by Amie Kaufman
He’d only swum a few times, as a human. On hot summer days in Holbard the street children would launch themselves into the harbor, throwing down cork buoys stolen from fishing boats to help themselves float. Paddling around in the harbor, though, was a very different thing to throwing himself into this rushing torrent. He knew his wolf’s body would be stronger, and his instincts told him he’d be able to swim, but the current was roaring past him like a living thing, waiting to grab him and drag him down.
He forced his body into wolf form once more, pacing the riverbank, studying the far side in the gloom. There was a place downstream where he could land, perhaps. The bank looked less steep there, which gave him a better chance of scrambling up. If he started upstream and tried to swim across as the current swept him down, he should hit it. He hoped.
Beyond that landing place the banks towered above the river for as far as he could see into the gloom. If he missed it, he’d lose his chance to climb out of the water before the cold and the current exhausted him, and he would be dragged under.
He let himself imagine, just for a moment, that Lisabet was with him. He’d felt so alone, walking up to Hayn the day he’d enlisted at Ulfar. But now, having found friendship, he was more alone than ever without it.
The water below was freezing and churning, racing downstream like a wolf pack across the plains. Jagged rocks made dark islands down its center, white spray standing out in the dark around them. Hesitating wasn’t making this any easier. He picked up the chalice in his mouth and edged his way down to the water.
The current rushed past the bank, and Anders braced himself to jump, swaying back and forth, trying to summon the courage to make the leap. There was only one way to Rayna, and that was across. And then suddenly, before he knew he’d made the choice, he was in the water.
The cold hit him like a huge hand wrapping around his ribs and squeezing tight, forcing all his breath up into his throat, then wrapping around that to squeeze too.
He clenched his jaw shut around the chalice’s handle as the current swept him along, the shock sweeping through his body and driving every thought from his mind.
As the river swung him around he caught a glimpse of the landing. The sight galvanized him, and he remembered what he was supposed to be doing, scrambling to swim across the current to reach the shore. Keeping hold of the chalice forced his mouth open, and as water splashed down his throat he had to clamp down on the urge to cough.
As he struggled for breath, the current swung him around in a circle, the rocks and the rushing water and the shoreline blurring together as one. I’m not going to make it.
The whole of his body slammed into one of the rocks in the middle of the river, pain overtaking the frozen numbness for an agonizing moment, foam and spray surging up over his head. Then he was past it, desperately holding onto the chalice, watching the landing place as he swept by it.
He gasped another breath, simply trying to keep his head above water as the banks grew taller and steeper. If he hit another rock it could knock him out. He’d drop the chalice, or simply slip beneath the surface and drown. He found more strength, frantically clawing at the water, dragging in breaths when he could manage it.
Then over the rushing of the water he heard a high, piercing howl from the shore. He wrenched around in time to see Lisabet racing along the far bank in wolf form, her dark fur glittering with frost, leaping over a fallen log to keep pace.
He glanced off another rock, sending a sharp pain through his ribs, spinning around again. As she came back into his field of view she transformed seamlessly from wolf to girl without breaking stride, suddenly a human running a few steps ahead of him.
She leaned down to grab a branch, pivoting and swinging it out into the river with all her might. She kept hold of one end as she pushed the other into the current. With the last of his strength Anders forced his legs to work, surging toward it, and crashed into it with a force that reverberated through his body.
He tangled his legs around it, the water grabbing at him with ice-cold fingers to try and tug him free. Above him, Lisabet used the current’s force to swing the branch in parallel to the steep shore.
Anders sunk his front paws into the soft mud there, hooking one around a tree root, and Lisabet frantically dragged another branch into place to make a bridge up for him. With the last of his strength he scrambled up. Lisabet reached down to grab at the scruff of his neck and helped him up the steep, boggy incline, until they both fell in a heap in the snow at the edge of the river.
He finally released the chalice, trembling as he coughed up water in great, heaving gasps.
Lisabet was still wrapped around him, half underneath him, still holding him, as if even now he might slip away beneath the surface of the furious river.
Even if he’d been human like her, he couldn’t have spoken, still caught up in coughing. But he turned his head, and between gasped breaths, he pressed his wet nose to her cold cheek in thanks.
It was a little while before either of them spoke, and eventually it was Lisabet who broke the silence. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.
He had to reply in wolfish, with a flick of his ears and a soft whine. I’m sorry too.
Her face was nearly hidden in the dark, but he knew she understood him. “I should have told you. I just . . . everyone judges me by my mother. I liked making a friend who didn’t. I wanted you to trust me. And you can trust me.”
And he knew now that she was right. He whined another question. Do the others know?
“Most,” she admitted. “But they know I disagree with her on a lot of things, so they don’t bring it up. They don’t forget either, though.”
That explained the loneliness he’d sensed in her, he realized. The isolation.
“I’m not the daughter she wanted,” Lisabet continued, still in a whisper. “My father should have been a powerful wolf. Instead, he was a mercher from Baseyda who was back on a ship before I was born. I’m not sure he even knows I exist. If she ever imagined having a child, it wasn’t like that. It wasn’t me.”
