“See,” Pietre said. “Then how can I save anyone else?” He tossed down one of the stones he’d just chosen.
Humphrey used his foot to push it back towards Pietre. “You are thinking of the end, which seems impossible, and the beginning, which seems faltering. You are forgetting about the middle—the most important part, the part where you change.”
Humphrey nudged Pietre’s pocket where he used to hold the stone. “Much like a plain, rough rock that can be transformed into a beautiful, powerful gem. The gem was always there, but it had to be smoothed, then recognized, then used.”
Pietre held his pouch, now heavy with several strong stones. “I’m not very fast,” he said at last.
“That’s okay,” Humphrey said. “I will be your speed.”
Pietre looked into the wide brown eyes of his friend—he who had so much to lose if they didn’t succeed. Pietre climbed onto Humphrey’s back and together they thundered forward, running along the thin string of hope that had bound them together since the beginning.
Wolrijk ran at Wittendon’s back. The prince was hunched over, looking towards the top of the hill as though he thought he was the only creature there. Wolrijk raised his blade, about to swing it across the back of the prince’s neck, when Wittendon swatted a hand as though hitting a fly. A thick vine flew down and smacked Wolrijk across the face.
The Verander let out a roar and Wittendon turned to face him.
“I bet you think that was cute,” the wolf-man hissed.
“What was cute was the fact that you thought I wouldn’t hear you pummeling toward me, like a child playing at war.”
“You call me a child?” Wolrijk asked, laughing. “I who have been of this kingdom since before its conception.”
“Whatever I choose to call you, I don’t have time for your stupid game,” Wittendon said. “Here, take my crown—it’s yours.” Wittendon tore off his crimson sash and tossed it at Wolrijk’s feet.
Wolrijk stepped on it, grinding the fine fabric into the sandy stones beneath him. “I’d rather play my game now. And you won’t give me the crown because I’m going to take it.”
In the distance a trumpet blasted and a wolf captain shouted, “The king’s box; it is destroyed.” This cry was repeated among the ranks, trickling to the crowd below.
Wittendon looked to Wolrijk.
“He was my first order of business.”
“You,” Wittendon said clearly, “cannot kill my father.”
Wolrijk swung the blade so swiftly back and forth at Wittendon’s stomach that the metal looked like scissors opening and shutting.
In the distance, they heard the howling that shook the air. “The king is gone,” the captain bellowed.
Wolrijk’s blade stopped. “Gone?” he whispered.
“As I told you,” Wittendon said.
“Without aid, he will die soon enough from the wound I inflicted. As will you.”
“I will do no such thing,” Wittendon said, stopping the blade at once with his own weapon and pushing Wolrijk back.
The wolf-turned-Verander may have been a crazed lunatic bent on usurping the kingdom, but Wittendon was broken-hearted and furious with everyone he’d ever cared about. That was its own kind of lunacy. Wittendon sheathed his blade and pointed all ten fingers in front of him like they were tiny harpoons. Behind Wolrijk trees began to fall. They hit the ground in rhythm, like a line of dominos getting nearer. Wittendon smiled. Two trees fell on either side of Wolrijk. Abruptly, Wittendon clenched his fingers into tight fists. Instantly the trees burst into flame.
“All the better to cremate your body,” the wolf growled, but as he conjured a tornado of stone to dump on the flames, it was clear that both shifters would need more than a quick blade or a burst of magic to conquer the other.
Now that Pietre was standing staring down the sun, it didn’t feel as terrifying as he’d expected. Until the drums began. From across the hill at the king’s box, he could hear the Veranderen guard calling, “She has come—leaving a purple lily of mourning—to avenge her brother’s death.”
“Find the lady of the lily,” a whispered shout rose into the air like an army of ghosts. “She who has robbed us of the life of our king.”
“Sadora,” Pietre murmured. The drums grew louder—a chilling sound in the land of the red sun—the march of Veranderen hunting one of their own, armed with weapons tipped in the Shining Grey. The chants of the guard and the crowd arched over the hill like a song of banshees—Veranderen wailing the coming death of their traitorous comrade.
