The flame of dawn spread across the sky and warmed the Shining Isle of Anniera. When the sun’s rays broke the horizon, they fell soft and golden on the two brothers, fast asleep and leaning against one another on the stony hill.
Janner opened his eyes with a shivery stretch, then nudged Kalmar. “Kal, wake up. They’re here.”
“Hmph?” Kal asked, smacking his lips.
Janner stood and pulled Kal to his feet. “Look.”
Gathered at the foot of the castle mound was the whole multitude of Fangs on one side and cloven on the other. The few humans stood between them. There was hope on every face.
Then the boys spotted a winged shape, silhouetted by the rising sun, flying their way.
“Hulwen,” Kalmar said. “Good.”
The dragon circled the ruins of the Castle Rysen and then alighted beside the boys in a rush of air. She folded her wings, craned her gleaming neck, and lowered her head. She nodded at the brothers, and Janner heard her voice in his mind.
I have recovered the stone. What would you have me do with it?
“Did she bring it?” Kalmar asked with a yawn.
“She said she has the stone.”
Kalmar touched Hulwen’s snout. “Thank you. You can leave it here. Then go back to the sea. Hide. Until you know it’s safe.”
Hulwen paused, studying Kalmar’s eyes.What do you mean to do, Wolf King?
“She wants to know what you’re going to do,” Janner said, his anxiety growing by the minute. What did Kal mean, telling adragon to hide? What about Janner? What about their family? “Kal?”
“Everything’s going to be all right,” he said to the dragon. “But whatever you do, don’t sing a note. Not till you know it’s safe.”
Hulwen huffed a burst of warm breath.Very well. Maker help you.
Hulwen lowered her head to the ground at Kal’s feet. At first Janner thought she was bowing, but then he saw her jaw working and out slid the brick of shining stone from the Fane of Fire.
Hulwen took to the air and flew over the heads of the Fangs and cloven, on her way back to the sea.
“Now what?” Janner asked.
94
The Seed Is Planted
Janner and Kalmar stood in the ruins of the Castle Rysen before a multitude of monsters. There were cloven of all shapes and sizes (Elder Cadwick and Arundelle at the fore), along with Green Fangs, Grey Fangs, and Bat Fangs—all of them hissing, growling, and snorting as they shuffled closer to the boys.
Kalmar held the ancient stone in the crook of one arm, and the nearest creatures shielded their eyes from its light.
“This thing’s heavy,” Kalmar mumbled, and he shifted the rock to his other arm.
“Want me to hold it?” Janner asked, though he didn’t really want to. The stone was beautiful, but its power frightened him.
“Kalmar, what are you doing?” Nia asked as she and Leeli hurried out of the cellar and joined the brothers.
Leeli rubbed her eyes and yawned. “He’s healing them, Mama.”
“But how?” Nia took one look at the stone and said, “Kalmar, that thing is dangerous.”
Kalmar nodded and shifted the stone again.
A Grey Fang stepped forward, carrying Nuzzard in its arms. “I brought this one, as you asked, sir.”
The emaciated creature’s limbs dangled as if it were already dead, but its eyes were open and its breath came in quick gasps.
“Thank you.” Kalmar bent closer to Nuzzard. “Can you sing?”
Nuzzard grunted weakly and nodded its head.
Arundelle glided closer and looked down at Kalmar. The stone lit the underside of her leaves and branches like a campfire in the woods. “The cloven are assembled, King Kalmar. What would you have us do?”
“Sing the song,” Kalmar said. “Sing the song of the ancient stone, and the blood of the beast imbues your bones.”
The cloven and Fangs whispered among themselves, some of them excitedly repeating the phrase.
Nia knelt in front of Kalmar and grabbed his shoulders. Fear whitened her face. “Son, what did the Maker ask you to do? Tell me!”
Kalmar looked his mother in the eye. “He said that I would know what to do. And I do, Mama. The stone will heal them.”
