The Baroug

Beyond the root arch stood a sanctuary built into the mountain’s living bones.

The Bruxsa had made no palace there. Roots crossed the ceiling like the ribs of some buried animal. Small lamps burned in hollows of green glass. Along the walls, women and men of the Vale watched the Betas with expressions that were neither welcome nor hatred.

At the centre of the sanctuary, beside a pool fed by a thin silver stream, Faelan waited.

He was older than the child Aatu had lost, though no more than a few years had passed beyond the Vale. Gold fur fell across his shoulders. His eyes were Ralphina’s, but steadier than the court had ever allowed a child’s eyes to be. In his hands rested the Baroug, dark wood bound with silver, humming like a living thing.

Sandalia made a sound that was almost his name.

Faelan looked at her for a long time. “You found the courage to come in.”

“I should have come sooner.”

“Yes.” He did not forgive her. He did not turn away either.

Rafe stepped forward and lowered his head. “Your mother has not stopped looking for you.”

“My father did.”

The sanctuary seemed to grow colder.

“He came,” Rafe said. “He chose you.”

Faelan’s fingers tightened around the staff. “He chose a way to live with the choice. That is not the same thing.”

An old Bruxsa woman approached. Her hair was white with ash and her hands bore the blue stains of root dye. “He has learnt the language of a locked door,” she said. “It is not a gentle language.”

Faelan lifted the Baroug. “My father told you it was authority. It is a lock.”

He told them what the old court had concealed. Lycaeon’s descendants had not been chosen to rule the Nether region. They had been bound to guard the doorway beneath the mountain, a wound in the world through which Alushba could reach the living. The Baroug did not give an Alpha a right to command. It demanded a keeper willing to stand between a hungry power and everyone else.

Each generation had made the burden into a crown. Each Alpha had taught the pack that obedience was protection. The Vale had weakened as the lie grew more useful.

“When Aatu took me from the pool,” Faelan said, “Alushba offered him the staff or my life. He gave up the staff. The door began to wake, and I became the thing holding it shut.”

Lycurgus looked at the black pool. “Then we cannot take it.”

“You cannot take it as a prize,” said the Bruxsa elder.

Fenrisúlfr stepped forward. His face had become very calm. “A pack without an Alpha will tear itself apart. A staff without a hand is only wood.”

“That is what every Alpha says,” Faelan replied.

Fenrisúlfr moved faster than grief. He struck Rafe aside, seized the Baroug, and wrenched it from Faelan’s hands.

The sanctuary shook. Lamps burst one by one. Shadows poured from the cracks in the stone and gathered into the outline of a face with no eyes.

At last, Alushba said.

The voice did not come from the darkness. It came from inside every wolf who had ever wanted power without consequence.

Fenrisúlfr staggered, but he held the staff tighter. Silver light crawled over his claws. “Kneel,” he said.

No one did.

Then the roots above them began to split, and the sanctuary remembered why it had been built.