Chapter 14 14
Narnia's POV
I was panicking as I struggled to my feet. Guild hunters. Perhaps more, a dozen at least, their forms visible through the waterfall as silhouettes against the moonlight. They had found us. Somehow, despite our precautions and even the secret cave, they had followed us.
Eira growled in my head, itching for a fight, but I could tell she wasn’t strong enough. She had spent weeks chained inside iron cages and her strength was sapped. I had no idea whether or not I even could change, let alone fight.
Elias stepped in front of me, already changing. His back hunched over, his chest broadened, talons erupted from the tips of his fingers. But his metamorphosis was still partial, a mix of human and wolf. He was struggling for control even as he readied to fight on our behalf.
"Keep behind me," he snarled, in muffled tones.
A shape pushed through the waterfall, water flowing off her black leather armor. She was big and rangy, with a scarred face and hard eyes like grey ice. She wore silver weapons on a belt around her waist and she had a rifle with silver bullets.
“Captain Morwen,” Elias said with a note of surprised recognition.
“Your most gracious Majesty,” the woman answered sarcastically. “Or do I just refer to you as beast? I'm sorry to hear about your altering, The Archon is very disappointed. All that years of training, all that promise, squandered on wolf corruption.”
“I am not debauched,” Elias said, his teeth grinding.
“That is not your duty to decide. Morwen's gaze turned to me, and I felt like a rabbit examined by a wolf. "Narnia Voss. The Guardian's daughter. It's been a long time before the Archon has accepted one of you. Your blood will be most helpful to our cause.”
You’ll never get her,” Elias growled.
All smiles, Morwen gave it to them, and a terrible thing it was. "Surrender peacefully, and the girl will survive. I have two lengths of chain, Resman—a pair, one for each of you.”ResmanVoicing the encouragement in action of the tiny men who had rendered such valuable advice as he wrote his wartime letter, Resman said: Renferr! The Archon, he likes you alive but dead will work as well.”
Elias stooped very close to my ear, and lowered his voice almost to a whisper that I alone could catch. "When I give the signal, run. Follow the stream east. Malarik’s sanctuary is that way, three miles. You can make it."
"I will not leave you," I hissed.
"You have to. "She didn't die for you to be the Guild's science project.”
“And she did not curse your father so you could die alone in a cave.”
Before he could protest Morwen held up her hand. The hunters behind her tossed small clay pellets into the cave. They crashed on the stone floor, releasing a cloud of thick grey smoke which stung my eyes and my throat at once.
I had almost ruptured a lung coughing, my head still reeling. Next to me, Elias growled, and it didn’t sound very human.
In a second his change was over. Bones cracked and reformed. Muscles expanded. Fur burst across his skin, silver white and shining even in the dark. Seconds later, he was on all fours instead of two, enormous and strong, his eyes burning gold with primeval rage.
He was so pretty and scared at the same time.
Elias plunged through the smoke and cascade of water, his piecemeal jaws grinding. I hear screams, the ringing of steel on claw, the staccato snap of gunfire. I staggered to the cave's mouth, squinting in the smoke, trying to make sense of what I was witnessing.
The hunters surrounded him. They did me no harm as they moved with well-practised teamwork, trying to chain my legs with silver, firing bullets of that same metal which burned my flesh. But Elias was quicker than they planned, stronger than they'd trained for. He carved a swath through them in brutal economy, his claws going through armor like so much wet paper.
But there were too many. And silver bullets hit the target.
One struck his shoulder. Another hit his back leg. A third grazed his ribs. Every bullet was a scorching pain to him, and I saw him shaking as he staggered before slowing down.
Captain Morwen advanced, her rifle trained on my forehead.
"The Guardian is ours, animal," she said coldly. "Dead or alive. Your choice."
Something inside me snapped.
I spent my life afraid. Afraid of my uncle. Afraid of the pack. Fearful of men who wished to kill me and wolves who wished me away. I learned to accept my fear as a given, the cost of being.
But seeing Elias bleed, seeing him struggle to defend me while I quailed in helplessness, ignited a fire inside me that I'd never known existed.
Rage. Pure and protective and overwhelming.
Eira ignited within me more fiercely than she had in months. And I made the easiest transformation in 40 years of my life. Naturally. Powerfully.
My bones reshaped without pain. My body condensed and shifted, muscle reforming into a form in which it was meant to be fast and agile. With white fur over my skin which shimmered by its own light and not the moons. I could feel strength pooling deep inside me, ancient and divine, my mother’s heritage finally stirring at long last.
I was smaller than Elias in his wolf form, meant for grace and not brute force. But that silver white light coming from my fur made them reel back in shock.