“But that’s not how it works, Kal,” Janner said. “There was always another animal in the melding box. They have to meldwith something.”
“I know,” Kalmar said. He lifted the stone over his head and shouted, “Sing the song of the ancient stone, and the blood of the beast imbues your bones!”
He pushed his way into the crowd until all Janner could see was the light of the stone floating through the beasts like a second sun about to rise.
Cadwick and Arundelle looked at one another nervously as the first Fangs began to sing, and then they too began to sing the old melody.
Janner remembered the steaming, shriveled husks of bats left in the melding box once their essence had been drained, and he imagined the same happening to Kalmar. His brother was going to die.
It made sense—Kalmar’s strange sadness since he had emerged from the Fane of Fire, his promise to heal the broken ones—but the Throne Warden heart beating in Janner’s chest compelled him. He couldn’t stand by and watch as his little brother gave himself up, let himself die.
Protect. That was Janner’s only duty as the elder brother. That was the calling of a Throne Warden. Protect the king. Protect him from the Fangs, from Gnag—even from himself.Protect.
Then a memory of Arundelle’s words surfaced in his mind.I was told in a dream that a boy would come to Clovenfast, and he would be the seed of a new garden. This was what she’d foreseen—but Janner wouldn’t accept it. Kalmar wasn’t a boy. It wasn’t going to work. It was only going to kill him. He was a Fang—or a cloven, or whatever they wanted to call him.
Protect, Janner thought.Protect the king.
Then a warm and powerful voice swept through Janner’s mind.Sing the song of the ancient stones, and the blood of the boy imbues your bones.
The blood of theboy?
“Kalmar, no!” Janner screamed, and he ran.
He shoved past Elder Cadwick, past the smelly Fangs, and through the lumbering cloven as their voices unified into a single melody and the light of the stone pulsed and grew. Janner strained closer and closer to the light until he spotted among all the twisted and misshapen forms his little brother’s fur and saw his weeping face as he struggled to hold the stone overhead.
“Kalmar, sing the song!” he shouted as he pushed through the crowd.
“What?” Kalmar said, blinking at Janner in confusion.
“Sing it!”
Kalmar’s lips moved as he joined his voice with the others. The stone burned brighter and brighter. Golden beams shot from the ancient stone, spraying out through Kalmar’s fingers.
Janner reached Kalmar at last and looked firmly into his bright blue eyes. “I love you,” Janner said.
Then he tore the stone from Kalmar’s hands, astonished by its weight and warmth, and hugged it tightly. He fell to the ground and curled his body around it.
The last things Janner saw were Kalmar’s feet and the living light that washed over them. It flowed upward like water from the stone and the earth and the white blossoms and from Janner’s heart, too—a pure and cleansing glow that blazed like the word that made the world.
Janner felt himself emptied of life, of air, even of thought, and his bones burned with a terrible and ecstatic love. He sensed the Maker’s presence and pleasure like a roll of thunder, a crashing wave, a cool rain, a newborn’s breath, all unfolding like the joy of spring from the earth’s wintry grave.
95
The Price of Healing
Leeli held Nia back when Janner rushed through the singing mass. The ache she felt in her soul was bone-deep, but she had no doubt that whatever happened, this close to the Fane of Fire, it would be the Maker’s doing. She clung to her mother’s arm, though Nia screamed and fought, and when Nia f
ell, Leeli fell with her. They clung to one another and hid their eyes as the light enveloped them.
All at once the ancient song ended.
An unnatural fog enshrouded the mount and blocked the sun’s light. Leeli grabbed her crutch and climbed to her feet, fully expecting the very thing she saw when the wind stirred and the fog thinned.
Hundreds and hundreds of men and women, glistening with dew and draped in ill-fitting Fang cloaks and armor, stood together in the silence of the dawn. A tall, beautiful woman, whom Leeli knew to be Arundelle, admired her arms, turning them this way and that, as if she had never seen arms before. The man beside her draped his cloak around her shoulders and turned to face the sun as three little children hugged his legs. Slowly, like the sound of a coming rain, laughter and gasps of delight swept through the throng, followed by joyful weeping.
