“Did the wolves fight back?” Lisabet whispered.
Hayn shook his head, but his expression was grim. “Not this time,” he said. “Every wolf is taught never to harm a human. But a human’s never harmed a wolf before. There’s talk around the human camp that they need to be ready for a wolf assault, and there’s talk around the wolf camp that they need to show up in force, to bring the humans into line.”
“Do you think they’ll do it?” Tilda asked, looking pale.
“I think all it takes is one human or wolf to begin it, and after that, I don’t know who’ll end it, or how,” Hayn replied.
Everyone was silent, and Anders closed his eyes. It felt like all of Vallen was on a collision course—the dragons readying themselves to attack the wolves, the wolves and the humans preparing to fight each other.
“We don’t have much time,” he said.
“Not much at all,” Hayn replied. “Tilda, Kaleb, we should get to work.”
Anders, Rayna, Lisabet, and Ellukka squashed onto the couch together, and Tilda loaded them up with big glasses of milk and even bigger slices of cake. In whispers, they caught each other up on what had happened since they separated, and then slowly fell silent as they watched the designer and the dragonsmiths work together. It was the first time it had happened anywhere in Vallen in over a decade, and Anders found he was holding his breath as they quietly talked over each of the artifacts.
Tilda had been right. No matter how urgent the work, it did take a long time—they studied, they debated, and slowly but surely, they settled on the repairs they wished to make.
It wasn’t just a case of re-engraving old runes. Hayn had to understand where and why the artifacts had begun to wear out, and create new combinations of runes that would reinforce them. The dragons would then need toforge the runes into place, taking care that each one was located exactly where it was required.
Some hours later, Anders was woken by Hayn, who was crouching in front of him and gently touching his knee.
“We’re ready,” the big wolf said, adjusting his glasses as he studied both Anders and Rayna, who was still waking up.
“Do you understand how these work?” Tilda asked from behind him. “They’re powerful.”
“We looked in the mirror last time, and it worked,” Rayna said.
“You won’t need to look in it this time,” Tilda replied. “Keep it wrapped up, and when you’re ready to use it, just unwrap it. Anyone who’s within, say, fifty feet of it, maybe more, will feel its effects. What about the staff? Do you know how to use that?”
The children all shook their heads.
“What are you doing,” grumbled Kaleb, “gallivanting around Vallen with artifacts you don’t know how to use? What Drifa would have had to say about that, I don’t know.”
Hayn snorted. “Drifa and Felix and I were always creating artifacts out of nothing. Half the time, we had noidea what they were going to do until they did it. I think Drifa would say that her blood runs strong in these two.”
The children all exchanged a long glance, but they kept quiet. It wasn’t the time to tell the dragonsmiths that Drifa hadtoldthem where to find the mirror and the staff. That would raise far more questions than it answered, and they had to focus on using them to try to start peace talks, before their time ran out. Thankfully, neither of them had thought to ask how Anders had known which artifacts to ask the map to show him.
Hayn pointed at the staff. “When you’re ready to use this one, take the end of it and drag it along the ground until you’ve drawn a circle. It doesn’t matter whether you can see the circle. You can draw it over rock, over grass, anything you like. Anyone who steps inside it, their elemental powers will be completely neutralized. They won’t be able to breathe flame or cast ice. They won’t be able to transform.”
“At all?” Ellukka asked. “They’ll be humans?”
“Might do some of them good,” Tilda said.
Anders’s mind was racing. Already he could feel a plan beginning to form—he was starting to see what Drifa had thought of when he and Rayna had told her what they needed to do.
“Like I said,” growled Kaleb, “it’s powerful stuff. Are you sure you can handle it?”
“No,” said Anders honestly, “but we’ll try our best.”
“Good.” Kaleb gave him an approving nod. “That’s the first sensible thing you’ve said. If you know how hard it is to control, you’ve been paying attention.”
“We’d wait if we could,” Anders replied. “But we don’t have a choice. Hayn says the humans and the wolves could begin a battle any moment. And Leif said the dragons could attack by tomorrow.”
“He what?” Hayn said, pulling off his glasses and pinching the bridge of his nose. “How did you manage to see—no, that’s not the point. This is even worse than I knew.”
“This is why we live up in the mountains,” Tilda said. “This is how it was years ago, before your parents died. Only then it wasn’t the dragons trying to start something, it was the wolves making demands for repairs that nobody could meet.”
“They wanted to oversee our every move,” Kaleb agreed. “What happened to Drifa and Felix wasn’t the reason for all of it, it was the last straw. Sigrid was determined to have a fight.”
