The Warden and the Wolf King

by Andrew Peterson

  “Cloven like Oood’s words,” he said happily. He waved at the cloven, who waved back, visibly relieved that the recital was over. “Go get Gnag now?”

  “Yes, Oood,” Kalmar said as he marched straight to the main gate. “Go get Gnag.”

  Janner jogged to keep up, waving apologetically at the cloven watching them pass.

  When Kalmar got to the gate he tugged at it and found it locked. He turned to Cadwick. “Are you coming?”

  “Yes, brother cloven,” he said. “I would prefer to let you go alone, but Queen Arundelle has asked me to lead you into darkness. First I must bid farewell to my family. I may never see them again.”

  Cadwick fixed them both with a heavy look, then turned to the building where Mother Mungry had tended to Oood. When he reached the door, a feminine cloven with sleek black fur and the head of a quill diggle flung it open and embraced him. Two young cloven clambered around his four legs, and one of them shimmied onto his back.

  “Remember, love. You are Cadwick, blacksmith of Pennybridge. You are in my heart, and my heart will wait for your return.” The young ones cooed and gurgled as Elder Cadwick embraced them and kissed their malformed faces. “Farewell, children,” said Cadwick tenderly. “Cling to Kinnan, for she loves you well.”

  Mother Mungry bustled through the door and handed Cadwick a satchel. “You’ll find balms in here, as well as some cracklings. Is your foot well?”

  “My foot?” Cadwick asked.

  “Someone’s foot was broken, was it not?” She poked at one of his hooves.

  “It was the troll,” Cadwick said with a chuckle.

  “Ah!” She looked at Janner. “Is your foot well, then?”

  Janner nodded, flexing first one foot and then the other so she could see. Cadwick placed the young ones on the ground, kissed his wife on the forehead, and joined the boys at the gate.

  Elder Cadwick looked up at a sentry at the top of the wall. “Are the cows gone?”

  “Yes, sir. For now. Be careful out there, sir.”

  Cadwick nodded, then the gate swung open and they stepped into the tangle of trees. The forest was silent and foreboding, and Janner suddenly wanted to stay. What did they think they were doing? Striking out into a forest of monsters, only to sneak into a dungeon of monsters, only to infiltrate the stronghold of a monster so powerful he had basically destroyed the world? It seemed like the height of foolishness, even for a seasoned warrior—more so for two boys who didn’t know what they were doing.

  The walls of Clovenfast were strong and sure. If Gnag had been dumping his failed meldings into the wilds all these years, then it seemed he didn’t care about the Blackwood or consider it a threat. Maybe the best thing would be to bring Leeli and the rest of the family to Clovenfast where they could finally get some peace. But moving and running and hiding was all they had done since they escaped Glipwood—first to Peet’s Castle, then to the Ice Prairies, then to the Green Hollows. No matter where they went, Gnag the Nameless found them, attacked them, and in the process hurt everyone around them. Clovenfast would be no different.

  As they walked, Janner glanced behind him for a last glimpse of Clovenfast, but the gate was shut, already hidden by branches and budding leaves. They may as well have been alone in the middle of the Blackwood. It was no wonder the Hollowsfolk knew nothing about Clovenfast. Maybe Gnag didn’t know about it either, nor would he.

  After walking in silence for an hour, the trees grew fatter and the branches fewer. They were following a faint path, probably made by wild animals or cloven, and Janner could tell by the slant of the late afternoon sun that they were heading south. “How far is it?” he asked.

  “I don’t know.” Elder Cadwick didn’t look at either of the boys as he spoke, but stared straight ahead as if he were walking in his sleep. “It could be hours, or it could be days. I have tried to avoid the southern forest since I remembered my name and hoped I would never have to go back. A foolish hope, it turns out.”

  There was an edge of anger in his voice, and Janner decided not to ask any more questions.

  “You don’t have to do this, you know,” Kalmar said. “We were on our way to Throg before we even knew you existed. We can push on alone. Go back to your family.”

  Cadwick looked over his shoulder in the direction of Clovenfast. He curled his lip and shook his head. “The queen has ordered me. I will obey.”

