Lukasz pushed back his hair. Ren put a hand on his arm. He put that arm around her and pulled her into his side.
They had made it. They were at the foot of the Glass Mountain.
That was when Lukasz saw them.
44
“WHAT IS IT?” ASKED REN as he stooped suddenly to the ground.
When Lukasz straightened back up, his heart was pounding. He didn’t trust himself to talk. Ren was speaking in the background.
“Lukasz,” she repeated. “What is that?”
Two wire rims, two pieces of cracked glass inside.
He looked up, numb. Ren’s eyes went wide. Then his heart dropped right to the bottom of the Mountain, and he swayed so sharply that Ren grabbed his arm again.
As if she read his expression, she turned slowly around.
Someone had appeared behind them, inching out from behind the pink rocks. Now that person squinted at them, as if he had trouble seeing through the rapidly gathering twilight.
He looked so different Lukasz might not have recognized him.
His long black hair fell loose over his shoulders, merging seamlessly with an equally tangled beard. He was smaller than Lukasz remembered, or at least thinner. No longer obscured by glasses, his eyes had dark circles under them. There was a gaunt, hungry look in them. It was a face he’d tried so hard to make a scholar’s, one that belonged so obviously to a Wolf-Lord.
The best, the smartest, the kindest of them all.
“Lukasz?” whispered his brother.
When Lukasz finally found his voice, it ached.
“Franciszek.”
45
KOSZMAR WOKE.
He curled his fingers under, tasted blood. He blinked. The sun had risen behind the trees, and the light was too bright. With what was left of his arm, he shielded his eyes. He was faintly aware of ribs protruding, like fingers, from his torn chest. The light was unbearable. The hum of crickets was unreasonably loud. Something pounded on the ground beside him, and it took him a moment to realize it was his own eviscerated heart.
Koszmar screamed.
The protruding ribs began to move. Wriggle. Then they twisted and tore and stretched, and Koszmar screamed into the empty forest. No, whispered a small part of him. A small part not yet dead. Not like this—
He had been broken. Undone. Remade. Left to die. The ribs kept moving, clawing, and in another moment, Koszmar realized they weren’t ribs at all.
They were fingers.
Koszmar screamed.
The fingers tore free. The world danced on stars of pain. Koszmar’s heart pounded wildly in the dirt, and his skin ran slick with blood, and he screamed, he screamed, he screamed. His single remaining eye rolled, looking for flames, seeing only darkness. He screamed until the fingers inside him tore his lungs out, his voice out. And then, without his lungs, he screamed in silence.
These were his last moments. If he had hoped they would be heroic, would be selfless, would be good—
And then, Koszmar Styczeń, who had wanted so much to live, was dead.
The hands kept clawing. They kept tearing.
Only the fingers moved. They pushed farther from his broken rib cage, sliding into hands, then forearms. Then a chest and shoulders emerged, tearing the ribs wide. A head unfurled, with hair congealed in clots. Slick rivers of blood coated naked spine. Yellow fat dripped from bare skin. In quivering loops, entrails fell from its body as it straightened. Slowly, stiffly, gingerly. A new colt, learning to walk. It turned its head from side to side: it saw, it heard, it smelled.
It had struggled, being born.
Then the second soul of Koszmar Styczeń stepped out of his corpse and into the mad, dark world.
46
THE LAST TWO BROTHERS EMBRACED each other.
They spoke so rapidly and in such thick Mountain accents that it was like an entirely new language altogether. Ren only caught a few words, too few to pick out an actual sentence.
At last, they broke apart, and Lukasz introduced his brother to Ren. She smiled uncertainly.
“This is Ren,” said Lukasz. “She’s the queen of the forest.”
Franciszek held out a hand, and Ren shook it.
As Franciszek led them up the mountainside, Lukasz told him their story. About the Apofys, and about his hand, which he offered to his brother for inspection. Franciszek turned it over, examining the missing fingers.
“It’s healed remarkably well,” he said with interest. “Did you get photographs of the healing process? Now, what do you suppose—?”
Then he stopped and said, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—”
Lukasz held it up, as if in peace.
“It’s all right,” he said. “It’s not as good as it was. I think . . .” He hesitated. “I