Sadora wasn’t one to do things by mistake. Pietre guessed she’d left the flower for a reason. And he had a guilty feeling that it involved leading the king’s guard away from the Sacred Tablet, away from himself, and down the hill.
“The king’s blood splattered like water,” the head wailer sang, inciting the troops. “His body lost from those who mourn.”
The king’s full guard—both wolf and Veranderen—gathered at the opposite slope of the hill and then, at the blood-curdling signal of the head captain, they stormed forward over the grass like a pestilence of crickets darkening the hillside. Pietre could hear their feet as they tore up and across the great hill. Even worse, he could feel them, thousands of tiny earthquakes barreling toward his captain.
“Madmen,” he whispered. “Check and double-check.”
Sadora stood at the center of the hill, less than a mile away from Wolrijk and Wittendon and a bit further from the boy. Dropping a flower in the king’s box hadn’t been her best plan ever, but she’d had to do something. She had heard the guard coming up the hill to check the box. When they found it destroyed, she knew that they would have combed the hill one way or another. As it was, they were now looking for her, not a prince they didn’t yet know was a traitor, or a small boy who needed a shiny stone. Just her. And presumably when they found her, they would stop looking for anything else. She sighed. Fulfilling your destiny sounded grand, but now that it was done and the king destroyed, it would have been nice to enjoy the years ahead.
She walked to the freshly disturbed dirt that she knew marked Sarak’s grave. It would be a logical place for them to find her and she wanted to be as near to her brother as possible. Sarak had always made difficult things better. She took one of the two remaining flowers from her hair and rested it on the dirt.
The thundering of the guard shook the ground beneath her and she took a deep breath, ready to be driven through with the first tooth or Grey-tipped scythe that came at her. The line of muscular wolves and Veranderen crested on the darkening horizon, and stopped. “My lady,” said the one in the forefront—the wolf known as Rorof. “You must now come with us.”
“Must I?” she asked, holding the shaft of the blade of Crespin.
Rorof gave the broken weapon an odd look and said, “My lady; it is clear that your grief over your brother maddens you. Now come. Even the asylums of our land are better than a lonely hill.”
“An asylum,” she asked, feigning surprise. “The king who has reigned for 900 years is gone, and you speak to me of asylum. It is difficult to believe.”
Behind the wolf Rorof, another growled low. His voice was joined by others, though soon silenced by Rorof. “You will have the best our land can offer you.”
“Which is, as I understand it, a noose after a decent meal.”
“On some occasions, yes, it well may be.”
She raised the shaft of the spear above her head and moving it in circles brought a heavy, dark cloud above the wolves. Rorof lowered his body and the guard behind him did the same, bracing for attack.
From the cloud, Sadora pulled a jolt of energy, which she held at the shaft’s tip. Rorof looked to it, calculating.
Sadora took a deep breath. She would never be able to take them all with one puny lightning streak, but it would take out a few and frighten many more.
She tightened her grip on the shaft with the bolt and Rorof pawed the earth. Both paused, letting the adrenaline build
and bracing for its release when a voice spoke from behind Sadora.
“And what if she didn’t do it?” Kaxon asked, stepping in front of Sadora. “She is not the only one who has cause for madness on this day. Nor is she the only one that would do evil to our king.”
“Kaxon,” Sadora said, too shocked to notice the reaction of the guard.
“You may come with us as well, my disgruntled prince,” Rorof said, though without the civility he’d expressed to Sadora. “No noose awaits you or asylum either, although with the disgrace you will surely suffer throughout your life, you may wish it had been thus.”
“Ah,” Kaxon said. “I see you understand my predicament then. That is very much what I was thinking when I came to my father and—” Kaxon gestured to the point on the hill where his father had been.
“There we found a flower just as this one,” Rorof replied, nodding to the flower that lay on Sarak’s grave.
“There’s a whole creek bed of them right near the royal box.”
“Kaxon,” Sadora said.
“Do not try to protect me just because I am kin to your love,” Kaxon replied.
“I will take you both,” Rorof replied, looking from one to the other, confused.
