The Warden and the Wolf King

by Andrew Peterson

  “Frankle’s cute!” she blurted.

  “Anyway,” Thorn said, “I’ll see you later.” He strolled away, seemingly unaware that Leeli was gasping for air and most of the soldiers were grinning after him.

  “Come on, Frankle,” she said with a shake of her head, and she mounted a stout table that had been put there just for her.

  She looked out over Ban Rona, at the broken windows, the smoldering buildings, the ramparts of debris and rubble. Torches were being lit all over the city. The cloud of Bat Fangs was but minutes way. A howl rang out across the rooftops from somewhere to the south, and it was answered by another in the north. Hollowsfolk shouted defiance. The city was rousing itself for another long night, another battle, and Leeli prayed to the Maker for the strength to play her song as long as she drew breath. She longed to see the dawn, to see these brave people push back at the wickedness again, and, somewhere deep in her heart, she longed for the day when she would be old enough to marry. But first, she thought, she would have to teach Thorn some grammar.

  “Here they come,” said the woman with the braid.

  A Bat Fang shrieked overhead and a snarling Grey Fang dropped to the roof. Leeli’s guards swung sword, hammer, and axe, and a bitter cloud of dust swirled in the air. Leeli strummed her whistleharp, then played a melody she had just learned from Oskar’s new book. “Fetch the Pony, Tony.” It was a rousing reel of a tune, and she immediately pictured herself adorned in white, dancing at her wedding. It sent such a thrill through her that, before she knew it, the magic shimmered the air and she saw Janner and Kalmar creeping through a damp darkness. The connection only lasted a moment, but it was enough to tell them she loved them before a swoop of bats cut her concentration and she forgot about weddings altogether.

  There were songs to play and battles to fight.

  “Come home,” she whispered between verses. “Please come home, brothers.”

  58

  Leeli’s War

  The battle raged all through the night. Leeli’s lips bled, and she endured the smelly balm. The Fangs knew that she was their only true obstacle, but it was easy to see that they weren’t allowed to kill her, either. Whenever a cluster of Bat Fangs swooped down to seize her, she played all the louder and her guards drew closer. And because her whistleharp’s song carried far, its effects were felt throughout the city.

  Several times each night, though, word came by way of her dogs that a fresh attack was centered on another part of the city and it was necessary that she be bustled off in secret. The guards would remain, and one of the smaller women, garbed in a similar dress and coat to Leeli’s, stood on the table while Leeli slipped away. She would hurry under escort to a wagon, which would then speed through the streets to where she was needed. Leeli played, reinforcements pounded the enemy, and in this way the line was held. Then as quick as a clap she was escorted back to the Great Library to resume her station in the city center.

  It confounded the Fangs every time, confirming the Hollish suspicion that though Gnag’s army was strong in number, it was disorganized and easily duped. “But,” Podo had reminded Leeli, “a swarm of bees can fell a toothy cow.” And enough Fangs, fools though they might be, could fell Ban Rona.

  For long hours Leeli played, improvising when she had exhausted every song she knew. One of her guards held open the new book so she could follow the notes of new songs. They did some good, but it was only when she had internalized a piece of music that she saw the biggest effect on the Fangs.

  Nia remained at the periphery of the rooftop, watching her daughter and praying for her strength. She seemed to know exactly what Leeli needed and when, arriving with a canteen of cool water just when Leeli realized she was thirsty, or applying more of the balm, or ducking through the guards to bring motherly words of encouragement.

  Leeli was hardly able to stand by the time the first hint of dawn backlit the hills in the east. The Fangs retreated at first light, and as the weary soldiers changed shifts, Podo appeared and lifted Leeli onto his back. Nia took her crutch and they walked to her room again.

  How long could this go on? Would they fight every night until the Fangs were all dead? No. The new fleet of ships was coming, and Leeli knew that with it would come the end of the war.

