Silver wolf, p.1
Silver Wolf, page 1
part #2 of The Sworn Saga Series
Contents
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
CHAPTER FORTY
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
SILVER WOLF
The Sworn Saga #2
Kate Avery Ellison
Copyright © Kate Avery Ellison 2019
No part of this book, in part or in whole, can be copied or reproduced without the written consent of the author.
This book is lovingly dedicated to:
Elsie H.
Molly A.
Krista Marie
Carol Ann W.
Nicole T.
Karen R.
Malia I.
Tabitha M.
Jessica J.
Dani C.
Melissa O.
Jennifer J.
Danielle C.
Lindsay W.
Heather J-L.
Rachel K.
Heather A.
Elizabeth C-C.
Rebecca W.
Amber C.
Thank you so much for being such enthusiastic, supportive readers and commenters in the FB group, and for loving Red Rider. Infectious excitement like yours keeps me going when the writing gets tough!
SILVER WOLF
PROLOGUE
WHEN I WAS eight years old, my best friend, Kassian, saved my life.
I know he didn’t see it that way at the time, but it was true.
We’d finished our chores early and ventured together into the fields surrounding my home that fateful afternoon. The sun made long, golden streaks across the grass and winked among the rustling green leaves overhead as we ran hand in hand through the stream nearby, stopping to build towers of round, smooth rocks that lay in heaps along the bank.
“Look,” Kassian called to me. “Look what I’ve found!” He held something aloft in his dripping hand. “It was in the river!”
I splashed across the icy stream to join him. Together, we peered down at the strange thing nestled in his palm.
“What is it?” I asked.
“An ancient weapon, probably,” Kassian said with a note of importance in his voice. “My father has told me lots of stories about them.”
The thing in his palm was small and cylindrical, coming to a point at one end, with a shiny, golden-colored metal exterior all over.
“A weapon?” I asked, doubtful. “It isn’t even particularly sharp. How could you hurt anyone with that?”
“Lots of ways,” Kassian replied. He tossed his dark hair out of his eyes and tucked the golden thing in his pocket. “You could throw it.”
“A stone would work better,” I argued. “It would be heavier.”
“In the before time, my father said the weapons exploded like roasted chestnuts,” Kassian said.
The fact was meant to tantalize me into a game. I knew this and fell for it anyway.
“Let’s pretend we’re in the before time,” I suggested.
Kassian was, in my eyes, an expert on the before time. He was two years older, a grade ahead in school, and worlds wiser than me because he was allowed access to the ancient library in the basement of the town hall, kept preserved by his father, and I was perpetually jealous about it. My grandmother told me stories, the bits and pieces that she knew, but Kassian sometimes described the pages and pages of pictures he’d seen of the wonders that had used to exist, and I wished more than anything that I could see them, too. But the library was available only to scholars, lest the books be damaged or lost. They certainly weren’t available to an eight-year-old girl.
“All right,” Kassian agreed. “I’ll be a captain in the war against the Sworn, and you’ll be my subordinate.”
Kassian always wanted to play battles and wars. I didn’t like those games. I wanted to pretend we lived in a shining tower in the middle of an ancient city, with dizzying elevator lifts to carry us up and down, and music at our fingertips with a flip of a switch, and books enough to burn. Pretending to fight the Sworn filled me with uneasy fear. It was too close to our reality, even if we cloaked it in the trappings of the before time.
Kassian, however, seemed to need to pretend to fight them the way a bird needs the sky.
“Can’t we pretend we’re brother and sister, living in luxury?” Even as I spoke, I plucked a fallen tree branch from the ground reluctantly.
Kassian shook his head with dignity. He’d already adopted the persona of a man in charge of a battalion. His voice was grave and artificially gruff as he spoke. “We aren’t brother and sister, we’ve only met because of the war, but we can be best friends. I’m the captain, and I’m training you to be a fierce warrior against the Sworn. What is your name, warrior?”
I hesitated. “My name is… my name is Penelope Green. Pen Green. Call me Pen, okay?”
At eight, I was woefully transparent—Kassian’s cousin was a stately blond named Penelope, called Pen by all her friends. She helped Kassian’s father with the library books and sometimes went on trips to other villages to find and preserve books that had been discovered in cellars and attics. I envied and idolized her with every fiber of my being.
