Legacy of the Claw (25 page)

THE FIRST PERSON TO move was Gwen. She turned around to look back through the trees behind the rock where she and Tremelo had entered the fight. Her gaze fell upon something farther back in the woods, and she cried out and bolted ahead. Tori, Hal, Phi, and Bailey ran after her.

Behind the rock, underneath the shade of the trees, the old man who'd arrived with Tremelo lay crumpled in the sidecar, bleeding heavily from wounds on his head and his chest. Gwen kneeled next to him. As Bailey approached, he looked at Hal and Tori, who stood closely together.

“He's called the Elder,” Tori whispered. “He came today, to tell us—” She stopped, and shook her head. “There's just too much to tell.”

The Elder coughed and shuddered as Gwen took his hand. Bailey saw that the wound on his chest, just below his heart, was not large—but it was deep.

He turned quickly to Tremelo.

“We're not far from the Velyn camp,” Bailey whispered. “They were healers—I mean, they
are.
Maybe they can help?”

Tremelo looked uncertain, but he nodded.

“We have to try. But the motorbuggy won't make it any farther over these rocks.”

Bailey felt something heavy and soft brush against his good shoulder. The white tiger had crept behind him and was nuzzling him gently. Bailey placed his hand on the rough fur of her neck. Without a word or even a gesture, Bailey felt Taleth offer her help.

“Thank you,” Bailey whispered, even though he knew he didn't have to say anything for her to know how he felt.

Together he, Tremelo, Hal, and Gwen lifted the Elder carefully onto Taleth's back. Phi flew ahead to warn the Velyn that they were on their way.

“Give them this,” he said, placing the Seers' Glass carefully in Phi's open palms. “It belongs to them.”

Hal and Tori walked on either side of the tiger's flanks as they set off over the rocks with Bailey in the lead. The Elder groaned softly. Gwen walked at his side as Taleth crept through the Dark Woods. Just once, Bailey glanced back at Tremelo. The professor's jaw was firm and his eyes were red. He looked like he carried the weight of the Elder on his own shoulders.

It was a slow and silent walk through the snow and the darkness. At last, the group reached the Velyns' camp. A fire crackled at the mouth of their cliffside cave, illuminating the giant white wings that Phi still wore strapped to her back. She stood waiting for them with the tall, light-haired man that Bailey had seen when he'd stolen the Glass. He felt a heavy guilt settle over him as the man's eyes met his own. A few others, including the man with the dark beard, stood on the other side of the grove, watching them approach. Already many of the animals that Sucrette had controlled with her Dominance had found their way back here, and the clearing was full of the groans and muttered curses as other Velyn tended to their wounded kin.

Tremelo walked forward and held out his hand to the light-haired man.

“I am  … ” He hesitated. “I am Trent Melore.”

The man clasped Tremelo's hand in his own, and bowed his head.

“Where is the man who needs our help?” he asked.

The tiger crept forward into the grove. With the assistance of Gwen and Tremelo, two of the Velyn men lifted the Elder off of Taleth's back and lay him down carefully by the fire. Bailey stayed close to the tiger. Her white fur was matted with blood—both the Elder's and her own.

The light-haired man and a Velyn woman with long reddish-brown hair and freckles knelt over the Elder, examining his wounds. Another woman brought over a bowl that contained a sticky substance just like the salve that Tremelo had used to heal Bailey's arm. He recognized the sweet, plant-like smell of it.

“What is that stuff?” Bailey asked someone next to him—the Velyn man with the dark beard he'd seen guarding the Glass against the vultures.

The bearded man regarded him cautiously.

“It's a paste made of the flowers of the King's Fingers,” he said gruffly. “The seeds bloom in winter into a little black flower that, when crushed, is very potent.”

Bailey nodded, thinking of the black flowers drawn on Loren's map.

The Elder cried out as the Velyn applied the salve to his head and chest. After a short time, the light-haired man stood up, and the two women backed away.

The man shook his head.

“He has suffered too great a wound,” he said. “The flesh could heal, but without his life-kin, he is too weak to overcome it.”

The girl Gwen uttered a sharp, soft cry, and lifted her hands to her eyes.

The Elder reached up his hand and pointed at Tremelo. The professor crouched at the Elder's side. The Elder touched Tremelo's face gingerly, then lay his hand back down on his chest.

“I see him in you,” he said. “I never thought I'd see that face again. There are so few photographs  … ”

Tremelo took hold of the old man's hand and held it tightly.

“I tried to save you,” the Elder said. “I thought I had lost you the night the palace burned. I saved your sister, only to lose her to the hordes in the streets. I had intended to save you both, and I failed. She told me”—the old man closed his eyes, reliving the memory—“she told me that you were surely dead, and I believed her. I took her to safety, and have lived every day since then with the guilt that I could not save you too. But now you're here. You're found, at last.”

Gwen let out a sob as the Elder's head sank back onto the stone. His eyes darted in her direction.

