33.
Arwena
Tir ran as fast as he could, every particle in his body crying out with fear. Captain Leron! But where was Xelind? They had been fighting a moment ago. The thought fled his mind in his fear for Arwena. He had heard her cry, but hadn’t seen her move; there was a good chance she was already dead. It didn’t matter. Leron would pay. And for once, Tir was glad to have the renegade’s vicious fury with him.
The renegade had flashed ahead and was not far behind them. Tir tried to move his legs faster, but they felt weak with terror for his mother. He flew through the devastated hollow, tripping and stumbling over the wounded and shoving aside battling wolves from both packs who turned in bewilderment as he rushed by.
They were just ahead. Gasping, Tir threw himself through the brambles, thorns scraping and clawing at his tattered pelt. He floundered in the bushes for a few moments. Then he froze.
Leron stood over Arwena’s quivering figure. Blood dripped in slick ropes from his grinning jaws and his grey eyes seethed with a mad light. “And now it all comes into the open,” he said with a sort of harsh triumph. “And now your natures have betrayed you, and now—”
His words were abruptly cut off as the renegade bowled into him with the bone-jarring roar of an angered bear. He and the renegade were thrown backwards with the impact of her attack, rolling and writhing in the snow in a hurricane of snarling brown and white fur.
Tir ignored them and dragged himself towards Arwena. His head was spinning and each breath caused him jolting pain, but he no longer noticed. Arwena was alive, but only just. Leron had left his mother in a gasping heap. The snow beneath her was red.
She looked up at him, and smiled.
“Tir,” she rasped. “You’re here.”
Tir almost cried at the sound of her voice. “I’m alive, and so are you. Oh, mother—”
“I feared this day. I’ve done terrible things, Tir, and I feared the punishment waiting for me. But now I see that you are here, and all is forgiven. Are we going back home, now? To the forest before the fire began?”
She waited with an expectant smile. But Tir only stared, the bubble of hope that had just risen inside of him suddenly deflating—he had dreamed of this day, when he would see his mother again, alive, but in his dreams she had always been lucid and strong. This was all wrong. She thought she was already dead.
Tir’s eyes travelled down, away from his mother’s gaze. There was a gash in her throat from where Captain Leron had bitten her, a dark and ragged hole in her tawny fur. Tir felt helpless. He needed Palva—she would know what to do, she would understand—but he didn’t want to leave Arwena. What was the herb she used to stop bleeding? He looked around the frozen clearing, but the only plant to be seen was the hunched form of a dark yew tree, blood-red berries bobbing in the wind.
He looked away.
“Is something wrong?” The smile faded and Arwena frowned. “You look upset. You are here to take me home, aren’t you? Or has she come to punish me?”
“Wh—what?”
“I said the proper prayers!” she whispered, eyes shiny and filled with old grief. “It was all I knew to do! But oh, was I only being a coward, Tir? Did I make it worse? Did I—oh.” She fell silent and her eyes darkened as she looked at something beyond Tir’s shoulder.
Tir turned around just in time to see the large black form fly into the clearing from the battle hollow. “Father,” he gasped, and Misari spared him and Arwena a quick glance before he raced to join the renegade. Tir had never heard his father growl before, had never heard him so much as raise his voice—but Misari snarled now as if he had become something else entirely. Flashes of the long-gone forest fire blazed in his golden-orange eyes. He threw himself between Leron and the renegade, lips peeling back to bare his fangs, and thrust his head aggressively into Leron’s face with a loud, grating bark. Every one of his black hairs stood on end and he was terrifying, massive, fierce enough to join the night sky; and for a moment Leron stumbled back, surprised. The renegade was one thing, but this was something else altogether.
“Fearless leader,” Arwena was mumbling to herself behind him, her eyes half-shut. “Maker of laws, murderer of my last daughter…”
Tir’s head jolted. “No, mother,” he said. “Not now. Please, not now.”
“I told you, Tir. What happens when you play beneath that tree.”
Tir shivered. Behind him, he heard the sounds of the fight commencing as Captain Leron now faced both Misari and the renegade. The sounds were distant to him. He could see his mother now, as she had been once. Once, she had had good days mixed in with the bad ones. This one was a bad day. And he didn’t think she would live to speak again tomorrow.
