Battle Born

by Amie Kaufman

  “I think—” she began as they finished, then abruptly faded out of sight.

  The twins had only time to gasp, and then she returned, translucent for a moment, then apparently solid once more.

  “This is taking too much of my essence,” she said. “I can’t do it for much longer. Listen closely, my darlings. I’ll answer as many of your questions as I can. To bring your friends inside Cloudhaven, all you need are yourselves and your augmenters. You’re descended from me, and I am descended from . . . well, many generations of dragonsmiths, including one of the founders of Cloudhaven itself. Bring your friends to the entrance, one at a time. Place one hand on your augmenter and one on your friend, and introduce them to Cloudhaven. They’ll be able to come inside after that.”

  “I don’t suppose you know how to bring about peace between wolves, dragons, and humans?” Rayna asked with a sigh.

  “I’m afraid I’m no expert on peace,” Drifa said sadly. “Felix and I wanted it very badly, though. That was one of the reasons we made a workshop here at Cloudhaven—so we could work toward peace in secret. You said you had my map? Most of the artifacts it leads to were items we made, or ancient items we restored, each of them one we hoped might help us find a way to create peace between the elementals of Vallen. Some of the artifacts were tools, some were weapons, but we never found a way to use them. And, of course, very few elementals agreed with what we were trying to do.

  “Your last great battle might have been fought after I . . . left, but though we wanted peace, Felix and I were a part of starting that war. It was his death and my disappearance that helped destroy the last of the trust between the wolves and the dragons. But your father and I always saw the good in both the wolves and the dragons, and others can too.”

  “We do,” Anders said. “We have friends who are wolves and dragons and humans.”

  “Then you have even more friends than we did,” she said. “Speaking of friends, you should trust your uncle Hayn. He’s a very good man. That’s what your father would want as well. When you wake up, you’ll find Felix’s communicator just over there.” She pointed at a towering stack of papers leaning against a small clockwork device. “It’s part of a set of four. Hayn has one, and the other three are there. If they don’t work at first, remember you can use your blood for more than proving your identity to an artifact. For an elemental as powerful as each of you, the essence in your blood can provide power to an artifact as well. Prick your finger, let the artifact have a drop of your blood, and I think you’ll find it will work for a little longer, though eventually you’ll want to take it to a dragonsmith for repairs.”

  “There’s so much about the artifacts we don’t know,” said Anders desperately, and he knew a part of him really meant, So please don’t leave us. This is as good an excuse as any. Please stay and tell us about artifacts. Please stay and be our mother.

  “I know,” said Drifa, a note of desperation in her voice. “Don’t forget about my map. It will tell you where every one of my artifacts is to be found. Perhaps you’ll know how to use them where I didn’t. Be careful, though—it’s not safe. There are those who will do anything to stop you.”

  She lifted her hand toward them, but she seemed to know without trying that it would pass straight through them, and so she didn’t touch them.

  As they watched, her hand faded out, then flickered back to life again.

  “I love you,” she said quietly. “I love you both more than anything. I’ll try to come again if you need me.”

  “I . . . I love you too,” Anders blurted out.

  He had never said it to anyone except Rayna before.

  “We love you,” Rayna said.

  And then the pair of them blinked awake, lying beside the fire.

  For a long moment, Anders stared at the cracked ceiling, completely confused. Then he turned his head, and his eyes met Rayna’s. As one, they scrambled to their feet. Most of their friends had fallen asleep waiting, but Ellukka and Sakarias were still awake, watching them for signs of life.

  “Did it work?” Ellukka asked.

  But Anders and Rayna were already running as fast as they could toward their mother’s workshop.

  When they stumbled through the door, they both pulled up short. Anders had known it would be empty—he had known she wouldn’t be there—but he still felt in that moment like his heart might crack.

  He made himself walk across the workshop to the pile of papers and the strange clockwork device. When he pushed them carefully to one side, there were three small communicator mirrors, just as she had said there would be. He flipped one open and stared down at the mirror, which showed him nothing except his own reflection.