Anders wondered whether that was why Lisabet tried so hard, was always top of the class.
“It’s like because I don’t behave the way a daughter of hers should, because I ask so many questions, she has to be the most wolf she can possibly be,” Lisabet whispered.
Anders knew a thing or two himself about not measuring up, and he was quiet, considering her words. I lied to you as well, he said eventually. I didn’t tell you who my sister was. I didn’t tell you what I was trying to do. I was afraid to tell anyone.
“We both had reasons,” she said quietly. “Some of them were good, some of them were bad. But I know we never meant to hurt each other.”
In the end, Lisabet had been there—been here—when he needed her most. She’d acted like a friend, even when he’d thought she wasn’t.
It turned out he still had one after all.
He thumped his tail against the ground, because it was like the cold water had washed away his anger. I should never have left you behind. Forgive me?
“Let’s forgive each other,” she said, picking up the chalice. “And let’s keep heading for Drekhelm.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
AFTER ANDERS COULD BREATHE A LITTLE more normally, he rolled in the snow to shed as much water from his coat as he could, trying to ignore the growing aches and bruises all over his body. He was lucky he hadn’t broken anything.
They made their way on in the direction he’d been traveling, Lisabet still in human form. They paused when they found a small stream feeding the river, and she used that to fill the chalice and check their course. “That way,” she said, pointing away from the river and on toward the mountains.
How did you get across? he asked, looking back, thinking of the roiling current as she poured the water out of the chalice.
“I found a place farther up,” she said. “But mostly, I wasn’t trying to carry the chalice in my mouth, so I could actually breathe.”
She set down the chalice and braced her hands against her knees, shivering in clothes as wet as their fur had been after their swim. “It’s so hard to transform.”
Anders whined his soft agreement, watching as she gathered herself to try.
“I don’t know how I did it just now, except I was terrified,” she continued. She looked down at the snowy ground beneath her feet. “I don’t think it’s that I’m tired either. That doesn’t usually stop me. We’re getting closer to the mountains. There’s lava down there somewhere. Our bodies know it. It makes it harder for us to change, even when we’re in the snow.”
She drew a deep breath and whined softly as she stretched out in wolf form, pushing her paws ahead of her and bowing for a long moment.
He tipped his ears toward her, and she pressed in against him, nudging his nose with hers in reply. It felt good to be a “we” again.
They were leaving a clearer path behind them as they headed out once more, the cover of the trees preserving the snowdrifts that had melted out on the plains and at the edges of the forest. Lisabet had left shortly after Anders, and though Ennar hadn’t worked out that the chalice was missing by then, with half the night gone, surely she had by now.
They couldn’t afford to stop and rest. So they took it in turns, one carrying the chalice while the other carved a path ahead through the banks of snow, their heads hanging lower and lower as their exhaustion grew.
It was some time later when Anders nearly walked straight into Lisabet’s tail, and he blinked awake, realizing he’d been dozing as he walked. The sky behind them was starting to grow lighter, pinks and oranges creeping up above the horizon as dawn prepared to make herself known. They’d been awake almost twenty-four hours.
The trees were finally thinning out, and Lisabet had stopped because they had their first clear view of the mountains, soaring up into the clouds above. They had steep sides of black rock, sheer in some places, with tiny, silvery waterfalls tumbling from great heights to fall hundreds of feet to the ground. Snow sat higher up before the peaks disappeared into the clouds, and huge boulders littered the slope, as if they’d been carelessly thrown there sometime in the past.
The path Anders and Lisabet were on—the path the chalice still insisted on—led straight up the steep slope ahead of them.
So Anders took his turn to lead, and he kept on climbing. Somewhere up there was the largest gathering of dragons in Vallen. Somewhere up there, he hoped, was Rayna.
* * *
The lower foothills of the mountain sloped gradually, and for a few minutes Anders thought the ascent might not be so bad. He weaved his way through boulders and past the last few thinning clusters of trees. The ground turned to scree, loose pebbles sliding beneath their paws, but he found when he stayed low to the ground he could get a better grip.
Both he and Lisabet craned their heads back every so often to look for dragons, but though the sky on the horizon behind them was pink, it was still a velvety dark blue up ahead, and he knew he had little chance of warning if they came down from Drekhelm.
So he simply focused on finding safe footholds, moving up the mountain as efficiently as he could. And eventually, he realized he’d stumbled upon some sort of path. Between the patches of snow he could see it worn into the rocks, and after an hour or so, he found four steps carved into a particularly steep ascent.
Someone had intended that this place should be approached on foot, once upon a time. A long time ago, judging by the way the weather had worn the steps.
There was a huge boulder up ahead that seemed like it would provide some shelter from the growing wind, and he decided he’d stop on the far side of it to mention the steps to Lisabet—though he knew she really couldn’t have missed them. It was an excuse for a rest.
He rounded the moss-covered sides of the boulder, pausing a few paces around its curve when the wind only seemed to worsen—it wasn’t just racing down the mountainside now, but seeming to batter him from above, and he was forced to crouch as a gust nearly knocked him sideways. It was as if the wind really was coming from—oh no.