  Leeli lay on the bed with her eyes closed. Nia sat beside her, cleaning her face with a cool, damp cloth. She hummed a Hollish lullaby. It was sweet of Nia to sing, but Leeli needed no encouragement to find her way to sleep. Just as she closed her eyes, Leeli felt the pleasant thump of Frankle hopping into her bed and curling up at her feet.

  “How is she?” Rudric said from the doorway.

  “She’s wearing thin,” Nia said. “And you?”

  “The same.” There was a long pause. “They’ve taken the Guildling Hall. A sneak of ridgerunners crept through the defenses and distracted our fighters long enough to allow the Fangs inside. We lost—too many.” Rudric sighed. “That’s not all. The snow is nearly gone. The days are warm. Someone spotted a company of Green Fangs near the Watercraw just as the sun broke.”

  “Green Fangs.”

  “Yes.”

  “Which means legions are to follow.” Nia’s voice trembled. “This will end soon, won’t it?”

  “One way or another.”

  Somehow Leeli knew that Nia and Rudric were looking at one another. She risked opening her eyes a squint and saw them staring hard into one another’s eyes. Rudric looked like he was going to speak, and Nia looked like she wanted him to. But a cloud of terrible sadness passed between them and he turned away. Nia stared long at the empty doorway, listening to Rudric’s fading footsteps.

  Leeli closed her eyes again and held still as Nia neatened the room, drew the makeshift curtains, and shut the door quietly behind her.

  Weary as she was, Leeli sat up. She petted Frankle, who watched her happily as she gingerly brought the whistleharp to her lips. Her heart was full, and she needed a place to empty it. She closed her eyes again and gave voice to all her feelings—all her dashed hopes that Nia would find joy with Rudric, all her gladness that she had met her father that night on the boat, all the grief over his death, all her longing for her brothers’ return, all her ache for the war to end.

  She knew there was a dark presence in her music’s magic, but today she didn’t care. She needed to play; she needed the comfort of her brothers’ love. And in the silence of her room she saw them again in the darkness, only now they were separated. Janner was afraid with a new kind of fear, and Kal was close to despair. Some blackness was in him that she didn’t understand.

  Kal.

  She knew that he heard her. Janner heard her too.

  We’re still here. Still fighting. You have to keep fighting, too.

  They didn’t answer with words, only with a swirl of emotions and memories. The Jewels’ hearts entwined invisibly for a little while, then instead of holding to the connection she bade them safe journey in her heart’s language and ended her song.

  A swell of weariness engulfed her and she collapsed to her pillow. But before sleep could take her, a voice rattled her mind and shook her so that she nearly tumbled from the bed.

  I SEE YOU. I’LL GET YOU, GIRL.

  “Mama!” Leeli screamed, and Nia burst into the room.

  “What is it?”

  “It was . . . it washim.”

  “Who?” Nia hugged Leeli tightly. “Was it a dream?”

  “No,” Leeli cried. “It was Gnag. He knows the boys are coming. He said he could see us!”

  “Shh,” Nia whispered. “You just had a bad dream.”

  Nia’s voice was so soothing after Gnag’s awful words that Leeli half believed her. “No, I saw the boys. They’re in trouble. They’re in the Deeps. After I stopped playing I heard his voice and he knows! We have to do something!”

  Leeli sobbed into Nia’s shoulder, so shaken she lost all her words. She wanted to get up, to rouse the Hollowsfolk, but her eyes were heavy with tears and weariness.

  F
rankle whined and nuzzled Leeli’s leg. She was only nine years old, and her poor little body was out of strength. Nia’s embrace, the warm bed, and her tears overcame the urgency of her fear and the world blurred. Sleep took her against her will as surely as Gnag had promised to take her, and she could do nothing to stop it.

  59

  Swallowed by the Deeps

  When the boys woke in the Blackwood, Oood was gone—literally.

  Janner and Kal sat up in the forest, shivering and alone. There was no sign of the troll’s body. Blood stained the leaves where he had lain the night before, and bright green shoots sprouted where his head had been. The boys called for him, hoping against hope that he was alive and merely off gathering food or firewood.

