Esben twisted his body as he ran and cradled Nia as more arrows thudded into his broad back. He roared with pain as he lost his footing and slammed onto his side. Nia’s head crashed into the bone of his shoulder and her vision blurred. She felt Esben roll forward and launch himself through the wall of archers and onto the docks.
“Are you all right?” Esben panted. “I can hide you here until it’s safe.”
Nia tightened her grip and felt his strength around her. She shook her head. She was rattled, but she refused to spend another heartbeat apart from him.
“Good,” he said, and he vaulted to the nearest ship and crashed to the empty deck.
Nia’s heart sank when she saw the fleet of Fang ships, roped together and dark in the harbor. “They could be anywhere.”
“I can smell them,” Esben said as he ran. He leapt to the next ship and lifted his head to sniff the air. “They’re close.”
From behind a nearby barrel, a Grey Fang growled and lunged at Esben. Without turning, Esben flung the Fang into the water and jumped to the next ship, then the next, all the way to the last ship in the line. Esben finally stopped and hunkered over, struggling for breath. Nia heard a rattle in his throat.
He sniffed the air again, peered into the shadows, and said, “Squoon.”
58
Escape
Nia saw no one. The ship creaked as it rocked in the tide and bumped into the vessel beside it. They weren’t far from the waterfront, where the Hollowsfolk and the Grey Fangs fought, but the battle seemed strangely distant. Esben placed Nia on the deck and motioned for her to stand aside.
“Squoon, I know you’re here,” Esben rasped. He sniffed the air and limped forward. Some bone-deep pain wracked him and he shuddered, then slumped to the ground, trying to prop himself up on his elbows.
Nia rushed to his side, then heard something thump against the hull, followed by a faint splash. She ran to the ship’s rail and saw a small boat in the water. The sail hadn’t yet been set, but three Grey Fangs tugged the oars. She saw three shapes, bound and motionless in the bottom of the little boat, and she knew they were her children. Bonifer Squoon sat in the prow with his top hat and cane and waved at Nia as the boat floated away.
He removed his hat and bowed his head. “Ah, Nia! Farewell! I’ll send Gnag your greetings.”
“No!” she screamed and heard her children’s muffled voices.
Bonifer hit them with his cane and said, “Quiet!”
Behind her, Esben’s elbows slipped. He lay flat on the deck, struggling to raise his head. He tried to roar, but in his weakness it was only a moan.
Nia turned back to the water, torn between her dying husband and her stolen children. All that lay between Bonifer and the Watercraw was open water. Nia had to stop them but couldn’t think how. Even if she could swim that far and fast in the frigid water, the Fangs would kill her as soon as she approached the boat.
Nia looked around for someone to help, but all she saw were Fang ships stretching back to the dock, and beyond it, the clash of battle. She looked for another boat, or a bow and arrow, or something—anything. But there was nothing she could do.
She wanted to scream. There were so many blasted ships and no way to stop one little boat from escaping. Though she was terrified of the sea dragons, she prayed that they would rise from the water. She prayed for another of Artham’s sudden, dashing arrivals, but she knew he was on the other side of the Dark Sea.
Nia’s despair hardened into desperation. She took Esben’s weary head in her hands and looked into his eyes. She saw by the moonlight that they were glazed over, but some life glimmered there yet.
“There’s no one else, my love. I need you to get up. Our children will be lost if you don’t. Can you hear me?”
Esben grunted.
“Get up!” Nia cried. She scooted underneath one of his arms, tiny beneath his girth, and strained with all her might. She gritted her teeth and pushed and said, “Get up!”
As her strength began to fail her, she felt his arms and legs move a little. The muscles in her own legs and back screamed for rest, but she willed them to push on and on as Esben fought to stand.
Esben’s feet slipped in the pool of blood that had gathered beneath him, but he managed to straighten. He staggered back from the rail, looking down at Nia with a tired smile. Even in the moonlight Nia saw blood dripping from his nose and lower lip.
“Our children need you, my king,” she said.
Esben drew a long, rasping breath. He heaved himself forward, tottered for a moment, and then, with a furious roar, leapt over the rail.
