the blue wolf, he seemed as tame as ever that cat had been. She continued to murmur her sounds and he lay stretched out beneath her hands, his head to one side, looking at her, his fore and hind legs sprawled out around his body, relaxed and unthreatening.
If she stopped speaking for a moment, he would be his old self again, Dagmar knew, but for now he was hers and she could make him do what she wished. It would not have worked if he were in human form. So without the real princess she could not have done this.
But there was a triumph glow in Dagmar’s heart to know that she had done what no one else could do, not her father or mother, and not the Princess Ina who had such great wild magic.
She, a peasant’s daughter, had her place, and if not for the Olde Wolf taking the true princess in the night, he would not be in the position he was right now. He had defeated himself, in a way, and she was glad of that. He had not thought that there was anything humans could do to defeat him, once he had control of the wild animal magic.
Chapter Twenty-eight: True
The queen was the one who took out her sword and thrust it through the back of the blue wolf. True did not notice her until she had finished the deed. He had thought her too sorrowful to do anything but hold her husband’s body. And he had been too captivated by the power of Princess Dagmar to lull the blue wolf into a state almost like sleep.
Where had her power come from? Why had he not seen it before? He suspected she could use it on any animal, even on him, if he returned to animal form.
The blue wolf gasped as the sword came out his belly, but that was his only sound of pain. Princess Dagmar kept murmuring her sounds of peace at him.
Peace magic, thought True. That was what it should be called.
Then the queen pulled it clean out and spat at him, kicking him down.
True expected to see the blue wolf die. Any wolf would have been dead two or three times over, if it had suffered what the blue wolf had.
But the Olde Wolf did not die. It shivered, then got back to its feet.
Princess Dagmar continued to use her peace magic, so it could not escape from her, but though blood dripped from its chest, it continued to breathe and seemed hardly worse for wear.
There was nothing any of them could do, True thought. With such an enemy against them, the future of humanity was truly hopeless.
But Princess Dagmar turned and looked at him and she stopped a moment in her soothing murmurs to the Olde Wolf to mouth the words “Help me.”
The Olde Wolf clawed her across her ear before she could get him to submit to her again, and then she had to pant between her murmurs because she was in such pain.
But she thought that True could help her. She had asked for his help.
He could not ignore her plea.
There was no reason for her to think of him as anything other than a hound who was also a human. He had no magic like hers. But she expected more of him. And he could not ignore that.
It had happened unexpectedly. He had seen the way that his father looked at his mother before he died. Red would have died to do anything Fierce asked of him. And he had never understood that before as he did now.
He could see no way that she could love him as he did her. She was a human. She was a princess. He was no one and nothing.
But he did not need her to love him to give himself to her.
He moved close beside her.
He thought of what his mother had told him of the magic that animals had naturally. He could restore the balance to the world. It was a limited magic, and he could not see how it would be of use here.
But he put a hand to the Olde Wolf and held it there without flinching away as Princess Dagmar continued her song of peace and calm.
There was a sensation of warmth, following by a sound of humming in his ears. And then his human body began to twist. Was he turning back into a hound? Was that the way that he made the balance? If he had known he could do this before, he would have done it long ago.
But then what? He would have left the castle and gone into the forest. He would have followed the Olde Wolf, along with all these other animals. And the Olde Wolf would have won.
True was glad he had been a human, at least for a time. But he was glad to return to his hound form.
Except that as he looked down at his hands, he realized that he was not changing. He was still a human, and he felt as if he had done something in his mind to his image of his hound form. It no longer seemed right.
He never knew if it was because of the magic that he poured into the Olde Wolf, a magic he had never learned to control and was only just acquainted with. But he felt power stream out of him and through his hands, into the Olde Wolf.
He felt a jerk between him, as if he had been touched by lightning. He fell away from the Olde Wolf, then looked back as the Olde Wolf’s chest heaved. He coughed violently, and his limbs began to shiver. His fur went from silver to pure white as True stared at him. His eyes lost their shine, and his body went slack.
The smell of death filled the air as True looked down at the two very human legs that held him up. He no longer felt unsteady on those legs. He felt—right.
And somehow, the Olde Wolf was dead. True had finished him off.
He could hardly breathe.
He felt a pounding on his back. It was Princess Dagmar, her cheeks red, her eyes bright, her face alive and beaming.
She was very strong, for a human woman.
True fell down.
“Oh, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you.” She slipped to her knees and offered him a hand.
He took it with his own shaking one. It was more difficult to pull himself to standing again than he had thought it would be. He was embarrassed. No male hound would allow himself to be lifted to his feet by his mate.
She was pleased with
him now, because he had saved her father and her kingdom, and the humans who were like her.
But when she thought about the truth of him, she would hesitate and look away from him and wish him gone.
How could she ever understand what his life had been like in the forest? How could she live with a man who sometimes still thought of himself as a hound? What human woman would wait for a man to run through the woods and kill dinner for her? He knew nothing about how to live among humans, how to make a place for himself here, let alone for her.
“What did you do to him?”
“I don’t know,” said True. “It was a magic of the hounds. My mother’s magic. The magic of balance.”
“It was unnatural, the way he shook off my mother’s sword to the heart.”
“And when I touched him, I made him natural again.” But not himself. Or was this natural to him now? He looked down at his human fingers, so long and fragile. There were so many things he could do with those fingers. He could touch her face.
But no, he could not do that. She was a princess, he reminded himself.
“Did you know you could do that?” she asked.
“No,” True admitted. It was stupid of him to step forward when he had not known. He had hoped, but he had no plan as a human would have. He had simply wanted to help her, and to hurt the Olde Wolf.
“You are very brave,” she said.
“Or stupid,” said True.
“I do not think that. I never said that.”
“I am a hound. I only did what were in my instincts to do.”
“You are more than a hound,” she insisted.
But he would not listen to her.
And there was no time for them to speak longer. Though the Olde Wolf was dead, the animals he had brought with him were still living. They might not be under his command, and they might not feel his hatred for humans, but they were still dangerous.
The Princess and the Wolf (The Princess and the Hound) Page 20
