The Warden and the Wolf King

by Andrew Peterson

  “This was called Lorryshire. There was a bakery there,” Nia pointed at a pile of charred planks. “They had the finest sausage bread in all the island. Your father and I came here often in the autumn for the beanbrew.” She smiled and wiped her cheeks. “There’s so much work to do.”

  Biggin O’Sally grunted. “I could use some beanbrew about now.”

  “How far is it to the castle?” Kalmar asked.

  “No more than an hour on foot.” Nia looked out at the sinking sun. “If we hurry, we’ll be there before dark.”

  Gnag’s troops had used the road often enough over the years that it was well worn and easily traveled. Along the way Nia told them stories, awakened in her memory by the lay of the land and the ruins of buildings. Even in the smoky sadness of the place there was a sense of peace that made the journey surprisingly pleasant. As they walked, the joy Janner had anticipated simmered in his chest—a slowly and steadily rising warmth rather than an eruption—as he allowed himself to believe that this was actually happening.

  They saw no Fangs prowling the hills, no sign of malice—only what was left in its wake. Leeli pointed at a sunbathed hillside where a flock of white birds picked their way through the ashes, evidence that not everything on the island was dead. The sun began to slide below the horizon and lit the high clouds in pinks and reds that set their faces and the very air aglow.

  Then they saw the castle. The children had been there only the day before, but now Janner reallysaw it—and what a beauty it must have been! What was left of its walls rose out of the very stone, as if the castle had been a living thing, sprouted from the island’s bedrock. Now those walls were jagged and broken, but it was easy to picture the large roof they must have once supported.

  Nia stopped and gathered the children close. She pointed out where the highest spires once stood, where the courtyard once opened onto a grand garden in which the people rested after their days in the fields, where she and her court fed them feasts of game and the fruit of the forests and they sang under the stars and the rising moon.

  “Speaking of stars,” Nia said, “they’re coming out. We need to find a place to sleep.”

  “Oy,” agreed Biggin. “It’ll get mighty chilly at night.”

  “I know a place,” Kalmar said.

  Frankle and Baxter trotted beside him as he led them up the hill and among the ruins to the cellar. He sniffed and confirmed that they were indeed alone, and then he led them down the steps.

  Biggin and Kelvey lit the torches left behind by the Fangs while Nia and Leeli nested, clearing away the rubble to arrange a comfortable place to sleep. Janner and Kalmar laid out the food Biggin had brought, and soon the seven of them (and the two dogs) sat in a circle, eating in silence. Janner knew by the look on his mother’s face that her thoughts wandered deep in the forest of the past, and he didn’t want to interrupt her. The O’Sallys munched, muttering their amazement that they were sharing a meal in the Castle Rysen.

  When the meal was finished, Nia told them about her first night in the castle many years ago, when, unable to sleep, she had crept out of her new bedchambers and wandered the grounds under the moonlight. She had fallen asleep on the soft grass in the garden and woke under a pile of dirt. The gardenkeeper and his crew had covered her in it from the waist down and planted an assortment of firebud and totato seedlings. When Nia had sat up, sputtering her disgust, she saw Esben and Artham doubled over, laughing like little boys.

  “Your father promised to take the gardener and his family sailing on theSilverstar as payment for his mischief.” Nia smiled at her children and asked Biggin to douse the torches. “In the morning, maybe we’ll plant some new memories.”

  Janner and the others fell quickly asleep, even though Biggin’s snore was clamorous. A few hours later, Janner woke with Kalmar’s face just inches away. His wolf whiskers tickled Janner’s cheeks. “Shh. I need you,” Kalmar whispered. “Stay quiet.”

  Leeli knelt beside him, her outline faintly illuminated by the starlight floating in through the doorway above. Janner and Leeli followed Kalmar, trusting his wolf eyes as they crept around Nia’s sleeping body.

  “What are we doing?” Janner whispered.

  “Hold on.” Kalmar tugged the squeaky iron door open just enough for them to squeeze through. When they were inside and the door was shut behind them, Kalmar spoke. “I know you’ll think I’ve lost my brain, but I need to go down there. To the Fane of Fire.”

