Ice Wolves (Elementals, Book 1)

by Amie Kaufman

  “That’s spending the whole morning as a wolf,” Viktoria replied. “Eat it all, though, it’ll help you run this afternoon.”

  “I’ll be tired by tonight,” Lisabet admitted, stretching out her legs. “I always envied the older years when they got to head out overnight, but now I’m wishing I’d had a little more training.”

  “We’ll all sleep well,” Anders agreed as he exchanged glances with Lisabet. Hopefully everybody would sleep well, except for them.

  Ennar didn’t allow them much of a break, and soon enough they were loping across the plains once again. They did stop throughout the afternoon, though they never left wolf form, as she gave them quick lessons in tracking and showed them how to find the safest ways down to the edge of the streams, pawing at the soft edges where they threatened to crumble, then leading them to a firmer descent, so they could plant their front paws in the flowing water and drink in long, thirsty gulps.

  The water itself was ice melt from the mountains, mouth-numbingly cold, and Anders’s gut ached as he drank. But it revived him too, and a few moments later they were running once more.

  That evening they made camp at a second cache, switching back to human form to unpack their supplies from the stone shelter. Neither Anders nor Lisabet missed it when Ennar stowed her satchel inside.

  “They’ve spoiled us,” their teacher said with a rare smile, as they discovered the adult wolves had hauled kindling for them from the woods, which were at least a couple of hours’ run from here. “Someone must have had a friend in the patrol that came out this way.”

  Mateo admitted it was his big brother, and the others cheered as the group found turf to fuel the fire, and food to spare. As dusk fell they built up the fire near the riverbank, mixing together flour and water and a pinch of salt to make a rough dough, and wrapping it around the ends of sticks to hold it over the fire and toast it until it cooked. Anders quietly took a packet of flour and hid it under the pile of turf and kindling—it was about the same size as the chalice, and he hoped he’d need it later.

  Ennar showed them how to ease the roughly cooked bread off the end of the stick, and fill the hole where the stick had been with berry jam, which quickly melted from the heat, running down their chins as they ate. Only a couple of the students—those who were about to move up into second year—had been out overnight before.

  For Anders’s friends, this was the first time, and they all seemed determined to have as much fun as possible. For his part, Anders was impatiently waiting for them to go to bed—he had to get away with the chalice tonight and find Rayna tomorrow, because the day after that was the equinox, and . . . his mind shied away from what might happen then.

  Sakarias was the one who started the dragon stories, and by the time darkness had fallen completely, the whole group was huddled in close to the fire, and to one another, jumping at shadows.

  Professor Ennar seemed more relaxed out here, and she let them go on until the stars were bright above them, scattered across the sky like the first snowfall of the year. Then she banked the fire, and the class transformed back into wolf form, piling together on top of one another, sharing their warmth as they settled down to sleep.

  Where the ground would have been too firm for a human, every bone hurting where it stuck into the hard surface, and where their jackets wouldn’t have been enough to keep them warm all night, Anders found that in wolf form he was perfectly comfortable. In wolf form they really should have been wakeful at night, ready to run or hunt, but the day’s journey had taken its toll on everyone.

  He and Lisabet took up positions at the very edge of the group, on the far side from Ennar, as near to the stone cache site as they could manage. The others were nearby, Sakarias and Viktoria curled up in a ball together, Mateo somehow already gently snoring underneath a pile that contained Det and Jai.

  Anders and Lisabet were careful to keep quiet, communicating in tiny whines, puffs of breath, flicks of their ears, like whispers for wolves.

  A few minutes later, Ennar quietly padded by, conducting a head count, and checking in on each of the students. Get some sleep, she whined softly, when she saw the two of them lying there with open eyes, her tongue lolling out in a smile.

  But she didn’t seem to really mean they should follow her advice, for she eased down onto her belly beside them, her tail waving slowly, pleased. I just spoke to Sigrid using a hand mirror.

