The Rise of the Fire Moon

  ***

  They awoke in the dead of night to strings of unearthly wails. Tir lurched out of his shuddering state of half-sleep as though he had been electrified, every single hair standing on end. Wrenching, blood-curdling shrieks rang from the dark spaces outside of the redoubt, and Tir ran out from the shelter of his den in a flood of panic. He could hear shouts as the rest of the pack awoke, all frightened and confused by the horrible sound.

  Tir stumbled out into the redoubt main just in time to see Raatri burst out from the tall grass. He seemed to have lost his mind. His green eyes were wide and staring as those of a dead animal. A livid red slash cut like a dripping ribbon across his side, and he was screaming as though he were being burned alive.

  Tir recoiled, frightened. Raatri was nearly unrecognizable. His face was stretched and contorted with paralyzing terror, and he stumbled into the center of the redoubt to collapse onto the ground, still wailing a strange, shrill wail that seemed to waver in and out of Tir’s hearing.

  “Raatri! Raatri! What happened?”

  A grey she-wolf Tir knew to be a Sentinel named Salka ran over to the tormented Raatri and attempted to comfort him. He drew back from her approach, eyes glassy and wide, like those of a creature already dead.

  “NO!” he howled in his thin, eerie voice. Tir shivered. “NO—get back; I can’t see; I can’t see!”

  “I’m not going to hurt you, Raatri,” Salka said. “What happened to you?”

  Raatri didn’t answer; he emitted another wordless wail.

  “Raatri! Raatri!” Salka nudged him, almost knocking him over.

  “The shadows—something was there!” he gasped. “It—it was in the shadows, and it came, and it…it ripped us. It was everywhere, all over, there were millions of them, swarming around us, and I couldn’t see, I couldn’t see, I—”

  “But what happened, Raatri? Raatri, where’s Yielsa?”

  Raatri choked mid-sentence, and dissolved into his shrill, gurgling wails that Tir was quite sure no wolf should be able to produce.

  “THEY TOOK HER! HER BLOOD WAS EVERYWHERE—DRAINED! DRAINED IT ALL! HER BLOOD IS GONE AND DRAINED AWAY!”

  There was a horrified silence, and Raatri collapsed into convulsing sobs.

  “Someone go find Alpha Liyra,” Salka said, her voice quivering.

  In a moment, Alpha Liyra came bustling into the redoubt clearing, looking frantic.

  “What’s wrong with Raatri?” she demanded.

  “I—I don’t know,” Salka said. “He’s not making any sense.”

  Liyra padded over to Raatri, who was shivering in a knot on the ground.

  “Everything’s fine now, Raatri,” she said. “You’re safe.”

  “NO! NO, I’M NOT! THEY’RE COMING—THEY’LL COME HERE! THEY’LL TEAR ALL OF US! I—CAN’T—GO!”

  Raatri leapt up and made a desperate movement as though to run away, but Liyra snatched him by the scruff of the neck and pulled him back.

  “I’m sure you have seen something terrible,” she said, trying to sound kind as she forced him back into something of a seated position. “But could you tell us what it is?”

  Raatri silenced, looking up at her with widened, glassy eyes.

  “It isn’t anything,” he whispered. His voice was hoarse and ragged. “It was just a shadow—and then it wasn’t. It was everywhere, with claws and fangs and I couldn’t see, I couldn’t see, I—”

  “Now now,” said Liyra patiently. “That does not make sense. Can you tell us what attacked you?”

  “A shadow. An awful white shadow. A wolf, with movements in the dark and something screaming, something—a—a shadow.”

  Liyra looked up, glancing around the redoubt main at the rest of the silent, watchful pack. They had all exchanged uneasy glances, and the air began to buzz with their confused muttering. Raatri stood back up, his eyes wild.

  “MURDERERS! MURDERERS! I’LL SHARPEN MY CLAWS ON YOUR BONES! THE RIVER WILL RUN RED WITH YOUR BLOOD! I’LL FEED YOUR EYES—”

  “Raatri!” Liyra shouted. “Stop! What are you doing?”

  “I’LL OPEN YOUR THROATS, CARRION-EATERS! I WILL WATER THE GRASS WITH YOUR BLOOD!”

  Liyra backed away. Raatri seemed to have gone insane; he was pacing and spitting on the ground, screaming horrible things. Over the din, Mluma spoke from the corner of the redoubt where she was crouched; she had to repeat herself several times before Liyra heard her.

  “That’s what the renegade said,” she whispered. Her voice was eerily serene.

  Liyra stared at her and then whipped around and pulled Raatri towards her, shoving him to a seated position. He stopped shouting and blinked, as though confused.

  “Raatri!” Liyra said. “Does this have something to do with the renegade?”

  Raatri whimpered and cowered on the ground.

  “Did the renegade attack you?” Liyra persisted.

  “Attack,” he repeated dizzily. He was nodding with a nauseating rhythm, his voice rising and falling. Tir felt as though a claw were being drawn along the length of his spine—he wanted to close his ears as Raatri’s voice spiraled back up into wails. “ATTACK. Attack, and the shadows, the—the—I saw none of it; I couldn’t see; I COULDN’T SEE, AND WE RAN, WE RAN—”

  “We?” Liyra said, sounding sick. Then she jumped as she realized what he meant, fur standing on end. “No! Raatri, where’s Yielsa?”

  Raatri’s wails died down, and he began to speak in a terrified whisper, as though afraid of being overheard.

  “Gone, all gone. She made a sound and they turned her into blood.”

  A shocked silence filled the air, and horror was in the eyes of every wolf in the clearing. At last, Liyra spoke in a shaking voice.

  “That can’t be true,” she said. “He is clearly driven out of his mind. He doesn’t know what he is saying.”

  No one was listening to her. They were all staring at Raatri, horror-struck. For a few moments, he continued to gibber to himself, and every now and then he’d shriek. Then he stopped and looked around the clearing at the other wolves as though wondering why they were there. He swayed, and dropped to the ground in a dead faint.

  “We need Palva,” Liyra ordered to Salka, who was still hovering nearby. “Go and fetch Palva.”

  “But—Palva isn’t even here,” Salka moaned.

  “Oh,” Liyra said, sounding faint. “Blacksky. Oh, oh, no—”

  But at that very moment, the wall of grass around the redoubt rustled, and Palva slipped into the clearing. Her fur was ragged and torn, and her paws bled into the dust as though she had run all night. The pack stared at her in horror, recoiling as she passed.

  She dragged a bloody mass of tawny fur into the center of the redoubt main and looked up at the stunned Alpha Liyra, her eyes dull with sorrow and defeat. Palva dropped the bundle.

  “Yielsa,” she said in a hollow voice. “She’s dead.”

  Liyra swayed, looking as though she might faint as Raatri had.

  “But—” she said weakly. “But—but how?”

  Without a word, Palva turned over one of Yielsa’s dead, limp paws. Snagged around the bases of her dull claws was the white fur of the renegade.

  Palva looked back up at Liyra.

  “You didn’t listen,” she said. Her voice was quiet, tired. “I tried to tell you, but you refused to listen.”

  “Oh, Palva—”

  But Palva ignored her. Turning around, she trudged down the grass tunnel and back into her hollow, leaving Yielsa’s mangled body at the alpha’s feet.