“Please don't go,” Gwen whispered. “What will I do?”

“Child,” the Elder said, so softly that Bailey only saw his lips move, “don't cry. I am proud of you. So strong, and so good. The kingdom  …  It needs you. Your place is with your king.” He gestured weakly at Tremelo. “His faith is not enough, not yet. It is your task to help it grow. He cannot be a king without it  … ” His voice broke, and his cloudy gray eyes took in the students standing over him. “The kingdom  … ” The old man gasped and gazed upward at the sky.

“Grimsen,” he whispered, smiling. Then all was silence.

GWEN WEPT, INCONSOLABLE, AS the group left the forest and made their way in secret to Tremelo's quarters. Her grief and exhaustion were overpowering, but she couldn't sleep. She didn't know if she would ever sleep again.

She was alone. Completely and totally alone.

Now, in the early hours of the morning, before the first hazy light rose over Fairmount's cliffs and forests, the students, Tremelo, and Gwen sat huddled in Tremelo's small apartment in the teacher's quarters. They drank from steaming mugs of sap milk.

“No one here at the school will know you were involved in Sucrette's death,” Tremelo assured all of them. “As far as anyone knows, you students—and you, Gwen—weren't anywhere near that grove. If anyone were to find out, the Dominae would come looking for all of you.”

The students nodded, and Gwen stared into the swirling cream of the sap milk. She wanted to believe that she was safe—but now that the Elder was gone, she didn't know where she belonged, and safety seemed like something she'd merely dreamed of.

“They'll come here anyway,” she said. “One of their own is dead. They'll want to know why.”

She met the eyes of the students as they turned to her.

“The Elder said that dangerous times were coming,” she continued. “I believed him—but I didn't know just how dangerous. You're all lucky you have each other.”

It was Bailey, the sandy-haired boy with the wounded arm—the Child of War—who spoke first.

“We have you too, don't we, Gwen?”

Phi, whose wide-eyed falcon was perched on her shoulder and nestled in her wild hair, placed a hand on Gwen's knee.

“Yes, you'll stay, right? With us?”

Gwen looked at Tremelo, the professor—and the king. She recalled the Elder's words:
Your place is with your king. His faith is not enough  …  Help it grow.
She could see that the Elder had been right. Tremelo—Trent Melore—looked worried. His shoulders hunched as though he could already feel the eyes of the kingdom on him, and wanted to shy away.

“Of course you must stay here with us,” he said to her. “Far too dangerous to let you back to the city on your own, and you have information that we need about what's happening in the Gray. We'll need you.”

His words made her think of the RATS, and how they so desperately needed a leader. Their leader was sitting in front of her, and with the Elder gone, she was the only person they would trust who knew his true identity. The Elder had left her one final mission: to bring Trent Melore and his people together.

Gwen managed a small smile. She nodded to Tremelo. Yes, she thought. I think you will need me after all.

THE NEXT EVENING, A somber group stood atop the highest hill on the Fairmount grounds, overlooking the snow-covered campus and the Fluvian River beyond.

Tremelo, Bailey, Gwen, Hal, Tori, and Phi were accompanied by a few other professors who'd offered to help send the Elder back to Nature. Earlier in the day, Mrs. Copse and her helpers had built a pyre for the Elder. Now they all stood alongside her as she set the pyre alight. With the setting sun as the funeral's backdrop, it seemed to Bailey as though the entire sky were in flames. Freshly cut cedarwood had been brought in from the deep forest, and the air smelled of spices and woodland. Bailey's arm was set in a sling. Gwen stood next to him. She played a low, melancholy lullaby on the harmonica.

“I'm sorry we couldn't take him home to the Gray City,” Bailey said.

She shook her head and stopped playing. “He's closer to the mountains here,” she said. “I think he'd have liked that.”

No one spoke. Headmaster Finch had muttered, on his way up the hill, that a Parliament member's funeral was a first for Fairmount, and no one seemed to know the right thing to say. But Parliament, Bailey reminded himself, had fallen. The Dominae had taken the city, and Viviana had an army that would guard against any uprisings from loyalists in the kingdom. What would be proper, or official, for the funeral of a Parliament member didn't seem as important now. Instead, those who gathered listened to the strains of Gwen's harmonica as the Elder's body turned to ash under its canvas shroud. Bailey and Hal stood with Tori, Phi, and Gwen. Tremelo was clear-eyed, standing at the front of the group.

As the mourners began to turn away, a flock of owls flew overhead. They hooted their good-byes to the group below, and then circled back to the woods.

Bailey and Tremelo walked down the hill and toward campus in silence. The others lingered at the top with Gwen, who wanted to wait until the fire died completely. When Bailey reached the path that led back to the dorms, he stopped. A shiver of warmth ran down his spine. He turned, knowing he would see his kin just beyond the hill. The tiger had been wounded in the fight, and Bailey felt the ache in his own muscles, as though he were feeling both of their injuries. But his wonderment was greater than his pain.