  “Do you smell him?” Janner asked.

  “Nothing fresh. Everything here smells old—but notdead-old. Ancient old. And alive. It’s hard to explain. I smell Oood’s blood, and his usual stink, but only here where he was lying. This gives me the weirds.”

  “What do we do?” Janner asked, scanning the forest.

  “We keep going.”

  “Is there any water left?” Janner was painfully thirsty, and hungry too.

  “I gave it all to Oood last night.” Kalmar shook the empty canteen. “I can go back to the spring, but it’s a few miles that way.” He pointed north. “In the wrong direction.”

  The boys turned south and looked in silence at the slope below them. They no longer needed a guide to show them the way to the Deeps of Throg. The deepest part of the valley below them seemed to breathe, as if their way led into a dragon’s lair in one of the stories Janner loved.

  Kalmar said, “I smell more water down there.”

  With a last look at the ground where Oood had died, Janner and Kalmar climbed down, wishing with every step that they could turn around and run home. The trees thickened, the land steepened, and soon they were hopping from stone to stone, grabbing old roots and low-hanging limbs for balance.

  After a while, Janner heard dripping water. They followed the sound to a trickle running into the ravine between two boulders like blood from a wound. They refilled their canteens, guzzled it down, then refilled them again.

  After hours of climbing down and down, deeper than Janner thought possible, they reached the bottom. They stood in a dank, earthen corridor, with walls of root and stone and a floor of soggy leaves. Weak sunlight sifted through the trees overhead.

  Again, they didn’t have to wonder which way to go. They were drawn to the Deeps like the trickle of water between the stones. They stepped over the rotten remains of trees, swatting at biter bugs as they slogged on for hours without speaking. Janner thought of Esben and Artham all those years ago, dragging themselves along this same path in the opposite direction, from darkness to light.

  Then he saw a mildewed ribcage half covered in old leaves. Kalmar pointed further ahead at the skeleton of a many-legged beast, intact except for the missing skull. The farther they walked, the more bones they saw, until it became impossible to keep from stepping on them. Janner was glad they had filled their canteens at the last trickle, because now the only water was stagnant, gathered in little pools littered with tiny white bones and green sludge.

  The boys rounded a tumble of fallen boulders and beheld the mouth of the cave. Above it rose a flat slab of rock, like an enormous gravestone, so tall that it disappeared into the trees overhead. Below it was the yawning black mouth of a cavern, swallowing the water that dribbled into it. At first they saw no way down, but Kalmar detected a path that led to and fro over rock and shale and slick root, into the Deeps of Throg.

  “Let’s eat,” Kal said. He sat with his legs dangling over the edge and opened his pack. Janner was thankful, this once, for Kal’s appetite, because it delayed them at least a few minutes. He sat beside his brother and ate a few crumbles of bread and a strip of dried diggle.

  “I guess we have to go down in order to go up,” Janner said as he capped his canteen and shouldered his pack. “I don’t know about you, but this whole thing strikes me as a bad idea.”

  “The worst,” Kalmar said with a smile. “You ready?”

  They prayed to the Maker for aid, then hopped to the first ledge. Janner pretended his legs weren’t trembling. He willed himself to go on, reminding himself that he was the Throne Warden, that he was older than Kal, that there was nothing to do but go on. Kalmar moved in quick hops along the path, stopping every few minutes to wait for Janner. The light faded, but Janner’s eyes adjusted enough that when they reached the bottom he could still see a little, though there was little to see other than fallen rocks, bones, and spider webs.

  He looked up the way they had come and was amazed by how welcoming the Blackwood now seemed. It was green with new leaves, and the sunlight that had seemed so dim before now looked as bright as a summer day. When he pulled his gaze away, back to the pathway descending into the Deeps, he saw only blackness.

  “We need a torch,” he said, embarrassed by how feeble he sounded. “I have some strips, and we can use one of these bones.”

  “I can see fine,” Kal said.

  “Well, good for you. I can’t see anything.”

