The Maelstrom

~ 4 ~ Dregs and Driftwood

Three days later, the cottage on Crofter’s Hill was filled to capacity. Its doors were propped open, a cool breeze skimming across as dozens of children sat silent as church mice, their attention fixed upon the ogre’s pale eyes and knuckled skull. Hunched upon his stool, Bob recited a poem in a voice that rumbled like old millstones:

“We know not the MakerBut we know his worksWe smell the badger in his burrow and see old troll on his mountainWe fear the giants on their isles, wild as the stormWe envy men and their warm firesWe scorn the goblins and their low housesWarm blood our wine; winter’s heart our homeWhere stones crack and rivers freeze and woods grow quietYou will find the ogreAnd when all is dust and the lands bled dryYou will find him still”When his slow verse was finished, the ogre blinked as though waking from a dream. Tapping his chin, he frowned. “There is more, I think, but Bob remembers not.”

“Tell us another, then,” pleaded Claudia, a thickset twelve-year-old with shiny black braids. Among the orphans Max had met in Blys, Claudia was the natural leader—a bold and gregarious child who was always inventing new games and activities. Following his previous visit to Bob, Max had sought her out and asked if she might like to meet a real ogre. The girl had nearly fainted with excitement. Within the hour, she had recruited an entire troop of fellow refugees eager to make the trek up Crofter’s Hill.

Bob smiled as Claudia clambered onto his knee across from a toddler who was busy drooling on the ogre’s flannel shirt. “You can tell us a story about Max!” she proclaimed.

“It is almost suppertime,” the ogre observed, his eyes tracing the hazy sunlight that streamed through the windows. “And Bob knows not the verse for him.”

“But Max should have a song,” she insisted. “We can sing about the time he fought Skeedle’s troll on Broadbrim Mountain.”

“Or when he saved Mina from the monster,” suggested a skinny youth named Paolo.

“How about when he rode off with a demon in a fiery carriage?” chimed a cheerful lump nicknamed Porcellino. “We could write a verse about that!”

“Bob believes you could,” replied the ogre solemnly. “But it is unwise to sing songs of the living. The Fates might think their tale is finished. And our Max’s tale is not finished yet, is it, malyenki?”

“Not yet.” Max smiled, giving Mina’s hand a squeeze. Scooting her off his lap, Max stood and stretched. “In fact, I’m running late to train with Sarah. Would you mind walking them back to Wainwright Lane? It’s by the dunes.”

Bob nodded and turned to Isabella, a dark-haired woman knitting by the hearth.

“Would you like to stay for supper?” he inquired. “Bob can cook and after he can see you and the little ones safe to your doors. He would not mind.”

At this, the children erupted in such howls of delight that Isabella had no choice but to accept. Bidding Max farewell, Bob turned his attention to the matter of supper, lumbering about the kitchen and issuing slow, patient orders to his many eager helpers. Within minutes, they were boiling water, emptying the pantry, mixing dough, and picking tomatoes off the vine. When Porcellino dropped a sack of flour, Max skirted the mess to slip outside. Mina followed.

“Don’t you want to stay and cook?” he asked. Shaking her head, she stopped to pet the billy goat, which bleated amiably and lay down on the grass.

“I have lessons with David.”

“Ah. Are you enjoying them?”

“Oh yes,” she replied, leaving the goat to go trotting down the hill, jumping from rock to rock. Max trotted after. “David’s a very good teacher,” she chattered. “So patient and wicked. I should not care to cross words with him.”

“Cross swords,” Max clarified.

“Words,” she laughed. “I should not cross words with patient, wicked David. He’s as patient and even wickeder than Uncle ’Lias.”

“Speaking of words,” Max reflected. “I don’t believe wickeder is one of them.”

“It is within the circles,” she remarked, “and if it’s not, it should be.”

“What circles?” asked Max.

“You know the ones I mean,” she said knowingly. The girl chased after a butterfly at the base of the hill. It flew to Mina’s finger as though obeying a silent command. She stared at its golden brilliance, her eyes shining like opals.

“Mina, are you talking about summoning circles?” asked Max, his smile fading as he came up beside her. Astaroth had forbidden summoning spirits and demons. Even if one was willing to risk such a transgression, it was a profoundly hazardous exercise—one that had cost David Menlo his hand. David had been thirteen when he attempted such dangerous activities; Mina was but seven. Ignoring Max’s question, she merely blew the butterfly a kiss and watched it flutter away.