Taleth stood proud on the embankment of rocks beyond the hill. They looked at each other, and Bailey felt a surge of confidence, tempered with longing. The tiger had seen her kind almost completely wiped from the mountains, and the loneliness she felt echoed within Bailey—a sadness so deep he could hardly bear the feeling, or the beauty of sharing something so intimate with another soul.

Tremelo had invited the Velyn to attend the funeral, but they had declined. It wasn't yet the time to reveal themselves. But Bailey was thankful even that
he
knew. After all, they were his people. After the battle, the tall man with light hair like his own had taken a knee before him.

“You know what it means, don't you—that the tiger is your kin? It means we're your kin too.” It wasn't customary for humans to refer to other humans as their kin, but he liked how it felt. “We can't replace your parents,” the man had continued. “They're gone, just like so many of our kind. But you're one of us, Bailey Walker.”

The man put a strong hand on Bailey's shoulder and squeezed.

“Taleth will be safe here in the woods with us,” the man said. “It's too much of a risk to allow her to come to the school with you—she's the last of her kind.”

Bailey felt an intense longing then, even stronger than the yearning he'd felt to find his Animas—he wanted to go with the Velyn and learn from them, learn about his real family. He wanted to stay wherever Taleth was, so they could protect each other. But he saw Tremelo, standing and talking with Gwen and his friends, and he knew where was most needed.

“I know,” he said. “Thanks.”

The Velyn warrior stood to go. Bailey couldn't bear to see him walk away.

“Wait,” he had called. All of his questions burned in him like a flickering campfire, but he could hardly voice them. He settled on one. “What's your name?”

“Eneas Fourclaw of the Velyn. If you ever need me, I'm here for you.”

With that, the Velyn had receded into the forest to care for their wounded, bloodied kin.

Now, as Bailey walked back to campus with Tremelo and Fennel after the Elder's funeral, he felt pulled back toward the woods. He'd made a decision to stay with Tremelo and help him become a king—but he knew he'd always feel that longing. It would be a part of him, as surely as he was Animas White Tiger.

“I wanted to ask you something before,” Bailey said. “When Ms. Sucrette tried—” He gulped. It still seemed too strange that someone had tried to kill him. “In the woods, she said something about finishing what the Jackal started. It had something to do with the white tiger, and my Awakening.” Bailey pointed to Taleth.

Tremelo nodded. For once, Bailey noticed, his professor didn't smell of herbs. “You knew, already, that the Velyn people had disappeared and that the white tiger was rumored to be extinct. But the Loon knew the white tiger did not die of natural causes—they were hunted. Massacred, along with their kin, the Velyn. They were no more outlaws than you or I.”

“They're warriors,” Bailey said.

“Just like you,” said Tremelo.

“I still don't understand, though,” said Bailey. “What do I have to do with the True King? With you?”

Tremelo stared straight ahead. Behind his eyes, a hundred questions seemed to float by, unanswered. Bailey understood the feeling. They'd both been taken by surprise, and both faced a kingdom filled with uncertainty. Tremelo reached into his pocket, and took out the Seers' Glass.

“Eneas gave me this after the battle. He claims it belongs to the king.” He fixed Bailey with a look that was part excitement, part awe. “We have some reading to catch up on.”

The shadowed figures of Tori, Hal, and Phi descended the hill. Gwen followed closely behind. As they approached, Hal smiled at Bailey, and Phi placed her hand gently on his hurt arm.

“I thought it was an Absence this whole time,” said Tori. “But you're Animas White Tiger. I'm  …  impressed,”

Bailey smiled. “You? Impressed by something? I'm honored.”

“You should be,” she said firmly.

“Are you the only one?” asked Phi.

“I don't know,” Bailey said, looking from Phi to Tremelo. “I think so.”

“But even so, you're not alone,” said Gwen. “You and the tiger have each other now.”

“That's true,” Bailey said, and his heart felt so full at the thought.

The sun dipped below the horizon, bathing the cliffs of Fairmount in an orange light. Bailey shivered, but not from the cold. For the first time, he knew where he had come from, and also where he belonged. Tremelo, the True King, stood beside him—and they would soon prepare to lead an army. Though he was small, and young, Bailey felt powerful enough to fight. Tremelo touched Bailey's arm, and pointed at the rocks where the tiger had sat only a moment before.

“Where did she go?” Tremelo asked.

Bailey shook his head. The tiger was out of sight, but her strength remained, coursing through his blood.

“She's close by,” Bailey said. But those words fell short of describing the kinship he finally felt—with Taleth and with his friends. His senses told him his kin was just beyond the trees. More than that, his senses told him that what Gwen had said was true: he wasn't alone, and that even in the worst times, he never had been.

He smiled at his good friends and his king, and they continued on the snowy path toward home.