“LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,” BEGAN PROFESSOR Damian Biele?, “we live among legends.”
He paused, bracing his hands on the sides of the lectern.
“For we have lived through the fall of Kamieńa. We have lived through the advent of the Golden Dragon. And in the midst of both these tragedies”—Damian Biele?’s voice fell to a carefully crafted whisper—“we have seen—nay, we have borne witness to—the last of the Wolf-Lords.”
A thrill ran through the auditorium. Shining heads bent toward one another. Their owners ignored the tight collars digging into throats as they murmured their admiration for a brilliant speaker, their interest in a fascinating subject. The air rustled with low voices, and Damian Biele? waited before proceeding.
In the back of the auditorium, leaning against the doorframe, Lukasz put his hands in his pockets.
Outside, it was June. Outside, children were laughing, parents were scolding, and carriages were clattering. The streets were filled with fire breathers and ice-cream vendors. Outside, the world was a riot of summer and sales, of bartering and bickering. Miasto was the greatest city in the world, and it was at its peak. But in here, in this moment, no one cared about the outside.
Because in here, in this ageless dim, legends were being told.
“For a thousand years, the Wolf-Lords did not leave the Moving Mountains,” Professor Biele? went on. He inhaled deeply, nostrils flaring, as if he could actually smell the cold shale and hot smoke of that lost world. Then he said: “Until seventeen years ago.”
Another pause.
“Until the Golden Dragon.”
His listeners were on edge. Lukasz could feel it. He could also see it, betrayed in the glances cast over shoulders, in the subtle twitches of those elegant faces. It was half fear, half hope. Maybe they had even come for the same reason as Lukasz had: Not just to listen to fairy tales, not just to learn of the Wolf-Lords. But to see for themselves whether the gossip rags were true.
Whether there really was, somewhere in these hallowed halls, an Apofys dragon on the loose.
“For ten centuries,” Biele? was saying, “the Wolf-Lords lived in isolation and in a state of barbarism that we can only imagine. They carved out niches among the shifting rocks and weathered the tides of those Mountains. They hunted dragons and made blood pacts with wolves.”
Somewhere near the front of the auditorium, a projector rattled to life. A map of Welona loomed, with the ocean to the north and Miasto—where they were now—marked by a star in the south. To the northeast, a black stain marked the kingdom of Kamieńa. And still farther east, beyond the forest, a line of crosshatching represented the vast, legendary Moving Mountains. A Dragon, rendered in golden ink, wrapped golden claws around forest and mountain.
There were sounds of awe from the audience.
“Because seventeen years ago, the Golden Dragon attacked the kingdom of Kamieńa,” recounted Professor Biele?. “And shortly thereafter, the Wolf-Lords left the Moving Mountains. Were they pushed out by the dragon, which had claimed their ancestral home as its roost? Or were these dragon slayers as foolish as the king of Kamieńa, and were they, too, killed in its pursuit?”
He chuckled, and Lukasz cracked his knuckles. Ironic, he thought. Biele? wanted to criticize Wolf-Lords when there was an Apofys running amok upstairs?
“But all we know,” Biele? murmured, lowering his voice, “is this: In the end, only ten Wolf-Lords remained. Only ten came down from the Mountains.”
The map trembled in place for a moment. Then Biele? made a small signal, and the slide changed, the projected image shuttering up and out of sight. A photograph took its place, black pigment stained brown with age.
“These ten men were the Brothers Smokówi.”
The photograph had been taken from a distance, with a low line of black trees cutting a stark line in the background. In the foreground, ten men were seated on black warhorses. Nine of the ten horses each had a set of antlers on their bridles: some ending in elegant curls, others simple and spiked. The men had serious faces. They wore leather and fur.
They looked, in a word, barbaric.
“These ten,” whispered Damian Biele?, “became the Brygada Smoka.”
A crest ratcheted onto the screen: a wolf’s head, flanked by crossed antlers. Below the image ran lettering familiar enough that even Lukasz could recognize it.
Z?B LUB PAZUR
“Tooth or claw,” translated Damian Biele?. The projector’s beam cast his face in alternating light and shadow. “The motto of the Wolf-Lords. And later, the motto of the great Brygada Smoka.”