“Mina,” pressed Max. “What have they been teaching you?”

“Rules.” Mina shrugged, squatting to investigate a chipmunk hole. “How some spirits fear iron and running streams and others special words. They have to answer David when he calls, but they want to see me.”

Max’s mouth went dry.

“Who does?” he croaked. “Who wants to see you?”

“Outsiders,” she replied, peering down the hole. “Scary ones with fiery crowns and faceless ones made of blue smoke and faerie queens so pretty you could stare at them for days! There are others, too—others who call out from places only I can see. Not even Uncle ’Lias can see them.”

“So he’s there, too,” Max remarked. “The Archmage is showing you these things?”

But Mina didn’t appear to have heard him.

“You have to look deep in the circle’s center,” she continued dreamily, taking his fingers once again. “And you can’t look too hard or you won’t see it. I try to picture the skinniest space between the chalk and the floor and then—oh, Max! There are so many places! Some are like a forest of shimmering towers so tall they make Old Tom look like a toadstool. Others are smaller than my thumb and close like a flower as soon as I look at them. But they’re not flowers—they’re little worlds made of water and mist and light. When I look deep down in the circle, everything’s bending and moving and overlapping. It’s like seeing all the places at once through a curvy glass that won’t stay still. It makes my head ache, but they’re so very pretty and thin and far, far away. And everyone in them wants to see me, Max. They all hurry out to see little Mina!”

Max pressed Mina on exactly who wanted to see her, but her only response was to laugh and repeat the statement with a shy but unmistakable pride. Throughout their conversation, Max kept his voice and manner calm, but inwardly he was reeling. It was unconscionable to involve a child—even one so obviously gifted—in such risky endeavors. He needed to speak with David.

“What if I asked you to stop taking these lessons?” he said quietly. “What if you went back to living with Isabella and Claudia and the rest?”

Mina’s smile vanished. Letting go of his hand, she stopped to stare up at him. “We must be what we will be.” There was a Rowan seal embroidered on Max’s shirt, and Mina reached up to touch each of the sigil’s symbols with her finger. “Wild Max must be Rowan’s sun and wise David her magical moon, and Mina must be a bright little star that shines far above all.”

Max gazed down at the standard. For years it had seemed little more than a charming bit of heraldry. But did the celestial symbols above the Rowan tree represent something else? Did the sun, moon, and star stand for three children of the Old Magic? There were so many strange portents of late and none stranger than this little girl he’d rescued in Blys.

“Did the spirits tell you that?” he wondered.

“Uncle ’Lias,” she replied distractedly. Her attention had now shifted across the Sanctuary lagoon, where refugees and Rowan students were popping in and out of the Warming Lodge. Mina watched them with quiet, attentive curiosity. Max knew what she was thinking.

“A charge will choose you,” he assured her.

“I know,” she sighed. “He is searching for me. But he cannot come to me yet—he is not strong enough. I must be patient.”

“You already know what your charge will be?”

“Oh yes,” Mina whispered. “I saw him in the circle. He’s wilder than you, Max. Even terrible Prusias will fear him! When the gulls cry out and the waters run red, he’ll rise from the sea to find me.…”

She grinned and clapped but would say no more. As the pair walked, Max reflected upon how much Mina had changed. The shy, nearly mute child from the farmhouse was gone, consigned to a past that might have been another existence. There was something of David in her now, an abstracted quality that made Max feel as though his questions were intruding upon a mind feverishly preoccupied with weightier matters. While David bore Max’s queries with weary patience, Mina was still young enough to believe that sheer enthusiasm was sufficient to explain the wildly complex concepts that she apparently mastered with instinctive ease. She might have been speaking another language; Max simply could not conceive of more than four dimensions or send his spirit on shadow walks or perceive the pervasive, Brownian buzz of ancient incantations. When she noticed that his nods were a polite appeasement rather than a meeting of minds, she ceased her breathless discourse and talked instead about her favorite bakery.

“You sound like you’re hungry.” Max smiled, spying the shop in question. “Let me get you something?”

“No thank you. Uncle ’Lias will have food waiting and I mustn’t be late.”

“Listen,” said Max. “Why don’t you come to the training grounds with me? I’m meeting my friend Sarah. You’ll like her.”

“But the Archmage is waiting.”

“I don’t care who’s waiting,” Max retorted. “I don’t want you doing such dangerous things.”