  “Well I’m the king, and I’m ordering you to go back.” Kalmar stepped in front of Cadwick and stopped in the middle of the path. “We know the entrance to the Deeps is south of here. We know it’s somewhere at the base of the Killridge Mountains. We’re trained Durgans. You may think we can’t care of ourselves, but we made it this far. Go back to your family. Gnag has taken enough from you already.”

  Cadwick’s tail twitched as he considered Kalmar’s words. “If indeed your brother is the boy Queen Arundelle prophesied, then he must be kept safe.”

  Janner started to speak up for himself, but Kalmar interrupted. “We also have a troll on our side. Not many boys can say that.”

  “Oood smash,” the troll said helpfully.

  Elder Cadwick’s front hoof pawed the ground and he adjusted his scabbard. “Very well. I’m going back.”

  “Really?” Kalmar said.

  “I have young ones to care for and a city to protect. I wish you a safe journey.” Cadwick turned and clopped back the way they had come.

  “Wait!” Janner called. “I don’t know if this is such a good idea! We might need you.”

  “Courage, boy. You have a troll on your side, remember?” Cadwick said over his shoulder.

  “Kalmar, stop him! We don’t know our way around this forest.”

  “Neither does he. He just told us so. Besides, he didn’t want to be here, and I don’t blame him.”

  “But—but—” Janner was so flummoxed he couldn’t think of what to say. He looked from Kalmar to Cadwick, who was rapidly disappearing into the forest. Then he was gone. “And now we’re alone,” Janner said. “Why would you send back the one person in our little band who knows the forest best?”

  “Because he scared me,” Kalmar said.

  That wasn’t what Janner expected. “What do you mean?”

  “I know what it feels like to . . . lose myself. It’s awful. And the worst of it is, I don’t know it’s happening until it’s over. Can you imagine what he would be like if he snapped and turned wild? He’s almost as tall as Oood.”

  “Oood not afraid of horse-man,” the troll said.

  “I know you’re not,” Kalmar said. “But if Cadwick got weird on us and you had to stop him, those little cloven back there would lose the only father they’re ever going to have. We only left a few minutes ago and he was already different. Meaner, or something. I was afraid of him.”

  Janner had to admit that he sensed the change, too. But now that Cadwick was gone, the forest seemed like the more frightening enemy. They had a long way to go. And the sun was beginning to set.

  “Fine. Let’s go,” Janner said.

  Kalmar sniffed the air and pointed. “This way, I think. Try to be as quiet as you can.” He marched on.

  “Why?” Janner asked.

  “Because I can smell five toothy cows nearby. A bunch of cloven, too.”

  53

  The Angry Ones Attack

  They spent the night in the boughs of a tree so tall that Janner never saw the top. Though the new leaves were tiny, the tangled branches overhead were dense enough to hide the stars. All through the night, creatures, whether cloven or ordinary wild animals, snuffled and grunted and traipsed about on the ground below them, and more than once something sizeable skittered up or down the trunk opposite from where they slept.

  When morning came, Kalmar gave the air a careful sniffing and warned them to wait as a flock of huppitousgleezes grazed. Once they were gone, he sniffed again and indicated that it was safe to climb down.

  Neither Janner, Kalmar, nor Oood had any idea where they were goi
ng, but it was obvious that they were nearing the foothills of the Killridge Mountains. Every valley was deeper than the last, and they were confronted with increasingly steeper gullies mounted by boulders the size of buildings. Janner’s mind raced with entries from Pembrick’sCreaturepedia, attentive to any signs that might indicate a gargan rockroach den or something worse.

  They ate berries collected along the way, and Kal and Janner used their bows to bag enough flabbits, thwaps, and snapping diggles to keep their bellies full. Kalmar’s heightened sense of smell served them well; he was able to guide them to the east or west to circumvent gobbles of cows and other unidentifiable beasts in their path.