From above.
He backed up abruptly until his tail hit the boulder, yelping a warning to Lisabet. She lunged forward to his side with a growl of her own, and suddenly the pink and orange of the sunrise seemed to come to life and streak across into the darkened skies, as three dragons appeared to hover above them.
Their scales ranged from the orange of the dawn to the dark red of blood, streaked through with copper and gold. They took up a position directly above the two wolves, and the downdraft of their wings pushed Anders and Lisabet back against the boulder, forcing them lower to the ground.
One of them sent a gout of flame soaring up into the sky, and even from where he crouched, Anders could feel the heat of it, the roar of the hot air crashing into the cold.
Beside him, he felt Lisabet shift her weight, ready to bring down her front paws and create an ice spear, but he felt her uncertainty too. Which one would she aim at? And what would the other two do next?
He dropped the chalice into the snow at his feet, frantically casting his exhausted mind around for his next move. He couldn’t throw a spear. He couldn’t fight. The dragons didn’t look like they were in the mood to listen, even if he could think of something to say. His plan had been to stay unseen, because he was totally useless in a fight. Running or hiding were his only options.
Perhaps they could run, find some place to squeeze into that the dragons couldn’t follow? But even as he thought it, two of the three dragons descended to the ground, the wind from their wings buffeting the two wolves and forcing them back against the rock behind them. Once they’d landed they smoothly transformed, shrinking down and shifting into a boy and a girl about his own age.
The boy reminded him a little of Sakarias, but his hair was a deeper copper, and longer, more tousled. His smirk had a harder edge than the wolf’s friendly grin, and where Sakarias’s green eyes always danced with a joke, this boy’s were more calculating, their deep brown standing out against his pale skin.
She was a little more suntanned than him, her blond hair pulled into two braids. She was bigger and broader than the boy, and moved with an ease that told Anders she was strong. Both of them were clad in fur-lined cloaks and gloves, but they didn’t wear a uniform like the wolves.
The girl folded her arms across her chest as the boy sauntered toward the two shivering wolves, his gait relaxed. And why shouldn’t it be? He had the girl right behind him, a dragon circling in the air above him, and they outnumbered the two exhausted wolves.
Anders was going to fail Rayna and get Lisabet killed in the bargain.
“Well,” said the boy, lifting one eyebrow. “To what do we owe this very great honor? We weren’t expecting visitors.” His smirk didn’t budge one inch.
“And we don’t want any,” the girl added from behind him. “Explain yourselves.”
Anders racked his tired mind for one more idea.
There had been moments when he’d almost begun to believe Lisabet—to wonder if there was more to the dragons than the wolves were telling him. Now, looking at their satisfied, unfriendly faces, he felt that uncertainty fall away. They were hostile. They were amused by his fear.
He tried to think back over the path they’d taken, calculate how long it would take to run for the woods, where they might at least have some cover. Too long.
He wondered if Lisabet would run for it, if he ran forward to distract the dragons. But she wouldn’t. She’d try to help him. And she clearly had no more idea than he did of what to do, crouching beside him.
“Forgotten how to transform, Wolf?” the boy asked, amused.
Anders made his racing heart slow. He had to speak to them. He had to find the right words. It was the only way to save Rayna—and himself and Lisabet.
He reached inside himself and found the kernel of a human, and tugged at it, forcing himself back into that shape.
Beside him, he felt Lisabet changing as
well. Even though he was taller than a wolf when he was in human form, he still had to look up the mountain to where the dragons stood above him.
His clothes were still clammy, damp from his plunge in the river and sticking to his freezing-cold skin, and he was shivering the moment he was human. But the cold of his clothes felt wonderful. The dragons were radiating heat, and the wet fabric helped keep his skin cool—he felt stronger, even as he shivered. Perhaps there was some way he could talk his way out of this.
“Just give me a chance to explain,” he said, his voice hoarse with tiredness. “I can explain.”
“Go on,” said the girl, tugging up the fur-lined hood of her cloak as the breeze picked up around them once more, sending a shiver through Anders and Lisabet. “I’m fascinated to hear.”
But before Anders could try, the wind buffeted them again, pushing him into Lisabet, and then throwing them both back against the rock. The world overhead became a whirl of red, and he realized the last of the dragons was descending, forcing the boy and girl before them to stumble out of its way.
It landed with a swing of its tail, and a moment later it transformed, shrinking down to a figure in a red-brown coat. Anders could make out a shock of black, curly hair, but the swirl of snow still settling after the dragon’s landing obscured the face beneath it.
Anders’s feet were moving before his brain understood what he was seeing, the information arriving in a jumble.
Ahead of him was Rayna running down the slope, sliding on the stones in her haste, and in the same instant he was running toward her, scrambling over wet and icy rocks.
They smacked together in a tangle of arms and legs, his sister squeezing his ribs as tightly as the frozen river had done.
Relief crashed over him, pushing away the pain he should have felt when she hugged him right over his bruises, and his knees threatened to give way as he wrapped his arms around her in return.