  Janner rubbed his eyes and tried to clear the sleep out of his mind. Being in this room again unsettled him. He couldn’t help but picture Gnag the Nameless rising out of the shaft with the look of satisfaction on his face.

  But his trepidation went deeper than that. He remembered being in the shaft, looking along the glowing passageway to the chamber and sensing a presence there. If the legends were true, and he had no reason to doubt them any longer, that presence had been the Maker himself. Janner was ashamed of all the anger he had flung at the Maker—when he was in the Deeps, when he was in the Fork Factory, when he was on Gnag’s ship, riding the storm that had, in fact, carried Leeli’s music to the Field of Finley. The thought of coming face-to-face with that presence terrified him.

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Janner whispered.

  “Why not?” Leeli asked. “The kings of Anniera have always walked with the Maker there.”

  “I don’t know. I just—I don’t want to go down there.”

  Kalmar started to say something but hesitated.

  “What is it?” Janner whispered.

  “Janner,” he said, “you’re not supposed to. I’m the king, not you.”

  Of course. The Fane of Fire was for the High King. When he had entered before, Janner was trespassing. He shuddered to think what might have happened if he had followed the passage to the chamber.

  But now Janner felt a sting of jealousy. Why shouldn’t they all be allowed to enter? It took the three of them to open the door. He had done as much to fight for Anniera as Kal had. His mind raced with all the trouble Kal had caused over the years, from their days in Glipwood, to his cowardice in Dugtown, to his Fanging in the Phoobs. And nowKal was the one who got to walk with the Maker. How was that fair? The old familiar anger, which had only moments ago filled him with shame, now filled him with indignation.

  “Janner?” Leeli said.

  He let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. Janner shook his head, thankful that in the darkness they couldn’t see the way his cheeks flushed. “I’m sorry,” he said—not just to his siblings. What a tangle his heart was. “Of course. I know the Fane is for you. I just—”

  “It’s all right,” Kalmar said. “I understand. Believe me, I’d trade places with you if I could.”

  Janner wanted to cry, though he didn’t understand why.

  Kalmar guided them to the circle on the floor. “Do you both remember what you’re supposed to do?”

  “Yes,” Janner said. “I think so.”

  He had only spoken the words twice before, but by some strange remembrance in his blood he knew that once he started speaking, they would come easily. Leeli played the music quietly, and Janner recited the old script. Kalmar traced the glittering form in the air. At once the light blazed through the seams in the wall. The shapes carved into the floor glowed and twinkled with silver sparks as the floating figure rotated and descended over them. The shaft slid open and rays of golden light splayed forth.

  Down Kalmar went, as if he were climbing into the sun itself.

  89

  The Maker

  Janner didn’t know what to feel as he and Leeli watched Kalmar descend. He was embarrassed at his jealousy, at the bitterness he had aimed at the Maker over the years; he was afraid to be so close to such power and mystery; and he was unsettled by the memories of Gnag in the same room only a day before.

  Kalmar reached the bottom, looked up at them with a nervous smile, and walked out of sight. Janner and Leeli sat at the edge and listened fo
r a long time. They waited without speaking, staring at dust motes that swam in the beam of light.

  Janner’s heart somersaulted with shame, embarrassment, envy, frustration at himself, contrition, gratitude, and then more frustration. As soon as he settled on one feeling, the next one crowded it out. He sighed, wishing he could rest and let things be as they were. He felt as if he were two people: one boy who saw the situation objectively, who knew the right answers—which were to be content with his lot, grateful to the Maker, humble to his calling—and another boy whom he hated, who felt things hotly and demanded attention like a child throwing a fit.

  Even the good feelings betrayed him, because once he felt them he was proud of having them, which opened the door for the next multitude of conflicting emotions.No, he would think.Gnag is dead. You’re the Throne Warden. Be glad Kalmar is acting like a king; be glad the Maker is real; be glad you get to be a part of this.He would settle for a moment, even breathe a sigh of relief. Then like a rat in the kitchen, a dark thought would skitter across the floor of his thoughts.