“You will not,” Kaxon replied. “You will take only me. The blade that spilled my father’s blood—it wasn’t hers. Which is fairly obvious. Did you not notice that she’s fighting with a stick. The blade belonged to me.” He laughed, a sad, sick sound that rose from his throat like choking. “You know, that extra-long blade, three-inches of Grey—it even had my name on it. Can you believe it?”
Rorof just stared at him.
“I couldn’t quite believe it either, but it’s true. A little gift from a too-smart Greysmith.” Kaxon staggered around, like a human drunkard.
“Kaxon,” Sadora said for the third time, raising her voice. And with that, Kaxon swung around and smacked her on the mouth. “Enough,” he shouted. “Now go.”
The flesh of her lip split open, and she held her hand to it in shock more than pain. “I will not leave my brother’s grave. You go.”
“Fine,” he said. “Consider it the last favor I do for my brother.” And with that he ran straight into the outstretched weapons of the Veranderen, collapsing as his chest and neck hit the blades.
Sadora stepped back and gasped. “Kaxon,” she whispered one final time.
“My lady,” the wolf Rorof said, turning to her. “Tell me truly: did you kill the king?”
“No,” she said clearly. “I did not.”
He bowed briefly and said, “Then pay your respects to your brother if you must, but be careful on this hill. It has brought more death today than it has in all the years since its first.”
After they left, Sadora sat down for the first time that day. She wanted to cry. They would see more death before it was through—death of the good as well as bad. She had known this at the start—known what war and revolution entailed. But watching Kaxon fall for her sake, she felt it deeply for the very first time.
In the distance, Wittendon heard a crash. The guard, it seemed, was dealing with something else on the hill. The sun sat low and fat. Wolrijk had conjured a group of snakes that hissed and writhed at Wittendon’s feet. Using his scythe to vault over them, Wittendon jumped and ran toward the sounds of voices. Wolrijk followed. For somebody who was 1,000 years old and had spent the last several centuries cramped into the incorrect body, Wolrijk was fast. Wittendon had to stop just before he reached the noise in order to face Wolrijk again, but he’d made it several lengths up the hill. In the fading light he could see the Tablet—a simple round stone, pocked and ancient. It looked nothing out of the ordinary, but at its left was a small indentation—an indentation you would assume had been formed from millennia of rain pooling there. That was where the stone needed to go. Placed by the hand of a human. If a human managed to show up.
Wolrijk tore a handful of hair from his neck and held it in front of him. Quickly each hair grew into thin golden daggers that reminded Wittendon of the ice pick that had killed the Mördare. That couldn’t be good. Wolrijk tossed one at Wittendon. It was impossibly fast. It struck his tricep and hurt, but no more than a needle would have. Wittendon pulled it out.
Wolrijk smiled then spat on the others. They sizzled at their tips and Wittendon moved back a step. Four dozen needle-like daggers, now poisoned at their tips with the wolf-man’s saliva. In the distance, Wittendon heard Sadora shout something that sounded like his brother’s name. At that moment, Wolrijk smiled again and pulled his arm back, releasing the daggers. Wittendon couldn’t think what to do—he stepped back once again, tripped over a rock and fell. It wasn’t his most graceful escape. But it worked. Only two daggers hit their mark—one at his side and the other on his forearm.
Both had barely hit him, but stung like death. Wittendon moaned and stood up. “I don’t have time,” he said, but could say no more. As soon as he was on his feet, he wanted to sit back down again. His head felt like a sandbag and his vision was almost entirely marred so that he could see only out of the corners of his eyes. Turning, he saw Wolrijk grab another wad of hair. Taking the Grey blade of the scythe, Wittendon quickly scooped out the needle at his side, and immediately started to feel better. Trying to hold the small end of the scythe without cutting his finger off, he jabbed at the other needle in his forearm. When it was released, his head cleared, though by the time he had his vision back, Wolrijk was ready to spit again.
Wittendon’s own mouth felt like he’d swallowed a layer of the chalky river sediment. He paused at the thought and then pointed to the ground, pulling a chunk of it up. Whitish-gray soil lurched into the air, and Wittendon threw it towards Wolrijk’s mouth just as he opened it. The wolf-man coughed and Wittendon swiped the hair blades with his scythe, cutting them in half.