“He did it,” Leeli said.
And then a voice that Leeli hadn’t heard in a long time shouted, “Janner!” It was Kalmar, but gone was the wolfish growl—and his voice alone among all the multitude was sorrowful.
“Janner, no!” he cried. “It was supposed to be me!”
Nia leapt to her feet and Leeli followed her through the crowd. When it parted Leeli saw Kalmar—Kalmar the boy, older and without a trace of fur—on the ground beside the glowing stone, with Janner in his arms.
Janner’s body was as thin as a skeleton and steaming, and though all the life had gone out of it, the look on his face was one of abounding peace. The old scars on his neck and cheeks adorned him like badges of honor.
Nia and Leeli fell to their knees beside Janner’s body. Nia’s wail raked the sky, and she cradled her son, rocking him as she had when he was a baby. “My boy,” she said. “My little boy.”
Kalmar and Leeli laid their heads on their brother’s sunken chest and wept with their mother, and soon the men and women all around joined them in a lament made sweeter by their gratitude.
A shadow fell across the Wingfeathers, and Leeli squinted up at a winged figure gliding overhead. Artham Wingfeather landed among the crowd without a word and looked at Janner, and the stone, and the restored Kalmar, seeming to understand at once what had happened. He spread his wings over the children and Nia, and placed his hand on Janner’s forehead.
Artham looked around at the silent crowd. “This is the price of their healing.”
“I didn’t mean to,” Kalmar said. “He told me to sing and I—”
“He didn’t leave you,” Artham said, smiling through his tears. “He never left you.”
Kalmar sniffled and shook his head. “Until now.”
They wrapped Janner in his Durgan Cloak, then Nia, her back straight and her chin high, carried him to the cellar. Kalmar carried the stone. Leeli was too sad to play a single note, watching as Nia laid Janner’s body gently on the floor.
“Open the door,” Nia commanded, pointing at the door that led to the Fane of Fire. “Take him down there. Tell the Maker to do something.”
“We can’t,” Leeli said.
“It takes all three of us to open it.” Kalmar gazed at Janner’s form under the cloak.
“Artham’s a Throne Warden,” Nia said. “Get him to help.”
“Even if we could open the Fane, it doesn’t work like that,” Kalmar said. “You can’t just tell him what to do.”
“Why not?” Nia’s angry tears glimmered in the stone’s glow.
Kalmar shook his head. “I’m sorry, Mama.”
“And where were you?” Nia asked, narrowing her eyes at Artham. “You were too late.”
“I came as soon as I could. I was so lost, Nia,” Artham said. “But Sara found me.”
“Sara?” Nia asked.
“Sara Cobbler. A girl Janner met in the Fork Factory. She found me in the forest and said if there really was such a place as Anniera, then she and her orphans wanted to live there. We sailed theEnramere straight from Skree, five days ago—it should have taken longer, but a storm sped us on. The ship will be here soon.” Artham sighed and looked at Janner’s body. “It was a fine voyage. He would have loved it.”
He took Nia’s hand and waited until she looked him in the eye. “Nia, what Janner did was magnificent. It was the only way.”
Nia’s shoulders slumped and she bowed her head. “The only way to what?”
“To seed the new garden,” Kalmar said. “That’s what Arundelle told us would happen.”
Artham’s jaw went slack. “Arundelle?”
He sounded so confused that Nia laughed in spite of herself. She looked up and smiled through her tears. “Yes, Arundelle.”
“She’s—”
“Alive. And she’s right outside.” Nia’s anger turned again to grief, and she joined Kalmar and Leeli beside Janner’s body. “Oh, Janner,” she said. “Youwere magnificent.”
“Mama,” Leeli said, “let’s go see the new garden.”
