Silver Dragon Codex (7 page)

One of the windows of the building shattered, and Belen screamed. Another of the thickly furred, hunched monsters crashed through the fragments of flying glass, landing with a heavy thud on the stone floor. It stood gingerly, shaking tinkling bits of glass from its fur. Jace could see that this one, too, was healing, the lacerations in its side sealing up as long glass splinters fell to the floor. He could hear a third scrabbling at the rear of the building, trying to find another way in. Soon enough, it would follow the other and make its way into the room. There wasn’t much time.

Jace looked up. “Rafters!” he cried.

Cerisse followed his gaze, identifying the same safe haven that Jace had seen. The rafters were thick oak in good
condition, but higher than these heavy monsters could jump. Even if they stood on the pews, the werewolves wouldn’t be able to reach them. The only problem was, how would they get up there?

“All right, Jace, it’s worth a try. You pitch, I’ll loft!” She sheathed her daggers in an instant, checking her belt for their traveling rope while Jace jumped up onto one of the nearby pews. They’d need the extra few inches.

“Go!” he called to her, cupping his hands together and lowering them down to his ankles.

He tried to concentrate on Cerisse, who was running toward him full tilt with the ardent excitement of a performer. At least she wasn’t scared. The monsters had caught sight of her, and while the one at the doorway pulled Cerisse’s dagger from its arm, the other gave chase. Cerisse didn’t notice—or didn’t care—and barreled forward, leaping up to place her foot in Jace’s laced fingers with a perfectly timed jump. He hurled her upward as hard as he could and watched her feet vanish into the air above his head. “Got it!” she cried, catching hold of the rafter with both hands and swinging on it like a gymnast. She pulled herself up onto the flat oak above and started tying her rope to the wood.

“Stellar!” Jace grinned. “Now—”

Unfortunately he’d forgotten that Cerise was being
chased by a four-hundred pound creature made entirely of muscle. The werewolf bowled him over, knocking into the pew so hard that it cracked in half. Wood, Jace, and fur landed all tangled up on the floor. Jace rammed his short sword into anything that didn’t feel like oak, twisting about to recover his footing beneath the weight of the beast.

The second one must have decided that Jace was too small for two of them to eat, because he dropped Cerisse’s dagger on the floor and charged straight for Ebano and Belen. Belen stepped back, lifting a thick piece of pew in both hands like a club, but Ebano never lost his serene smile. The mesmerist continued to wave his fingers back and forth, clicking his tongue over strange syllables as the werewolf plunged toward him with arms lifted wide over its head. Ebano lifted his chin and stared the beast squarely in the eyes. “Be still,” Ebano intoned, snapping his fingers three times. The monster jerked, its howl choking into a mangled squawk, and froze.

Jace managed to wriggle free, feeling his clothing tear under the vicious claws of the werewolf rolling on the ground with him. It outweighed him by more than three times as much, but he was faster and had a trained acrobat’s dexterity. Scrambling over the ruined pew, Jace hurled it into the creature’s face and rolled back until he felt the wall behind him.

Before it could shake off the wreckage, a long rope dropped, uncoiling only a foot in front of Jace, right down to the floor. “Climb!” Cerisse yelled.

“But Belen and Ebano—” he started.

She cut him off. “Later! There’s a seven-foot walking werewolf who wants to eat your face, and that pew isn’t going to stop him! Ebano’s fine. You’re not. Now climb!”

Jace didn’t need to be told a third time. He grabbed the light silk rope and jerked himself upward. Hand over hand, as quick as a cat, he scampered up toward the rafters. The werewolf, now free of its entangling wooden planks, jumped for the rope. Jace felt its hot breath against his ankles as it leaped to bite at his legs, but the werewolf fell short. Jace flipped himself upside down on the rope, twisting his ankles around the top portion to keep them safely out of the way of the foaming beast below. With a few more tugs of his legs, Jace pulled himself up to the rafter, took Cerisse’s hand, and swung aboard.

“We have to get them up here.” Jace looked down at the mesmerist, who was still standing by the fire between Belen and the frozen werewolf. The third creature was climbing through the broken window now, and more had begun to pull open the door and pour in through the front.

“I don’t think we have to worry about that.” Cerisse
clung to the thick rafter, her grin shining in the dim light. “Look.”

Ebano wrapped his arm around Belen’s waist and drew something from his belt with a flourish. Belen clutched her makeshift club with one hand, grabbing him with the other. Ebano snarled, holding the frozen werewolf’s eyes with his own. Then, with a loud command in his native tongue, he flung his hand downward and a burst of brightly colored yellow smoke exploded at his feet.

The smoke engulfed them, breaking the hypnotist’s hold over the frozen werewolf. It howled in delight, crashing forward into the drifting waves of color—and found nothing.

“Nice trick,” Cerisse muttered. “Where are they?”

“Look with your eyes,” Ebano intoned with the aplomb of a practiced stage performer. “See with your heart.” He was standing on the wooden rafter behind them, holding Belen by the waist and smiling like a cat that had gotten into a fisherman’s net.

“How did you—”

“What was that—” Jace and Cerisse burst out together. They stopped and laughed, clinging to the heavy oak rafter high above their enemies.

Below them, more and more of the werewolves poured through the door and the broken window, circling
and snapping at the air. The thunder outside rocked the building once more, shaking the walls with its rolling echo. The fire that Ebano had started on the floor sputtered, but the wolves did not approach it, keeping a respectful distance even after the blaze died. The only light in the room came from lightning that flashed outside the window. Jace clung to the thick oak, staring down at the pack of vicious creatures. Fear fluttered in his stomach. The height didn’t bother him, but the sight of all those teeth and claws, well, that wasn’t the kind of net he wanted to land in if he should fall.

