The Sianian Wolf

by Y. K. Willemse

  He twisted the rod in his hand, his yellow teeth grinding.

  Breathe. Breathe. It had always been his philosophy: calm in the face of trial. The voices of Nazt were whispering to him, soothing him, and he would do whatever it took to succeed.

  He had waited twelve months for this moment, ever since Frankston had handed the throne to him. The first thing he had done after gaining the country was hunt down and destroy his mother. She had hidden from him when he had previously been in Siana, but now every hunting resource was granted to him, and he made use of them. He threw her off the same cliff she had intended to sacrifice him from, and then he had killed many of the elders of his previous Ashurite clans, aiming always to establish the young Ashurites in the place of the detested Sartians and Sianians in government. In his childhood, the Ashurites had thought the elders were of greater worth than the children. That was how Alakil had nearly lost his life. And that was why he put such a great emphasis on the promise of youth.

  However, some old blood was useful, as such people had expertise and understanding of Siana that he could not do without yet. He had made all the old Sianian nobles – any power-wielders – vow fealty to him. Those who didn’t perished in the most deserved way possible. In his spare time, of which he did not have much, he had been commanding a battle in southern Zal Ricio ’el Nria from a distance, hoping to perhaps kill the Selsons before they even returned. When the battle had gone hopelessly wrong, he had turned his attention to other things. In Sarient, he was trying to infiltrate the guard surrounding King Albert and Richard Patrick. He had not been able to get at them while they had been voyaging back to Sarient, and now he realized anew that it had been foolish to let the heir to the Sianian throne and the Fourth Runi (the only one who could theoretically stop him) get away. So far, he had made some headway with a man called Marcius.

  Yet all those little projects of his had entirely slipped his mind the moment he had heard the Selsons were almost ready to drop anchor. And now he had been thwarted once more.

  Still… the truly great persevered.

  Taking another slow breath, he allowed his mouth to hang slightly open as he tasted the air. He felt the body he had created for himself, after his first and only death, revive. The sinewy and dripping muscles relaxed and then poised, ready for what was to come.

  He was both Alakil and the Lashki Mirah: the keen, ambitious youth and the wiser, more powerful and ruthless elder. Together, they would win. He would not let this stop him from declaring himself king of Siana. Robert the coward (soon to be dead) did not deserve the title, and the Lashki did not want the people to believe there was hope.

  He narrowed his black eyes and moved swiftly into the trees, first sloping, then running at the unnaturally fast tattoo he had had since he was a child, the run that outstripped any creature in Siana. The slight corrections he made to his course were lightning. He zigzagged through the trees, leapt over logs, and shot through the leaves so fast that it was as if he merely materialized from one side of them to the other.

  Nazt was crescendoing in his skin, his heart, his mind; the exultation was dizzying.

  They could not have gone far.

  RAFEN! RAFEN!

  He froze, pulling into the eerie halt that came without any loss of balance or breath. The rod jumped in his grip, almost uncontrollable. He tightened his grasp, and it bucked harder. The chanting from within it – the chanting that was his life, that was louder than any birdsong of the woods, any blizzard of the mountains, any trumpet and clamor of the battlefield – was frenzied. His eyes dilated.

  Rafen…

  The language of Nazt swept over him, and he trembled.

  Rafen stood before him as a man. He was still the size of a fourteen-year-old, due to the life he had led in Tarhia, though the stubble on his chin and the lines in his face told Alakil he was already eighteen. The quickness in his eyes and the steel in the set of his mouth chilled Alakil. The sword in Rafen’s left hand blazed. In one lightning movement, he sent flame toward Alakil’s hollow chest. A terrible twanging within, Alakil swept the rod down to block the kesmal.

  It wasn’t real.

  Rafen wasn’t there, and yet he was. He flickered in and out of sight, tantalizingly close. Then he turned and flew away into the Woods at full tilt, his movements fluid with the kesmal in his veins.

