Matabar. Book II. Chapter 167. Blazing Darkness (Patreon)

Ardan ran. He ignored Mshisty’s shout.

“Help me stabilize the outer contour!”

He shut out the screams of the wounded, of Lubava, Olesya, and Adelaide; the soldiers’ cries and groans; the sobbing and howling of those trapped beneath the rubble of half-collapsed buildings. He didn’t give a damn about any of it. He didn’t give a damn about any of them. As fast as he could. Faster. He ran for the crater where the sewer entrance had been.

If he made it in time…

No.

He would make it. Of course he would. All he had to do was set off a wide-area blast beneath the asphalt to blow a passage open. But not one seal in his whole grimoire would do, and… to hell with it. He’d make do with an Ice Artillery Core. He’d pour in as much power as it took and just punch his way down. And then…

“Stop!” The Major’s shout cracked through the air. He was still fighting to contain the effects of the explosion inside his shield. The Ley-artifact that had detonated was devastatingly powerful, perhaps bordering on Pink Star strength.

But Ard didn’t care. He was well past caring.

He took another step, still some distance from the smoking car. A seal flared beneath his feet with the same flash of light a shield gave when it activated. At the last instant, Ardan managed to read the main runic links governing its attack properties and conjure an elemental Shield. A veil of ice whirled up around him. An explosion boomed beneath his feet, flinging razor-sharp shards of asphalt in every direction and tossing Ardan into the air with them. Compared with the prospect of ending up as a crisp black cinder, that wasn’t so bad.

Except that he’d been hurled like a rag doll almost ten meters into the air and thrown just as far backward and to one side. He crashed to the ground and banged his head on a chunk of wall from the nearest house. Consciousness was slipping away, and he scrabbled frantically to hold on.

Everything around him swam.

He saw Mshisty nearly lose control of the shield. A shard had punched clean through the shoulder above his missing arm. He saw a whip of fire burst from the cage of trembling light and consume several screaming soldiers in an instant. Nothing was left of them, not their boots, not their rifles, only black ash scattered on the wind.

People were already running toward Ard.

Shouting something.

But Ardan clung to the edges of his own mind as it gave way to the simple, natural workings of his body. He couldn’t stop his body from pulling him under. Couldn’t make it obey. He just kept falling and falling, sinking deeper and deeper into warm, faintly damp blackness that smelled of copper. Something thick and sticky trickled down the back of his head.

Ardan heard no shouts.

Instead, his father’s wristwatch ticked in his ears, measuring out its brisk little steps, steady and utterly indifferent to everything that was happening.

Tick-tock.

Tick-tock.

Tess

Tess came back to herself slowly. Her hearing returned first, though the sounds seemed unnaturally muffled and distant. As if she were underwater, straining to catch what was happening on the shore.

Her eyes, too, were relearning how to make sense of the blurred world around her. From the center outward, her field of vision widened slowly and a little grudgingly. First came shadows, then hazy outlines, and only at the very end…

At the very end, something clicked.

She surfaced from the depths like a drowning swimmer gasping for air. A sickening cacophony crashed down on her all at once: shouts, rustling, a metallic drone. Her head hurt so badly she couldn’t keep from doubling over and retching. But all that came from her mouth was thick saliva mixed with bitter stomach acid and blood.

She looked down at her torn, charred dress. Blood dripped onto the plank floor, strewn with scraps of fabric. Her legs were bare, darkened with soot. Her legs… her left ankle was wrapped in bandages and looked badly swollen. The moment she noticed it, a nasty, shrieking pain in her leg joined the alarm bell tolling in her head. At times it subsided to a dull, nagging ache, only to flare again.

She must have broken it when they hauled her onto the back of that locust-like chimera.

Memory came back in snatches. The explosion. The screams. How they’d dragged her into the rift that had split open in the earth and tied her to the pommel of a saddle before something heavy came down on the back of her head. Pain. The smell of smoke. All of it was lodged as deeply in her mind as the shards of glass and asphalt in her skin. Where those had bitten deepest, more bandages showed, already marked with faint scarlet stains.

Tess instinctively tried to run her hands over her body, but all she managed was a groan at another flare of pain. This one had two sources: her shoulders, numb and cramped, and the ropes that bound her far too tightly to the chair she sat in.

“She’s awake.” She recognized the voice. She’d already heard it somewhere among those fragments of memory that stung her exhausted mind.

She jerked her head up, blew a lock of hair away from her face with a sharp breath, and regretted it at once. The lock was damp with sweat, plastered to her skin, blackened with ash and soot.

People moved around her. Several dozen. They wore every kind of Imperial Army uniform, from infantry to cavalry. Shoulder boards, peaked caps, pistols, automatics. She’d spent enough time talking with the brothers over the past few days to pick up a good deal about life in Shamtur, including how to recognize the uniforms.

They were in a hangar. Or a warehouse. Something large enough that nearly forty meters of open floor stretched from wall to wall. Wind cut through the place, and almost at once she felt bitterly cold. Ley-lamps swayed on rails. They had generators, then. The walls looked like brick, so this was no temporary structure.

That left the last and most important question: had they made it across the neutral strip into Fatia, or were they still on Imperial soil?

“Hey, Miss Imperial.” The speaker wore a dark green infantry uniform with a third brigade patch. He lifted her chin with careful fingers.

Too careful. They’d taken just as much care splinting her broken arm and bandaging the wounds the shrapnel had left. No, they didn’t mean to kill her. They wanted her alive.

She looked at the speaker’s face. An ordinary, forgettable oval face. His pale brown eyes were worried and slightly sunken with fatigue; his nose had been broken in childhood and healed crooked.

He didn’t look like the one in charge.

“What’s that out there?” a voice called from the catwalk by the windows, several meters above the floor.

A handful of people stood up there, armed with new rifles and automatics.

“Floodlights, looks like! Something white flashing out there!”

Tess, still not quite in control of herself, turned toward the voices too sharply.

The Fatian jerked away from her. “Everybody shut up!” he barked. “She knows our language! Nobody say a word!”

The worry in his eyes gave way to confusion. One of the women came over to him. Of course there were women here too. That made it far easier for a sabotage team to slip into the city by posing as married couples transferred in from other units and billeted here. For all she knew, they’d already been living in Shamtur for several decades. If not longer. Some had gone on to have children, children who had no idea they were actually Fatian by blood.

How did Tess know all this?

As the Governor-General’s eldest daughter, she’d learned that the Empire slipped its own saboteurs into Fatia the very same way.

And judging by the number of people in the hangar, they’d thrown most of the saboteurs in Shamtur at this one job.

“According to our intelligence, the target doesn’t know the language,” the woman whispered, but Tess caught it.

Her profession had its perks. She might not hear as well as Ardi, but her hearing was still quite good. Good enough to catch a whisper, even through the pain and dizziness.

“I know…” the man said through clenched teeth. “Get the commander.”

“He’s working out the escape route and—”

“Go get him!”

The woman’s eyes flashed. She slung her automatic over her shoulder and walked briskly behind Tess. Every click of her heels set off a small firecracker in Tess’s head. As she passed the chair, she deliberately kicked one of its legs.

Tess’s stomach heaved again.

“Hey! We need her in one piece.”

“Galessian whore,” the woman answered with contempt.

Tess spat blood and saliva, then looked up again at the bewildered Fatian standing in front of her. She had no idea how much time had passed. No idea where she was. And she had just one trump card, just one. Strange as it might sound, this was not the first time she’d found herself in a position like this.

“You need to run,” she said. Every word was a struggle, forced out in a thick accent as she fought to keep from sliding back into blackness. “As far as you can. As fast as you can.”

He frowned, then let out a short snort of laughter.

“Miss Orman, you seem to have misunderstood who’s holding whom hostage.”

“You’re the one who doesn’t understand what you’re bringing down on yourself, Fatian.” Her smile was bitter.

“Please, stop practicing my language on me.” He grimaced. “Your pronunciation is appalling. I can’t make out half of what you’re saying.”

“That’s because I’ve hardly ever spoken it, soldier.” She felt bloody spit gathering in her mouth and spat again. Right onto her dress. “After I was kidnapped as a girl, I decided it would be very useful to know what my jailers were saying. Father and Mother never knew. No one knew… I didn’t want to frighten them with how frightened I was. So frightened that I had to force myself just to leave my room. Silly, isn’t it?”

“Funny,” he said, though his smirk carried little conviction. “But if you’re thinking of threatening me again, save your strength, Miss Orman. If everything goes smoothly, you’ll be back in Shamtur in just a few days. Getting married, I expect.”

Tess felt blood trickling down over her teeth, and she smiled wide.

“I doubt I’ll manage that.”

“Honestly, I don’t give a damn.” He shrugged. “But given where we are right now, Miss Orman, your father, however formidable he may be, won’t risk crossing the border without the Emperor’s orders. And the Emperor will never give that order. Simply because the Empire isn’t ready yet. Nobody is, really, but—why am I even telling you all this?”