The Wingfeathers emerged from the cellar under a bright blue sky and looked out on the new citizens of Anniera, all standing respectfully among the ruins of the castle as if they were waiting for something.
Arundelle drew Cadwick’s cloak tighter around her shoulders and stepped forward. “Artham Wingfeather,” she said, her long hair flowing in the breeze. “Will you still have me?”
Artham forgot to hide his claws and his reddish skin. He forgot to stutter or bob his head, and he forgot to listen to all the accusing voices in his mind. He completely forgot his shame. Then he lifted Arundelle in his arms and kissed her, and it was several minutes before he realized that they were flying high over the heads of the cheering crowd.
96
The Former Fangs Have Passed Away
In the histories of Aerwiar, it was reckoned that the death of Janner Wingfeather and the rebirth of the Shining Isle of Anniera marked the first day of the Fifth Epoch, an age of peace and provision—a lasting repose that was known, in some measure, by every living thing that walked the land, swam the sea, or soared the sky.
While Janner’s body rested in the cellar of the Castle Rysen, High King Kalmar Wingfeather blessed the new citizens of Anniera with new names. The former Fangs bowed before him one by one, and he gave them the finest, strongest, most graceful names he could imagine. They received their new names with humility and joy, because they understood the price that had been paid. Even the cloven who remembered their old names, gladdened by the hope of their lives to come, asked for new ones. The men and women who had never been Fanged did the same, welcoming the citizenship Kalmar freely offered.
Even as Kalmar blessed his people, some of the newly named Annierans formed an encampment in the fields below the Castle Rysen, while others began piling stone on stone, already rebuilding the walls of the castle. With Biggin O’Sally’s tools, men and women marked out fields for planting, and by the end of the day new seeds were buried in the furrows, awaiting rain and resurrection.
Near the end of the line, a girl of Kalmar’s age approached and fell at the king’s feet. “My king! The Stone Keeper named me Nuzzard,” the girl said, “but you carried me out of the dungeon.”
Kalmar took the girl’s hand and lifted her to her feet. She was beautiful. “Your new name is Galya. How does that sound?”
She took a deep, trembling breath and whispered, “I like it, Your Majesty.”
“Just call me Kal,” he said, and he watched her depart for the encampment in the company of a married couple who had rediscovered one another after many years of darkness.
Sara Cobbler arrived at sunset with all of her orphans, as well as Armulyn the Bard. He kissed the ground, then walked barefoot around the island in a daze, saying, “The stories are true,” again and again to whomever would listen.
Sara wept at the news of Janner’s death. Artham introduced her to Nia, who remembered her from Glipwood and delighted in Sara’s affection for Janner, promising to raise her as her own daughter, to Leeli’s great joy. While Artham and Arundelle strolled the fields around the castle, Sara told them all about Mara
ly and Gammon—also known as Shadowblade and the Florid Sword—and how happy they were, riding the rooftops in the moonlight to protect Skreeans from the scoundrels of the Strand.
That night Sara stood with the Wingfeathers as Artham placed Janner’s body, still wrapped in his Durgan cloak, on a bier in the courtyard of the Castle Rysen.
Leeli played a lay for Janner, a melody that lodged in the hearts of the Annierans. Many years later, Armulyn the Bard added words—words of redemption and courage, vouchsafing the tale of Janner’s honor for many Throne Wardens to come, so that all children, whether Annieran, or Hollish, or Skreean—or from some other faraway land—would know the glory of servanthood and sacrifice and selfless love.
“Janner Wingfeather,” they would say, “never left his brother’s side. He loved him to the end.”
The world is whispering—listen, child!—
The world is telling a tale.
When the seafoam froths in the water wild
Or the fendril flies in the gale,
When the sky is mad with the swirling storm
And thunder shakes the hall,
Child, keep watch for the passing form
Of the one who made it all.
Listen, child, to the Hollish wind,
To the hush of heather down,
To the voice of the brook at the stony bend
And the bells of Rysentown.
The Warden and the Wolf King Page 45