Nia watched him soar across the water, farther than she would have thought possible. She saw Bonifer Squoon’s smile vanish and imagined what it would be like to see that hulking shape overhead, blacking out the stars, edged with moonlight. Just before Esben hit the water between the ship and the skiff, Nia heard Bonifer squeal with terror.
The shock of cold water seemed to awake a new well of strength in Esben. He swam after the skiff with quick, graceful strokes, nosing through the water like a fish. The arrows spiked in his back bobbed back and forth as he cut nearer, and the Grey Fangs abandoned the oars and drew their swords. When he reached the boat, they hacked, and their blades struck his arms, but it did little to stop him. With a sad, strange calm, Esben took hold of the Fangs one at a time, dragged them out of the boat, and held them underwater.
Then there was only Bonifer Squoon. Nia saw him clutching the rails, trembling in his seat, staring with white-faced terror at the beast heaving itself into the boat.
“Bonifer,” Esben said.
“I—I know your voice,” Bonifer stammered.
“And you knew my father’s voice, and his father’s.”
“Esben!” Bonifer whimpered. “But how?”
He didn’t wait for an answer. Squoon took a frantic look around, then threw himself into the water and swam away, leaving behind his cane and the satchel containing the First Book.
Nia was sure Esben would pursue him, but when she looked at the skiff, the bear was huddled over the children, loosening their bonds. When she looked back, Bonifer had vanished. His top hat bobbed in the water.
Whether he had drowned or died of shock from the frigid water and the sight of Esben Wingfeather after all these years, it didn’t matter. The monster in the Hollows was gone.
59
Beneath the Moonbright Heavens
Janner felt the boat rock, pitching so far to the side that he feared it would flip. Then with a splash and a gush of water the boat righted itself, and he felt his father’s fingers pulling at the ropes around his wrists. When his hands were free, Janner yanked the sack from his head and pulled his gag away. The moon was directly overhead, so bright that it took a moment for his eyes to adjust.
Janner gasped when he saw his father, covered in fur but without the twisted limbs and the slick grey lumps of flesh. He knew it was the cloven by the arrows jutting from his back, but everything else had changed. Though Esben was wet and wounded and his face sagged with weariness, he seemed to glow with a regal strength. His arms and shoulders were sleek and muscular—and his voice! Though it trembled with pain, his voice was warm and resonant, as if he had spoken in an echoing royal hall. Gone was the cloven’s gurgling mewl, replaced by the voice of a king.
Janner untied Kalmar’s bonds while Esben loosed Leeli. “Papa!” she cried, and as soon as her arms were free she wrapped them around Esben’s neck. When the three children were untied, Esben slumped back against the hull, snapping arrow shafts like twigs, his face and torso aglow with moonlight.
“Children! Are you all right?” Nia called. She peered down from the deck of the Fang ship. The skiff had drifted back and bumped against its hull, where a rope ladder hung.
“Yes, ma’am. But—” Janner couldn’t bring himself to say it. He saw the dark stain spreading from his father’s wounds. He heard the weakness of his breathing.
Kalmar crawled over to him and sa
id, “Papa?”
Nia climbed down and dropped into the skiff. Leeli, Janner, and Kal gathered around their father and whispered their love to him as they leaned on him and stroked his fur. Nia sidled under one of his arms and rested her head against his mountainous chest. Janner wanted to speak, but he couldn’t. His throat was tight and refused to make a sound as tears sprang from his eyes. He could hear Esben’s heartbeat and the rattle of his breathing.
I found you, the voice said in his mind. Janner wiped his cheeks and looked up to find Esben’s eyes on him.My son. Then Esben’s lips moved. He licked the roof of his mouth, swallowed once, and spoke in a voice as frail as it was rich.
“Kalmar, come closer so I can see you.”
Kalmar wiped his eyes and sat up. Janner watched with wonder as the two of them looked at each other: the great bear and the little wolf; the High King and his heir; the lost father and his outcast son.
“Have they done to you what they did to me?” Esben asked.
Kalmar nodded. “I’m sorry, Papa. I wasn’t strong enough.”