  Even Oood was quiet when he needed to be—but his poetry recitals posed a greater threat. The dam had broken with “Rain and Fire,” and Oood had flooded them with troll poems ever since. The boys feigned appreciation, but upon hearing the first syllables of troll-rhyme, birds and wild animals chattered and brayed and cawed with irritation until the poem mercifully ended. Janner even began to suspect that Kalmar smelled danger only as a pretense to silence Oood’s poetry.

  On the afternoon of their second day in the Blackwood, they encountered the first of the untame cloven—untame and angry. It leapt upon them from a boulder as they climbed out of a ravine. Its legs were long and scaly, but its body and head were one circular blob with hands sticking out of the sides like ears. Its lippy mouth opened wide to bite them, but before its jaws snapped shut, Oood dealt it a blow that sent it tumbling in a spray of leaves. It kicked in the air while the fingers of its head-hands wriggled about. It seemed to be throwing a fit.

  As the brothers recovered, the creature calmed down, found its feet, and glared at them from several feet away. “Meanies,” it said indignantly, then it loped away.

  “It’s good to have a troll,” Kalmar said with a smile at Oood.

  “If he’s your friend,” Janner added.

  “Friend,” Oood said, and he thumped his chest.

  “You didn’t smell that thing coming?” Janner asked as they continued their hike.

  “I smelled it,” said Kalmar. “But I didn’t think it would attack.”

  “Why not?”

  Kal hesitated. “Because I’ve been smelling them all morning, and none have attacked yet. Cloven are everywhere. Maybe they’re holding back because of Oood.”

  Janner felt chills as he peered through the forest—chills, because he couldn’t see any cloven at all. That they were surrounded, being watched, almost made him wish the cloven would attack and be done with it. “How many are there?”

  Kalmar sniffed the air and flattened his ears. “About thirty, I think. Maybe more. The farther we walk, the more of them I smell.”

  “Getting close?” Oood asked as he broke a large dead limb from a tree and swung it like a club.

  “Maybe,” Janner said. “There could be more cloven near the mouth of the Deeps, and if what Cadwick said is true, they’ll be wilder.”

  Kalmar stopped in his tracks. “Janner, draw your sword. There’s one just ahead. Do you see it?”

  Janner slipped his sword from the scabbard and scanned the trees ahead. He saw nothing but forest and more forest. “Where?” he whispered.

  “To your left.”

  From behind an old log, two stems rose, each of which was topped with a greenish orb that blinked. Eyeballs. Padded frog-like fingers draped themselves over the log, so that they looked like vines or caterpillars resting on the rotten wood. Janner had the troubling realization that the thing was about to jump.

  Then something crashed in the underbrush behind him. Janner spun. Two hogpig cloven charged toward him, squealing. Their tusks were black with mold and as long as daggers. Janner swung his sword. His first blow missed, but his second made contact with one of the cloven’s front legs—a front leg that ended not in a hogpig hoof but a human foot. Oood roared as he leaped forward and swung his fists, first at Janner’s hogpig then at the other, which was attacking Kalmar.

  The eyeball thing behind the log loosed a rumblinggribbit and leaped over the fallen tree. Its body was like a digtoad’s but with spikes sprouting from a coat of luxurious white fur. Janner didn’t want to kill it. He knew it had once been human. He knew it probably suffered from the same forgetful madness that haunted Kalmar.

  Before it landed on him he hunkered down and raised his sword. The hairy digtoad slammed into him and rolled away with a groan. Janner climbed to his feet and realized his sword was no longer in his hand. It was embedded to the hilt in the digtoad’s belly.

  The cloven’s eye-stalks twitched on the ground as it gasped for air. The hogpigs were several feet away, one of them crackling to dust and the other wounded and struggling to breathe. Oood slowly turned in a circle, braced for any further attack, but none came.

  Kalmar sheathed his sword and knelt at the digtoad’s side. “Janner, it’s trying to speak.”

  Janner averted his eyes from the wound he had dealt and knelt beside Kalmar. He wanted to speak but the lump in his throat silenced him.

  “Are . . . you . . . a child? Aboy?” the thing said between breaths. Its voice was gribbity, but there was enough human in it that Janner’s sadness grew. The digtoad took a deep breath and said, “I remember. I was a boy once.”