Mina glanced at him. “You once saved me from a monster and chased it down its well. Was that dangerous?”

“Of course,” said Max. “But I’m older. You’re only seven, Mina.”

“I might be seven, but I can go on shadow walks and make out the secret places. Can you?”

Max shook his head and acknowledged her point with a rueful smile. “No, I can’t do those things. I don’t even understand them.”

The little girl hugged him, her cheeks pink from their long walk and the cold. Already streetlamps were glowing with witch-fire, bathing nearby windows and awnings with a golden light. Turning her face up to his, Mina gazed at him with fierce adoration.

“I’m going down a well, too, Max. It’s just a different one than yours. But don’t worry about your little Mina. She knows the way out.”

Standing on her tiptoes, she kissed his cheek and ran off down the central lane, her shoes smacking on the cobbles as she cried hello and goodbye to the baker’s wife. Max watched her go, resolved to speak with David and Bram and do what little he could to protect her. What’s been seen cannot be unseen. Mina is seeing too much, too soon.

It was nearly dark by the time Max exited the hedge tunnel. His breath frosted in the night air as his boots crunched on brittle leaves. Curfew would be in several hours and the paths were crowded with students hurrying off to libraries, their magechains glittering by the light of lamps and lanterns. He said hello to a few but kept to the edge of the path and never passed within close reach. In the dark, it was not easy to determine if an approaching figure carried a book or a knife. Bram’s words echoed in Max’s mind: When they come for you, they will not come as a stranger in the shadows. The Atropos will be someone you know.

He skirted the orchard and the Manse, hurrying down to the sea where the xebec lay anchored in Rowan Harbor. There’d been no word of Cooper or Ben Polk, and Max itched to speak with the hunched figure sitting near the xebec’s prow, silhouetted against the green witch-fire. The witch was just a weather worker, but she might have heard or seen something of value.

Turning away, he veered north along the coast and toward the training grounds that Sarah had mentioned. As he walked, the elegance of the academic quad gave way to a wilder setting. Here the trees grew thicker and the smoke of a hundred cooking fires scented the air. Up ahead, there were shouts and laughter, punctuated now and again by the ring of steel striking steel.

Through a gap in the trees, Max glimpsed a broad clearing that resembled both a military post and a gypsy camp. Long, low buildings and colorful tents lined the perimeter, surrounding archery ranges, sparring pits, and open-air smithies. It was chaos within; thousands of refugees huddled around bonfires and waited in long lines to hone their skills at archery or hand-to-hand combat. A small army of hogs, goats, and dogs scampered atop mounds of garbage, sifting through the waste for scraps of food. A shrill ring rose above the din. A crowd by one of the sparring pits gave a throaty cheer.

“Don’t go in unless you plan to burn your clothes,” warned a nearby voice.

He turned to see a boyish creature with curling brown hair and the hind legs of a deer. It was a Normandy faun, stepping gingerly through the underbrush before stopping to sniff at the base of a shaggy oak. Max recognized him at once; he was the twin brother to Connor Lynch’s former charge, Kyra.

“Kellen,” said Max. “What are you doing out here?”

“Truffles,” replied the faun, scraping at the soil with a hand shovel. “A cruel joke that they grow so near this abominable camp with its dogs and their reek, no? If the pigs should find them”—he shuddered at the thought—“I will throw myself into the sea.”

“A bit dramatic,” said Max.

“Monsieur has clearly never tasted truffles.”

“How is Kyra doing?” inquired Max. “Has she heard anything from Connor?”

“Non,” replied the faun testily, probing another patch of dirt. “And do not mention his name. Two years have passed and poor Kyra is still so ashamed. A human leaving a faun? It is not done!”

“They weren’t dating,” Max chuckled. “He was just her steward.”

“Tell that to my sister,” Kellen grumbled, prizing out a beloved truffle and sniffing at it rapturously. He waved Max away. “Go swing your silly sword and thump your chest with the flea-bitten commoners. And when you itch, don’t say Kellen didn’t warn you.”

“Always a pleasure,” said Max, stepping into the clearing.

But as he strolled through the camp in search of Sarah, Max had to admit that the faun had a point. The clearing was very large, but it was packed with people dressed in filthy leggings, shirts, and jackets. Most were unwashed and some looked ill, gazing at him with rheumy eyes from within their tents. Why Sarah had chosen such a place to train was beyond him—Rowan offered pristine facilities for its students to hone their skills.