“None of us are, lad. Me least of all.” Esben smiled and took a rattling breath. “But it’s weakness that the Maker turns to strength. Your fur is why you alone loved a dying cloven. You alone in all the world knew my need and ministered to my wounds.” Esben pulled Kalmar closer and kissed him on the head. “And in my weakness, I alone knowyour need. Hear me, son. I loved you when you were born. I loved you when I wept in the Deeps of Throg. I loved you even as you sang the song that broke you. And I love you now in the glory of your humility. You’re more fit to be the king than I ever was. Do you understand?”
Kalmar shook his head.
Esben smiled and shuddered with pain. “A good answer, my boy. Then do you believe that I love you?”
“Yes, sir. I believe you.” Kalmar buried his face in his father’s fur.
“Remember that in the days to come. Nia, Janner, Leeli—help him to remember.” Esben coughed and pointed at the mast. “Janner, raise the sail, would you? It’s that rope there. Go on.” Janner blinked away his tears and scooted over to unwrap the line from the cleat. “Kalmar. Row us out a little way. Get us into the wind.”
Esben guided the boys while Leeli and Nia leaned against him and wept. He told Janner when to pull the rope tight and draw in the boom, and he helped Kalmar steer the rudder. “Point us south,” Esben whispered to Kalmar. “To Anniera.”
A few minutes later they were well away from the Fang ships and the pier, cutting through the waves toward the center of the harbor and the Watercraw.
At Esben’s request, Leeli played her whistleharp. Nia held her husband while the children leaned against him and looked up at the moonbright heavens arrayed above the full, white sail.
The Maker’s magic swirled around them as they went: gleaming strands that connected the hearts of the children to their father, and their father to his grieving brother across the Dark Sea of Darkness. The sorrow in Leeli’s heart opened a door to a greater joy than any of them had known before. She felt her father’s affection in her secret heart and through her song communed with him there. Kalmar’s mind swirled with glimmering images and sounds: Esben’s deep laughter in a firelit room; Esben lifting a young Kalmar over his head and looking up at him with delight and pride and wonder. Janner heard his father’s love sung over him in words tender and ancient and strong: “I am well pleased with you, my son.”
The bear’s heart beat slower and slower, and Nia and the children knew he was leaving them. Esben looked at Nia. “I love you, dear Nia. Thank Artham for me. For the song.” He put one of his big, trembling hands on her cheek.
Then he turned to the children. “In death, my love, I loved you best,” he said, and under a quiet moon in a steady south wind, wrapped in the arms of his wife and children, Esben Wingfeather, High King of Anniera, died.
In the days that followed, people watching from the waterfront that night claimed they heard a sweet music and saw a swirl of shimmering mist that surrounded the little boat. They said it glowed like a spirit and a tendril of it twisted up and up, clear to the moon. They claimed it was the Maker’s own breath, sighed out over the Wingfeathers from beyond the veil.
60
The Keeper and the High King
Without a word between them, Janner and Kalmar turned the boat around and sailed back to the port. When they arrived at the quay, a multitude of battle-weary and wounded Hollowsfolk welcomed them home in respectful silence. They beheld the Bear King’s body—not crumbling to dust, but majestic and peaceful in the cradle of the boat—and they murmured prayers of grief and contrition.
The battle was won, and not a Grey Fang had survived. Fang armor and weapons were strewn in the street and on the pier, and behind the throng, houses blazed.
Rudric stood at the front of the crowd. Nibbick Bunge was nowhere to be seen, but Janner saw Danniby, Olumphia, Guildmaster Clout, Joe Bill, Morsha, and other friendly faces, along with the O’Sallys and their brave dogs. All were dirty with soot, mud, sweat, and blood. Their clothes were torn, and their shoulders slumped with fatigue. Podo and Oskar pushed through the crowd and stopped short when they saw Esben’s body.
Podo helped Nia out of the boat, and she stood on the pier looking over the multitude. Everywhere her gaze fell, the Hollowsfolk looked away. Rudric stepped forward and lashed the skiff to the dock. When he passed Nia, his face contorted with grief, but he swallowed it quickly and turned to the crowd.
