Page 65 of The Wolf Queen

“How can I be of the Mother?” I shot her a tight smile and watched her face fall as she saw my anger, my pain, at how inadequate my attempts to change things had been., I glanced over my shoulder at the chapel behind us, seeing the darkness, the bloodied hand marks. “I lost my child, Pepin, so there’s no need to shun me anymore. I’m not a mother anymore; perhaps never will be…”

She put her hand out and clasped mine, and, at her touch, my words trailed away.

“You lost one child, Darcy,” she said, “but not the others. You know what you are now. No longer a maiden, concerned only with her own life, her own needs, her own development. You’ve become like her.”

And, oddly, when we both turned to stare into the statue’s face, this time I saw something different. An impression, as if the details of a face had been rubbed away over time, leaving only the barest of bone structure behind. My mother’s face, mine, were both superimposed over the statue’s.

“Whatever I am doesn’t matter,” I said, finally, hearing the men’s voices getting louder. “So, are you the one who is responsible for clearing the Reavers out of the chapels?”

“No,” she smiled, “You are.”

“What?”

“Callum might have the blood,” she said, gazing up at me. “But he doesn’t have the connection. All he has is his own rage to feed him. He burned through everything he touches, until you. You’re the land we backburn to stop the bushfire from spreading, you’re depriving him of fuel.”

“Can I be the knife at his throat?” I asked, my voice far sharper than I had intended it to be. “Can I be the end of him? He won’t stop until he’s dead—”

“Darcy, maybe not even then.” Her smile was wistful. “That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? But you’ll need to evolve again, if you want to stop him for once and for all.” She regarded the statue steadily. “Remember, the Mother is life, not death.”

“Mother…?” She was talking about moving from mother to crone but it wasn’t just the age discrepancy that had me baulking at that. Mother, that’s what Pepin had just told me I was now, and I wanted to cling to that identity. Then I shook my head, remembering the way it’d felt when Callum’s Reavers had tried to take my children. “I’ll become whatever it takes to keep the children safe.”

“That’s just what she’d say.” Pepin was watching me closely, though I couldn’t imagine why. Then she slowly nodded, before asking me something unexpected. “Tell me now, how’s that little girl of yours?”

“Jan?” It felt like a cold finger slid down my spine. “Why do you ask?”

“She’s mine, now,” Pepin said. “I watch over her from time to time.” She shrugged. “I made sure you found her, didn’t I?”

“What…?” I had questions, so many questions and it wasn’t their importance or urgency that stopped me from uttering them. It was my experience with trying to communicate with the goddesses. The Morrigan, Pepin, they made vague pronouncements, hinting or alluding but never telling me anything really useful. I frowned as I stared at her, because I suddenly felt like I was moving away from her, in more ways than one. “It doesn’t matter. What does matter is why we’re here. If you are one-third of an all-powerful goddess, then perhaps you can help me and my party find our way across Snowmere in one piece?”

“I thought you’d never ask.” That familiar impish grin was back and as Pepin dusted off her hands, all of a sudden it felt like sound came back into the cavern. The members of the council were pushing forward, asking questions of each other (for why would a Granian nobleman expect a woman to have knowledge when he didn’t?). But of all of them, Dane’s was the only voice I listened to.

“Darcy?”

As he stepped closer, he eyed the two of us carefully, particularly Pepin. Now that he knew what she was, he was expressing a kind of wary respect I’d never really seen in him before.

“Gather your boys and hold them close,” Pepin told me. “Because Snowmere isn’t the place it once was. It belongs to him now. And Callum could never hold something precious without breaking it. And, Darcy, make sure those soldier boys hold their tongues. I can help you find a safe path to the castle, but not if they’re yammering the whole time.”

I conveyed that to Bryson, without bothering to explain exactly what Pepin was. I was in no mood to be holding theological discussions with a Granian right now. But as we passed through the chapel of the Maiden, they paid little attention to her statue, their attention captured by the massive footprints on the ground, the brownish stains that spoke of how Callum had found his way into the chapel. They fell silent of their own accord once the door was opened. Because there, tossed on the steps like dolls, were the bodies of those the Reavers had decimated in order to break the seal on the door: their only funeral rites was a constant drone of flies that set my teeth on edge. I wanted to stop and pay my respects, but this was not the time, so I covered my nose and climbed after her, up the stairs and into the old castle.

“This is the palace?”Bryson whispered.

“No,” Dane replied, looking around at the destruction. Every piece of furniture was broken or burnt, every piece of fabric shredded. Paper had been thrown about, torn and scattered. People’s belongings had been ransacked and dumped in hallways, forcing us to carefully pick our way through. But once we got to the gates, that’s when we saw how complete the sacking of the city had been. Snowmere burned before us, smoke rising in lazy curls, turning the sky grey with ash.

“Looks like an attack is not needed, brother,” Tristan whispered when he reached our sides. “They’ve destroyed it themselves.”

And Callum had. Not one building was whole and standing. The place was ghostly quiet, empty of life.

“Come on,” Pepin said, then glanced back at the northern lords and their weapons. “You’ve got swords? Good, you’ll be needing them. But for now, stay quiet and look alive. I know one of the less used routes but, be warned…” Her lips pursed. “You’re about to enter the wolves’ den and you don’t want to go alerting them to our presence.”

Chapter37

This had seemed like a much better idea back in the safety of Aramathia. Once I was back in Snowmere, I remembered anew what it was to be living on a knife’s edge. I jumped when I heard the far-off howl of a Reaver, started at the sound of rubble tumbling across the cobblestones, kicked by an errant boot as we made our way through the ruins of the city. Tristan smirked at me, obviously amused by this, but he didn’t know the horrors that existed here. We’d come at night to try to decrease our chance of detection. But, in some ways, that just increased my sense of dread. Was that dark shape just an irregular shadow or was it a lurking Reaver? Were those red points his eyes or just burning embers? The place stank of blood, rotting flesh, ash and smoke and every breath was a fight to take for more reasons than one.

As I picked my way through the destruction, I relived the day that Callum attacked. I’d been flush with a sense of victory at Ironhaven, only to belatedly realise how arrogant I’d been. He’d tricked us, using the battle as a feint to draw us away from the defence of Snowmere, and then he’d thrown the mass of his army against the city walls as we struggled to rally. I saw again Reavers plunging their claws into the mortar in between the bricks of the city walls to help them clamber up. The way they’d tossed dead bodies of their own kind at the base of the wall, and then used them as a ramp to climb higher. We’d done everything we could to defend the city and yet…

“Darcy.”

Pepin barely whispered my name, but it was enough to draw my attention back to the here and now. When she flattened herself against a wall, I did the same, gesturing fiercely for the others to follow. They did so, more or less, but without the required level of finesse used by me and mine. I heard the shuffle of feet, the muffled curses and I winced. Because if I could hear it, so could the ones we were trying to avoid.

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