Chapter 63. Meeting the Warmother: I Kept My Mouth Shut For This Time

Chapter 63: 63. Meeting the Warmother: I Kept My Mouth Shut For This Time

The tunnel was narrow, barely wide enough for a horse, with a low, vaulted ceiling and walls of rough dark stone.

Someone had carved wolves into them, long lines of running wolves, hundreds of them, chasing each other into the dark.

Sylvara called up a tiny lantern of violet light and set it floating ahead of us, and it cast long, flickering shadows over the carvings so that they seemed to move.

I walked near the back, leading my sulky mare by the bridle. And I can still feel my side aching.

Every few steps... my vision swam a little, and I had to stop and breathe. Sylvara dropped back to walk beside me, and without saying anything, she laid a cool palm against my ribs and murmured something under her breath.

The pain eased. I felt her eyes drift down to my hand, which was shaking again, and she looked away without a word.

"Thanks," I said quietly.

"Hush," she said.

Elsbeth walked on my other side, in silence. We went a long way like that, three abreast, with the little purple light bobbing ahead of us.

Finally... in a very low voice, she said, "I am afraid."

I turned my head.

"Not of the Chain." Her eyes were fixed on the tunnel ahead. "I am afraid of what I will find when we arrive..."

"My mother... My sister... The people I grew up with." Her jaw tightened. "I have been trying not to think about it."

"I’m here," I said. "Whatever we find..."

She didn’t answer. But after a few steps, her stride slowed, just slightly, until she was walking exactly in time with mine, shoulder to shoulder.

Behind us, I heard Millie humming. It was that slow, strange melody again, the one that drifted out of her without thought.

Bonette, walking at her side, glanced down at her and smiled... a small, bitter, tender smile that I couldn’t read at all.

Far ahead, Velora’s voice carried back along the tunnel, level and cool.

"There is a flaw in this passage," she said. "The wardstone opens only to wolf blood."

"Any wolf... Including those the Chain has taken."

I heard Elsbeth’s breath catch.

"If they have my sister," she said slowly, "then... she is the key."

Nobody said anything.

The little light bobbed on ahead of us, and the carved wolves ran on along the walls, forever chasing something just out of reach.

Hearthfang Keep was a fortress built around a secret.

...

We came up through a trapdoor in the cellar, into a vaulted stone room lit by a few smoky torches, and the first thing that happened was that six guards in gray tabards leveled spears at my chest.

They moved so fast that I barely had time to blink.

The nearest one, a hard-faced woman with a scar through her lip, looked at me with undisguised hatred.

"A human," she said. "In the keep..."

"He is with me," Elsbeth said sharply.

The guard’s eyes flicked past me and widened. "Third watch...?"

"Evershade?" The spears wavered. "We thought... you were dead."

"I am not."

They lowered their weapons. Very, very reluctantly.

The keep itself was a rough-cut fortress of heavy gray stone, set high on a bluff overlooking the valley. Its walls were thick, its towers squat and square, and the whole place had the air of a house that had been braced for a siege a long time.

Smoke poured from a dozen chimneys. Every window was shuttered.

I could hear the muffled sounds of hammers and shouted orders, and somewhere nearby, someone was weeping softly.

A woman descended the great stair to meet us.

She was tall, like Elsbeth, but older, with iron-gray hair streaked silver at the temples and a long white cloak trimmed with fur.

A thin scar split her left eyebrow in two. Her eyes were the same deep red as her daughter’s, and when they landed on Elsbeth, I saw them harden... and then something behind the hardness moved.

"Mother," Elsbeth said.

That’s Elsbeth’s mother...?! Holy shit...! She’s gorgeous!

The Warmother of the Northern Wolf Clan crossed the last few steps and embraced her daughter.

It was stiff, brief, and brutally controlled, the kind of embrace that two people give each other when they are both holding something very fragile... and also very carefully.

It lasted about three seconds. Then she stepped back and put her hands behind her back.

"You are late," said Hrafnhild Evershade... yes. That was her name.

"I was delayed."

"I see that..."

I’d never heard anyone speak so much like Elsbeth. She had the same clipped, formal rhythm, the same flat precision, and not a single contraction in the whole sentence.

It was almost funny. It would have been if I hadn’t been looking at her hands, which were clasped behind her back so tightly that the knuckles had gone white.

Elsbeth reported. She did it in her usual cool, steady voice, with all the facts in order.

The ambush at Hollow Pass.

The Wolfkin in the crystals.

And what had happened to Torunn?

When she said Torunn’s name, her mother’s eyes flickered, once... She said nothing for a long moment.

"She... taught you well," she said at last.

It was the only condolence she allowed herself, and Elsbeth received it with a short nod.

"And Ylva...?" she asked.

I frowned. I’d heard a different name for her sister, but Elsbeth’s voice cracked slightly on this one, and I figured it was a nickname.

"Astrid was taken in the fall of the outer village," the Warmother said, without any expression at all. "I do not know where she is."

I heard the faint crack of porcelain.

She was holding a cup, and I saw a thin line split down the side of it. She set it carefully on a table and did not look at it again.

Then those red eyes turned on me.

"And this," she said. "A... human?"

"His name is Leon Levarion," Elsbeth said. "He has been under my protection."

"Under your protection...? Why?"

"He held Torunn down so that I could strike," Elsbeth said, steadily. "He broke the root of the Oathglass rather than take it for himself."

"He reached eight of our own back from the dark... I owe him my life three times."

Yikes. I feel like I was one cloud nine right now with that glaze.

The warmother studied me. It was the longest, coldest look I’d ever been given, and I felt like a bug under a glass.

The more I look at her... the more I’m starting to feel nervous and try my hardest to not think of any dirty-minded shit about her.

I bowed instantly. I didn’t know what else to do at this point, just so that I could control myself.

I’d practiced it in my head on the long ride, and I tried to make it look dignified. But, of course... I didn’t say a word... just to make sure I didn’t crack an unnecessary joke.

"Then the clan really owes you," the Warmother said at last. "Wolves repay."

It wasn’t thanks. She didn’t smile, or unbend, or nod.

But I felt the weight of it settle on my shoulders anyway, a heavy, serious thing... and I understood that I’d just been given something rare.

Velora stepped forward and handed her the letter from the Council of Elarune.

"Magnara leads the relief column," she said. "She will arrive in two days."

"Two days," said the Warmother, and her mouth thinned. "We may not have two days at this point..."

"Then we shall see to it that we do."

They exchanged a brief, formal bow, two commanders measuring each other, and I noticed with some amusement that neither of them looked away first.

Before we were dismissed, the Warmother said something else, in a low voice, almost to herself.

"One more thing... My scouts dug up the carcass of the Frostfang that attacked you, daughter."

"It lay where you buried it." She paused. "There was a shard of Moonshard buried behind its ear..."

Elsbeth went very still.

"They were testing the stones on beasts first... And then they used one as bait. "The Warmother’s voice was perfectly level. "The strongest warrior of the third watch was sent to hunt it... alone, and they let her go."

"I was the lure," Elsbeth said quietly.

"Yes."

She didn’t say anything else. But I saw her hand clench at her side, and I stepped a few inches closer so that my sleeve brushed hers.

She didn’t move away.