A coolness spread out from her ring finger through the rest of her body.

“My father isn’t the one you should fear, soldier.” Her smile grew even wider, even madder. “My husband is.”

The Fatian’s frown deepened. For a moment, suspicion flickered in his eyes.

“Look at my hair, soldier,” she hissed. “Look closely, you idiot. While your loved ones still have a chance.”

He shifted his weight from foot to foot for a few moments. Then he stepped closer to her. Afraid of hurting her, he gingerly took a lock of her hair between his fingers. He rubbed it. Then he spat into his palm and rubbed harder.

“Eternal Angels.” The soldier took a step back, leaving a patch of red in her blackened hair. “You’re not Olesya… you’re Tess… Tess Egobar.”

“Yes.” Tess nodded, and the motion nearly doubled her over with nausea again. She’d have to move less. “And if you leave now, if all of you leave, then… you’ll die.”

“Funny,” he said again.

“But you’ll be the only ones to die,” she continued, ignoring her captor’s reaction. “He’ll find you. Wherever you are. However far you run. He’ll find every one of you. And he’ll kill you. And you won’t be able to buy him off, you won’t be able to talk him out of it; nothing will help you. Nothing at all. You’re already dead men walking. You just don’t know it yet.”

“Mrs. Egobar, perhaps you don’t quite grasp how a negotiation is supposed to work, because—”

“But if you stay…” Tess ran her tongue over her teeth and swallowed the coppery saliva. “If he sees me like this, next to you, he’ll kill everyone. Every last one.”

“As I understand it, you’ve already made that threat.”

“You don’t understand a thing, Fatian!” she cried out, and the effort wrung a groan of pain from her. “Everyone you’ve ever known. Anyone who’s ever said a kind word to you, even once. Your parents, if they’re still alive. Your children, if you have any. Your friends. Their parents and their children. Everyone whose hand you ever shook. Everyone you ever hugged. Your school sweetheart. All of them. He’ll send every one of them to the Eternal Angels. Every single one.”

The soldier had just opened his mouth when another voice cut him off.

“I would be very interested to know, Mrs. Egobar, where exactly a Green mage would find the power to do such a thing.”

A man emerged from behind Tess. He too wore a dark green uniform with the insignia of a private third class, the army’s lowest rank. But his bearing and the icy, dispassionate look in his eyes gave him away. So did the way the others deferred to him. This was their leader.

“You answered your own question just now, Fatian. You just didn’t realize it.”

He stepped closer to her. He casually picked up the same lock of hair and rubbed it between his fingers the way the other man had, then bit out a curse. Then another. And another. Then he drew back his arm and gave her a ringing backhanded slap.

Tess’s lips split and her head whipped to one side. For a moment she vanished into a deep pool of blackness. When she came to, she found herself wheezing and spitting up acid that seared her throat all over again.

“You can keep using the Egobar name to scare idiots, Tess,” he rumbled, wiping his hand on a handkerchief. “I stopped believing in boogeyman stories when I was a kid.”

“Then you’re an idiot yourself, and—”

Another slap snapped her head the other way.

“I strongly advise you to choose your words carefully, Tess,” the leader warned in a steely voice when she regained consciousness. “I have orders to keep Olesya Orman safe and sound. Not Tess Egobar.”

She threw back her head and gasped for air. Ragged breaths tore from her throat.

“Idiot…”

He ignored his men’s shouts and whipped his pistol from its holster. He pressed the muzzle against her forehead.

“Shut your mouth, Miss Imperial Scum, and pray to whoever you like that I decide Tess Egobar is worth more to my country alive than dead.”

Slowly, she looked up at him.

“You think I’m scared of you, you bastard?”

“I think you are.”

Tess couldn’t hold back the smile that came, unbidden and bloody, and it was enough to make him doubt his own words. She caught the flicker of bewilderment that passed through his eyes.

“I was eight, Fatian,” she rasped, feeling the blood bubble in her throat. “Eight when men just like you brought me to a place like this. Threw me onto a mattress that stank of bedbugs and chained me up. And I’ve already done my praying, Fatian. I prayed to everyone there was to pray to. And nobody answered.”

Something kept him staring into her eyes. Something made him hear her out. Something kept him from moving the pistol away.

“I prayed to the Eternal Angels. I prayed to the Old Gods. I prayed to all the heroes and protectors of Galess.” Hoarse moans, broken by bursts of laughter, escaped her split lips. “And nobody answered. Nobody… and then I started praying to monsters. The most horrifying creatures imaginable.”

“Why should that—”

“Ohhh, Fatian, it should scare you.” Little by little, choked laughter drowned out her labored breathing entirely. “Because they answered. It wasn’t heroes who saved me, Fatian. Monsters did. All in black. With silver phoenixes on their belts. They came just in time. You see, the Eternal Angels had already reserved a place in hell for one of the men who took me. And he’d gotten his pants off. Funny… for years afterward, the sight of his manhood dangling between his legs haunted my nightmares. So small. He probably only needed two fingers to get himself off.”

The leader pressed the pistol harder against her forehead.

“You’d better shut up.”

“You’re funny. Not scary at all, but funny.” Tess winked at him and laughed again. “One of those monsters came up to me. While that bastard was still gasping. Clinging to life with everything he had, and gasping. And the monster handed me a knife and told me that if I didn’t overcome my fear, if I didn’t save myself, I wouldn’t live. I’d exist. In fear, forever. Forever unable to act. And I’d spend my whole life on that chain. Even if the chain was only in my head by then.”

“Those aren’t searchlights! And they’re getting closer!” the men on the parapet shouted, ignoring their orders.

“So I took that knife, Fatian.” By now she couldn’t tell whether her cheeks and lips ached from the slaps or from smiling. “Yes, I took it. And I stabbed him. And then again. And again. And again. After he’d stopped gasping. After he’d fallen silent. I went on stabbing and stabbing and stabbing until I sliced open my own palms. Want to see the scars? They’re still there. I told everyone they were from snapped strings. I’d been kidnapped from my music teacher’s, after all. And everyone believed me. Mother and Father because, I suppose, they wanted to. Everyone else because it was easier. And only one… only one person didn’t believe me. Never believed me. But he never asked, either.”

“You crazy fucking bitch,” the leader said through clenched teeth. He took a step back, but he never lowered the pistol. “I don’t have time for your ravings.”

“That’s why I couldn’t train as a surgeon.” But there was no stopping her now. No one had ever heard any of this. She’d never needed to tell her husband, because he already knew. She was sure of it. Now it all spilled out of her with the blood and the pain. “Every time, I saw that ugly face of his. And his glassy eyes. I couldn’t shake the thought that what I was holding wasn’t a scalpel but a knife. I could have balanced my studies with performing, but I just couldn’t go through with the surgical training. Because every single time, I was back on that mattress.”

“Hey, Baudi! Get up here and take a look! Some kind of demon shit is going on out there!”

But Baudi went on staring straight into her eyes, as if under a spell.

“I always wondered why I fell in love with him. Almost at first sight. When he walked into the Bruce, skinny and lost, in that ridiculous cowboy hat, like an abandoned puppy. The funny way he chatted with Arkar. And the way he couldn’t take his eyes off me. Just like I couldn’t take mine off him.” She watched as Baudi raised the pistol again, from a distance this time, slowly leveling it at her forehead. “I learned when I was just eight, Baudi, that this world has no heroes. Only monsters who’ve lived long enough for the people they protected to start telling stories about them. That’s who gets called a hero, you Fatian bastard.”

“Baudi, goddammit!”

“I thought I could never love anyone. You see, Baudi, for a woman to so much as look at a man, never mind love him, she has to feel safe beside him. And I never felt safe with anyone but my father. Not with my brothers. Not with anyone. Except him.” She stared, unblinking, into the blackness inside the pistol’s muzzle. “From the very first glance. The very moment he appeared in the Bruce, I suddenly felt calm. And that was when I realized it wasn’t a lost puppy that had come into the bar at all. It was a monster. The most terrifying of them all. A monster… just like me.”

“An awful lot of tears for a monster, you piece of Imperial trash.”

“I’m not crying for myself!” Tess laughed through her tears, so hard that the pain nearly made her pass out again. “I’m crying because I won’t be there to stop him, you poor bastard! Everyone thinks they see something in him. Something dangerous. But what they see is only the beast in him. Part of his childhood. A little piece of each of his friends. No, the monster, the real monster, lives much deeper. Down where only an eight-year-old child who’s been chained up and nearly raped can see it. A monster strong enough to tear that damned chain apart with a single smile and, by his presence alone, finish off the ghost of your countryman, a scumbag just like you.”

Tess caught her breath. At last she tore her gaze from the barrel and met Baudi’s eyes. His mind was already made up. She could see it. And no, in the last seconds of her life, she would not give the Fatian scum the pleasure of her fear. Or her despair. Or her grief.