  Rayna silently unpinned her brooch, handing it across to him so he could prick his finger.

  Soon, they would be able to speak to Hayn.

  Chapter Six

  THE NEXT FEW DAYS RAN A LITTLE MORE smoothly. Anders and Rayna introduced their friends to Cloudhaven exactly as Drifa had told them to do, and then they tested whether it had worked with the same method they’d used to discover the twins could get inside in the first place.

  Anders and Rayna watched from the hallway, and most of the others stood in the entrance hall, waiting nervously as Mateo and Bryn, two of the strongest of their number, held onto Theo’s hands, as he was one of the lightest. If the floor crumbled beneath him when he stepped inside, as it had when they’d first arrived, they’d be ready to catch him and pull him up.

  “Make sure you’re holding on tight please,” he said nervously, as he prepared to step backward onto the stone floor. “I don’t have wings when I’m a human.”

  He reached back with one foot and rested it on a paving stone, waiting to see if it held. When it did, he slowly eased his weight onto it. Still it held.

  “Here goes,” he murmured, and moved his second foot back, so he was standing still on the stone floor. Then he let go of Mateo and Bryn’s hands, and . . . nothing happened.

  He was safely inside Cloudhaven.

  Mikkel, Ellukka, and Sakarias danced in celebration, and Lisabet, Viktoria, and Isabina all watched with quieter satisfaction. Det nodded, as if he approved of Cloudhaven’s decision.

  Anders and Rayna both hugged Theo, who held on a little tightly, as if he still wasn’t sure he was on firm ground. Bryn and Mateo just shook hands, then shook hands again, as if they were congratulating each other on their role.

  “At last, proper beds,” said Ferdie, grinning broadly.

  “A proper kitchen,” said Jai.

  “More than one washroom,” said Jerro.

  Then Bryn and Mateo reached for Sam’s hands, and prepared to hold him in place as Anders and Rayna made their next introduction to Cloudhaven. One by one the children were brought in, and with each new addition, Anders felt the hope inside him swelling. It felt good to achieve what they had set out to do.

  Everyone immediately spread out to explore. Isabina headed for the mechanical room without delay, carrying a pile of books and promising they’d have running water and other helpful things in no time.

  “Not,” she said diplomatically, “that your drawing wasn’t very useful, Rayna. I’m sure it gave me a head start on figuring out how it works.”

  That turned out to be a little optimistic, though, and some time later Anders found her sitting with Mateo, Theo, and Sam at the entrance to the strange room. It might have been where Cloudhaven had led them when they asked how to make it easier to stay there, but to him, it still looked more dangerous than anything else.

  “We’re getting there,” Isabina promised. “Some of these instruments remind me of the ones at Drekhelm—I think they’re artifacts that control the hot water and the lights and all kinds of things. But they were all designed so long ago that it’s like trying to remember something you dreamed. Nothing’s quite the same. We can figure it out together, though.”

  “She’s right,” Theo agreed. “Mateo thinks that section over there looks like something fro
m Ulfar, so I’m about to squeeze in and go and poke at it.”

  “It’s safer than it sounds,” Sam promised, when he saw Anders’s face. “Once when I was, uh, passing through a fancy house in Holbard, I saw some gears just like this. I think it’s fine if he touches them.”

  “Add in these books from Ulfar, and we’re nearly there,” Isabina promised. “Wolf, dragon, and human expertise, at your service.”

  Anders couldn’t help smiling as he walked away. Of everyone, Isabina was perhaps the least concerned with the old enmity between wolves and dragons. She just wanted to invent things, and she didn’t care who she did it with, as long as they were interesting.

  One of the children’s greatest concerns about Cloudhaven had been the fact that—just like its name suggested—it was permanently hidden in the clouds. That made it very hard to know if dragons were approaching. A few hours later, when Isabina and her team were able to switch on a series of alarms that would warn them if they had unexpected visitors, everyone breathed a sigh of relief. When they announced they’d managed running water as well—“And hot water!” Theo said, with a dragon’s love of all things warm—their friends cheered out loud.

