But Ren wasn’t anyone else.
“Wodnik,” she called. “Is that you?”
From among the bulrushes, a single bulbous eye blinked. Wodnik didn’t answer, but a second eye joined the first. He had no eyebrows, just raised scales over vivid yellow eyes. He blinked again.
Ren couldn’t help but grin. Typical. She liked Wodnik.
“I wish you’d consider bringing your nimfy to the castle this year,” called Ren. A very small nimfa, still a bit more tadpoley than the others, clambered up on her shoulders and began to braid her hair. “We killed some strzygi half a mile from here.”
Wodnik blew some bubbles, which sounded suspiciously like “We’re fine.”
Somewhere, a horse whinnied.
Ren twisted around. She met the questioning eyes of the nimfy. Had she misheard . . . ? The horse whinnied again. The nimfy shrank low in the water, all silver tendrils and hollow eyes.
There were no horses in her forest. Except . . .
“Go,” she growled.
The water cleared. No whisper of the slim bones and silver hearts that had been there a second before. The horse whinnied a third time as a hand closed on Ren’s shoulder.
Ren whirled around, teeth bared.
But it was only Wodnik. He had risen almost out of the water, that toady face framed by damp rushes instead of hair. He met her gaze, silent. The only sound was a small splash as a fish flopped out from behind his ear.
Wodnik blinked. He took her hand, looked toward the opposite shore.
“No,” she whispered back. “Someone has to stay. We don’t know what it is.”
Wodnik tugged her toward the shelter of the bulrushes.
Run, he seemed to say. Run now.
But Ren didn’t budge.
“I can smell him,” she hissed.
Smoke first. Then horse, which she was expecting. But then: blood and tanned hide and oiled leather. Even if every scent was animal, it was a hideous kind of animal: a patchwork of different creatures. The most gruesome of monsters. Clothed in the bodies of others.
“It’s a human.”
3
IT HAD BEEN TWO MONTHS since the Apofys had burned Lukasz’s hand.
He barely remembered most of it, just staggering down the pink-carpeted stairs, coming face-to-face with a dozen reporters, their cameras sparking and billowing smoke. Standing there in a daze, burned arm buried in his black coat, while Damian Bieleć had rushed up to him, shaken his remaining hand, weaseled his way into the photographs.
After that, Lukasz had collapsed. At least, that was what he’d been told.
His next memory was of white hospital walls and a doctor wearing pale blue. They’d kept him knocked out with opium for a full two weeks. For the pain, the doctor had explained.
He’d been confused.
For your hand, she’d reminded him, pointing.
He’d looked. He’d remembered. And he’d wept at the sight of it.
Six weeks of nimfy-hair dressings and the best care Miasto could offer, and it was a horror. Stripped of flesh and burned to the bone, the ends of two fingers had eventually been removed. What remained of the hand had initially been glistening red, and as it had healed—was still healing—it shrank and withered away.
And it was his left hand. . . .
The hand he fought with. The hand he needed. It looked like wax left too close to the flames, melted and then re-formed, molded into some grotesque semblance of a human hand.
Lukasz hated it. He hated looking at it, and he hated anyone else seeing it. The photographs from the Apofys hunt had been bad enough. He’d looked gaunt and dazed in every last one of them. Thank God he’d had the wherewithal to hide the horror at the end of his arm.
He shouldn’t have been surprised. Every dragon slayer ended up with some scar sooner or later. And at least it wasn’t his face; Michał and Eliasz had had far worse luck than he. Anyway, even if they’d ended up scarred and disfigured, it hadn’t mattered. It ended for them the way it ended for all Wolf-Lords: swallowed up by this goddamned forest, devoured by that goddamned dragon. . . . But the dead didn’t need to worry about pain. That was the burden of the living.
The light was getting dimmer. The trees crowded closer together. The ground was puddled with pools of brownish, sweet-smelling water. Apart from the buzzing flies and Król crunching on his bit, everything was silent. Maybe the sun was beginning to set.
Or worse: maybe he was lost.
“Whoa, boy.” Lukasz drew up Król’s reins.
The black horse halted. In the dim light, the bridle’s silver antlers almost glowed. Lukasz produced a small leather-bound notebook from his coat pocket. He opened it against Król’s neck, flexing what was left of the fingers on his left hand.
He carefully turned the tea-stained pages, wincing as they rustled in the silence. Neat, elegant writing took up most pages, interspersed with the odd hand-drawn map or illustration. Most of them had been drawn by Franciszek—although, before he had disappeared, Jarek had often contributed his illustrations, too. Lukasz smiled at the memory. If Franciszek had been the scholar of the family, then Jarek had definitely been the artist.
Even if Lukasz couldn’t read them, Franciszek’s neat notes were oddly comforting. Not for the first time, he wished he’d actually paid attention every time his brother had tried to teach him the letters.
“Why did you leave?” he muttered. One of Król’s ears swiveled toward him. “Why did you leave, when I needed you?”
He kept turning pages. Franciszek would have known how to kill that Apofys. Franciszek would have taken his time; he’d have disappeared into every library and museum in Miasto, and they’d have taken weeks to do the job, but they’d have done it in the end. Lukasz would have gotten his adventure.
And he’d still have his hand.
But Franciszek had left. Franciszek had done what they’d all done, uttered some nonsense about mountains and going home, and he’d left. He’d said other things, too. Things that made Lukasz’s stomach turn over with guilt.
At last he found the page he needed. It was a map of the country, less detailed and elaborate than the one from Bieleć’s lecture. No nicely drawn dragons or fancy lettering here. Lukasz considered it for a minute.
He’d ridden north from Miasto, following the half-constructed railway, asking directions from the crews along the way. It must have been a sight for the ages: a Wolf-Lord on an antlered warhorse, cantering alongside the lumbering engines, yelling at the bewildered operator over the noise.
After that, he’d stayed out of the forest for as long as he could. The borders of Kamieńa had been expanding for almost twenty years. Not out of any human intention, but because the forest seemed to be spreading, and with every mile closer he drew, the towns grew emptier. Finally in view of the first trees, he’d spent the night in an abandoned village on its borders. Unseen evils had chattered in the trees and the stars had seemed particularly dark that night, so dark that Lukasz had brought Król indoors and slept in a modest little kitchen, rifle pointed toward the door.
The next morning, he’d entered the forest.
There’d been no one to stop him. Even if Kamieńa wasn’t exactly forgotten these days, it was at least ignored. Besides, Welona was an unusual country in that most of its internal borders were unofficial. Ruled centrally from Miasto by King Nikodem and his parliament, Welona was also separated into smaller constituent provinces. Often referred to as kingdoms, these provinces were governed by minor kings—usually the descendants of the great war chieftains of medieval days when the country was constantly at war with itself.