No.

She was Tess Orman.

She was Tess Egobar.

Ever since that mattress, there had been nothing left in this world that could frighten her.

“Take this knife, little one, and set yourself free. We’ve done most of the work, but the most important part is up to you.”

“You do believe me, coward.” Her smile had all but turned into a snarl. “Know what it takes to love a monster? Being a monster yourself. That’s how I know. I can smell it: you reek of fear. You’ll run. As far as you possibly can. But he’ll find you. And he won’t rest. Not even when you’re dead. Not even when everyone who so much as breathed near you is dead. He won’t rest. And when there’s not a trace of your country left, all I’ll do is pray from beyond the grave, in the Eternal Angels’ keeping, that he finds peace at last. When Fatia has become a wasteland from end to end, and people point to it and say, ‘Look! Compared with this, even the Dead Lands look like paradise!’ And here’s why: the Emperor will stop my father. Borders and armies will stop him. But nothing in this world can stop my husband.”

For a moment, silence fell between them.

“Too bad you won’t live long enough to see just how wrong you are.” Baudi grinned viciously and squeezed the trigger.

Tess was lying.

She was afraid.

She was lonely.

And she was sorry. Sorry for all the moments she’d never gotten to spend at Ardi’s side. Listening, until her eyes grew heavy, as he talked with such delight about his magical seals. Laughing at his jokes, clumsy as they sometimes were. Getting annoyed with him when he forgot something that everyone else found perfectly straightforward but that baffled him. Teasing him now and then when she had to explain poetry, music, theater, and nearly everything else that lay outside magic and ancient legends.

To hold him. To breathe him in. Just to be near him. Even in silence. Even if only for a little while. But knowing the day would come when they would be together again. No matter how much time passed. Whatever they had to overcome. Together again. Side by side. Happy. Silly. No matter where. No matter how. The only thing that mattered was being near him.

All she had time to think, before the pistol fired with a deafening crack, was:

"Forgive me, Ardi-the-wizard. I’ll be waiting."

***

The little hunter watched the enormous bear, sprawled among the junipers, lick the deep wounds on his paws. Along his right flank, ribs jutted out through the torn hide, and several ragged strips of muscle hung all the way down to the ground, sticky and wet with blood.

“Guta…”

“It’s all right, Ardi,” the bear rumbled. “It’s all right. Don’t fret, little friend. Before the warm winds turn cool, I’ll be whole again.”

The little hunter stepped carefully up to the bear. He was so small, so plain-looking. He could probably have fit entirely beneath a single paw of the mighty “King of Forests and Valleys,” as other hunters sometimes called bears.

He laid his palm against the soft fur, then leaned back against the bear’s uninjured side and sank to the ground.

The mountain of iron muscle, hidden beneath soft fat that sometimes gave a comical jiggle, kept breathing steadily and licking his wounds, cleaning away all the dirt and dust. The Alcade sun shone bright overhead. The Queen of Summer ruled once more over the spreading seas of forest, bringing heat and, now and then, wildfires with her.

“What troubles you, little one?” His rich, resonant bass rumbled like a storm roaring through bottomless gorges.

The little hunter didn’t answer right away, but the bear didn’t rush him.

“Why did you… why did you… all of them… all of them, Guta.”

“Because they were hungry, little one,” the living mountain rumbled, calm as a steady river. “And I was hungry too. We’d come for the same prey. We couldn’t part in peace, so we had to fight. I proved stronger.”

“But you went into their den.” The little hunter sniffled. “They’d never challenged you on the hunting trails.”

“I did.”

“And you sent them down the paths of the Sleeping Spirits.”

“I did.”

“Why? They hadn’t done a thing to you! They…”

A paw, heavier than a young oak and larger than an ancient boulder, curled around the little hunter and pressed him to the giant’s chest.

“Listen… listen, little one.”

And the little hunter listened. To the searing heart that beat deep within that living crag, a heart the size of an entire mountain ridge. To the way its rhythm faltered, again and again. As if it were weeping. Quietly, hidden from everyone else.

“You… didn’t want to?” the little hunter asked, surprised.

“I didn’t want to,” the mountain thundered. But he kept hold of his friend, hugging him a little tighter.

“Then why?”

The bear fell silent. He stayed silent for so long that shadows gathered across the sky, and among them glimmered the souls of those already wandering the unseen trails through the last dreams of the Sleeping Spirits. The Eye of the Spirit of Night lit their paths in the land where all who walk the trails of hunter and prey would one day meet to become a single tribe that knew no more enmity, and no more Hunger.

“I suppose it’s time I told you something neither mighty Ergar nor clever Atta’nha nor cunning Shali nor that insufferable but very wise little squirrel will tell you,” the bear grumbled, settling onto his side and pressing his damp nose against the little hunter’s back. “But the Sleeping Spirits know how badly I wish I didn’t have to…”

The little hunter felt something wet trickling down his legs. Something wet that smelled strongly of salt.

“Guta?”

“Don’t turn around, little one!” the mountain rumbled, a touch louder than before. “Don’t turn around… just listen. These are good times. The dream of the Sleeping Spirits is generous with prey for the hunters, and the forests are generous with food for the prey. And so we live in peace. Hunters take no more than they should. And the prey breeds as much as it likes.”

“Yes, Ergar says the same thing.”

“Because it’s true.” The bear rubbed against his back, gently, careful not to jostle him. “But there are other times, too. Terrible times. In times like those, hunters eat hunters, and prey devours its own young.”

The little hunter nearly cried out.

“Are there really times like that, Guta?”

“There are, little one. And I pray to the Sleeping Spirits that in their all-knowing dreams they never see you walking through such times. But you must hear what I have to say all the same.” The bear’s tears, the ones he did not want the little hunter to see, grew hotter still. “These forests are full of weak hunters. And there are far more of them than there are of us strong ones. When times are calm, when there is enough prey for everyone, we have nothing to quarrel over. The strong know they are strong, and they live in peace. But the weak… they can’t forget that they’re weak. And so they talk. Very loudly. So everyone will hear them.”

“What do they say?”

“That it’s bad to be strong. That being strong means being different from them. And the weak don’t like anyone who’s different from them. They don’t like the strong.”

“But why?”

“Because they’re afraid. Because fear is like a burrow, the warmest, driest burrow of all. The best of all burrows. And because weakness is the best food there is for fear. It draws fear in. Feeds it. It’s like…”

“Like a beehive draws you in, huh?” The little hunter laughed. “I remember last season of melting snows, when you howled for a whole week because the bees had wrecked your whole nose.”

“The branch cracked under me!” Guta, that living mountain, protested. He rubbed against the little hunter again, making him laugh. It tickled far too much. “Listen, little one… Fear is like a wildfire. It sets everything around it burning. And when there’s too much of it, even the mightiest trees can’t stand against it. And they grow afraid too.”

“Of what?”

“Of themselves.” He gave a sad sigh. “When someone strong lets the words of the weak sway him, he begins to fear himself. To think there’s something wrong with him. Too cruel. Too bloodthirsty.”

“Because his fangs are bigger and his claws are stronger?”

“Not at all.” He shook his head. “Sometimes even the one with the longest claws and the quickest bite is weak all the same.”

“Then how… then how can you tell, Guta, who’s strong and who isn’t?”

Guta went quiet again. He and the little hunter lay among the junipers and watched the souls of the departed wander the sky. Now and then, a soul would leave bright streaks across the boundless black as it went to visit its living descendants and share memories of times gone by.

“By their wounds, little one,” he whispered, and there was pain in his voice. “Wounds kill the weak, but not the strong. And the stronger a hunter is on the trails, the more wounds he bears.”

“Ergar has hardly any scars, but he’s one of the strongest!”

“If not the strongest,” Guta agreed. “But sometimes you can’t see someone else’s wounds with your own eyes. You can only…” With his huge paw, he pressed the little hunter against his chest again. His heart still wept, and the pain drew real tears from him. “…hear them. The weak always fear the strong, even when the strong are trying to protect them and keep them safe.”

“But that’s stupid! Why is that?”

“Because they’re afraid to look at someone else’s wounds. Because they’re afraid to imagine that one day they might have to bear wounds like those themselves. And they don’t want to. They’re afraid. Fear rules their lives.” His breath was hot enough to sting the little hunter’s back. “I went into their den because if I hadn’t, one day they’d have gotten in my way again. And not just them. The whole forest would have learned that Guta the bear wasn’t as strong as he once was. That he couldn’t protect his own trails.”

“But that’s not true!”

“You know that, my little friend. But the others don’t.” He rubbed his wet nose against the little hunter’s side. “Now the forest will hear what happened to the wolf pack that chose to challenge me over my prey. And hundreds of other souls will think twice before courting the same fate as that pack. How many will that save, little one? How many will it keep alive? How many packs will stay safe and sound because they get off my trail in time?”