  Meanwhile, behind the many doors of Cloudhaven, Anders and the others found lots of useful things, including bedrooms, and everybody moved inside to more comfortable surroundings. They also found empty forges, abandoned inventions, a banquet hall that would have seated at least a hundred people, and dozens of other strange rooms besides.

  The big entrance hall remained the heart of Cloudhaven, though. There was always a fire burning in the fireplace, always at least a few children gathered around it to work or to talk.

  They were in touch with Hayn every day via the communicator, and he reported that the camp outside Holbard continued to grow. He’d been on several scouting trips to the wolf camp to the north, though he couldn’t go too close for fear he’d be seen and imprisoned again.

  “I’d hoped to speak to them,” he said via the mirror one night. “But the camp is set up for combat. I don’t think they’re in the mood to do anything but imprison me again, so I’ve kept my distance. They’re training hard, every wolf down to the very youngest student. There’s a fight coming, I’m sure of it.”

  In the meantime, the number of children they were sheltering at Cloudhaven continued to grow, filling up one bedroom after another. Hayn had a knack for finding those who had nobody else, and everyone at Cloudhaven knew that feeling far too well to deny them help—anything was better than the cold loneliness and the empty bellies that faced them in the camp.

  They sourced their food sometimes from the camps, sometimes from Holbard, and sometimes they bought it from farms farther afield—the dragons were able to pose as travelers and spend their coins without suspicion.

  But though they were busy rescuing children who needed them and making Cloudhaven into a home, Anders worried about the way the days were slipping away. They still had something much more important—and much harder—to achieve.

  One evening he stood in the entrance hall, taking in the scene before him. Wolves, dragons, and humans were working together, cooking the evening meal, studying their stacks of books, or making the latest arrivals comfortable. They laughed and talked and squabbled, and though he knew not all of them had come around to trust those different from themselves, there was a kind of change in the air.

  As Mateo and Bryn had said to him over lunch, it was hard to spend all day, every day, with someone, and hold on to your idea that they were all that different from you.

  Anders finally felt as if they had stopped rushing from crisis to crisis, desperately trying to solve each one without time to think about how best to do it, and had earned themselves just a few moments of breathing space.

  And though he never would have been able to admit it out loud, he knew within himself that at least a little bit, he was responsible for what they had achieved so far. He was proud of that.

  Still, the situation was definitely not without difficulties. Lisabet was subdued, and he knew that she was thinking about Sigrid, wondering what her mother’s absence meant. There was a chance that Sigrid might be missing for the worst possible reason—that she’d been killed in the Battle of Holbard. But none of them really believed that. Someone, wolf or human, would have seen her fall, and everybody would be talking about the death of the Fyrstulf, the leader of the wolves.

  It was far more likely that Sigrid was planning something, and Lisabet seemed to feel a kind of responsibility for her mother’s actions that Anders wished she wouldn’t. Lisabet wasn’t the same as Sigrid—anyone who met her for even a minute knew that.

  Bryn had succeeded in translating the glowing text on the wall that concealed Drifa, but that puzzle would not be as easy to solve as they had hoped. Some of the words made perfect sense. Others were in some kind of code.

  “I can tell you what every one of these letters is,” Bryn said with a sigh. “But if we’re going to decode it, we need a key. Something that tells us what kind of code it really is. Until then, I don’t know how we can get past the wall.”

  Despite his mother’s warning not to come looking for her, Anders had spent a lot of time thinking about how they might reach her.

  And through all these small triumphs and bigger challenges, one stood out as the hardest of all: they still had absolutely no idea how to convince the wolves, dragons, and humans outside of Cloudhaven that they needed to talk to one another if they were ever going to rebuild Vallen.

  Later that night, Anders was returning from fetching more wood for the fire, along with Ellukka and Sam. Anders had asked Lisabet if she wanted to come, but she had quietly shaken her head and returned to the book she was reading. He wished he knew how to make her feel better.

