The trail is steep and makes my breath come in sharp gasps, but the path is clear: a dirt track winding ever upward, lined on both sides by stately, ancient pines. Sunlight glints through the boughs, but after a while the branches grow thick and close over my head, and the light is blocked out. I am the only thing that stirs on the wooded path, or anywhere near it—no birds in the trees, no animals in the underbrush. After a time, there isn’t even the barest breath of wind. With every step I take I feel the trees watching me, listening, wary of my presence but not alarmed.
She knows, I think, fear pulsing sharp. The Wolf Queen knows I’m coming.
I have climbed for a little more than an hour when the path spills unexpectedly over a ridge and comes to an end. The wood spreads out before me, more wild and ancient than the trees observing my ascent. But here there are neat stone paths, twisting away among the forest, and bright red flowers peering over the stones that smell of honey and fire. A glitter of light sparks on a tree branch, and then it winks out and my eyes are drawn to another tree, another glitter. The sparks are everywhere, blinking on and off amongst the pine boughs, and I wonder if this is what Hal meant by the trees being hung with stars.
I step into the ancient forest, pulling the compass-watch out from under my shirt. The hands of the clock are now spinning madly, as are the compass needles. This place clearly cannot be understood by Rodya’s careful mechanism.
I choose one of the stone paths that seems to wind gradually upward, and my felted shoes make almost no noise as I walk. Shadows flash past me. The red flowers nod and wave, though there is still no wind, and I get the distinct feeling that the glints in the trees are laughing at me.
Two shadows jerk across my path from either side: a pair of wolves who stand as high as my chest, growling and barring my way. Both have dark gray brindled fur and the Wolf Queen’s silver collars. My hand closes once more around the compass-watch, seeking comfort in its familiar shape.
“Let me pass.” My voice is overloud in the unnatural stillness of the wood.
The wolves clamp their jaws down on my arms and drag me forward, astonishingly fast. I stumble trying to keep up with them. The wood passes in a blur; the chatter of the tree sparks grows louder. I wish my hands were free so I could clap them over my ears and block out the noise.
As the wolves pull me deeper into the forest, the pines become tangled with other trees, elms and oaks and aspens, until the pines disappear altogether. The ground rises steadily upward, and it grows increasingly more difficult to catch my breath. The light dims as if we’re approaching night, though I know it can’t be more than an hour or two past dawn—can it? The glints in the trees illuminate our way.
We come to a break in the wood, step into the clearing I know so well from my dream. Starlight burns cold overhead, and the unnatural hush redoubles. Here is the hall of twining trees: the Wolf Queen’s court.
The wolf guards drag me on, across the clearing to a door in the hall.
Two other wolves stand guard here, their eyes flashing as my guards bark at them in their strange language.
The new guards step aside, pulling the door open with a creak and snap of twigs, and simultaneously my arms are released and I feel teeth at my back, propelling me forward. Pain makes my head spin. There’s a blur of light. Silent dark shapes sit on one end of the clearing, and the scent of honey and fire is stronger than before. There’s a thin, eerie music. Starlight.
I’m forced onward, and my vision clears. Beyond the trees the moon is rising, a huge disc of white silver.
“Hello, Echo,” says a voice at my ear.
I look up into a large pair of violet eyes that I know very well, even though I’ve never seen them set in this face.
“Mokosh,” I whisper. I can’t help but stare. She’s very like her mother, the same furred hands and moon-silver hair, but her head is almost entirely lupine, those eyes her only human feature. She wears a gold breastplate and wrist guards over a thin gown the same color as her hair; two pale, human feet peek out from underneath it. There’s a sword at her hip. “I will escort her from here,” she growls at the guards. And then to me: “It’s time you met my mother.”
She strides forward and I stumble after her.
The dark shapes on the edge of the clearing focus into a maze of thrones, occupied by cold figures I realize with horror are people, or what used to be people. We pace through them, and it takes everything I have to keep from being sick. All of them are dead, heads tilted forward or to the side, vines coiling tight around them, eyes staring vacantly into nothingness. Some are little more than brittle bones, some just dust in scraps of cloth. There are hundreds of them, both young and old, men and women. Every one has a crown on their head.
This is Hal’s fate, and mine, if I fail.
Mokosh doesn’t even glance their way.
Beyond the sea of thrones is a group of—I can only call them children. They run on two legs and some have human feet and hands and faces, but the rest of them is wolf: ears and snouts, flashing teeth and flagging tails. I get the feeling they’re Mokosh’s siblings. They run back and forth, howling and laughing, carrying a long vine between them that bursts with those red flowers. They weave the vine around themselves as they run, and the vine looks to have a life all its own, an evil, vicious snake.
Mokosh growls as we approach, and suddenly we’re caught in the midst of their frantic, teeming ranks. They coil the vine tight around us, the red flowers catching at my sleeves and my ankles, hidden barbs stinging like wasps.
“Get off!” Mokosh barks. “Wretches, get off!” She pushes them away, none too gently, and they yip and whine and let us pass, shedding flowers like red snow in their wake. Tension pulls tight between Mokosh’s shoulders.
I forget how to breathe.
Ten paces in front of us stand three more thrones. Two of them are empty.
But on the third throne, a circlet of gold pressed onto his hair, sits Hal.
The sight of him pierces through me, as cold and sharp as the wind over the frozen lake. He is worn and thin and filthy. There are bruises on his face and a small, angry scar on his right cheek, like—
Like the burn from a spot of oil.
He is chained to the throne, a silver band around his throat, matching manacles on his wrists and ankles. He doesn’t speak. He doesn’t even look at me.
I am sorrow and rage and hope. My fire burns brighter than the Wolf Queen behind my bedroom door.
I found him.
And now I will save him.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
SO, ECHO ALKAEV. YOU HAVE FOUND your way to my wood.” The Wolf Queen’s voice resonates behind me, clear and cold and brittle as ice.
She sweeps past me and Mokosh to settle on the central throne and I let my eyes follow her. This throne is the largest, made of twining vines and tree branches, more of those red flowers blooming bright from its edges. She looks the same as she did in my dreams, silver hair and clawed hands, angular face and lupine ears. She looks more human than her daughter, but Mokosh is more beautiful.
I look her square in the eye, and hold fiercely to my fire. “I have come to free Hal.”
She regards me with a cool indifference, and the scent of the red flowers growing from her throne burns strong. It’s cloying, too sweet. It chokes me. “Free him? He dwells willingly in my court, according to the terms of our agreement.”
“Is that why you’ve bound him where he sits?”
I don’t take my eyes from the Wolf Queen’s—I don’t dare—but I can feel Hal watching me, and it gives me strength.
“He will be more than willing when his time is fulfilled, and that is soon now. Quite soon. I am surprised you have gotten here before it expired.”
“I came on the back of the North Wind.”
“If that were true you would have gotten here faster.” She taps her clawed fingers against the arms of her throne. “But I fear your journey has been in vain. I cannot release him, and even if I could I would not. You are human. Frail. You have nothing to offer me.” Mokosh grunts, throwing me one swift, piercing glance, before going to sit on the third throne, tension in every line of her body. For the first time, I wonder what deal she made with her mother, what she could possibly want so badly she would barter her life away to get it.