Just then, lightning shattered the darkness outside, flashing through the windows. Jace caught sight of a smaller figure in the doorway. It stood draped in a fluttering cloak instead of heavy, thick fur. The thumping as the thunder passed wasn’t that of padded feet, but instead of a heavy staff upon the floor, coming in from the heavy rain.

“Is that Mysos?” Jace whispered.

“No,” Belen answered through gritted teeth. Her eyes were better in the darkness than Jace’s, or even Cerisse’s, if she could make out the solitary figure surrounded by the ever-moving pack of werewolves. “It’s a woman.”

Light flared again, and Jace thought at first that it was another bolt of lightning. But then the flash stayed,
bursting through the room in a sharp spread of cold bluish white light.

Belen was right. The woman now stood in the center of the room. She was dressed in rags that wrapped around her thin, wicker-frame body. She held on to a staff that was little more than a torn and ravaged tree limb, with knots and broken bark marring the length of the wood. Her gray hair, mussed and laced with greenery as though she’d been sleeping in the musty woods, was twisted into a knot at the nape of her neck. Her eyes were wide and rolling, brown as mud surrounded entirely with white.

“Starlings in a tree.” She spoke in a voice as dry as burning twigs. “Come down, little birds, and—” Her voice fell and her eyes widened as her gaze fell upon Belen. The mad old woman clutched her staff with both hands, baring her teeth amid the howls of the wolves around her.

“You.”

ou dare return here after the woe you’ve caused, the lives you’ve ruined?” The ancient woman stomped her staff upon the ground, the hem of her tattered cloak and skirt swirling around brown, earth-stained feet. Anger radiated from her slight form, shaking her shoulders. “You return here only to die—you, and all those who come with you.”

“You … know me?” Faced with such deep hatred, Belen struggled with the words. Jace saw her knuckles whiten around the heavy oak rafter, her face paling before the woman’s threats.

“Who, whom you have ruined, would not?” the forest hag spat. “We would never forget your face, Belengithar—no matter how you try to hide in sheep’s clothing.”

“We?” Jace seized upon the word. “You’re a survivor of this village—are you implying that there are more like you? Others who lived through the attack? We need to find
them, ask them what happened. Belen doesn’t remember anything—”

“And I want to make this right,” she cut in, “to help anyone who was hurt. But I need to know where they are to do that.”

“Where they are?” Cackling, the old woman spread her hands wide. “They are here! Look upon them, dragon and friends of dragons! See the people you have cursed.” The werewolves howled and snapped, leaping toward the ceiling in desperate attempts to catch anything that hung too low. “You did not just destroy this village in your attack, Belen. You left its spirit in as much rubble as its houses, rent and broken.”

“The werewolves?” Cerisse gasped.

“Yes, the wolves. But they are not true werewolves. The moon holds no power over them. They are cursed wolves, the entire village forever condemned by Chislev, cursed for their failure.” Her red-rimmed eyes stared. “I will tell you the story before you die, yes, I will, so that as the wolves strip the flesh from your bones, your last thought will be of her great betrayal.” She smiled, and there were black holes between her teeth. “This village was once blessed by the goddess Chislev, and even after the gods left this land in the great Cataclysm, we always felt that her power remained among us, however silent, however soft. We knew this because
Chislev’s hands remained among us. The forest stayed green and warm through the winter, our butter was always sweet, our streets clean. We protected the stone at the center of our village—a stone sacred to Chislev—and we had peace.

“Then
she
came.” Snarling, the old woman stamped her staff on the ground once again, knocking aside one of the broken pews. “From the sky, without reason, she brought a rain of ice and hail where there had only been warmth. Her claws pulled down the village, ripped up the houses, tore away the stone. And for what? We did nothing to her—nothing. We left milk on the doorstep and sacrificed the first hunt each winter to the great silver dragon of the forest. We revered her—and she destroyed us. Chislev’s grace fled this village, and we were cursed for our failure to protect the sacred stone.”

Ebano said something in his strange tongue, muttering as if he were trying to muddle out some of the details. He tugged on Belen’s sleeve, catching her attention, and she turned a stricken gaze to him. “Not kill?” he asked her, trying to make himself clear. “Belen not kill?”

“Hey, that’s a good question.” Cerisse raised her voice to shout down over the noise of the wolves. “Did Belen kill anyone? Or are they all werewolves?”

The hag scowled. “Minus a few lost to hard winters, the wolves number the same as the villagers once did, yes.”

Cerisse brightened, and Ebano sat back on the rafter. “You didn’t kill anyone, Belen! That’s great!”

“Great,” Belen muttered, looking down at the vicious creatures beneath her feet. “Yeah.”

Jace called down to the hag. “Why were you immune to the curse?”

“I was cursed as well, though not the same as the others.” She snarled at him. “I did not lose my human form because someone had to tell the tale. Someone had to take vengeance on the one who did this to our village! I was the priestess of the stone, I who told the seasons by its shadow and prayed to Chislev, even after others had forgotten her name. So did my mother, and her mother before her. For my failure, I was given the task of recovering the sacred stone, though my powers were stripped and my body withered. Chislev is angry. She will have vengeance on the one who stole the stone. I will give Chislev vengeance, and then, perhaps, she will lift her curse. Even without magic, I will call on the villagers who were cursed by my failure, and they will seek vengeance for me.”