  Anders tilted his ears forward for a moment, confused, until he remembered the day he’d arrived at Ulfar. Then, Sigrid had talked into a hand mirror, and someone on the other end had heard her and summoned Lisabet. He forced himself to keep still and not give anything away, but he wanted to tense up at the words.

  If Ennar could communicate with Sigrid from out here, she had a quick way to summon help when she discovered he, Lisabet, and the chalice were missing. Pack and paws, I hadn’t counted on that.

  Ennar was looking at Lisabet as she continued. She said to tell you that the lookout you suggested, on top of the tavern, the Wily Wolf, is so good that she’s not even going to ask how you knew about it. She said you really can see the whole city from up there. She’s posted a permanent guard.

  Anders went still with shock. He’d told Lisabet about that lookout atop the Wily Wolf, back when she’d asked him about his favorite place in the city. He’d shared that with her, his secret, after she promised he could trust her—and she’d given it to Sigrid? Without even telling him? What else had she told Sigrid?

  Lisabet wasn’t looking at him, and thankfully, neither was Ennar, because Anders knew he was showing how he felt now. Lisabet had called herself his friend, told him that she was honest with him.

  She’d told him to trust her.

  But passing information like that to the Fyrstulf?

  It’s nothing, Lisabet said to Ennar, uncomfortable. Just something I thought of.

  Well, it was a good thought, Ennar replied. Sigrid’s proud of you, even if she’s not very good at showing it.

  Anders, desperate for Ennar to leave—and desperate not to let his body language show her how hurt he was, how betrayed—closed his eyes and put his head down, and heard the professor’s huff of breath as she pushed to her feet. Perhaps she said good night with a flick of her ears, but if she did, Anders didn’t see it. He just heard the pad of her paws receding.

  Once she was gone he opened his eyes, and found Lisabet gazing at him, misery in every line of her body, her ears flat, her tail low. Anders, I can explain.

  Why you told her a secret you promised to keep? He growled, soft, in the back of his throat. Did you share other secrets too?

  It wasn’t just his sister who was gone now. Even the place they loved the most was gone. There were wolves there, keeping watch. Probably scaring Kess. Taking over the place that had been theirs, and only theirs.

  Lisabet tried again. Anders, I—

  But he pushed silently to his feet, turning his back on her so he wouldn’t have to see the way her head tilted, so he wouldn’t have to see her make an excuse, or lie.

  Keeping his belly low to the ground, Anders crept over to the stone cache. He crouched behind it to transform back into a human, then reached inside, feeling around in the dark until he found Ennar’s artifact satchel.

  But before he had a chance to open it, Lisabet was crouching beside him, one moment a wolf and the next moment a girl. She was white as a sheet beneath her thousands of freckles. “Anders,” she whispered. “You have to listen to me.”

  Frustration boiled up inside him. He didn’t have to do anything for her. She sounded just like Rayna, telling him what he had to do. “I don’t,” he whispered back, as fierce as he could when he was speaking that softly. “Why don’t you go talk to the Fyrstulf instead? She listens to you. She’s proud of you, Ennar just said so.”

  “No she’s not,” Lisabet whispered. “She never has been. But I thought if I could get her to pay attention, get her to see I had good ideas, maybe she’d listen to me about other things. Abo
ut the dragons. This was incredibly important, Anders.”

  Anders’s fingers tightened around the satchel in his hand until the metal netting pressed into his fingers. “You told her about my secret place so she’d listen to your made-up ideas about making alliances with dragons?”

  “They’re not ma—” But Lisabet must have known they didn’t have time for that argument right now. “Anders, I’ve spent my whole life trying to get her to listen to me, and for the first time, she’s actually impressed with something I said. It’s worth it if she’ll listen to something more, and something more after that. We have to talk about the dragons!” Her voice threatened to rise above a whisper, and she quickly yanked it back down again. “Maybe this could even help Rayna.”

  But Anders was still stuck on the first thing she’d said. “Your whole life?” he echoed. “But you’ve been a student less than a year.”

  Lisabet bit her lip, for once not sure what to say.

  How would Sigrid have known Lisabet her whole life?