“But… but… that’s…”

“Cruel, little one?”

“Very.” The little hunter nodded.

“It is,” Guta agreed. “But the weak and the fearful invented the word ‘cruel.’ That word, and so many others.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s a weapon against us, little hunter. Against the strong. Against those who were wounded and lived anyway. Which is crueler: to send one misguided pack to the Sleeping Spirits, or to let dozens of others trust their noses and eyes and make the same mistake?”

The little hunter opened his mouth, then closed it. He had no answer to Guta’s question.

“But the Laws of the Hunt forbid taking more from the forest than you need to fill your belly or defend yourself! Hunters drive the Blood-Drunk out of their packs! And when spring comes, solitary hunters won’t take one of them as a mate!”

“But do you know how to recognize one of the Blood-Drunk, little one?”

The little hunter thought about it.

“No.”

“Then listen again.”

And he heard Guta’s heart weeping again.

“So long as your soul fights against your own paws and fangs, little one, so long as you do what you must even though you don’t want to, you will never grow drunk on blood. And when you meet the Sleeping Spirits and your ancestors on their paths, you’ll stand as proud as they do.”

He gazed up at the sky.

“And my ancestors, Guta… are they there? Up there too? Among the lights?”

“Yes, little one. Almost all of them are already there. And they’re waiting for us. But they ask us not to hurry. They ask us to come to them as late as we can. Still, they wait.”

“And were they strong too?”

Guta sighed again.

“Some were, some weren’t… Many were weak. But the strong still outnumbered the weak. Such is the dream of the Sleeping Spirits.”

“And who was the strongest of all?”

“The strongest of all?”

“Yes.”

Guta was silent, and the little hunter listened to the night birds singing and to the wind playing merrily with the rustling, grumbling treetops that would much rather have been asleep. Skusty had taught him to listen to the wind and the trees both. Atta’nha had taught him to speak with them. Listening, though, was something you could do whenever you liked. Speaking was something you should almost never do.

He still didn’t understand why.

“The strongest of your ancestors has not yet gone to the Sleeping Spirits.”

“Really?” he cried in delight. “So I can meet him? Can I find him?”

“Yes. You’re sure to meet him,” Guta replied somberly. “But he’s old now. They’ve been waiting a long time for him on the paths of the Sleeping Spirits. Still, he’s here. Waiting for you. And when he meets you again, he’ll most likely go.”

The little hunter never caught the word “again.” Strange, powerful words crowded it out, and the slip of the tongue left no trace in his memory.

“And did he… well… do that to lots of packs, like you did today?”

“Many, many,” Guta grunted with effort. He must have shifted the wrong way, and the claw wound began to hurt again. “Many thousands of packs.”

“Thousands?” The little hunter was horrified. “And he wasn’t Blood-Drunk?”

“If he had been, the She-Wolf, our mother, would have found him,” Guta replied. “And she’d have taken the gift of the Sleeping Spirits away from him.”

“But then how…”

“He sent thousands of packs down the paths of the Sleeping Spirits, but he may have spared far more from that same fate. Hundreds of thousands. Or more. No one knows. No one can say how many packs cowered in their dens at the mere sound of his name, having seen what became of those who challenged him on his hunting trails.”

“Hundreds of thousands… How many is that?”

“A lot, little one. A lot,” Guta repeated, then fell silent again.

They were still sitting among the juniper. The little hunter watched the pesky ants crawl over his paws… legs. Yes, legs. That was the right word. He still couldn’t get used to it.

“Then why don’t the weak become strong?”

“I don’t know, little one,” Guta admitted. “Some say they’re afraid of the pain they’d have to endure to grow strong. Some say they’re lazy. Others, that they’re fools. But it seems to me that such is the dream of the Sleeping Spirits. That in their all-knowing wisdom, they keep strength from those who couldn’t bear it. Who would break. And do more harm than good.”

“But then… then there’d be no Blood-Drunk!”

Guta grumbled something and gave the little hunter a nudge with his nose. Harder than before.

“That pest of a squirrel is a bad influence on you.”

The little hunter laughed. He’d always enjoyed watching Guta and Skusty squabble and play.

“The stronger a hunter is, the more he’s feared. Even by the strong. And when you’re the strongest of all, you’re also the most frightening of all. And probably the loneliest.”

“Like Ergar?”

“Like Ergar.” A rustle suggested that Guta had nodded. “That’s why they say the world is cruel. Because everyone fears the world. Because it’s the biggest, the mightiest, and the most treacherous hunter of them all.”

“So what do you do?”

“Don’t be afraid, little one. Not of anyone or anything. And above all, not of yourself. Do what you must, my little friend. And what will be, will be. Don’t forget: the world is cruel because we’re all weak in the face of it. So walk with your head held high. Never unsheathe your claws if you can help it. Never bare your fangs if you see another way out. But never be afraid to be the most frightening, the strongest, and the fiercest of them all when you have to be. Live by these rules, and you will never lose your way.”

“But what if… what if…”

“And if something happens and you do stumble, those who always come for the Blood-Drunk will be there to stop you. That’s how it always goes.”

“But how?”

“I don’t know, my little friend. But such is the dream of the Sleeping Spirits. We are born alone. And alone we die. And the only difference lies in the tracks our paws have left along the trails through forests and valleys.”

The little hunter went on looking at the sky.

“But I don’t want to, Guta… I don’t want to…”

“I know, little one.”

“I want to play with you, to walk the snows with Ergar, to read with Atta’nha. I want to race Kaishas, to argue myself hoarse with stubborn Lenos. I want to puzzle out Skusty’s riddles and go fishing with Shali.”

“I know… I know, Ardan. I know…”

He stared up at a starless sky hanging in the blackness of his own mind.

“I don’t want to wake up, Guta. I don’t want to. Because I’m scared, old friend. So scared to wake up and hear that… to hear how… And what am I supposed to do? What am I supposed to do, Guta? What do I do if I can’t… if I can’t follow the Laws of the Hunt? What then? Why won’t you say anything? Why won’t you tell me what to do?”

He turned, but there was no forest behind him, no juniper, no wounded bear. Only the emptiness of his mind. This was nothing but a memory. The most ordinary of dreams. And he needed to open his eyes now.

***

Ardan fell off the cot. The hot asphalt hit him in the face with a stone-hard slap. Ard wheezed, then rolled onto his back. The instant he did, a desperate howl almost burst from his chest. Above his head, stars shone through the city’s glare. Night had fallen on Shamtur.

“Corporal!” A young nurse rushed to his side, wearing a white kerchief over her hair and a dark green infantry uniform. “You need to lie down, Corporal!”

Somehow, with the help of a few more nurses she’d waved over, she got him back on his feet. Then she led him to the cot. Right there, under the open sky. Among dozens of other cots just like it, where soldiers moaned and screamed. Some called for their mothers, others prayed to the Eternal Angels, and some lay with their arms and legs wrapped in blood-soaked bandages that hid the ragged stumps beneath.

For some, the prayers for the dying had already begun:

“And we shall meet the dawn with bared blades and burning hearts. In the name of our Father and to the glory of…”

He wasn’t listening. His eyes found his staff where it lay across the edge of the cot, beside a worn old blanket, and he reached for it.

“You need to lie down, Corporal.” The nurse jerked his hand back. “Your skull is all but split open. Most likely a severe head injury. We didn’t think you’d wake up at all!”

“I need—”

“You need to lie down! You’re a mage! You of all people should understand that—”

Ardan shoved her hand away and picked up the staff. The feel of that familiar old oak gave him back a little strength. Fleeting, maybe, but strength all the same.

“Where… where’s the command post?”

“You need to—”

His hands moved faster than his mind. He seized her by the front of her uniform and pulled her face close to his. His claws tore several slits in the fabric, dangerously close to her skin.

“Where?” he repeated quietly, straining to keep his fangs from slipping out, and to keep his eyes from… from fixing on the artery that pulsed in her throat.

Even so, the nurse went pale. Her fellow nurses took a step back. One reached for her holster.

“There” was all the doctor said. She pointed toward a side street, where lights shone just beyond the last row of wounded soldiers.

He looked at the lights and squeezed his eyes shut. He very nearly threw up. So the nurse was right about the brain injury.

To hell with it.

“Thank you.” Ardan let go of her uniform. He leaned heavily on his staff and limped toward the lights, dragging his bandaged leg behind him. His fibula was clearly broken.

To hell with it.

You didn’t even need a fibula to walk. If he remembered his Star Healing Arts lectures right, the bone served only highly specialized functions. Almost superfluous ones.

Still.

Halfway there, he stopped. He didn’t turn around, because he wasn’t sure he’d stay on his feet if he did.

“Forgive me, Miss. Please.” That was all he said before trudging on.

