Page 88 of Echo North

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, getoff!” 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, ECHOALKAEV. YOU HAVE FOUNDyour 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.”

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