  And in that moment of silence, it began to make sense. His thoughts whirled faster and faster, and with a series of clicks, different memories from different moments came together like clockwork.

  Lisabet had a key to the Fyrstulf’s office, and when he asked her how she got it, she’d dodged the question.

  Lisabet argued with Sigrid in class, when nobody else dared.

  Sigrid had spoken to the class, after she’d sent Lisabet out of the classroom. She’d said, “when you were all babies,” not “ten years ago,” as so many of the other wolves said. Like she remembered the time when Lisabet in particular was a baby. Sigrid had even said to Rayna, up on the dais on the day of the Trial, that she had a daughter Rayna’s age.

  Lisabet had been trying to impress Sigrid all her life.

  Anders stopped breathing.

  “Lisabet,” he whispered. “Sigrid’s . . . your mother.”

  Lisabet’s face told him everything he needed to know.

  She had been lying to him all along.

  Lisabet had had so many chances to tell him she was connected to the Fyrstulf herself. She’d had so many chances, and she hadn’t taken one of them.

  Her mother was Sigrid, the one who’d have been leading the celebrations if they’d managed to spear Rayna straight out of the sky. And she’d told him to trust her? She’d literally stood with him in her mother’s office and quoted Ennar to him. The truth matters, she’d said.

  That had been a lie, and she’d told it at the exact moment she could have been telling him the truth. He couldn’t afford to risk her doing it again. Not with his sister on the line. And he couldn’t afford to waste time arguing with Lisabet about her betrayal, or about her lies.

  His decision was settling in his gut like a heavy weight, but there was no question in his mind about what he had to do. He reached for the satchel, tugging the flap up. Inside, atop a small pile of medical supplies was the chalice he’d seen Sigrid holding in her office. Fylkir’s chalice.

  His breath catching in his throat, hands trembling, Anders pulled it free. The metal gleamed in the moonlight, rows of tiny runes marching along every available surface. He shoved his stolen bag of flour into Ennar’s satchel in place of the chalice, to leave the bag looking as full as it was before, in case Ennar didn’t open it for a while yet. Perhaps she wouldn’t try and use the chalice until the middle of the night, or even until the morning, before the students woke.

  “Anders,” Lisabet whispered. “I’m your friend. I want to help. I thought if Sigrid would listen to me, decide I had reasonable ideas, she might listen when we tried to tell her about Rayna. There might be a chance she’d believe Rayna’s a prisoner, not just another dragon.”

  “Then you should have told me that.” His hand tightened around the chalice. “You should have told me she was your mother. And none of that matters now, anyway. There’s no time to convince anyone of anything. I’m going to try the chalice, and if it points to Drekhelm, I’m going to find her.”

  “I’ll come,” Lisabet whispered immediately.

  He shook his head. His thoughts were a whirl. How could he trust her to make saving Rayna her number one priority?

  “I don’t want you with me,” he said. And even through all his hurt and frustration, through his anger, it still felt terrible to say it.

  Her face fell, and her lips pressed together very hard, as if she was trying not to cry. Anders turned away before he had to look at her again.

  He pushed himself back into wolf form and picked up the chalice experimentally in his mouth. It wouldn’t be comfortable, but he’d be able to carry it.

  Keeping it clamped safely between his jaws, and slinking with his belly close to the ground, he left his friend behind, disappearing into the night.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  ANDERS CREPT AWAY FROM CAMP AND down to the bank of the river they’d camped by, a wider version of the silvery streams they’d run past earlier that day. Here, the air was crisp and cold, faint spray landing on his fur as the water hurried along.

  He trotted along the bank for a few minutes, putting some distance between himself and the camp before he stopped. He set down the chalice to transform, and a moment later he was a human, crouching on the riverbank.

  He did as Ennar had shown him a few hours before, felt out a firm place to make his way to the water’s edge and carefully climbed down. The waters were wild and churning, crashing against boulders midstream and sending up spray. He checked carefully before he rested his weight on the soft ground of the bank.