Past the groaning soldiers. Past the priests, among them the very one who had refused to say prayers over ground where the “unclean one” stood. Now he gripped the hand of a seventeen-year-old boy thrashing in a fever. He recited prayers over him and stroked his sweat-slick forehead with a father’s tenderness. A length of rebar jutted from the soldier’s chest. The Eternal Angels were already circling above him.

Just as dozens of thoughts were circling in Ard’s head.

None of it added up.

No. Far too much of it didn’t add up.

Ardan was no expert on how the Daggers or their foreign opponents carried out sabotage, but what had happened in Shamtur didn’t look like an operation thrown together in a hurry. And if there was one thing Ardi had gotten good at by now, it was the Puppeteers’ game of chess.

No, he doubted they’d had anything at all to do with Shamtur. He just couldn’t help noticing how much the pattern resembled the one at the Crown Hotel.

What did the Crown Hotel have to do with anything?

His thoughts kept slipping away from him. The stitches at the back of his head had torn open. Thick blood ran down his neck.

To hell with it.

The explosion had almost perfectly mimicked an industrial disaster, the kind that only a whole cascade of failures could produce, a textbook perfect storm. Only under conditions like that was there any chance that the Ley-wiring in the underground utility network could have set off a chain reaction and produced a Ley-flare. The odds of that happening were one in a number so large it might as well have been infinity. Generation sections had existed for half a century, and in all that time, such a thing had happened only twice.

Once in Seiros, Olikzasia’s capital. And once in Radan, the capital of the Selkado League. Only the capitals had generation-distribution systems complex enough for anything like that to happen.

What did that tell him?

That the whole thing had been planned in advance. Far in advance. Decades in advance! Just like at the Crown Hotel… which meant the saboteurs were from Fatia, or Tazidahian, or…

To hell with it.

To hell with who they were.

What mattered was that they’d kept a piece on the board in reserve, then played it as a last resort at the most critical moment. A move they could make only once, designed to gain them the greatest possible advantage.

Did kidnapping Olesya Orman warrant a move like that?

The answer was obvious.

No.

Which meant… which meant…

“History, big guy, has a nasty habit of repeating itself twice. As farce or as tragedy. Or… maybe that’s not how the saying goes. Listen, dig around in the drawer at the far end. Maybe I’ve still got a bottle of Lintelar semi-sweet in there.”

Ardan pushed Mart Borskov’s voice from his mind. He had already reached the tent. Someone had pitched it right in the middle of the blasted street, among mangled cars and collapsed buildings.

Soldiers hurried back and forth around it. They were clearing rubble, hosing down the last pockets of fire, their boot heels ringing on the pavement, and… Ard nearly threw up again. His head was splitting.

But he was still moving. Still refusing to give up. And still keeping the fangs and claws in check. Maybe only because the ring on his right hand hadn’t dimmed yet. She was alive.

“You can’t go in.” Two soldiers with rifles closed ranks in front of him, shoulder to shoulder. Both rifles had fixed bayonets.

“Corporal with the Second Chancery…” Ardan began patting his jacket, only to realize he had no papers. None at all. No checkbook, no papers, nothing. He had scarcely any clothing left. Nothing but rags, torn, burned, and in places fused to his skin.

Pain flashed white through his mind as he pulled at the rags, tearing them off along with strips of flesh. Something yellow and slimy ran down his legs.

“Black House,” he said simply. “Let me through.”

“You’re not allow—”

He never finished. Ardan made no attempt to hold back; he no longer had the strength for that. He shoved with his left hand, right where the soldiers’ shoulders met. He put everything into it. They were flung straight into the tent, whirling like a pair of children’s tops.

The tent flaps billowed. He followed them inside and found himself staring down a dozen barrels. Rifles, automatics, and a pistol. The pistol was in Reish Orman’s hand. He stood over a table with a map spread across it.

Only Major Mshisty, the right half of his face bandaged, hadn’t so much as touched the staff propped against the end of his bench.

Didn’t matter.

Ardan ignored the rest of them, the twins included. Without a word, he walked to the table and looked at the map. Wooden arrows laid out across it led north from Shamtur. Toward the border.

He glanced at his wrist. The late Emperor really had spared no expense on the watches awarded to the heroes of the Fatian massacre. So much had happened, and still not a single scratch on his father’s timepiece.

Half past seven. Almost four and a half hours since the explosion. They’d most likely gotten rid of the chimeras as soon as they left the utility tunnels, to avoid drawing unwanted attention. In that case, they’d switched to…

No, cars and trucks were out. The roads would have been blocked immediately.

So, the fields.

Which meant horses. And if they’d used horses, they’d planned to stay off the roads. Harder to follow them that way. A little math, far easier than rewriting even the simplest seal on the fly, told him that… the arrows on the map were a few arcminutes too far west.

They were somewhere else. And he already knew where. Roughly, at least. Give or take fifty or a hundred square kilometers.

Didn’t matter.

He would find her.

Even if…

“We can’t let you go, Ard.”

Ardan realized he was standing across from the twins and several officers. They’d put away their weapons but were in no hurry to move away from the tent’s exit. Reish Orman had spoken. He’d set his pistol aside too.

He still couldn’t think straight. No, he could think just fine, but he couldn’t see properly. Or he could see fine, but his hearing…

Ahgrat!

Everything kept drifting apart like scum on a pond. He couldn’t get a proper grip on reality.

“I don’t think you can stop me,” Ard replied. His tongue felt like cotton, and every word was work. “Please step aside.”

That last part was for the twins.

“That’s an order, Corporal,” a voice said from behind him. “Surrender your staff and report to the infirmary.”

“She’s my wife!”

Ardan couldn’t have said when he’d slipped into matabar, or at what point his words had turned into a growl and his fangs had lengthened in his mouth. Everyone grabbed for their weapons again, Alaris included, but Ardan caught himself. His fangs retracted, and he switched back to Galessian.

“She’s my—”

“And she’s my daughter,” Reish cut him off. “And their sister. But we can’t… we can’t…” He caught himself and drew himself up. “We can’t risk destabilizing the border for the sake of a single citizen of the Empire.”

Ardan looked into Reish’s eyes. Bright eyes, full of pain yet unwavering in their resolve.

“A team of Daggers will arrive here in a few hours, Corporal.” Reish seemed to be deliberately avoiding Ardan’s name. “Then we’ll decide what to do next.”

“A team of Daggers…” Ardan repeated. He looked down at the map again. “To hell with it. I’m leaving now.”

“That’s an order!”

Ardan slowly raised his eyes to Mr. Orman. To Tess’s father. And once again, he spoke before he could think better of it.

“A mortal in epaulets is still nothing more than a mortal in epaulets.”

He flinched at his own words as if he’d been slapped, but it was already too late. This wasn’t one of Tess’s records, where you could lift the needle and set it back a groove.

For a moment, silence hung in the tent.

“Perhaps.” Mr. Orman didn’t so much as raise an eyebrow. “I understand you, Ard. I understand perfectly. And believe me, I would…” He clenched his fist. So hard that a thin trickle of blood ran from where his nails had bitten into his skin. “But she’s still just one citizen. One. Citizen. Of the Empire. So don’t make me give Major Mshisty that order. Please. Don’t force my hand.”

Ardan turned to Mshisty, who was calmly smoking his cigar.

“Don’t think I won’t obey that order, Corporal.” Mshisty’s warning was blunt, his tone utterly level. At the moment, he had the air of a gallant, aristocratic scholar. “And given my current condition, I’m not sure I could go easy on you.”

Ardan looked at his staff. Even if he’d had a full supply of accumulators and Mshisty hadn’t had a single one, Ard still wouldn’t have stood a chance. Maybe, just maybe, if it had been winter, the kind of winter they’d had during the Congress, he might have pulled it off. Not beating Mshisty, of course. Getting away.

But it was hot. So hot that what was left of his shirt and jacket clung to his back, not just because they’d burned into his skin, but also because he was sweating. Instead of the dead of winter, summer blazed all around him. A humid, sweltering summer.

“Who?”

“What?” General Orman asked.

The words came back to Ardan:

“Why on earth would Shanti’Ra lay siege to Evergale over a prison?”

“Kelly, he…”

“He what?”

…

“And what’s wrong with the Ogdens?”

“Besides the fact that they got gutted? Oh, nothing much, Hunter. Mrs. Ogden was born a Brian. So our gallant retired cavalry officer couldn’t think of anything better than to track down the Shanti’Ra chief’s younger son, throw him behind bars, and send word to Delpas.”

“Who are you holding prisoner?” Ardan asked in a low, silky voice. “Which Fatian or Tazidahian did Shamtur’s counterintelligence service or the Daggers capture? Who was Olesya supposed to be exchanged for?”

Silence settled over the tent again. Mr. Orman slowly turned to Mshisty, who just spread his hand in a shrug.

“I didn’t tell him anything,” Mshisty said. “But this is Captain Pnev’s partner we’re talking about, so none of this should come as a surprise.”