Kassian rolled his eyes. He knew all about my obsession and found it baffling. “Fine. Let’s go, Pen.”
I might have wanted to play something else, but Kassian was the air I breathed. If he said we were going to pretend to be at war, then I didn’t want to be anywhere else.
We crept on hands and knees through the trees that ringed the edge of my family’s property. Leaves rustled beneath my hands, and branches scratched my face. Beyond us was the forest, which most people in the village feared. We didn’t fear it much, because we knew it well, and it was daylight, and we were young.
“Carefully,” Kassian whispered. “Like this.” And he showed me how to move so that I didn’t make the leaves crackle, and so I didn’t snag my clothes on the trees. Even though we were playing, I was learning. It was always that way when I was with Kassian. He couldn’t seem to help teaching me, improving me.
When we reached a clearing, Kassian said, “Shhh! Do you hear that?”
I listened, but all I could hear was birdsong and the wind in the trees overhead.
“Enemy soldiers,” Kassian breathed. “They’re close. Can you hear them?”
My heart beat fast. I pretended to listen, but I couldn’t have heard anything over the sudden roaring of blood through my ears. The forest seemed unnaturally bright now, the sunlight harsh and wrong. A few ferns waved in the wind, and I twitched in fear.
Kassian’s eyes were alight as he grabbed my shoulder. “I want you to run to the creek, soldier, and don’t come back for me no matter what happens. Move quietly like I taught you. Run!”
I was frozen. A protest rose in my throat—I didn’t want to leave him, I didn’t want to be alone, I was scared—but Kassian was wrapped up in the spirit of the game, and he pointed a finger at me with the furious fervor of a beleaguered captain beset by enemies.
“Run!” he bellowed.
I stumbled to my feet and ran, leaping over rocks and ducking under half-fallen limbs until I was halfway to the creek.
Don’t come back for me, whatever happens.
A sob rose in my throat. We were only playing, but even so, the sense of panic filling me and threatening to squeeze the breath from my lungs was all too real.
Branches ripped at my clothes and hair. A stitch of pain stabbed my side, but I couldn’t stop. Frantic energy propelled me forward. I forgot my lessons about moving quietly and crashed into the bushes like a bull through a fence.
I tripped over a rock and fell. My palms shot out, breaking my fall as I slammed into the ground. Actual tears flooded my eyes, and I screamed Kassian’s name until I heard his footsteps crunching the underbrush behind me.
“Erie, Erie,” he said, his voice soothing like I was an injured animal. His hands closed around my shoulders, and he pulled me upright. He crouched next to me, scanning me for cuts. “Erie, what is it?”
“Kassian,” I sobbed. “Kassian, I’m scared.”
He wrapped his arms around me and hugged me close. “It’s only a game, Erie.”
“It-it feels scary. I hate this game. I hate pretending we’re in danger. I hate leaving you.”
“It isn’t real. I’m never going to leave you for real.”
I might be l
I hated this game because it was tinged with flavors from my nightmares—I’d find myself abruptly alone, my parents and Kassian gone, my grandmother dead, and the Sworn and treecrawlers and bandits closing in around my house and bursting through the walls while I screamed and begged for help. Sometimes, the scenery was different—a barn or a field—but the feeling was always the same.
The same feeling threatened to suffocate me now.
“I hate pretending you’re dying or getting kidnapped,” I squeaked. “Why do you love this game? It’s awful. I don’t even want to think about such things.”
Kassian’s expression turned serious. He wiped my tears away with his thumbs and stared into my eyes. He looked older. He wore an expression I’d seen his father make dozens of times when talking about things like ancient books, an expression that said he was going to try to make me understand something that he saw clearly.
“I’m practicing,” he said earnestly. “I get scared too, Erie. I get scared that I’m going to have to fight, and I won’t be able to. I’m scared I’m going to be overpowered and—”
He stopped talking like there was more he wanted to say, but he didn’t dare. Like he had a secret.
I swallowed hard. Kassian, scared? It was a revelation. He was my constant mooring, my rock. The thought of him feeling frightened was nearly as alien as the idea of my parents’ fear. I knew they felt fear—I’d heard them speak of it—but I couldn’t grasp the concept. Surely, they were never as fearful as I was. How could our world function if my protectors felt fear like I did?
“And what?” I asked, finally.
