Circle of Shadows (Circle of Shadows, #1)(29)

Hours later, they reached the canyon floor. They were dusty and sweaty, and their legs ached from holding tight against their saddles during the climb down. Sora dismounted first, just outside the strange log walls. Most remained in place, but a twenty-foot length of it had been eased open like massive doors.

Sora ran her fingers between two of the logs until she reached the corner, where it hinged out from the rest of the fortifications. “There’s nothing holding them together. No mud or other daubing between the wood, and no notches to lock the logs into place. It’s as if they’re just . . . balanced on top of one another.”

“Magic?” Daemon asked.

She shook her head. “I don’t know.”

Daemon kneeled into the dirt. “Add something else to our list of this camp’s strangeness—there aren’t hoofprints or wheel ruts here. It looks like they opened the log wall in order to leave and then rolled out in something giant.”

Sora bent to examine the dried mud. The ground had, indeed, been flattened by something wider than a cart or carriage. “Or maybe they marched and rode out of here like normal but had something follow them to erase their footprints?”

“Why would that matter? We could still follow the path crushed by . . .” Daemon’s voice trailed off as he looked in the direction of the path. It disappeared just a stone’s throw away from the logs, as if no one had been here at all. “So much for that theory.” He chewed on his lip, puzzled.

“Let’s go through the camp to see if there are any other clues,” Sora said.

They walked slowly through the site. Where there had been crimson tents last time, now there was emptiness, not even a stray stake left unpacked. Despite the Paro Village taigas’ report, there was no trash left behind, besides some horse dung in the area that had been their stables. And other than a handful of tree trunks that had been sliced a bit too cleanly, as if a sword had glided through them rather than a saw, there was no indication that magic of any sort—green fire or otherwise—had been here.

Sora and Daemon stood in the middle of the campsite, completely flummoxed.

A howl sounded at the edge of the forest, too close to the campsite. Sora froze.

Another howl responded. Then another and another.

The wolves were surrounding the camp.

“I don’t like the sound of that,” Sora whispered, drawing her sword and placing her back at his so they could fight attacks from both sides.

But Daemon hadn’t drawn his bo or any of his other weapons. Instead, he tilted his head up to the sky and belted out his own howl.

Sora whirled around, eyes wide. Her terror shivered through their gemina bond.

Daemon put a hand on her arm to calm her. “The wolves were issuing a warning to us.”

“I figured that out,” she said, “which is why I have my sword out. Why aren’t you armed? Why are you howling and letting the wolves know precisely where we are?” She shook her arm free from his grip and began to pace in an arc again, ready for an attack.

“Because they aren’t after us,” Daemon said. “They’re trying to warn us against the ones who were here before.”

She lowered her sword. Daemon often downplayed his ability to communicate with wolves—he called his language skills “rudimentary eating and fighting words,” since that’s pretty much all he remembered from his wolf cub days—but Sora thought he sold himself short. Other taiga apprentices might have been better at magic, but how many of them could be left in the wild for years—or even weeks—and survive alongside predators like the wolves, bears, and cougars of Takish Gorge? Not many.

Sora watched as he tilted his head up and let out another cry, his eyes closed and lashes fluttering as he poured himself into his past self, lost for a minute from this world. He usually kept his wildness stashed away, but in moments like these, Sora saw his true essence, and she swelled with pride. She also, irrationally, felt safer, knowing that her gemina had this ferociousness in him. She silently thanked Luna for bonding her with Daemon.

The wolves streamed in now from the surrounding parts of the canyon, into the center of camp. They were all colors—gray and black and snowy white—and their leader was a mottled brown, grizzled and scarred from winning his place at the top of the pack. The muscles beneath his fur heaved, fierce and taut, and he bared his fangs as he growled, teeth shiny and sharp in the sunlight.

Daemon crouched on all fours and bowed his head in submission. Sora mimicked him.

The alpha wolf barked.

Daemon lifted his head, growled, and barked in return. Despite living as a civilized human for thirteen years, he still seemed surprisingly at home in the company of wolves.

“What are you saying?” Sora asked.

“Shh,” Daemon said, as the wolf answered. They exchanged a few more rounds of barking and guttural growling. The effect echoed through Sora’s gemina bond, and she felt the rumble deep in her core.

Daemon finally turned to her. “I don’t understand everything he’s telling me, but from what I can gather, the people in the camp could do a lot more than turn a bonfire green. The wolf said the log fortifications were built in less than a day. Trees were ripped from the forest throughout the canyon and then flew through the air here.”

“Flew through the air?” Sora said.

“Yeah. He also said something about giant balls rolling out of the camp . . . they were made of ice and fire and . . . something about insects?”