Echo North Page 21

  “Jewels from the North Wind’s crown,” says Ivan. “Lost when he traded his power away.” His face grows tight beneath the shadow of his furred hood. “There are many stories that tell of the jeweled ice of the north. A man once sold his soul to take a bit back south with him, only to find on his arrival home that it had melted away. That very night his soul was required of him.”

  I try to shrug away my uneasiness.

  “Some say the Wolf Queen’s magic was born in the ice.”

  An ear-shattering crack resounds across the frozen lake and the ground splinters apart beneath our feet. My heart jolts, and my hand goes unconsciously to my hip, reaching for the pouch and the binding threads that aren’t there. Ivan is jerked away from me.

  “IVAN!” I lunge after him as he skids into a riven in the ice. Black water tugs him under but I plunge my hand in up to the armpit and my fingers close around his. I pull, I strain, I scream, and he’s fighting, too, desperate to break the surface of the water. At last he does, gasping for air. I reach for his pick, mercifully left above ground, and dig it deep into the ice. I wrap my other hand tight around Ivan’s arm, and pull.

  It feels like my arm is being ripped from my body, but I don’t let go. For one terrifying moment I think I’ve lost him, but then he’s scrambling back onto the ice, gasping for breath. His body shakes with violent cold—if I don’t get him warm, pulling him from the water will have been in vain, and the Wolf Queen will have won.

  I tug Ivan as far as I can away from the gash in the lake, back onto solid ice, and scramble about for the last of our firewood, scattered from Ivan’s pack.

  His skin is turning gray, he’s mumbling to himself, rocking back and forth, shuddering. I strike flint against tinder and coax a fire onto the wood, shoving Ivan as close to it as I can. I make him strip off his outer layer of furs, which are soaked through, and wrap him in our sleeping furs. The day is already waning, and I can tell by the clouds more snow is on the way. We’re nearly out of wood. More laughter shrieks with the wind over the ice. It would take very little for the Wolf Queen to kill us now.

  I scramble for the sewing kit from my pack and do a hasty job of repairing the tent, thinking once more of the golden needle and thimble, lost somewhere in the ruins of the house under the mountain. Ivan starts to look less gray and breathes more easily. Already the fire burns low.

  The sun begins to set, and I scatter the ashes of the fire to conserve what wood we can, then set up the tent. We crawl inside. I make Ivan tell me stories until I’m certain he is warm again; only then do I let him lie back on his furs.

  Ivan sleeps, murmuring and shifting where he lies, and I stare at the canvas above, terrified to fall asleep lest the Wolf Queen cause another crack to open wide and swallow us whole. Hal would never know that I had tried to come and save him.

  So I lie awake, listening to every sound outside the tent, certain I hear howling that doesn’t belong to the wind.

  The howling sharpens, drawing near. I jerk upright. Wolves, coming fast over the ice.

  “Ivan!” I reach across the tent floor to grab his shoulder. “Ivan!”

  The next moment something hits the sides of the tent and bursts through my hasty stitching job. There’s a flash of eyes in the dark, angry snarling, the scent of wet fur and fresh blood.

  “Ivan!” I scream.

  He wakes with a gasp, wrestling to extricate himself from the furs. His hand closes about the ice pick, while I reach for the knife at my belt. The tent pole could be a makeshift sword, if I can reach it in time.

  The tent rips apart even further, and moonlight floods in, reflecting off the surface of the ice. Wolves circle us, foam dripping from their bone-white teeth. Their fur is a mottled black and red and gray; their yellow eyes are sharp with rage, with death. Silver collars and flashing gems in their muzzles mark them as soldiers of the Wolf Queen. She’s sent them to finish us off.

  Ivan gives me an almost imperceptible nod, and I rip my knife from its sheath and plunge it into the wolf nearest me. It yelps and goes limp and I tear the blade from its body and turn my attention to the next.

  The storyteller wields his pick, and the acrid scent of blood grows stronger.