He finally found her in the midst of an exercise area, hanging by her fingertips from a crossbar.

“You’re late,” she chided. “I started without you.”

Without the slightest tremor, she raised her chin above the bar. Her sculpted arms were bare, the firelight gleaming on each muscle as they twitched beneath her ebony skin. At thirteen, Sarah Amankwe had only been growing into her considerable looks and athleticism. At eighteen, her beauty had blossomed in spectacular fashion. She had a dancer’s carriage and her close-cropped hair only seemed to accentuate her long neck and elegant features. Max was hardly surprised by her crowd of spectators.

But Sarah took no notice of them. Exhaling slowly, she completed another repetition and then another. Each was as smooth and effortless as the last. At fifty, Max stopped counting. The crowd of spectators grew. Some grinned with disbelief at the display, but others appeared sullen and almost resentful. None looked away until she had finished.

“Your turn,” she said, dropping from the bar and shaking out her arms.

“Where are Cynthia and Lucia?” Max asked.

“Studying,” Sarah laughed. “We have an exam tomorrow and they want to be Mystics, not Agents like yours truly. You couldn’t coax Cynthia out here for anything. Now, if you’re finished stalling …”

Max grinned and jumped up to take hold of the bar.

“What’s your best?” he asked.

“One hundred forty,” she replied coolly. “One hundred and forty perfect ones. No cheating.”

“Renard must love you,” Max grunted, spacing his hands.

He stopped well short of Sarah’s staggering number, doing only enough repetitions to get loose. The onlookers chuffed, some disappointed and others apparently pleased. Several catcalls rose above the clatter of training swords and laughter. Max turned his head and eyed a gang of young men and women warming their hands by a fire as they waited their turn for the sparring pits. That they were a tough-looking set was no surprise; anyone who made their way to Rowan from outside was bound to have seen more than their share of fighting. What surprised Max was the unmistakable hostility stamped on each and every face. Sarah wheeled at them.

“Watch your mouths,” she snapped.

“I’d rather watch yours,” quipped the leader with an insolent lift of his chin. He looked to be nineteen or twenty, a wiry youth with jagged brown hair that poked from beneath a leather cap. One eye was nearly swollen shut from a recent blow and his nose had been broken several times. In his eyes, Max saw the hard, hungry look of a scavenger.

You’ve killed before. And more than once.

“Cretins,” Sarah muttered. She took Max’s arm. “Let’s go to the sparring pits. I need you to help me with my footwork.”

“Don’t we have to wait?” asked Max, eyeing the snaking lines. “We get priority,” she explained. “If we had to wait behind them, we’d never get anything done. A thousand arrive every day, and most are no better than criminals. You’d think they’d be grateful for a bit of food and shelter, but all I hear are complaints about them being second-class citizens. They’re already pestering Ms. Richter. As if she doesn’t have enough to do.”

“Why don’t you just train on campus?” asked Max.

“I usually do,” she replied, “but Renard’s overworked and has asked Rolf and me to help with the First and Second Years. A few of my prized pupils wanted to see the camp and so we brought them here tonight. There they are—by the archery range.”

Max saw Rolf Luger standing behind a score of Rowan Second Years, conspicuous among the refugees. That Monsieur Renard would choose Sarah and Rolf for such a task came as no surprise. Since they arrived at Rowan, the two had been at the top of their class and captained many of the athletic teams. At Rolf’s command, the students notched their arrows and drew their bowstrings taut.

“Loose!” Rolf cried.

Twenty arrows thudded into their straw targets fifty paces away. Most were admirably centered.

“Pretty good, aren’t they?” said Sarah, smiling. “Weapons training has been intensified tenfold since Gràvenmuir was destroyed. Anything but a bull’s-eye is considered a miss, even for the First Years. What do you think?”

“I think they’d be better off hunting,” Max observed candidly. “Or shooting on the run. I don’t like this kind of training. You get too used to perfect.”

Sarah appeared crestfallen. “I—I thought you’d be impressed.”

“I am impressed,” Max assured her. “It’s no easy thing to consistently hit a small target. But we’re not training for an archery contest. We’re training for war. These kids are getting accustomed to taking their time and shooting with a steady heart rate at stationary targets. What happens when they’re too scared to breathe and a vye is closing at ten yards a stride? I doubt two in twenty would hit their mark.”

Sarah listened carefully to the feedback. “I want my group to be tops,” she said. “You’ve got real experience, Max. We’ll make whatever changes you suggest. What would you do in my place?”

