“This is true,” Leif allowed.
Bushy Beard dismissed Lisabet’s words with a flick of his fingers. “Can we get to the point? They’ve proven they’re willing to attack us. They’ve proven they want a war.”
“No,” Anders insisted. They had to make the dragons see that the wolves weren’t all bad, they weren’t what the dragons thought of them. “We only came for my sister.”
“If she’s that,” Bushy Beard scoffed.
“I believe she is,” Leif said quietly.
Rayna slipped her hand into his, squeezing tightly, but the Drekleid didn’t seem inclined to say any more, at least for now.
Ellukka’s father spoke again. “Torsten”—that must be Bushy Beard’s name, Anders realized—“is not talking
about the arrival of these children’s classmates. He is talking about the theft. Anders, Lisabet—the wolves who you say came to rescue you stole artifacts from us. One of them was the Snowstone.”
Every face up and down the table was grave now. During the battle, Anders had seen his friends Mateo and Jai disappear into the depths of Drekhelm’s caves, and when the pack had retreated, each of the two wolves had been carrying something in their mouths. Had one of those somethings been this Snowstone? The name sounded familiar, but Anders couldn’t place it.
“What does the Snowstone do?” he asked.
“In the right hands, it can alter the weather,” Leif said gravely.
Anders’s heart thumped. He had heard of it before. He’d seen it in the Skraboks—the records of artifacts—mentioned beside the plate that brought rain. “It makes the weather cold,” he said.
“Yes,” Leif said. “It can cause blizzards, bring hail and snow. In the hands of the wolves, if they can make it work, it could bring cold to Drekhelm. To all of Vallen. That is why we have always kept it safe here. The Fyrstulf can take away the heat we need to transform, and weaken us until we are easily defeated.”
As if the Snowstone were already at work, Anders felt
a chill go through him. Sigrid was easily ruthless enough to drive the dragons from Drekhelm, or from Vallen altogether. By now she’d know they had her daughter, and she would be more furious still. It was one thing to convince the dragons they weren’t bad purely because they were wolves, it was another to convince anyone—including himself—that Sigrid wasn’t a danger to the dragons.
Every dragon—including Rayna—would be in danger from the Snowstone. Her hand was warm in his, her presence beside him giving him strength as he answered these questions. He couldn’t bear to think of her in danger again.
No wonder the dragons looked grim. With Professor Ennar back in Holbard, Sigrid would know where to find Drekhelm. She would know where to aim that cold, and where to attack.
“We have nowhere to go if the wolves drive us out of Vallen,” said Torsten quietly. “No other country would welcome us, even if we survived the trip. There isn’t a place in the world that isn’t claimed by some kind of elemental as their territory.”
“We’re not going anywhere,” Leif said, but he didn’t sound as firm as usual.
And Anders didn’t feel so certain either.
Chapter Three
THE DRAGONMEET SEEMED ALMOST TO FORGET for a time that Anders, Lisabet, Rayna, and Ellukka were standing in front of them. The members broke off into quiet conversations, many of them arguing with one another. Anders was pretty sure he and Lisabet were both thinking the same thing—that Sigrid was bound to use the Snowstone if she thought it would give her an advantage against the dragons, but that saying as much would probably only provoke a fight sooner. So he stayed quiet, and she did too. For now, they just needed to be allowed to stay here. To find a way to keep the three of them—he, Lisabet, and Rayna—safe. Then he’d figure out his next steps.
It was Torsten who turned his attention back to them first, frowning at them over his bushy beard. “Who will you fight for, when the time comes?” He was looking at
Anders. “Your icefire stopped their ice spears as well as our flame. You could be the deciding factor.”
Every pair of eyes in the room turned to focus on Anders, and Leif held up his hands. “He is a child,” he protested. “Children will not be fighting at all.”
“If it comes to it, every one of us will defend ourselves,” Torsten replied. “And we’ve seen what he can do.”
“He’s right,” said a man with a long nose and neatly combed white hair, a few seats along. “Are we just going to keep them here in our midst, when he could attack us at any moment?”
“Are we just going to throw them out to roam the mountains?” another asked. “At least we know where they are here. We should lock them up.”
There was a flurry of argument, voices rising over one another, and finally Leif was reduced to thumping on the table for silence. “Anders,” he said. “Do you plan to use the icefire to attack us?”
“As if he’d tell us if he was,” a woman snorted.
Anders cleared his throat, nervous. “I don’t even know how I made it,” he admitted. “I’ve never even been able to make an ice spear before. Everyone at Ulfar knew I was hopeless.”
Beside him Lisabet was nodding, and though he’d always winced at his own ineptitude before, now he was
grateful for the confirmation. Rayna squeezed his hand a second time, and he knew she was holding herself back from the reply she always gave when he said he was hopeless at anything—a vehement denial, and quick, fierce support. But for once it was better that she let them believe it, and she clearly knew that.
“I was desperate when I threw the icefire,” he went on, thinking of the instant in the middle of battle that he’d thrown the silver flame. Icefire, a thing of legend, meant to be impossible. “I don’t know how to do it again. And I don’t plan to do it again.”
He could tell that at least half the Dragonmeet didn’t believe him, and all of them were studying him closely. Except for Ellukka’s father, who pointed at Rayna. “What about you?” he asked. “If you really are his sister, can’t you do it?”
Rayna shook her head. “I can’t even breathe a spark, Valerius,” she said. “Leif’s been trying to teach me.”
Lisabet turned to look at her. “Maybe you will be able to do it too,” she mused. “If you can’t make flame, and Anders can’t make ice, perhaps both of you are made to throw icefire instead.”
“Perhaps you can both learn in time,” Leif said. “We must try to teach you.”
“So you want them to stay?” Torsten asked, throwing
up his hands as if Leif simply couldn’t be reasoned with.
“We cannot throw them out,” Leif said simply. “They will be attacked if they return to the wolves, and they will die on their own. And they cannot be prisoners here forever. That is not who we are.”
Anders was pretty sure it was who some of them were, and a moment later, the hubbub around the table confirmed it.