“Some of you might say it was the Wingfeathers who brought this battle to our shores. Some may say it was Bonifer Squoon and his treachery. Some may say it was Gnag the Nameless. But I say it was none of these things!” Rudric glared at them, then pounded his chest. “We bear the guilt, Hollowsfolk. It is we who have hidden behind the Watercraw these nine years while Gnag the Nameless has ravaged the breadth of Aerwiar. It is we who let fear speak louder than courage.” Rudric stepped onto a crate so he could see the whole crowd. His face was fierce in the firelight. “We have abandoned the Shining Isle. We have betrayed its king and forsaken a long alliance. Our cowardice in this matter is made the more shameful by our great strength. No more.” Rudric jumped down from the crate and knelt before the skiff, so low that his beard touched the dock.
Nia didn’t have to say a word to Kalmar. He climbed out of the boat and stood straight and sure before Rudric, cape flapping in the harbor breeze. The Keeper of the Hollows removed the bloodied warhammer from his belt and laid it at Kalmar’s feet.
“High King Kalmar,” Rudric said, loud enough that all could hear him, “as Keeper of the Hollows, I offer you our allegiance. And we ask your pardon.”
Janner expected Kalmar to look to Nia or Podo for guidance. He expected him to fumble for words and stammer. But instead Kalmar put a hand on Rudric’s shoulder and said in a loud voice, “Rise, Keeper.” Rudric stood and looked down at the little wolf in the Durgan cape. “Your allegiance is accepted. And I gladly give what little pardon I owe.”
Rudric nodded, then turned to his people and mounted the crate again.
“Countrymen! If there is evil in the world, it will find its way into the Green Hollows, no matter how vigilant our watch. If there is evil in the world, should not the warriors of the Green Hollows meet it?”
As Janner listened, Rudric changed the Green Hollows forever.
The histories of the Third Epoch tell how at the harbor of Ban Rona that night, Rudric ban Yorna and the Wolf King of Anniera mustered the Hollowsfolk to war. Word spread throughout the land that the Durgans were readying for battle. Dogs carried messages to the Outer Vales and the cities of the hills and all the villages between, calling for arms and anyone brave enough to wield them against Gnag the Nameless and the Fangs of Dang.
As winter fell, weapons were forged, timber was harvested, ships were built, and food was stored. Among the fields and hills of the Green Hollows, an army prepared for battle. They gathered their strength, and they waited. In the fullness of time, when the winter fad
ed and the spring brought the thaw, the free people of Aerwiar would go to war.
And the Jewels of Anniera would lead them.
A Note From the Author
Dear Reader,
Roald Dahl said, “A person is a fool to become a writer.” I think he’s right on. It takes a healthy dose of foolishness to embark on this kind of journey, not just because it’s a lot of work, but because the writing of a book is an imposition on everyone the writer knows. They have to put up with a faraway look in his eyes when he’s at the dinner table. They have to put up with his unbearable blabbing about this troublesome plot point or that tricky timeline conundrum. They have to put up with his terse emails (because by the end of the day it’s a great effort to type another word), his headaches (either from too much or too little coffee), and his inability to converse like a normal person (because his brain is jellified).
So it’s time to offer up a profusion of thanks to the many people who aided me in my goal of putting poor Janner, Kalmar, and Leeli through even more trouble and getting them out of it again.
I would like to thank the good people at the Starbucks on Nolensville Pike, who filled my Rabbit Room mug each morning (and refilled it, and refilled it) and let me camp out in the best seat for hours at a time. Thanks to Tommy and Becky Scott, for the use of their little cabin on the hill above the Warren, where I work when I’ve bled Starbucks dry. Thanks to the barred owls who kept me company when I wrote from the bench at the bend in the trail. Without the encouragement of the Square Peg Alliance and the Rabbit Room community I’m certain these books would never have been written.
I owe many thanks to my brother, A.S. Peterson, who edited the first draft of this book, typeset it, and made it better by far than it would have been without him. Thanks to Jennifer Trafton for the proofread, and to my editor Jessica Barnes, whose delightfully nerdy enthusiasm and attention to detail makes her the perfect editor for books with dragons, warhammers, and names like Nibbick Bunge. Thanks to Brannon McAllister, whose design work never fails to impress me, and to Justin Gerard, whose drawings never fail to make me intensely jealous. I’m grateful to work with such talented people. Going back to the first book: I owe my thanks to Jeanette Thomason and Don Pape, who, about five years ago, gave a singer/songwriter a shot at writing a full-on novel.
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