Mr. Orman shook his head. For a while he said nothing. One second longer, and Ard’s patience would have run out.

“The Fatian Prince has a cousin whose younger son was captured six months ago, during the Congress last winter. He was taken in a raid behind Fatian lines and brought here.”

The Fatian Prince… Fatia hadn’t changed its system of government since the War of the Birth of the Empire. In practice, it was still a principality. On paper, a form of parliamentary monarchy. Just like the Empire and most other countries in the world.

In other words, Shamtur, and Reish Orman in particular, had taken the Fatian equivalent of Iolai Agrov prisoner. With just one difference…

“A nine-year-old child?”

Reish fixed Ardan with a cutting look.

“I hope I imagined that, and didn’t actually hear judgment in your voice,” the Governor-General said through gritted teeth. “He’s perfectly all right. He’s even put on a few kilos.”

Ardan didn’t give a damn…

“Hand him over to me, and I’ll come back with Tess.” Ardan gripped his staff so hard that the old, chipped varnish scraped his palms raw like sandpaper. His body was still weak from the mutant’s venom.

No one answered.

“Put the staff down, Ard. And go back to the doctors,” the Governor-General repeated. “You have three seconds. Then I’ll give Major Mshisty the order, and—”

And Ardan didn’t give a damn. Of course, there was no Ley-lighting in the tent. None anywhere nearby, either. The soldiers made do with old oil lamps. Identical lamps stood at the corners of the map. One was right at Ard’s elbow.

He grabbed the glass shade and squeezed. Glass sprayed in every direction, shredding his already injured palm to ribbons and laying bare tendon and cartilage. The muscles in his hand tore nearly all the way through, but he paid no attention.

He seized the living flame. Closed his fingers around it. And listened to its cry. It was calling to its brothers. Little flames like itself, scattered all around, flames that had long since forgotten a time when they weren’t held prisoner by the dead fires of the Ley-lamps.

Ardan poured his will into their cries and spoke.

“I call you to my aid, sworn brother. I call you, Ragr—”

Before he could even finish, the blood on his palm erupted in black fire. The fire surged outward like an avalanche, devouring the tables and the map spread across them, hurling soldiers, officers, and the twins backward. Mshisty tried to reach his staff, but he was too late. He was already flat on his back, his charred bench lying overturned beside him. Above him loomed the snarling muzzle of Ragrazrar, the Wolf of Blazing Darkness.

He’d grown noticeably since Ardan last saw him, more than a year earlier at the Nursery. They’d had to fight one of the Spiders there, and the Spider had turned out to be Corporal Alice Rovnev’s lover.

He stood three and a half meters at the shoulder, as long and as broad as a military truck. He could have bitten off half a car in a single snap. With fangs longer than Arkar’s hand and eyes like bonfires, he towered over Mshisty and let out a growl from deep in his belly. He was an Anomaly from the northern valleys of the Azure Coast, his fur ablaze with black fire that streamed toward the sky as if windblown, though not a breath of wind stirred. The giant wolf’s whole body seemed engulfed in an endless forest fire, the fire these magical beasts were born in.

All around, soldiers were shouting. Rifles and automatics swung up, and someone was feeding a belt into a machine gun.

“Freeze!” Mr. Orman roared, now back on his feet. “Nobody move!”

Ragrazrar brought his muzzle down until it almost touched Mshisty, so close that the heat coming off his fur began to melt Mshisty’s clothes.

“I have come, my sworn brother from the Snowbound Trails. Say the word, and I will tear apart this two-legs who wields a shadow of the Art!”

Ardan looked at Mshisty, who hadn’t even taken the cigar out of his mouth. Utterly indifferent, with perhaps the faintest flicker of curiosity, he went on studying the snarling Anomaly.

“Throw his staff away, Ragrazrar,” Ardan said in the tongue of wild beasts.

Ragrazrar’s massive paw shoved the nearby military staff of Ertalain alloy. In an instant it vanished into the gloom with a glassy chime, punching through one wall on its way and lodging in the next.

Ragrazrar could, in fact, have burned straight through Mshisty with his paw if he’d wanted to. He could have done it the moment he answered the call, while Mshisty was unable to cast spells. Instead, he lifted his paw from Mshisty’s chest, where the burning shirt had left the skin exposed. Mshisty scowled and began slapping at the spreading flames with his palm.

Then Ragrazrar came over to Ard and lowered his muzzle toward him. Ardan pressed his forehead against Ragrazrar’s.

“You and I, my sworn brother. We walk the hunting trail. I am a Hunter.” Ragrazrar spoke the words of the ritual. “And you are a Hunter. Neither of us is prey.”

“You and I,” Ard answered.

He didn’t care that hundreds of gun barrels were trained on them. He didn’t care about the stares of the soldiers, the local Cloaks, or the Orman men.

He didn’t give a damn.

“You called, and I came. Because the word was spoken, because it was heard, because my honor demands it, because I so desire it,” Ragrazrar growled, speaking in an instant what would have taken a human several seconds. “Speak.”

“I need your strength, my sworn brother.”

“A lot?”

“Everything you have, and more, because—”

Ragrazrar threw back his head and howled. The sound was so loud, so long and drawn out that it left the nearby soldiers’ ears ringing. They clutched their heads and sank into crouches, as if that could save them from the Anomaly’s voice.

Lamps burst one after another in the soldiers’ hands and on the benches. More shattered among the furniture set out in the street, on chairs arranged in rows and beside couches. The little living flames inside flared and swelled into black fire, and out of that fire leapt Wolves of Blazing Darkness. Many were smaller than Ragrazrar, many larger. Males and females. Dozens of wolves. A whole pack.

One of the females, half a meter shorter than Ragrazrar at the shoulder, padded up to him and took her place at his side.

“Her name is Garzagshzara,” Ragrazrar growled, and there was tenderness in the sound. “She is my wife. And this is my pack, sworn brother. I met them many steps of the Spirit of Night ago. I fought their chief on Larr’rrak. I won. I ate his heart. Took his strength and his pack. Now I am chief.”

“I greet you, Garzagshzara. You and I.”

“I greet you, Speaker, brother of my husband. You and I.”

The whole exchange took less than a heartbeat. The stunned soldiers hadn’t even had time to think about getting back on their feet.

“Tell us, Ard,” Ragrazrar growled. “Tell us. I’ve brought my pack here. All the strength I have! Because you asked. So tell us why you need us.”

Ardan closed his hand tightly around the blazing fur. It did him no harm. The words came hard, so hard it seemed he had to tear his own throat open for each syllable.

“They took her, Ragrazrar. They took Tess. Because I couldn’t… I was too late… and they took… took my wife.”

Savage growls flooded the street. Everything that hadn’t already broken now flew apart in shards. Black fires flared among the puddles. The military vehicles melted, their metal glowing red-hot and sagging. Soldiers scrambled out.

“They attacked my sworn brother’s wife!” Ragrazrar growled. Garzagshzara bared her fangs, and the other females bared theirs alongside her, glaring with hatred at the humans all around. “Wretched two-legs dared to harm our brother’s pack! Tell me, Ard! Say one word, and we will tear their males apart. We will throttle their females. We will devour their young! We will burn their lair of dead stone to the ground! Many of us will walk the paths of the Sleeping Spirits! But we will do it! Such is the law!”

The pack’s howl could have shamed even a military siren into sheepish silence.

“No, my sworn brother.” Ardan shook his head. “They’re far from here. Beyond the wing of the Spirit of Night. Will you carry me there?”

“Yes.”

“Will you give me your strength?”

“Yes. Just as I did last time, my sworn brother, but this time you will have the strength of my whole pack!”

“Will you fight beside me? Will your fangs be my fangs, and your claws my claws?”

“Yes.”

“Three times spoken and three times heard.”

Still gripping Ragrazrar’s fur with one hand, Ardan felt wild, unbridled power flooding into him. He pushed off the ground and sprang onto the wolf’s back. The flames around them gradually changed color. The wolves’ black fur was filling with light. Bright white fire, like snow glittering on a cold morning.

And unlike last time, Ard now knew how to guard his own Name. The Wolf of Blazing Darkness felt like an extension of himself, but he didn’t lose himself in the wolf’s feelings and sensations. He was still Ardan. And perhaps that was why his next words sounded so cruel.

“What should we do, my brother, with any two-legs who stand in our path as we hunt?”

“Gentlemen. As soon as we find out where the leader is, we go after him at once. Anyone who stands in our way, regardless of rank, position, or citizenship, will be destroyed. Is that understood?”

“Those who don’t smell like our packs, Ragrazrar, we kill. Every one of them.”

***

Reish Orman watched the avalanche of wolves, blazing with snow-white flames, sweep north through the city streets. Some raced down the roads, claws ripping up the asphalt; some leapt from roof to roof; others simply streaked straight along the walls, their paws smashing through the brickwork. Buildings meant to withstand an artillery barrage groaned pitifully under the Anomalies’ tread.