Arwena opened her eyes all the way. “What are they fighting about?” she asked, as though she had noticed it for the first time. Her voice was strange; it was clear and demanding. “I hear them, behind me, but I can’t—I can’t…”
“They’re fighting for you, mother.”
“Am I dead?”
Tir choked. “Yes, mother,” he whispered. “Everything is done now; it’s only a few more moments before I can take you home.”
“But they’re fighting,” Arwena said. She twisted, trying to look behind her, and Tir rushed to stop her from moving and hurting herself further. “Look,” she insisted, as though Tir hadn’t believed her. “Look at them. I told you.”
Tir turned. Leron was faring surprisingly well, but Misari and the renegade had backed him up against a wall of snow-covered brambles. His pelt was soaked with blood. Pink spittle was foaming up around his teeth. He was not going to win.
“I don’t understand,” Tir said, turning back to Arwena. “Why do you—”
“It isn’t supposed to be like this. It’s supposed to be perfect. But Misari and Alanki are fighting a stranger, I cannot move, and you…” She paused, frowning as though noticing something for the first time. “Tir, you’re covered in blood.”
“I—I’m only—”
“—and it’s dark, and I don’t recognize this place.” A spark of panic flitted across Arwena’s face. “Didn’t I say the proper prayers? Didn’t I do what was right?”
“Yes—yes, of course you did. Never mind all of that. Everything’s fine.”
“Ask her,” Arwena spat, twisting to glare at the fight behind them. “Ask her, and see if she’ll answer me now. She didn’t before.”
“Ask who?”
“Alanki.”
Tir lowered his head. He did not know anyone named Alanki, and neither did Arwena. “Alanki” must be one of the fantasies that Avrok had told him of—just a lost friend in her past, or maybe even an entirely nonexistent creature.
“Mother,” Tir said. “There’s no one named Alanki. Mother,” he repeated more urgently, as Arwena was struggling to look at the fight behind her. “Look at me,” he said. “I’m your son; I’m Tir. I—”
“I know who you are,” Arwena said irritably, turning back to him. “But I want to know if she knows me; I want to know why Alanki’s here if not to punish me.”
“Mother! Who is Alanki?”
“Your sister. Why are you getting upset?”
Tir stared at her and swallowed the words that rose in his throat. All at once, he became aware of the silence. Except for Arwena’s gibbering, the small clearing was quiet. The snarls of the fight had stopped.
He looked behind him. Leron was backed into the brush, his sides heaving as he stared at them from behind Misari, who was blocking his way. The renegade herself was looking at Arwena with the strangest expression of astonishment and disbelief Tir had ever seen.
“You—you mean you didn’t know?” Captain Leron’s voice was hoarse and barely understandable; he was panting for air, and took a breath at each syllable. He stared at Tir with open incredulity and seethed, “You mean you didn’t bleeding know?!”
The renegade looked up at Tir and then back down at Arwena.
“Oh, Alanki!” Arwena said, ignori
ng Leron. Her green eyes had begun to glow with elation. “Did the seasons have no claim on you? Was it my prayers? You’re looking at me—you know me; you’ve come to forgive me, haven’t you? You and Tir!”
“You didn’t know?” Leron repeated, his voice rising to a hysterical pitch. He was staring at Tir; he looked as though he had just been struck across the face. “This whole time, you didn’t know? And I—I thought that you—that means this isn’t…” His voice trailed away as his face struggled to reconcile the facts of the last few seasons with his own estimation of them. He looked almost frightened. Not taking his eyes off of them, he began to limp his way back to the battle—to tell Liyra, to drown out his shock in the snarls of the fight, Tir didn’t know. Misari let him go.
“Your mother is not mad,” Misari said to Tir. “I myself recognized the same, only a few nights ago. It is why my pack came here, to fight.”
The renegade herself was frozen. She turned her green eyes up to Tir—and right then, at that moment, he knew. Those pale green eyes were fierce and hard as flint, so different from Arwena’s and his own. But at the same time, there was something deep underneath the stony glint—something he recognized, something he knew.
His sister was alive.