Cursing, Wolrijk lunged at him with his own scythe—chopping and swinging with a force he hadn’t before. Wittendon stepped back once, then twice. They were nearer to Sarak’s grave now and Wittendon focused on his friend. In his mind he could see Sarak swinging the scythe with a level of skill he was sure Wolrijk didn’t possess. He pictured Sarak’s movements and mimicked them—faster and faster. Just as he had in the first round, Wittendon felt the outside sounds melt away and heard only the clang and click of their swords. He had forgotten the sun, the stone, the tournament. He threw Wolrijk to the ground and the wolf-man’s head hit a large stone, his eyes rolling back. To Wittendon’s left a voice murmured,
Bravo, my princeling,
but you waste precious time
dancing and mincling.
“That’s not even a word,” Wittendon said. “And would you care to step in?”
Wolrijk had begun to moan and would soon be getting up.
The cat just purred.
“I’ll get the stone to the top of the mountain; I’m on my way,” Wittendon said, turning to run.
“But you see,” the feline said. “That would do no good. This feat must be accomplished by the pure one.”
Wittendon just looked at her. It was the calico Savah and she sat there in the midst of an empty battlefield cleaning her paw.
“Pardon, my liege,” she said at last glancing at him. “But you are not he. The stone must be given to the one who is.”
“I don’t suppose,” Wittendon said, watching Wolrijk through the corner of his eye, “that you would like to tell me who this man is?”
“He who is himself called stone, formed by two of steady heart—solid as the earth itself and streaked as such, but not with gold.” She turned, apparently considering the question answered, and pranced away with her tail in the air.
“Feline demons,” Wittendon muttered.
Wolrijk got up, holding his hand to his head and growling—a deep menacing sound that made Wittendon’s innards vibrate. Wittendon looked to the top of the hill. Wolrijk’s gaze followed and then, slowly, he began to laugh.
Rhythmically, Wolrijk hit the bottom of his scythe on the g
round—two taps, followed by seven quick ones, then two more very slow, then one loud boom.
“You’re such a sweet little hero,” Wolrijk said, still laughing. “The sash you threw at me, the mysterious errand. Do you think I haven’t been around long enough to have heard the prophecies? Though it would have been easier if your father hadn’t destroyed so many of the ancient books. Even great minds cannot remember all the pieces. As it is, I’m just starting to put them together.”
Wittendon could hear the marching. It began at the bottom of the hill and moved quickly toward them.
“I am still general of the king’s guard,” Wolrijk said.
Wittendon leveled his scythe at Wolrijk and ran recklessly toward him. Wolrijk stopped the blade with a quick movement and pushed him aside, casting a spell that made Wittendon’s tongue feel like it had twisted into knots. The king’s troops came into view—both the strongest wolves and most powerful Veranderen of the land.
They halted when they saw their mute prince and the newly transformed general. “Do you see that noble altar atop this mountain? That which is found in our histories and mythologies, that which has been here ever and always since the beginning of our time?” Wolrijk asked.
The head captain nodded.
“Destroy it,” Wolrijk commanded, “and quickly.”
The king’s guard was not trained to question. They moved like a wave toward the stone. Yet, as the troops closed in on the Tablet, a tiny animal moved into view in front of the army. At the sight of the creature the entire group halted. The animal swished its tail twice and mewed. The wolves of the group took a step back, some touching their foreheads to the earth in a prayer their race used to ward off evil. The cat stretched her front legs as though preparing for a nap and then, in an impossibly quick movement, she sprang at the head captain’s face, clawing him with all four paws.
“Now,” the little cat Emie hissed. From the bushes and trees shot dozens of cats, some small, some huge—claws extended, teeth exposed. They ran at the guard as graceful and swift as fish, though strong and thick-skinned as elephants. They tore at the flesh of their enemies, breaking the necks of some who crumpled in helpless heaps. As the cats fought, a group of humans and green-cloaked Veranderen with ornate 7’s embroidered across their chests formed a wide circle around the top portion of the hill.
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