  “How much oil do you have?”

  “Just the one flask.”

  “Keep the bone. We should save the oil for when it’s too dark for me to see.”

  “I don’t like this.”

  “I’ll help you.”

  Janner felt Kal’s hand on his shoulder. He swallowed his pride and took his brother’s furry paw. “Just don’t walk me off of a cliff, all right?”

  Hand in hand, the Wingfeather boys made their way deeper into the cave, the light behind them fading to nothing the way Oood’s breath had faded the night before. At first, Kalmar had to help Janner around big stones and across cracks wide enough to fall into, but after a little while he assured Janner that the floor was smooth and safe.

  “What can you see?”

  “The ceiling is lower. The walls are closer. It looks more like a tunnel now.”

  “Is there only one way to go?”

  “I think so. And it looks like we’re going up again.”

  That was a small encouragement. Janner didn’t want to go any deeper, not if the Castle Throg was on top of the mountain.

  Kalmar led them on for what felt like an eternity before he stopped. “I can’t see. I just realized it.”

  “What do you mean you just realized it?”

  “I’ve been smelling my way, and I can kind of hear where the tunnel goes. I just closed my eyes and realized that everything’s totally dark now.”

  Knowing that neither of them could see almost unhinged Janner. He had begun to feel like the mountain was pressing down on him, crushing the part of his mind that knew light and shape until he was forever blind. He needed to light the lantern before he went mad. When he let go of Kalmar’s hand he realized he had been squeezing it for a while now. But with nothing to hold onto he lost all sense of place and felt like he was falling. He staggered and caught himself against the wall. It was cold and damp, like the wall of the tunnel under Anklejelly Manor.

  Janner chuckled.

  “What is it? Why are you laughing?”

  “I was just thinking about Anklejelly Manor. The ghost of BrimneyStupe.Aaaaaaaaaaah.” Janner snorted with laughter. “We were so scared that day!”

  “The hungry ghost of Brimney Stupe awaits your BONES to swallow,” Kalmar said, and now he was laughing too. “Remember how fast we ran home?”

  “You were screaming like a little girl!” Janner wheezed and doubled over. It felt good to laugh, no matter how insane it seemed in their situation. As he leaned against the wall and slid to the floor, he wiped his eyes and saw a million colors. It was a comforting illusion. “That was the most afraid I’d ever been. And now we’re in the Deeps of Throg, and neither of us can see a thing. If the ghost of Brimney Stupe showed up, I’d give him a hug.”

  It was, perhaps, the first time laughter had sounded in the
Deeps of Throg, and when it had passed the brothers were braver for it. They rested a little while, each of them lost in their thoughts and thankful for the other’s presence. That was when Janner heard the music. At first it was only a hint of a sound, enough that Janner held his breath and shushed Kalmar. He strained to hear it again, and soon the sound strung itself together into a melody so faint that even breathing made it hard to hear.

  “Do you hear that?” Janner asked.

  “Yes.” Kalmar’s reply was slow and soft. And wolfish.

  Janner’s skin crawled. “Kal?”

  When he didn’t answer, Janner dug blindly through his pack until he found his matches. He dropped them because his fingers were trembling and had to feel around on the floor until he found them. Kalmar was growling.

  Janner’s heart pounded as he struck the match and saw what he most dreaded to see: his brother, crouching only a few feet away, his teeth bared, staring at him with eyes so yellow they seemed to glow. The match fizzled and died, and the darkness fell over Janner like a curtain.

  Then Kalmar pounced.

  60

  The Fang Attacks

  “Kalmar, no!” Janner screamed.

  He felt Kal’s claws digging into his forearms, heard his jaws snapping just inches from his face. Janner raised his feet to Kal’s chest and kicked him away. He heard his brother slam into the cavern wall, growl, and spring again. Janner lunged aside and heard Kal crash into the stone behind him.

  Only now did Janner understand how foolish it was to infiltrate the Deeps with Kalmar at his side. It was probably the most dangerous place for him, so close to where the melding happened.