  I stab another wolf, and find my moment to wrench the tent pole out of its socket. Canvas collapses on us and Ivan and I fight free, out onto the ice, where more wolves are waiting.

  They attack in a blur of teeth and eyes, and all at once I’m back in the bauble room, raising my sword against my white wolf—against Hal. I see the blood burst bright against his fur.

  Pain comes roaring through my shoulder, and I’m jerked back to the present, crying out and stabbing at the wolf who has bitten me. But he evades my makeshift sword and I’m left nearly crippled with pain. Ivan is suddenly beside me, tugging me up, waving his pick like a scythe to any wolf that gets close.

  “RUN!” Ivan roars in my ear, and we do, skidding and sliding across the ice, for we’ve left our spiked boots in the tent.

  The wolves lend chase, yelping angrily, and somewhere in my pain-bleared mind I realize the direction Ivan is leading us.

  It’s both closer and wider than I think. In the space of mere heartbeats we reach the crack in the ice, and Ivan squeezes my hand and I catch my breath and throw all my strength into leaping across. I reach the other side and fall, landing painfully on one knee, then look back to see the wolves on the far side, snarling with hatred.

  Ivan tugs me to my feet. “They loathe the water, but they’ll find a way around. We have to go. Now.”

  I take a shaky breath and we run as best as we can on the slick surface, helping each other up when we fall, urging one another on and on.

  Behind us, the wolves’ howls tangle up with the wind, and I glance back to see their numbers have somehow swelled—a dozen or more are coming fast across the ice, their black coats stark in the moonlight.

  A sheer wall of ice rises suddenly before us, a cavern tunneling into it. We’ve come, at long last, to the end of the frozen lake.

  Ivan pulls me into the cave. Cool, dank darkness swallows us, but I have no illusion of safety.

  “What are we going to do?” I gasp.

  His eyes track the rapidly approaching wolves, his mouth set and grim. “Get behind me.”

  “Ivan—”

  “Stay back.” He crouches down, his body filling up the opening of the cavern. But he has no weapon, having dropped his pick somewhere on the ice.

  The wolves hurtle closer.

  Ivan starts singing, a haunting melody filled with words I do not know. They slip through the air like my binding needle, shimmering with power.

  The ground begins to shake. Ivan’s song grows louder.

  The wolves leap toward us. Huge chunks of ice cascade down on top of them, sealing the mouth of the cave and plunging us into utter darkness. The wolves howl and shriek; I can hear them, digging.

  Fear paralyzes me. “We’re trapped.”

  “No, we’re not. These are the ice caves. We just have to find a path through them. Come on.”

  We stumble together into the blackness. I try not to hear the sound of the wolves’ continued digging; I try not to give in to the horror of the dark. Ivan is solid beside me. Certain.

  “Do you still have that tent pole?” he asks.

  I hand him my makeshift sword and he snaps it in two, singing a fragment of his earlier song. Flame sparks out of nothing, catching each half of the wooden pole. He gives me one and keeps the other for himself, a smile touching his lips.

  I peer at Ivan strangely but he avoids my gaze. For the first time in our weeks-long journey, I realize there is more to him than meets the eye.

  We walk quickly, my ears straining always to hear sound of the wolves’ pursuit behind us. The cavern is immense, sprawling out in an impossible maze of interconnected caves, all of them beautiful, as if carved by a fairy artist with a magical knife. Strange ice formations overarch our heads like the meringue peaks that top Donia’s pies. Ice runs c
onstant beneath our feet, and I wonder if it is ever warm enough to melt into a raging river. Magic shivers in every fiber of the caverns; I sense it all around me.

  I sense it in Ivan, too. He walks before me, holding his torch high, and I almost feel like we’re dancing in the strange shadows his light casts. I begin to imagine we are shadows, that we died in the ice last night and are journeying to the afterlife.

  “Are these caverns natural?” I ask him, to distract myself from the howls echoing distantly behind us.

  He casts a glance back at me. “The North Wind made them.”

  “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.

&nbs
p; 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.

  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.