“Why?”
His eyes look deep and dark, and suddenly very ancient. “To keep the Wolf Queen’s court guarded from the world outside. We are close now, Echo. Very close.”
The howling grows louder, and I don’t think I imagine the sound of claws clacking against the ice. I droop with weariness, and Ivan touches my arm. “Stop and rest awhile. I will stand watch.”
“But the wolves—”
“I will stand watch,” he repeats.
I am far too tired to argue with him further, so I lay my head down on my coat, and slip into dark dreams.
Mokosh watches me from the wood, sipping tea from a chipped china cup. Her face is drawn and sad. “Time is almost up, Echo. My mother will prevail, and your journey will be for nothing. You should not have come.”
“Why are you doing this?” I whisper. “I thought you were my friend.”
“I am your friend, Echo. I didn’t mean to be. But I grew fond of our adventures together—I grew fond of you. That’s why I’m trying to warn you. I cannot cross my mother. I made a deal with her, to watch you, to make sure you didn’t get too close to the truth. You have to turn back. It is the only way.”
“I’m coming to get Hal.”
“You can’t free him. He made a deal with the Queen of the Wood. Nothing can break that.”
Coldness sears through me. “The old magic can.”
The dream shifts. The Wolf Queen’s laughter pours through the dark, and Hal stands suddenly before me in a shaft of moonlight. But it is not the Hal I know. His mouth twists with cruelty. He draws a dagger and slices into my face. Blood pours hot. Pain burns. But understanding runs deep.
I know how to free him.
When I wake, Ivan is holding his torch high, the flames dancing violet and white and blue. Beyond the reach of the light a dozen pairs of eyes gleam orange—the wolves, crouching in the shadows, watching us. Waiting.
“Ivan,” I gasp.
“I will not let them harm us.”
“But how—”
He speaks a sharp, unfamiliar word, and a gust of strong wind comes whistling through the cave. The wolves yelp and whine, shrinking back from him.
“What are you?” I whisper.
His hand tightens around the torch. “It seems I am a man with a little magic left. We’ll have to run. Can you?”
“Yes.”
He gives me one sharp nod.
I take a breath.
He hurls the torch behind us; it explodes in a shower of fire and we break into a run, dashing headlong into darkness. The wolves scream, and the awful stench of burning fur rises strong on the air. Ivan whistles three long notes. Light sparks in the air ahead of us, illuminating our way. Our feet slap hard against the frozen ground.
I don’t dare glance back—I don’t need to. Claws dig into the ice and teeth snap just behind my heels.
Ivan grabs my arm and we run faster, gaining ground from our pursuers as ice rains down around our heads.
My lungs scream for air. My feet stumble and slide—if not for Ivan, I would fall and be devoured.
All at once we burst out of the ice caves into open air. Stars burn bright and cold above; the whole sky glows an eerie, shifting green.
Ivan gives a shout, clapping his hands together, and a strong wind comes gusting past me. The caves shake, huge pieces of ice and earth breaking off, tumbling down, just as the wolves leap through the opening after us.
The wind whirls round Ivan; he gathers it up, holds it in his hands. He stares at it for a moment with a kind of wild joy, and then a hardness comes into his face and he hurls it at the wolves. They’re knocked backward into the cave, and with one downward jerk of his hands, Ivan pulls the entire cavern down on them in a roar of rock and ice.
He turns toward me, a fierce power shining in his eyes.
I gape at him.
He smiles, nods past me. “Look where we are, Echo.”
I turn to see a mountain soaring straight up into the sky. It’s thick with pine trees, and stars glimmer amidst their branches like jewels.
I stare and stare. “Where the mountain meets the sky,” I whisper.
“And the trees are hung with stars,” says Ivan soft beside me.
I look into his weathered face, and my heart seizes as I realize something. “You’re not coming with me.”
“I have been to the Wolf Queen’s court before. I cannot go back—the deal I made with her will be null if I appear again before her throne.”
Somehow, this doesn’t surprise me. Once more I see the ancientness in his eyes. “What deal did you make with her?”
“I, too, loved a woman. I traded my power to the Wolf Queen in exchange for humanity. Mortality.”
“You are the North Wind.”
He smiles a little sadly. “I am. Or was, long ago, before my deal with the Wolf Queen bound me in a human body and stranded Isidor and I both in a time that was not our own. But it seems the Queen did not take all my power, or else it creeps back to me, so close to her as we are now. I chose to please myself. I chose love. But in doing so I gave her greater capacity for evil than she possessed before. I have wanted to help you since you first told me your story. So you might defeat her, and undo what I set in motion long ago.”
I think of Isidor and Satu. I think of Hal. I would have done the same in Ivan’s place.
“I will wait for you at the base of the mountain for three weeks, and if you do not return by then, I must leave you to your fate, and go and find my Isidor and Satu again.”
I nod, my vision blearing.
“I cannot go with you, but I will not leave you powerless. Call upon the Winds if you need them, Echo Alkaev. Call upon my brothers: East and West and South. I have done my part in atoning for my mistake by bringing you here. They can help you now.”
I feel the truth in his words, a breath of air coiling gently past my cheek. “Thank you.”
“You are very welcome, my dear girl.” He tilts his head sideways and gives me a sudden quirk of a smile. “I’m glad you liked them.”
“Liked what?”
“The books. The library.”
I gape. “You made the library?”
Laughter sparks in his eyes. “I enchanted the books when I was the North Wind long ago. I was lonely in the Palace of the Moon, and I collected the stories of men and made them into something more. I put them all in a marvelous library, and there I lived out a thousand lives never meant for me. I brought Isidor there in the old days, before I traded my powers away. The Wolf Queen must have found the library when she stole my power. I thought it was lost forever.”
“You have always been a storyteller.”
He laughs softly. “I suppose I have.”
I sober, gripped by a strong sense of urgency. “Take my story back with you. Give it a happy ending.”
He smiles, and reaches out one brown finger to graze my cheek. “I will give it the happiest of all endings, Echo who braved the North. God and grace and all good cheer go with you.”
I hug him tight. “Farewell, North Wind.”
He bows to me, very low, as if I am a queen.
And then I turn and start up the mountain, alone.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
THE WIND IS WARM ON THE mountain, the scent of earth and dew and leaves strong and sweet. But there is a darkness, too, some acrid tang of fear or death that makes me shudder as I climb.
Morning awakes glimmer by glimmer around me. The cold slips away and I discard my coat, laying it over a rock to retrieve upon my return, if there is one. I try not to think about that, or the fact that the North Wind will only wait three weeks. And then I think how odd it is that I have journeyed so far with a Wind and not found it strange.