Echo North(70)

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.

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.”