  Alakil strode on again, his mind reverting to the Selsons. The screaming from Nazt blotted out the mossy pathways before him. Gray shapes stirred in the surrounding air, even though the cloud of Nazt was far away in the East. He tried to move forward, and the air buffeted him back. The rod was jerking in his hands, trying to slip through his fingers. Rafen, Rafen. He dragged the rod to his chest, even though it was trying to escape, and he folded it there lovingly.

  He had thought Rafen was dead.

  *

  Rafen rolled over and sat up, his phoenix feather still warm against his chest. He glanced around the darkened space he was in and felt fear climb up his throat. His head ached. Meaningless voices shrieked within it.

  He felt around himself desperately. There was stone beneath him, and earth broken up by swarming tree roots on both sides of him. It was a very close area, almost like a coffin. He began to pant.

  And then he saw the faintest trace of light above. Like a maddened spider, he rushed up the tree roots to his right and stuck his head through the opening. A pale night showed shadowed basswood trees forming a circular barrier around a clearing. Their hard round fruit covered the ground. Through the mesh of heart-shaped leaves above, a few stars shone. The light of the three moons of the Mio Pilamùr gave everything a strange and insubstantial appearance. In the middle of the clearing, an orange fire burned vaguely and eternally, perhaps one of the only signs a kesmalic conflict had taken place here earlier.

  Rafen moved his feet up to a higher tree root and started to feed his body sideways through the aperture of earth. In another minute, he was free and lying on the ground, rubbing his sore head. The summer night embraced him.

  His mind wouldn’t stop replaying the image of King Robert flying through the air, to crash face down on the red and white checked floor of the throne room.

  He shook himself. It hadn’t really happened. It wasn’t real. He had gone to find Alexander before the Lashki and his servants had come here. He would get up and continue now.

  He rose and then realized for the first time how late it was. Perhaps he was too late. He put clawing hands to his temple.

  No. Not too late.

  Who were those other people, who had fought with kesmal here earlier? Had they been servants of the Lashki after all, or enemies of his? Were they hunting him? Or someone else? They had interrupted Rafen. Yet, it was no matter. He would try again. He would try until he died.

  The fire’s flickering glow was reflected in the glassy eyes of the crouched forms that stole through the trees toward Rafen. Rafen’s breath caught in his chest. He moved closer to the fire, squinting at the shadows. One of the forms stepped closer, and the light fell fully on it.

  It was a large wolf. The gray hairs on its neck bristled, and it growled low in its throat. Its eyes were jet black.

  Rafen’s hand crept to his belt, his eyes never leaving the animal. He was still weaponless.

  “Zion, please,” he murmured, stepping back toward the fire.

  The wolf continued padding toward him. As if this were a signal, the rest of the wolves emerged from the trees – ten, eleven, twelve of them. They formed a perfect circle around Rafen and his fire. Some of them were almost as large as their leader. Others were scrawny, with a hungry look in their eyes. The leader of the wolves was now two steps away. A long tendril of saliva hung from its lower jaw.

  Rafen’s pulse throbbed painfully as he looked around for a chance to escape. Something warm was tickling his leg. He glanced behind him. He had stepped back one time too many, and a tongue of flame was licking his breeches. With a yell, Rafen slapped it with his bare hand, and now his hand was on fire
, the flames leaping up his arm.

  “AAAH!” Rafen screamed, swatting at the flames with his other hand.

  Then he stopped. The flames weren’t hurting him. Apart from the tingling sensation they brought, Rafen couldn’t feel a thing. Forcing himself to breathe deeply, he looked at his flaming left hand. Through the fire, it looked normal. Rafen closed his hand on the flames. As if anxious to cooperate, they rolled into a ball in his fist. When Rafen squeezed, they fell through his fingers as ash that landed on the forest floor. His hand was no redder than before, and only a little warmer. His leg still blazing, Rafen turned back to the wolves.