  On and on it went, in the light of the Fane of Fire, while Leeli contentedly rested her head on his shoulder and waited.

  Gradually Janner began to understand, deeper in his heart than any of these other thoughts or feelings, that what was happening inside of him was the Maker’s doing. Just being this close to the Fane of Fire stirred the muck in Janner’s soul so that every broken part of him floated to the surface and was drawn in sharp relief, just like those dust motes.

  After more than an hour, with Leeli now asleep on his shoulder, Janner understood something about his own heart: he was deeply, blatantlyselfish. In so many situations, from Glipwood to the Deeps to Gnag’s ship, whenever he had unleashed his frustration at the Maker, he had been thinking more of himself than anyone or anything else. Even in the performance of his duties, he thought mainly of his own dutifulness; in his courageous moments he thought of his courage. Only in his pain and despair did he turn his attention to the Maker, and then it was only to demand answers or outcomes.

  The light from the Fane of Fire illumined his heart and showed him who he really was: a weak, petty young man. Even in that realization he recognized his selfishness, because he was thinking not of the grace the Maker had shown him—was showing him—but of his own weakness and pettiness. There was no way out.

  Be still.

  “What?” Janner said aloud, looking around for the owner of the voice. Someone had spoken, but whom? When he tried to remember what the voice sounded like, its quality vanished from memory. Then he realized that, of course, the one who had spoken had also made the world. Janner trembled.

  Be still.

  “Yes sir,” Janner whispered. He knew the voice and had always known it. It seemed to come from the Fane—but also from the floor where he sat, and from the sky and the water and the wind and the blood in his veins and the air in his lungs. His heart swelled, and something like a shout rose from his throat, but it came out as a whimper.

  Be still.

  “Yes sir,” Janner repeated, and now he was crying. He felt in his heart a braid of pain and delight and longing that made his bones burn and his heart quake. All his attention turned from himself and he yearned for the speaker of those words so desperately that he wished he could die and be born again as a single spoken syllable from his mouth, just to know the pleasure of his presence.

  He vividly sensed Leeli’s sweet, gentle breathing and the music that wreathed her dear heart; he saw Kalmar’s woundedness and ached to embrace the boy in the wolf; he even saw his own troubled, selfish soul: the scarred flesh and weary eyes, his conflicted emotions, and he loved the Janner that he saw through the Maker’s eyes. He knew himself as he was known. He saw, and was still.

  A great love enveloped him, and he thought of his father’s bearlike embrace, only now he knew those arms were but a shadow of the bright love that beat the world’s heart and held him now, as they always had, with an inescapable, indescribable tenderness.

  Be still.

  The voice repeated the words again and again, like a beating heart, until Janner was at last able to obey and to rest, rest,rest. There in the light of the Fane of Fire, Janner Wingfeather encountered—absorbed—an abiding peace that he would never forget all the days of his life.

  He was still. And he was loved.

  “Psst! Janner!” Kalmar said, poking Janner’s shoulder.

  Janner sat up, afraid at once that he had only dreamed the Maker’s presence—yet to his relief he was still in the chamber, still awash in the golden light. Not only that, he sensed the change in his heart. It hadn’t been a dream.

  Leeli sat up and stretched as Kalmar knelt beside the two of them with an easy smile on his face. “Let’s go.”

  Janner wanted to ask Kalmar what had happened, but he chose to wait. The room held a holy stillness that he didn’t want to disturb.

  The Jewels of Anniera took their places and repeated the word, form, and song, and the chamber was once again plunged into darkness. The children climbed the stairs and crept around Nia and the O’Sallys. They found their pallets and lay in the dark for a long time before drifting into a deep and healing slumber.