Kassian closed his eyes. He breathed in and out. “Do you have nightmares?”
“Almost every night,” I said. I felt a stab of guilt, like my nightmares were an admission that I didn’t trust my parents to keep me safe, like I wasn’t brave enough to fight off my subconscious fears in sleep. But lying to Kassian was impossible.
Kassian’s hands tightened on my arms. He still hadn’t let go of me. I was grateful. “I have nightmares, too.”
“Every night?” I whispered, shocked. But... he was Kassian. Brave, sure, confident Kassian.
He nodded. “I dream… I dream that I am turned into one of the Sworn.” He paused, his throat bobbing with emotion. “It’s my worst fear. That, and you dying.”
Nothing about this felt like a game anymore. This whole conversation felt like something much darker, like a shadow looming over us, threatening to blot out the sun and Kassian’s smile.
I hid my face in his shirt again.
“But… you’re always so brave,” I protested. We’d never talked about our fears like this before. We were treading on unfamiliar ground.
“Being brave doesn’t mean you aren’t scared,” Kassian said.
The idea of fear and courage coexisting was a shock to my young mind. I processed the idea slowly, turning it over and over.
“That’s why I like this game. I always feel a bit braver when I play it. Maybe if we pretend enough times, one day, I’ll stop being scared,” Kassian finished. “Or at least I won’t be so scared that I can’t do what I need to do.”
“Oh,” I said wonderingly.
“And if you fight with me… you won’t die.”
“Oh.” I pondered this. Kassian worrying about me came as a shock, too. “But everybody dies eventually.”
“You know what I mean.”
We stared at each other. I’d always hidden from my fears, paralyzed and helpless in the face of them, but here was Kassian, willingly meeting his and wrestling them to the ground.
I was in awe.
“Does it work?” I asked.
“I hope so.” He studied me. “How are you feeling, soldier?”
I gulped air. “Still a little afraid.”
“Then,” Kassian said, “let’s practice some more.”
As always, I wanted my Kassian by my side. I drew back and swiped my wrist across my face. “All right.”
Kassian grinned in a quick-silver flash that chased across his mouth. “Let’s start over. We’re fighting back against our enemies, and we’re winning.”
“Okay,” I cried out, blinking away my tears as I chased after him through the thick green of the forest.
We practiced our success in battle again and again. Kassian howled with fury as he knocked back invisible Sworn with the stick that was his sword, and I copied him, letting feelings of strength and bravery flow through me like water. It started to feel like something that would actually happen if I was faced with my greatest terror.
We were running together, but we were several strides apart, laughing as we ran. We reached a clearing, Kassian at one end and me at the other.
That was when we stumbled across the treecrawler.
It was an old woman, or at least, once a long time ago, it had been an old woman. It was mostly tree now. All the skin was gone from the treecrawler’s face, and the skull was covered in lichen and moss. Vines hung through a splintered rib cage like green entrails, and arms had hardened into branch-like monstrosities. Her dress was half-rotted, hanging from one shoulder and exposing the bone and branches beneath. Instead of teeth, the treecrawler had sharp points of shattered wood that protruded through the jawbone in rows like a shark’s teeth.
Beneath it all, nestled in the place where the heart had been, was the Spore. That vile seed that gave lurching, decaying life to the treecrawlers, the thing that fused the human corpse host and the invasion of plant and tree.
The treecrawler made a rattling sound like tree limbs scraping in the wind.
Kassian threw up a hand to silence me, but I couldn’t have spoken had my life depended on it. I was frozen in place, my eyes glued to the sight of the rotting remnants of this woman. I thought of my grandmother, and I felt horror worse than I’d ever felt before, because this had been someone’s grandmother, once.
Now, it wanted to kill us.
“Back,” Kassian hissed loudly in the silence.
“Don’t make me leave you,” I begged.
We were too far away from each other. I couldn’t run to him. The treecrawler was equally far from both of us.
“I—” he started to say, but then the treecrawler lunged at me.
“Erie!” he shouted.
I was stuck. My legs were locked. I was like a bird caught in a snake’s gaze, frozen.
And I was afraid, desperately so.
This wasn’t part of my nightmares. It was off-kilter, an unfamiliar taste in my mouth. I’d never been with Kassian when the monsters came. I’d always been alone.
But Kassian had told me that I could be brave even if I was afraid.
I believed him.