  He unclipped the needle from the stem of the chalice, holding it between his fingers as he dipped the cup into the running water to fill it. He carefully set the needle on the surface of the water, where it floated. It spun in an idle circle that might be no more than the current of the water, and it hesitated for a moment on him. Then it spun again, much faster, and pointed quivering toward the mountains to his west. It didn’t move again.

  Drekhelm. Drekhelm was to the west.

  * * *

  The river snaked from west to east, roaring along beside his path, its fast-running water glinting in the starlight. Anders was grateful there was barely any moon, though he knew his tracks would still be easy enough to follow. And by morning, Ennar would have tried to use the chalice, and more likely than not, she’d be on his trail.

  He wasted no time as he loped across the dark plains, cutting a path through the silvery grass and the patches of snow, which grew more frequent as he made his way toward the forest at the base of the mountains.

  He had to transform every so often, to check a more exact direction with the chalice, but it always pointed west, along the course of the river. His jaw ached, and breathing around the chalice wasn’t easy.

  It was a couple of hours before Anders reached the edge of the Great Forest of Mists. He slowed to a trot as he slipped between trees that towered a hundred yards above him, their needles a thick carpet on the forest floor. There was much more snow piled here in the shelter of the forest. Out on the plains, the breeze had carried him the scents of faraway places, but here, the world focused in sharply to his immediate surroundings.

  He found he could tell an old tree from a young one by the scent of its bark, could smell where a rabbit had crossed his path hours before, and which way it had been going. Every breath brought him new stories, added new depth to this place. As a human, he’d have thought a forest an exciting but dangerous place.

  Now, he was the predator.

  It was almost completely dark farther in, the trees seeming to lean over him to block the faint starlight, a faint mist clinging to the forest floor, swirling around his paws. Anders was grateful for his wolf’s vision. He followed the river as it wound its way through the black trees, the world silent except for the faint crunch of his paws on pine needles and snow, and the sound of the water.

  His limbs were beginning to ache after a whole day of running. He knew he was lifting his feet a little less, carryin
g his tail a little lower. A small voice in his head kept reminding him that what he was doing was nothing short of betraying the pack—the kind of action that deserved the exile Sigrid had threatened.

  That same voice began to ask questions about Lisabet, as he scrambled up the huge trunk of a fallen tree, the rotting wood soft beneath his paws.

  She didn’t tell you who she was, the voice pointed out. But you lied about who you were too. You didn’t tell her about Rayna.

  He made it over the fallen tree and set the low mist swirling as he landed back on the bed of pine needles, starting out once more. The voice didn’t stop. She told your secret when she shouldn’t have, it said. But you said the locator frame was for helping Jerro, you didn’t tell her about anything you were doing.

  I did eventually, he pointed out to the voice. I chose to trust her, and she was never going to tell me about Sigrid.

  The voice had a ready reply: You took your time telling her. Perhaps she was just taking her time telling you. Hoping you’d still be her friend afterward.

  He sighed, making his way across a large patch of snow. What Lisabet had done had been wrong—she’d shared a secret, she’d lied to him, if only by not telling him something she should have. But he’d done the same, and he knew how it felt to wonder if anybody would still want him, once they knew the truth about him. He wished now that he’d said something different before he left.

  Still, perhaps it was best she was back at the camp. If he got caught, if he got exiled, at least she’d be safe.

  About an hour into the woods the wild river finally split into two, swinging north and south. He had no option but to cross it, if he wanted to continue west. Anders pushed himself back into human form to check the chalice. As he drew closer to the mountains he was finding every change harder than the last, each time requiring more concentration. Tiredness, he supposed.

  The river was running faster and fiercer now, and Anders was careful as he edged his way down the steep, boggy bank, keeping firm hold of a tree root as he leaned down to dip the chalice into the current. The water nearly snatched it from his hand, numbing his fingers with cold in an instant, and he snatched it back, water slopping. There was enough, though, and he made his way up the bank to safety, dropping the needle into it. It swung instantly west. There was nothing for it but to cross the river.