  Sunlight and birdsong woke them. In the glow of a cool dawn, the Wingfeathers and O’Sallys climbed from the cellar, and when they looked out at the rolling hills, they beheld a resurrection of white flowers, sprung from the ashen earth overnight, called up by the previous day’s rainstorm and the warming of spring. The flower petals blanketed the island and glimmered with dew, as if the stars themselves had floated down like snow while they slept. Little green vines adorned the rubble and the husks of all the shattered homes, blessing the wreckage with silvery blooms as glad as a wedding day. Honeybees zoomed from flower to flower like children in a candyhouse, as the River Rysen coursed through it all, laughing its way to the sea.

  “I didn’t realize,” Leeli said, “that the Shining Isle actually, you know,shone.”

  Nia laughed.

  They ate a quick breakfast and the O’Sallys got to work, rummaging through the ruins for the wood to build a shelter. It was good work under a good sun, but they only managed to find a few suitable planks.

  “It’s worse than I thought,” Biggin said with a shake of his head. “No use pretending. We have to go back to Ban Rona for supplies. We need tools. We need carpenters. And we need seeds to get into the ground before the planting season gets away from us.”

  “And that means we need horses, ploughs, hoes, and shovels,” Kelvey added.

  “You’re right.” Nia plucked a handful of the blossoms and smelled them. “But I think I’ll stay. I couldn’t bear to leave again so soon.”

  “Oy, I figured as much. Kelvey and I can manage the boat. We’ll get help and be back in a few days. There’s fish in the river or those birds wouldn’t be diving. There’s a net in the boat that Thorn knows how to use.”

  “Oy, I scored good in fishery,” Thorn said, obviously trying to impress Leeli.

  “And there’s a sackful of dried fruities that we’ll leave you as well. Firewood shouldn’t be a problem.” Biggin chuckled. “No time to waste. See you real soon.”

  “Janner and I need to go too,” Kalmar blurted, as if he had been holding his breath. “I need to help the Fangs.”

  “Help the Fangs?” Nia asked. “What about your mother and sister? We could use some help, too, you know, and we didn’t destroy the world. No. Absolutely not. Every time our family separates, terrible things happen.”

  Kalmar swallowed. “We have to go, Mama.”

  “The Maker told him so,” Leeli said, scratching behind Frankle’s ears.

  “The Makerwhat?” Nia asked. “What do you mean?”

  “It’s hard to explain.” Kalmar sighed. “Just trust me, I have to do this.”

  “If your boys are coming,” Biggin said, “Kelvey can stay here. Right, lad?”

  “Real glad to help.”

  “Really,” Nia grumbled.
<
br />   “Oy.”

  Nia smoothed the front of her dress and straightened. “Just hurry back.”

  “You don’t have to tell me,” Janner said once they were well out to sea. “I’ll understand if it’s, you know, between you andhim.”

  Kal stared at the horizon for a while before he answered. “It’s not that I don’t want to tell you about it. It’s just hard to explain. The Fane was beautiful. Just being in the room made my skin feel all swimmy. There were trees, and running water, and so much light that every color was more . . . I don’t know,colorful. Then he said my name. But when he said it, it was more than my name.” Kalmar scratched his chin and squinted one eye. “It’s hard to talk about it. You’re the one who’s good with words. When I think abouthim, my brain gets all fuzzy. It’s not that I can’t remember. It’s that when I remember I can’t think of any words.”

  Janner imagined how hard it would be to describe the voice he had heard the night before—a voice heard with more than just his ears; a voice that was loud and quiet and beautiful and enormous and pristine; a voice as vast as the heavens yet small as a grain of sand, stirring yet calming, yet—well, he couldn’t describe it. “But did he tell you anything?”

  A look of sadness passed over Kalmar’s face. “He helped me understand something.”

  “How to help the Fangs?”

  “Yes. I think.” Kalmar shook his head. “The more I talk about it the less I understand it. I just need to do something.” He looked at Janner and shrugged. “Sorry I’m not making much sense.”

  “It’s all right. Like I said, I’m with you.”

  The day was dying when they sailed through the Watercraw—but Ban Rona was coming to life again. Lamplight shone in the windows of the less-damaged buildings, and the Hollowsfolk sang in the streets. From the ship, the boys saw children and dogs playing on the waterfront, and the aroma of supper hung in the air.