  They were frozen in their circle, staring with black eyes at the fiery fourteen-year-old in their midst. Still watching them suspiciously, Rafen lowered himself into a sitting position in the middle of his fire, allowing the flames to sweep up his limbs and caress his face. Though the heat was tremendous, Rafen found he could withstand it. He felt bodiless, the spirit of warmth and life itself. Despite that day’s events and his hungry visitors, comfort washed over him. A memory of rushing through the air, of seeing hunters, farmers, bedraggled travelers, and even princes and purer-blooded beings out of their respective campfires, returned to him. At last he remembered who he had been before he had worn flesh, and what he had recalled when he had received his phoenix feather.

  If only he had been able to show Queen Arlene this, when she had tried teaching him kesmal on the voyage.

  The wolves lay down around the fire to enjoy its warmth. Pulling himself from his reverie, Rafen watched with growing disquiet. Without weapons, he was going to have to wait until the wolves left before he continued his search.

  “You had better be gone soon,” he hissed.

  *

  He woke with a start. The sun was flooding his little clearing, and heat rose from the ground. Rafen’s fire, which he had expected would go out halfway through the night, was still thriving. He had been lying in it, and the flames derived new energy from his presence. He had slept a lot better than he’d thought he would, because being immersed in flames gave him a feeling of euphoria. He found it hard to remember yesterday. Something about a throne room… he wouldn’t know until he left the fire, he realized.

  He slowly sat up, his back aching from a night on the forest floor. Several gray forms stirred around him.

  The wolves were still with him.

  Rafen gritted his teeth. The leader of the wolves scrambled to its feet, slavering. It reminded Rafen of one of Talmon’s dogs.

  “Get away,” Rafen said, raising his voice. “Get out of here!”

  The wolf started barking savagely at him, revealing yellowed, bloodstained teeth. Four of the others were on their feet now. The rest lay around the fire, lazily absorbing the sunlight.

  Rafen growled low in his throat. His stomach was cramped with hunger, and he wanted to find food. He rose, adrenaline building in his veins. The sort of warmth that preceded kesmal rushed down his left arm, and Rafen remembered the flaming colors of the Phoenix. He raised his arm and pointed at the leader of the wolves, lunging out of the fire, which came with him, clinging to his limbs. The wolf turned tail and scampered toward the trees, its mouth agape. An orange spurt shot from Rafen’s finger toward it as it pelted through the basswood leaves. The kesmal struck a sapling, which split down the middle, its two charred halves falling to the ground. The other wolves were fleeing too, and Rafen hurled flames at them. Their ears flattened on their heads, they rushed through the basswoods, whining.

  At last Rafen was alone, and he wondered why he hadn’t been able to do this yesterday. The flames had fallen from him, and Rafen stood in a pile of ash. He remembered shaking a pair of door handles, desperately trying to break into a room he’d been locked out of. His father had lain silently on the red and white checked floor. Yet Rafen knew Etana could have wakened him, if she had ever gotten there.

  He sank to the ground, sitting in the ash, staring at his own blackened fingers. Nearby, a woodpecker drilled a regular tattoo on a tree, and cicadas sang of summer.

  His chest quivered as he tried to hold everything in, though there wasn’t any point in doing so. He was alone. Zion had abandoned him.

  His tears came in gasps as he struggled to regain control of himself. His mind whirred frantically from one idea to another. Perhaps they weren’t all dead. Perhaps someone had survived. Etana - Etana had survived, surely.

  Hollow laughter reverberated in his brain at this latest thought. How could anyone survive in a palace peopled with one’s enemies?

  No. He was being a fool. He would get up and find Alexander, and Alexander would help him find the Selsons. The idea finished lamely, and he found himself thinking about corpses.

  He forced himself to get up. He would go to the Harbor.

  *

  They were catching up, and Rafen couldn’t go any faster. His heart pounded as he shoved through branches ahead of him, the steady thud-thud-thud of his own feet no match for the faster drum roll of the wolves’ paws.