  “I know you were,” Kalmar said. He placed his hand on the thing’s white fur. “I was, too.”

  “I’m sorry,” Janner said. He wanted to say more, but had no words.

  “Are you the one . . . who will seed the new garden?”

  “I don’t know,” Janner said.

  “I remember now,” said the digtoad. “Anniera. My home.” With something like a smile, it stilled and turned to dust.

  Janner sniffed and shook the dust from his sword before sheathing it. He said, “I’m sorry,” again, uselessly.

  The other hogpig’s breath rattled, then it died. Other shapes peeked from behind trees and boulders, eyes and lumpy faces, all watching him with what he felt was anger and accusation.

  “I don’t want to hurt you!” Janner said. It was a plea, not a threat.

  Several cloven whispered and muttered.

  “It’s a boy.”

  “What’s a boy?”

  “A young one. Like we used to be.”

  “I remember!”

  “I want to be a boy again.”

  “We should kill it. My thoughts hurt.”

  “We can’t. He might be the seed.”

  Kalmar spoke to the watching eyes in the forest. “My name is Kalmar Wingfeather. King of the Shining Isle of Anniera.”

  “Anniera?” they whispered.

  “I remember! It hurts! STOP IT.”

  “The Shining Isle. My mother’s name was Norra.”

  “STOP IT.”

  The voices grew angry, hissing and snapping at the air, monsters visible only as shadows and shapes behind the trees. Others, though, stepped forward, cautious and blinking at Janner as if he were an apparition or a king. One of the angry ones bit the leg of a small, goatish cloven as it approached.

  “Let it go!” Janner cried.

  He ran to the squealing goat thing and pulled it from the jaws of its attacker, which was the most hideous cloven he had seen. It was lumpy and legless, like a giant slug, but its manlike face was stretched wide across a black, slimy mass, and every time its mouth flopped open Janner saw crooked yellow teeth.

  “Get back! All of you, get back!”

  The sluggish thing slimed its way behind a boulder as several others shrank back to their hiding places.

  The little goat thing in Janner’s arms stilled once it was free and turned its face to his. Its eyes were bright blue, like Kal’s, and it was impossible to deny the soul that lived inside it. “I think my name was . . . Elin. That sounds right. Elin. But I’m afraid to remember more than that.”

  Elin the goat cloven trembled, then brayed and wriggled out of Janner’s arms. It—she—landed on the ground and ran in mad circles as the slug-thing laughed nearby. T
he other cloven joined in with crazed laughter and animal calls—it was like feeding time in a barn, but with human sounds mixed in with the racket.

  “Listen!” Kalmar called. “Quiet!” The cloven calmed down and whispered among themselves again as Kalmar stepped forward. “My father was Esben, King of Anniera. Do you remember Anniera?”

  A few answered, “Yes.” But some howled and scampered away.

  “Whatever you’ve done, I need your help. We need to get to the Deeps of Throg. Do you understand? We need to find Gnag.”

  At that name, the forest grew deathly still.

  “Will you take us to the Deeps?”

  After a pause some of the cloven lurched into view and beckoned for them to follow. Kalmar and Janner looked at one another with apprehension then joined the odd procession through the Blackwood.

  54

  The Pain of Remembrance

  Hours passed. Janner, Kalmar, and Oood trudged up and up, deeper into the forest and higher into the foothills. Sometime before the sun set, the trees opened into a little clearing.

  “Look,” Janner said, pointing at the snowy teeth of the Killridge Mountains towering overhead. They were terrifying—razor sharp and impossibly tall.

  “So that’s where we’re going,” Kalmar said.

  “Throg,” Oood rumbled.

  The cloven moved on without a glance at the mountains. As they walked, more and more of the wild creatures joined them until the forest teemed with twisted limbs and lumpy faces. At first they were noisy, snarling and threatening so that the boys drew their swords and pressed against Oood. But when they saw Janner, the cloven either ran away or fell in line, seeming to understand somehow where they were going. Those who stayed limped and lurched through the trees, whispering to one another. All Janner heard were the words, “Boy” and “Anniera.” Many of the cloven wept as they walked.