And out in front, riding a wolf, was someone Reish didn’t want to call “Ard.” Ard was human. A very strange one, with the vaguely “not quite here” air everyone expected of brilliant Star mages, but human all the same.

And certainly not a figure frozen somewhere halfway between wolf and man, its gleaming white fur painted with scenes of streams and mountains, of other beasts and forests, of lakes and birds and fish. Like some cave painting come to life.

Eternal Angels, the whole thing sounded ridiculous even in his own head. And yet there it was, real as anything.

In the space of a heartbeat, the wolves were gone, vanished somewhere beyond the edge of sight.

“Adjutant!”

“Yes, General!”

“Send word to the front line. Nobody fires on them.”

“Who’s ‘them,’ sir?”

Reish turned, slowly, to face his adjutant.

“F-forgive me, General.”

“And tell every journalist you can get hold of that an invasion of predatory Anomalies caused the catastrophic malfunction in one of Shamtur’s central generation sections. Then immediately file a request with the Hunters’ Guild to have them trapped. Backdate it. A month and a half or so.”

“But how—”

“Do it!”

“Yes, General!”

The adjutant clicked his heels, saluted, and vanished among the soldiers, who were slowly coming back to their senses. Reish, meanwhile, held out a hand to Major Mshisty. Mshisty caught hold of it and heaved himself to his feet.

They stood side by side in silence for a while.

“Why didn’t you stop him, Tulip?”

“Hm?” Mshisty grunted, puffing his cigar back to life.

“Why didn’t you stop that mage when he reached for the Lamp, Tulip?” Reish barked. “You could have!”

Mshisty glanced sideways at Reish and suddenly smiled. Or rather, bared his teeth in a crazed grin, like a predator catching sight of tempting prey.

“One of these days I’ll stop him, Reish. That son-in-law of yours.” He winked. “One of these days I’ll crush that cocky little upstart like a bug, him and his notions of being the second Aversky. Oh, yes. I’ll break every bone in his body. Burn off a couple of fingers, or a whole limb. Maybe even shatter a Star or two, if he’s sloppy enough to give me an opening. I’ll leave him in such a state that the Eternal Angels themselves will weep over him. But not now. Right now it would be boring. Maybe even shameful, in a way. For me. So, later. After that, I’ll probably open a flower shop. Like my parents’. Because the Light knows I won’t live to see the day someone stronger comes along.”

Mshisty took a drag on his cigar and exhaled a small cloud of smoke. His smile slowly faded, and his face grew a little more drawn.

“Would you mind sending a couple of your boys to dig my staff out of that wall?” he asked politely. “The kid overdid it. Not that I hold it against him, though. Everyone’s nerves are shot.”

“Go to hell, Tulip.”

“Technically,” Mshisty said, looking glumly at the wall, his staff jutting out of it, “that’s exactly where I’m headed.”

He took a step, then another, and stopped. He spoke so quietly that only Reish could hear.

“You stank of weakness today, Reish. If I smell it on you again, I’ll stop calling you my friend. You’re turning into a politician instead of a soldier. And I can’t stand politicians.”

“Go to hell, Tulip,” Reish repeated just as quietly. But Mshisty didn’t hear him; he was already hurrying toward his staff.

Reish stole a glance at his own trembling hand.

“She’s. One. Civilian!”

His heart seemed about to burst from the pain his own words had caused. And from knowing that he was willing to bear that wound. To live with that scar. To save thousands, even hundreds of thousands of people whose lives a single hasty decision could put at risk. So was Mshisty right?

Was Mshisty right?

Or was it exactly the opposite?

It was all the Light’s will.

Tess

Before the pistol went off with a deafening crack, she had time for only one thought.

"Forgive me, Ardi-wizard. I’ll be waiting."

She had no idea what it was like to die. Probably no one did. Except the dead. Not that you could even ask them. But she was certain of one thing: the dead didn’t feel anything. And they were even less likely to feel something dripping onto their faces.

Tess lifted her head and saw a face. Someone else might have said it looked like a wolf’s muzzle. Someone else, but not her. To her it was the most beautiful face there had ever been. She loved every feature. Every strand of fur, every curve of his long fangs, every line of his Alcade markings.

“Ardi…”

His left shoulder had been shot clean through, but he sank into a crouch in front of her and brushed her cheek with his fingers, crooked fingers with more joints than any human hand had a right to, wiping away the blood and the tears.

“Ardi, I’m all right, honest.” She kept nodding. “Everything’s going to be fine. Nothing the doctors can’t fix. So we can head back, okay? Let’s go home. We still need to buy a new icebox. Order the kitchen cabinets. Remember?”

He gazed at her without once looking away. With those enormous amber eyes, their pupils drawn into long slits. He didn’t look like a bear or a snow leopard, the way he had that time on the Tiny Viroeira. The doctor had forbidden him to call on his forest friends for help, after all. The Art of Aean’Hane had made him look this way.

She knew that. Thanks to Ardi’s stories, and thanks, too, to the books she sometimes borrowed from the district library and read on her own to learn more.

She took in the rest, too. She sat tied to a chair in the middle of a half-ruined hangar, a brick wall crumbling before her eyes. All around her, dozens enormous wolves burned with white fire. They held the surviving Fatians pinned to the floor, their jaws open in snarls above them.

Bloodied jaws.

She recognized it: this was what the Art of Atta’nha looked like. This was the magic Ardi had learned from the wise She-Wolf. Tess was deeply grateful and longed to meet her.

“It’s all right,” she repeated. She pressed her cheek into his palm. “Really, darling. It’s all right. Let’s just leave.”

Behind him, an enormous wolf gave an odd roll of its shoulders, twitched its tail, and let out a short growl. Ardan answered in much the same way. She had no idea what they were saying. She didn’t speak the tongue of wild animals.

“Ardi, I…”

A drop of blood broke free from her split lips and fell onto the snow-white fur. She wasn’t quick enough to lick it away. She wasn’t quick enough…

Nothing happened. No thunder, no lightning. No hurricane-force wind, no avalanche of ice to sweep away everything in its path. It seemed as if nothing had happened at all. Only a moment before, an enormous half-wolf, half-man had been crouching there, two and a half meters tall and covered in tribal tattoos. Now there was simply Ardi.

Just Ardi. In his own familiar shape. Wounded, his clothes torn and fused to his body, dark bruises on his shoulders. A perfectly ordinary man. With perfectly ordinary eyes.

Large.

Amber.

And full of hatred.

“Ard!”

He touched her cheek again. She saw his leg break where hers had been broken only a moment ago. Saw his lips crack. Saw his left eye swell shut. Saw cuts open across his arms and torso, some long, others shorter, as if from glass. From glass and asphalt, in fact.

Tess felt the pain ebb, her bones knitting and her skin drawing closed. All the while, her own wounds spread across Ard’s body until she bore no trace of what she’d suffered. Ardan had taken it all on himself.

“Ardi!” she screamed, louder still. But he no longer heard her.

He turned his back on her, gently lifted the staff a hair off the floor, and brought it down with a touch so light it was barely there. Waves rippled outward through the floor around him, as though something had troubled the still surface of a pond.

The wolves’ howling and snarling gave way to anxious whimpering. Then the hangar vanished. Everything vanished. Tess stood in the middle of a snowbound forest. Massive conifers towered around her, their crowns and bark glittering with ice. Snow creaked beneath her feet, and small clouds of vapor slipped from her lips.

She felt neither cold nor afraid. But she knew.

Many who have never set foot in a forest fear predators or hunger, not knowing that their deadliest enemy is the cold. Many who have never set foot in a winter forest fear the cold and the frost, not knowing that their true enemy is the shadows.

A true winter forest stretched all around them, endless, frozen to its roots and caught fast in its most dreadful hour. No stars shone over it. No moon.

“No! No!”

“Help! Somebody help!”

“Oh, Eternal Angels!”

“Mama!”

One by one, the men vanished into the shadows. One dug frantic fingers into the snow, only to find his skin sliding off his limbs. Another tried to grab hold of a tree, but all that was left of him was a pair of hands, frozen fast to the icy bark.

One by one, the Fatians vanished into the shadows along the wolves’ winter hunting trails. Only one wolf stayed at Ard’s side. Only one of the men was still there. Baudi. He shook and wailed, choking on hysterical sobs.

Tess didn’t blame him.

Baudi’s comrades were screaming in the darkness. Screaming the way human beings should never be able to scream. No description of blood running cold or hearts stopping could do those cries justice. Not remotely. Because even words like those leave room for hope.

But here in this winter forest, there was no hope. Only cold. And trails no human eye could see, where the Fatians endured moments of utter despair. Moments that stretched on without end, steeped in bloody horror, when all they could do was pray to the Eternal Angels that it would be over soon.