  No matter how hard he’d tried today, he hadn’t been able to escape the Woods. Every time he thought he was coming to the end of the trees, he discovered another stretch of shrubbery leading into still more. Once, he had stumbled across two mangled, unrecognizable corpses, and then he had been running in horror again. The Woods were deepening around him, and he had a horrid feeling he was very far from the Harbor. There was a road that was actually supposed to cut through this belt of the Cursed Woods and lead him there, but somehow he had missed it. Kesmal had evaded him too, and his stomach demanded food. Rafen had searched unsuccessfully for something edible. Thirst made his mouth sandy in the unbearable summer heat.

  And then, even though the sun hadn’t set yet, the wolves had found him again.

  Panting dryly, Rafen glanced over his shoulder at the leader as it burst through the leaves behind him, its legs forming blurred gray circles. His lungs burning, Rafen tried to quicken his pace. Turning to face the trees ahead, he glimpsed a wide bough level with his eyes.

  A disoriented bang, and Rafen was on his back, the blackening world around him peppered with scintillating pinpricks. Crazy panting filled his ears as paws scratched the ground nearby. A maw full of hot breath rushed toward his throat…

  Chapter Three

  Erasmus

  The worlds had been one, once, a long time ago. In the middle of the night, Sherwin sat up in his bed, blearily rubbing his eyes, and wishing that they were one again.

  Ever since he had been little, he had always had a nagging feeling that there was Another Place. Though he had been born in Southwark, England, he felt lost and often wondered how he had wound up here. The moment he knew what the word “world” meant, he had realized there was another one, and he was meant to be in it. He had somehow misplaced himself.

  The dreams began when he was eight. In a recurring vision, he had seen four figures: King Fritz, Prince Thomas, the sixteen-year-old Alakil, and the boy. Sherwin had never managed to figure out his name, even though he knew everyone else’s. The strangest thing about the dream was that Sherwin was in it twice. It was like watching a split-screen movie. One moment he was himself, running for all he was worth behind the boy, because he had to have one of those phoenix feathers, even though something within told him he never would. The boy heard him, but didn’t turn. He was focused on his feather, floating through the air of the strange cavern they all ran in. Then Sherwin was sixteen-year-old Alakil as well, coolly calculating when the first phoenix feather would flit close enough to his fingertips for him to snatch as he stepped out of the shadows. From this perspective, he watched Fritz and Thomas receive their feathers too, a cold flame licking his insides. Envy? Ambition? He couldn’t name it. He didn’t feel cruel at the time. He was conscious of one thing: desire for greatness. This desire was evoked and strengthened by the voices of the force of Nazt. Out of this ardor, he committed the murders that horrified Sherwin’s other perspective and caused his true self to freeze in terror on t
he rocks, behind where the boy received his phoenix feather. From Alakil’s perspective, he hadn’t seen the boy’s face clearly; in the dim light, it was a blurred white beacon that he had desperately wanted to snuff out. However, Sherwin’s true self saw the face perfectly: olive-skinned, framed by a mass of curly black hair, with determined, quiet blue eyes. In those eyes, Sherwin saw the reflection of a Phoenix.

  Over the past six years, Sherwin had had this dream repeatedly. Sometimes Alakil saw the boy’s face clearly enough to name him something Sherwin failed to remember, clearly enough to almost attack him before Sherwin woke. Other times, Alakil was confused. He addressed the boy as someone else again… a foreign prince whom he despised.

  Sherwin had been morbidly interested in these dreams for a long time. Despite Fritz’s and Thomas’ murders, his heart whispered that unless he went to this other world and found these four men, unless he was one of their number, he would never have any meaning. He would never matter. He would never be who he had been born to become.

  He gripped his shabby T-shirt above his chest and imagined a phoenix feather in it, even though divine will would never let him get one. There had only ever been four to give. And they were all in that other world. He had missed out because he was in the wrong place.