  The firewood came from a giant room not far inside Cloudhaven, where pieces of wood from kindling to logs had been neatly stacked by someone in the past. There was even a small red wagon on wheels for transporting the wood to whichever fireplace you were using, and just now Sam was towing it along, stacked high.

  The three of them were walking in thoughtful silence through hallways that had quickly become familiar. These days, unless they were going somewhere new, they didn’t even ask Cloudhaven to give them directions. They didn’t need a glowing path to lead them to and from the firewood room.

  It was Ellukka who suddenly stopped short and lifted one hand, causing Anders and Sam to halt as well. She had her head cocked to one side, as though she was listening for something, and Anders strained his ears but could hear nothing.

  “Do you hear that?” Ellukka whispered, almost inaudible. “It sounded like a rock clacking against something.”

  Sam and Anders shook their heads, but then Anders suddenly remembered the sound that he had heard but never been able to explain. He pointed ahead of them and raised his eyebrows—Was it that way?—and she nodded.

  The three of them began to creep carefully along the hallway, making as little sound as possible. The firewood cart had been as well-oiled as all the doors of Cloudhaven, and was silent as it trundled along behind Sam.

  Last time Anders had heard the unexplained noise, he had called out. This time, they reached the corner in silence and carefully peeked around it all at once, Ellukka’s head on top, Sam’s at the bottom, and Anders’s in the middle.

  They stared for a long moment, then withdrew back around the corner to stare at each other with huge eyes.

  They had all seen the same thing, but Anders could tell from his friends’ faces that they could barely believe it any more than he could.

  What Anders had seen was . . . well, it looked like a huge person, at least seven feet tall, but it was made of clay, as best he could tell from this distance. It was obviously an artifact, not only because it was walking on its own, but also because it had a skeleton on the outside made from metal and teeming with runes.

  They conducted a quick, completely silent conversation, raising their brows, widening their eyes,
and gesturing wildly.

  The language of wolves involved mostly body language—a tilt of the head or a flick of an ear was as good as a whole sentence. So even in human form, Anders suspected he understood the other two a little better than they understood him or each other. Ellukka wanted to go around the corner and confront the thing. Sam wanted to hide somewhere.

  Anders, if he was completely honest with himself, wanted to hide somewhere as well. But he knew they couldn’t. This place was so full of mysteries, they couldn’t give up the chance to solve one. So he nodded to Ellukka, straightened his shoulders, and with Sam reluctantly behind them, they walked around the corner.

  The giant artifact was walking slowly toward them, and stopped in place as they came into sight. Well, possibly into sight. It didn’t have eyes, so Anders had no idea if it could see them.

  “What is it?” Sam whispered.

  “Are you from Cloudhaven?” Anders asked it, raising his voice. “Are you what we’ve been hearing?”

  It didn’t answer, and it didn’t move, simply gazing toward them.

  Half a minute passed, and it was clear that nothing would happen unless the children made it. So Anders slowly walked up to the huge figure, tilting his head back to stare at it.

  It responded then, bowing a little at the waist and tipping its head down to stare at him in return. Anders heard a series of clicks inside it, as though some cogs or gears were moving. Then it grabbed him tightly around the waist, lifting him clean off his feet. It tucked him under its arm and turned away from Ellukka and Sam, striding quickly down the hallway.

  “Put me down!” Anders yelled, trying to push his way free, but the thing was made of rock, and he couldn’t budge it an inch—it only tightened its grip uncomfortably around him and kept moving.

  “Stop!” Ellukka screamed behind him. “Cloudhaven, stop it!”

  But nothing happened.

  Anders couldn’t see behind the artifact, but he could hear Sam and Ellukka following, both shouting for it to stop as Anders continued the fight to kick and wriggle his way free. The artifact responded by picking up its pace until it was jogging, shaking Anders up and down in the process until he could barely keep his eyes open. His heart was racing now, the artifact’s arm around him forcing him to take quick, shallow breaths.