That the hunters would hurry up and finish their feast.

But they were in no hurry.

No. No hurry at all.

At last, the screams fell silent. And the white wolves came walking out of the shadows once more, blazing bright, the last scraps of their prey burning away in the flames. They bared their teeth, bellies pressed low to the snow, and gathered in a ring around Baudi.

He couldn’t even speak. All he could do was clutch at the snow with frantic fingers as it sliced away his skin and flesh.

Ardan hooked the toe of one ruined shoe under the pistol and nudged it toward Baudi, who snatched up the gun.

“Aaaah!” He finally found the strength, whether within himself or, more likely, in the cool metal in his hand, and started shooting.

The bullets vanished in a scatter of fine snow before they could even reach Ard. The wolves began wheezing and growling, and it sounded for all the world like laughter: gleeful laughter, greedy for flesh and blood.

When the bullets ran out, Baudi looked at the useless chunk of metal and went limp. Ardan swept his free hand through the air, and a blizzard whirled up around Baudi. It yanked him off his feet, bore him obediently over to Ard, and left him hanging in a vortex of snow a meter above the floor.

“What’s your name?” Ardan asked, looking Baudi straight in the eye. His voice was perfectly calm.

“B-b-baud-di Bol-v-ver-di.” Baudi was plainly fighting it, and plainly losing.

Ardan nodded.

“You are in pain, Baudi Bolverdi.”

Baudi’s body didn’t so much as flinch. No agonized convulsions, no fingers bent back, no muscles torn by the strain. Only his eyes clouded over with a faint, murky film.

Tess had no idea how much time had passed. Probably no one else knew either. The wolves growled, deep and hollow, fangs bared, and watched the body hanging in the blizzard with naked hunger. Ard stood facing it just as they did. Though he bore both his own wounds and hers, he took no pleasure at all in Baudi’s pain.

If anything, he was… he was waiting for something.

“K-kill m-me,” Baudi suddenly whispered. “I’m b-beg-ging y-you.”

The wolves shifted from paw to paw. Their growling grew quieter and more muffled, until it began to sound like a chorus of wild voices. Something like:

Ud gar ud

Ud ud!

Adz zag ud

Adz zag!

Ud zad ud!

Ud Ud!

And then, from every pore of Baudi’s body, from beneath his clothes, through his hair and his eyelashes, out of his fingernails and his eyes, droplets of blood began to seep, so small they were barely visible. Forming a scarlet haze, a fleeting mist, they drifted off to one side, away from him.

“No! Don’t!” he screamed, his voice breaking. He finally understood. “Kill me! Do whatever you want to me, you monster! Just don’t touch them!”

Ardan swept his hand, and the blizzard spun Baudi around to face the scarlet haze. So he could see everything. Then Ardan brought his staff down, and hundreds of snow-white wolves slid up out of the earth. No bigger than a small dog, they ranged themselves in packs around their giant companions.

Ardan’s face twitched oddly. He moved his hands slightly and gave a short growl.

The wolves howled, then leaped into the scarlet haze alongside their snowy, spectral kin. They vanished into it without a trace.

Once again, only one of them remained standing beside Ard.

“The choice is yours alone, wife of the Speaker.” The voice came suddenly from above Tess’s head. She looked up and saw the giant white she-wolf who hadn’t left her side the entire time. “Today your husband is weak. And you will have to decide whether your strength is enough for both of you.”

She turned toward the scarlet haze and froze. Within it she saw dozens, hundreds of pools of blood. In each pool she saw wolves appearing in strangers’ houses and apartments, right on the streets, in the fields, sometimes even in latrines.

They bared their teeth and sank their fangs into the men they found there. Tess knew, somehow knew beyond a doubt, that all these men had helped organize the sabotage. Those who had spent years laying dummy cables in Shamtur’s underground systems. Who had taken bribes. Who had turned a blind eye to glaring discrepancies. Who had helped the saboteurs directly by selling them weapons, or had even fought alongside them.

She knew all of it. Just as she knew that this was only the beginning.

She saw wolves appear at someone’s kitchen table. Very far away, it seemed. Perhaps on the coast of Fatia. Children screamed and clung to their bewildered mother; the yard dogs barked themselves hoarse. And the wolves stood there with their fangs bared, facing someone who looked very much like Baudi. Enough like him for her to know it was his brother.

And Tess knew. Knew just as surely that he had nothing to do with any of it. That he was an ordinary farmer. That he tended his livestock and taught his sons to be honest and decent. And that together they’d been planning to put up a new pigpen.

She knew.

Knew that none of it would ever come to pass.

Because wolves awaited them all, teeth bared, ready to lunge for their throats at any moment. Men’s throats, women’s… children’s.

Ardan

Ardan watched through the wolves’ eyes. He drew breath through their nostrils, greedily drinking in the scent of his prey’s fear.

“These wretched creatures, who never knew the first songs, nor how the stars were kindled, nor how the trails were blazed. They simply came and took. Everything we had. Everything we are. They destroyed our sacred lands. They spilled the blood of those who guarded the laws and the old ways. They are a sickness. They are worms poisoning our homeland. They smother the earth in dead stone and try to slash the heavens with claws of steel! Poisonous black smoke rises from their maws… I HATE THEM!”

He had hundreds of paws and thousands of fangs. His breath had turned to winter. In his hand he gripped a shard of his people’s collective memory.

Yes. They’d come to take everything from him. Come to his door to tear his home down to its foundations. But they were wrong. They had no idea who they’d called to their own doorstep.

“Caught you…”

“Father…”

“Goodbye, matabar.”

“Ar…d…an…”

Yes… yes. They’d come before. And he’d been weak. Feeble. He couldn’t do a thing. Only lie there and watch the life drain from his father’s eyes. But that wasn’t true anymore. Even if only for today. Even if only thanks to the strength of an entire pack of Anomalies, it wasn’t true anymore.

If he’d met the Dark One Aean’Hane today, everything would have gone completely differently. But these would do instead: the ones who’d decided they could take something from him.

Wrong.

They were wrong.

Because he was the one who would take everything from them.

“Tear them ap—”

“Let’s go home, my love.” Something very warm and very soft wrapped around him from behind. So cozy. So tender. And so very fragile. “Back to our home. All right?”

No. Focus. He was already struggling to keep the power of the Wolves of Blazing Darkness under control. He had to…

“Damn it, Magister… how old are they?”

“Three to seven… give or take. Some are older, and some… Some are younger…”

“We’ll stroll along the waterfront and eat ice cream.”

“Did you leave any witnesses, Captain?”

“In the excavation pit, there’s… one left.”

“We’ll listen to Bazhen and Arkar argue themselves hoarse. Hear Elena cooing over her daughter while Boris reads his stupid Magical Boxing magazines over and over until the pages fall out. Let’s go back to our friends, Ardi. While we can still look them in the eye.”

“Just don’t confuse a honest person with a good one.”

“Is there a difference?”

“You and I would be enough for each other, Ardi-the-wizard, but… it’s better together, isn’t it? All of us, together.”

Ardan lowered his hand.

The rest of the command never left his lips. As the scarlet haze of Baudi Bolverdi’s Blood Name thinned and melted into the air, the wolves returned. They had bloodied their fangs only on those directly involved in the sabotage. Only them. No one else.

Ardan looked down at Baudi, the Fatian saboteur weeping soundlessly at his feet. He let out a breath, and a shard of winter took Baudi’s last with it.

Was it right? Was it fair that so many people, Imperials and Fatians alike, had died because of the feud between the Empire and Fatia? All because a member of the ruling family of the Principality of Fatia had been kidnapped at just the right moment for the kidnappers, when all eyes were fixed on Congress.

He didn’t know.

Such is the dream of the Sleeping Spirits.

He didn’t want to kill them. Not one of them. Not now, at any rate.

Guta was probably right. If you wander off the path, someone will turn up to bring you back. The only question is: will you listen to what they say? Ardi had listened. Today, he had listened.

“You’re right. Let’s go home, darling.” He turned and caught Tess as she crumpled from exhaustion. He could feel how close he was to crumpling, too. Only Ragrazrar’s flank against his back kept him upright.

“I will carry you back to your lands, my sworn brother. The first time we met, it was because we needed each other. The second, because I’d given you my word and meant to keep it. The third time we meet, it will be because the Great Song has sounded.”

They stood in the middle of the field, with what was left of the demolished hangar scattered all around them.

Ardi didn’t want to do what came next, either. Not now. But he had to.

“I need a little more of your strength, Ragrazrar.”

“Can you bear it?”

“I have no choice. I don’t ever want it to happen like this again. Let them see what will happen to anyone who comes after us.”

“Very well, Speaker. Take it.”

The pack of magical wolves carried the two of them back south. Dozens of ice pillars towered behind them, each several stories high, with bloodied, torn bodies dangling far above the ground, impaled on the pillars’ sharp tips.