I had to save Calder.
Nineteen
Wolves
The temperature inside the woods dropped immediately, shivering along my arms. I broke into a run, calling Calder’s name, my energy leaking out of my skin, desperately searching for the heat of his. I remembered what it smelled like, what it tasted like. I was searching for fire in a frozen place, for a blazing light beating against a smothering dark. The vegetation was thick. Thorny vines entangled my arms and legs as I forced my way through. I could hear the whispering of the woods. It sounded like twigs snapping and snow crackling. It was a sound made deafening by a backdrop of silence, because nothing else seemed to live within its clasp.
I came across no animals, or bubbling streams of fish. It consisted of relentless scrub and towering trees, snagging vines, and a decomposing carpet of leaves. I was the only light in that place of impossible, prospering decay—other than the occasional bolts of lightning that sliced across the sky. I wondered if they were causing fires where they struck, and whether those fires would last in the perpetual darkness. The forest floor seemed damp, mud crawling over my boots. I paused every hour or so to tighten my face wrappings, but otherwise didn’t stop at all.
I checked the timepiece as my limbs began to tire. When I saw that almost twelve hours had passed, I stopped dead in my tracks, disbelief gripping me. I was about to take another step when I heard a call through the trees. Another bolt of lightning shot boldly through the sky, the deafening sound ringing in my ears. I didn’t dare move as the light faded away, my ears straining for the sound again.
“Calder!” I shouted when the eerie silence of the forest persisted.
I started running again, leaping over fallen logs and pushing through brambles, my ears straining. After some time, I heard it again, and I stopped. It was closer. I followed the sound, but it seemed to be coming toward me. It was the bellow of a man in pain, shouted out into the sky.
Calder.
I scrambled around, trying to figure out which direction the shouting was coming from. It seemed to be right on top of me, battering against my head with horrible wings of sound. He roared—a cry filled with so much agony that there was no other explanation: the Vilwood was torturing him.
I screamed back at him, but he couldn’t hear me, and I eventually fell to my knees, my arms wrapped around my head.
“Where are you?” I cried, rocking back and forth. He should have been right there.
And that was when I remembered how it had felt when Andel had cracked my head open, forcing me to listen to my mother’s screams. I quickly wiped my tears, catching sight of the vines that had crept across the forest floor to tangle about my boots. I surged up, stepping away from them, horror mounting in the back of my mind. I started running again, calling on my Vold magic to lead me in the right direction, to make sure I didn’t get turned around and start running back the way I had come. I had been zigzagging from the northern side of the Vilwood to the southern side, hoping Calder had slipped into it at the same point as me. I knew that the further I went, the less chance I had of finding him, as he was only travelling in one direction, but I wasn’t going to give up.
Vale had said that the Darkness would take control of him, but Vale was disregarding Calder’s own strength, and the man was strong. He had fought against the Darkness alone in Forsjaether, persisting in an empty world with all the evil of another world living inside him.
I continued to search for his energy, but eventually realised I was only wasting my own. I slowed my run to a jog but didn’t dare stop completely. I must have been draining my reserves of energy—there was no way I could have run for over twelve hours without the assistance of the Vold magic … and yet, when I peered inside myself, I found only a fount of power, begging to be used.
Andel had been right.
I stopped again, skidding against the forest floor.
I was stronger.
I thought of the incantation Calder had used while training me for my battle with Helki, searching for the word I had heard him utter on more than one occasion.
“Braen,” I shouted, throwing every ounce of my strength behind the word, my hands extended.
Fire burst into being all around me, briefly piercing, before the darkness began to beat it away. I closed my eyes, whispering the word again and again, until I could feel the battering of heat from every direction. I opened my eyes, watching the vines burn away as they tried to slither toward me. The fire rose high, licking onto the trunks of the trees, devouring everything in its path. I watched it race towards me and quickly kicked away the dead leaves until I stood in a bare, muddy circle. The fire licked happily against the ground, only really growing as it peeled away the bark from the trees, escaping into the core beneath. I watched as the flames brightened the sky, smoke billowing up into the air.
I had to trust in Calder, the way Vale didn’t.
I had to trust he would fight off the hold of the Darkness and find his way back to me, the way he had before.
I pulled my backpack around to my front, slipping the bladder of water beneath my face covering and taking a measured sip. The food was mostly strips of dried fruits and meats, as well as a small circle of cheese wrapped in paper. I ate a little, fighting off the chill of the air now that I was no longer moving. It must have been a strong cold, to pierce the heat of the fire surrounding me.
The longer I stood still, the more the Vilwood seemed to change around me. I tried to ignore it, hoping it was a trick of the mind, but I couldn’t really be sure that the shifting shapes stalking on the outside of my circle of flames weren’t real. At first, I had mistaken their glowing red eyes for embers floating above the flames, but then the beasts swelled larger, and I could suddenly smell their putrid breath drifting towards me.
I drew the dagger out of my backpack, standing ready with it in front of me, turning slowly as the beasts surrounded me. I caught sight of something else moving toward me. A huge warrior, golden lines drawn across the skin of his chest.
“Stop!” I shouted, needing to warn Calder about the beasts, but he didn’t stop. He walked right past them, approaching the flames … and that was when they attacked.
They dragged him back, tearing him apart in front of my eyes. I started to run toward them, but stopped, reasoning with myself.
Calder would never turn his back on such a monstrous beast.
I forced myself to return to my circle of mud, realising they were trying to draw me out, past the fire and into the darkness. I tied the knife’s sheath against my leg, sliding the blade back into it, still watching those glowing red eyes carefully. Calder appeared again, from another direction—but this time, Frey was beside him. They stared toward me and I was unable to hold back my shout again, even though I knew it wasn’t real. I watched the beasts tear them apart, and then I watched them reappear again, Bjern in tow. I tightened my hands into fists, my nails drawing blood, my limbs trembling as it happened again. Soon, it was all of them. Everyone I cared about. Calder, Frey, Bjern, Sig, and Herra.
I was shaking when it ended, tears burning a path down my cheeks, but it didn’t really end there. This time, someone stepped inside the circle, and I barely managed to stop myself from stumbling back. A second form joined the first, and then a third, a fourth and a fifth. They were giants, shrouded in power.