“Stress training,” Max replied, watching the group loose another perfect volley. “Have them shoot while fatigued. Use blunted arrows at multiple live targets—targets that are attacking. Do they know how to restring a bow in the field or fletch an arrow?”

Sarah shook her head.

“I didn’t think so,” Max continued. “We may not have the course anymore, Sarah, but we need to mimic real combat as best we can. If Prusias attacks, his soldiers are not going to wait at fifty paces until we’re good and ready to shoot them. If Agents and instructors are spread too thin, ask some of the refugees for help.”

“What are they going to teach us?” wondered Sarah. “How to spit, swear, and gripe?”

Max shrugged. “Your students have technique but no experience. The refugees have experience but no technique. Maybe you have things to teach each other. These people have survived some of the worst stuff you could ever imagine.”

Sarah nodded but looked doubtfully at the lines of ragtag youths and adults crowded around the sparring pits. “Come on,” she said. “I’ve got an exam tomorrow and told Cynthia I’d meet her in Bacon by nine. Besides, I owe you a bruise or two for critiquing my perfect little archers.…”

For nearly an hour, Max tested Sarah’s skills in the sparring pit while Rolf and the Second Years gathered around to watch.

Sarah had chosen a naginata, a Japanese polearm whose steel blade had been blunted and wrapped with leather strips coated in phosphoroil. The wooden gladius Max was using was considerably shorter. With Sarah’s catlike quickness and balance, it was challenging to get within ten feet of her. Whenever he darted in to attack, he found Sarah’s blade waiting—poised and ready in her skilled hands.

But Max was skilled, too, and experience had taught him patience.

“Are you giving your best?” Sarah panted, laboring to ward off another attack. Despite her conditioning, she was growing fatigued. At last Max saw an opening. Feinting a lunge to the left, he spun around on his heel and rapped her sharply across the knuckles with the gladius. Hissing with pain, Sarah dropped the weapon. Snatching it out of the air, Max swept her legs out from beneath her. With a thud, Sarah fell onto her back, the gladius poised at her throat.

Breathing heavily, she glowered at him. “So you’ve just been playing with me.”

“Not at all,” said Max, helping her up. “You’re just tired. Your initial attack was excellent—legitimately superb—but you expended almost all of your energy. An experienced opponent will play possum and let you wear yourself out. Focus on your breathing, Sarah. Don’t think of me as an adversary; think of me as a puzzle. Find the patterns and solve the puzzle. If you haven’t spent all your energy, you’ll be able to capitalize when opportunities arise. Your problem isn’t your skill or strength; you have both in spades. Your problem is pacing.…”

“Go on,” said Sarah, catching a towel tossed by one of the Second Years. “You were going to say something else.”

“Well, it’s more than pacing,” Max finally conceded. “You’re afraid to actually hit me.”

Sarah laughed and tossed the towel at him. “Of course I am! Who wants to ruin that face?”

“I’m serious,” Max replied. “You have all the skill in the world, but you strike at your target when you should be striking through it. You’re holding back because you’re afraid you’ll hurt someone. That’s a habit that will get you killed. In the Kingdoms, they play for keeps.”

“That’s what I keep telling her,” Rolf called out, sounding superior.

“Hmm,” said Sarah, pivoting on her heel. “Seems like someone’s forgetting that I’ve beaten him the last five matches. And since when have you been in the Kingdoms?”

Rolf reddened but cracked a reluctant smile as the Second Years began to needle him. But another voice broke in, rough and raw. Max turned to see the tough-looking youth from before. He and his friends had gathered around one end of the pit and were looking down at them.

“I been in the Kingdoms,” he said, a grim smile on his face as he leaned on a battered broadsword. “Ain’t no ‘tap-tap-I-scored-a-point’ nonsense there. You’d be in a vye’s belly, sweets. Now get outta my pit.”

He spat, the gob landing inches from Sarah’s boot.

Max walked across the pit.

“Careful, Ajax,” warned one of the boy’s companions. “He’s in the Red Branch.”

“Red Branch?” the spitter scoffed. “I hear two of them’s gone missing. Nothing so special about them—not even this one. Shoot, I just watched ’im fight. He’s good, but rumor’s always better than the real thing, isn’t it? Umbra’d have his teeth for a necklace. And if he don’t get outta my pit, she will.”