“Moonlight Guardian,” one of them stammered in horror.
I lunged.
The first hunter I met tried to level his sword at me, but my glow erupted into a blazing beacon of light and he howled as the skin melted off his body. I hadn't even had to lay a finger on him. Something within me ignited inside those few who had wronged me, shielding me in archaic light that I couldn’t understand but warmly accepted.
Elias and I danced together naturally, our bodies falling into step like we’d been battling one another for years. It was all strength and fury, armor-to-armor, weapon-to-weapon. I was light and shield, and merely being there healed his hurts as we fought.
The hunters scattered. Those who could still walk moved into the forest. Captain Morwen took one final shot and backed away, her bullet a hair's breadth from my head.
Quiet descended over the clearing next to the waterfall.
Elias wobbled, his huge wolf form swaying. I saw silver blood spurting from many hurts. The bullets filled him still, burning, poisoning his blood.
Then he fell hard on his side, struggling to breathe.
I transformed back to human, my body wrung out but still moving. I dragged myself to his side and put my hands into his wounds. "Elias. Elias, stay with me."
His golden eyes filled with agony met mine. He attempted to revert to human form but was unable. And the silver was holding him back, holding him in wolf form.
"Let me go," he breathed, his voice harsh even in my mind. "They will come back. You have to run."
"No," I said firmly. I covered the worst injury with my hands, and felt hot blood pounding against my palms. "I am not leaving you."
I had no idea what I was doing. I had never been able to heal anyone. Only the power of my mother was alive within me now, coursing through my veins like moonlight made flesh. I closed my eyes, grasping it, pulling it up from the bottom of my soul.
There was silver light pouring from my hands, bright and clear, warm. I could feel the bullets in them, I could feel them being blasted out of Elias by my force. They toppled to the ground with tiny clanks, smoking and black.
The wounds began to close. The wound was covered by fur. His breathing steadied.
But I was drained by the effort. I felt my strength running out of me as water, I grew faint astray. Elias's wolf’s shapestruck at me but before the darkness engulfed me, I caught a glimpse of him standing protectively over my own failing form.
I woke to sunlight.
Warm and softly filtered, flowing through a window framed by sheer white curtains. Slowly I blinked my eyes, trying to comprehend where I was. This was not the cave. This was not the forest. I was in a soft bed, buried under clean blankets in a room full of herbs and musty books.
A face appeared above me. Older, gentle, with warm brown times and a sweet smile.
"You are safe, child," Brother Malarik whispered. “You’ve been out for two days. “But you are going to be O.K.”
“Elias,” I gasped, throat parched. "Where is Elias?"
Malarik's expression grew complicated. "He is here. He lugged you all three miles back here to my den. He wouldn’t even let me near you at first, he wouldn’t even let anyone near you except for me. He hesitated, thinking his words through. He underwent his metamorphosis while you were asleep, Narnia. In other words, he's not in-between forms. He is fully wolf now. And he would not have left you until the time you awoke.”
I attempted to sit up, but my body refused. I was feeble, spent by what healing I managed. "I need to see him."
“And you’ll get him,” Malarik reassured me. ”But first, you have to drink this. You have to give body after using so much power.”
He eased me sitting up and gave me a cup of warm broth. I sipped it slowly, starting and watching as the energy came back to my limbs little by little.
"Where is he now?" I asked.
Malarik gestured to the window. "Outside. He has never gone out of the courtyard since we have been here. He is just waiting for you to wake up.”
I swung my blankets off of me and shuffled to the window on wobbly legs. Malarik was close by, able to catch me if I fell.
I looked out a window to a tiny courtyard surrounded by stone walls covered with ivy. And in the middle of that pool of sunlight a huge silvery wolf lay.
Elias.
His eyes were shut, and his breath easy and regular. But still, I could see the strain in his body from here. He was at rest, but he wasn’t at peace.
"He's not reversed," I whispered.
"No," Malarik confirmed. "I do not believe he can. The transformation is complete. He is not a man who turns into a wolf. He is a man that became a wolf.”
I put my hand to the window glass and felt a tightness in my chest I could not identify.
“But there is a beacon of hope,” Malarik said. "As he grows and trains, he can learn to change forms at will. That is the way of the real wolves, to walk in two worlds. But for the present he is stuck in the shape. And he will not descend into you, Narnia. Even if you asked him to."
I watched the silver wolf in the yard, watched his ear flick at some remote sound, watched his tail curl protectively around him.
He had sacrificed everything for me. His crown. His humanity. His entire identity.
And somehow, miraculously, I knew that in my own way, I had done the same for him.