As Ajax said this, a dark figure stepped to the edge of the pit and looked down at Max. Umbra wore leather armor sewn together from mismatched pieces she’d evidently scavenged or stolen. She clutched an infantry spear whose nicked, oiled blade gleamed razor-sharp in the firelight. Thick, wild tangles of black hair hung about her head, shadowing her features until she brushed it aside to reveal the tanned skin and chiseled features of an Inuit girl. Umbra was no older than Max. Her black eyes stared at him, hard as iron.

Max met and held her gaze before flicking his attention back to Ajax.

“No one’s taking my teeth,” he said quietly. “And you’ve got ten seconds to tell me what the problem is before I take yours.”

Tension saturated the air, that almost tangible, sickly calm that often preceded a fight. Rolf hurried around the pit toward Ajax and the other refugees.

“Everyone relax,” he pleaded. “This is stupid—we’re all on the same side!”

“Sure we are,” Ajax jeered. “That’s why you’re wearing new boots but I can almost see my toes. Shut your mouth before you get the beating of your life. Think your little pupils will look up to you then, Blondie?”

Rolf stopped in midstride and looked imploringly at Max and Sarah.

“I’m still waiting,” said Max calmly.

Ajax glared at him. “Two years ago, a brayma took the last of my sisters,” he said. “Thought it was all over, but then someone told me ’bout this place. So I cut loose and clawed my way here—eight thousand miles through two kingdoms. And what’s my welcome? I get to sleep in a tent and gobble down slop while you feast like lords in your marble Manse. Shoot, I can handle that. But what I can’t goddamn stomach is the idea that I gotta step aside for a bunch of bookworm sissies whenever they decide to go slumming. I’ll be dead and buried ’fore I let that happen. We ain’t just dregs and driftwood.”

Ajax’s expression was defiant. By the time he’d finished, he was breathing hard, exhaling frosty gusts that scattered on the breeze. Max smiled.

“Sarah … meet your new training partner.”

“What?” she exclaimed. “I don’t need him!”

“He is exactly what you need,” Max said, climbing out of the sparring pit. Walking around the pit’s perimeter, he approached the refugees. When Umbra stepped in front of Ajax, Max stopped and held up his hands.

“What you say is fair,” he acknowledged. “It’s not right that you’re living this way and have to step aside for us whenever we please. Rowan can do better and will. Its students have a lot to learn from you, Ajax. If I can get you better food and equipment, will you and your friends help train our students?”

The boy blinked. Anger gave way to confused surprise. Ajax glanced at his comrades, who offered noncommittal shrugs.

“Sure,” he grunted, turning back to Max. “I guess we could do that. Once you make good.”

“I’ll make good—you have my word. I’m Max McDaniels.”

Ajax’s dour, battle-scarred face broke out in a rogue’s grin.

“Hell,” he laughed, “we know who you are. Looks like you’re off the hook, Umbra.”

With an almost imperceptible nod, Umbra stood aside. The conflict averted, Max called over Sarah, Rolf, and the Second Years while Ajax introduced him to the rest of his motley troop. However, even as Sarah and the others came up behind him, Max sensed that something was amiss with Umbra. The girl had never relaxed her grip on her spear; her dark, inscrutable eyes remained fixed on him with unsettling intensity. She reminded Max of a viper, coiled and lethal. He casually shifted his hand to the pommel of the gae bolga. Behind him, Rolf laughed.

“Everyone friends now?” he inquired, clasping Max’s shoulder.

In a blur, Umbra struck.

Her spear caught Rolf squarely in the throat, its impact so sudden and savage that he barely gasped. Max knew his friend was dead even before he staggered back and collapsed into his students. The Second Years didn’t even seem to realize what had happened until they saw the blood. Then they screamed.

Max had already drawn his sword. The gae bolga hummed greedily, its blade vibrating like a tuning fork, tasting the air for the first time since Walpurgisnacht. Umbra retreated a step, but her fierce eyes never left Max.

“He meant you harm.”

She spoke these words with such calm conviction that Max held his attack. The girl was either utterly insane or … Backing slowly beyond the lethal reach of her spear, he glanced down at Rolf. The boy’s eyes were already blank; his lips were parted on the verge of a scream that had never come. His entire throat was an open wound that gleamed wet and black in the moonlight.

But it was not this gruesome spectacle that made Max’s blood run cold. It was the cruel-looking knife that Rolf clutched in his right hand. Max had seen its wavy blade many times before. The knife belonged to William Cooper.