The boy called David was different from the others whom the Crooked Man had tempted. He had helped to destroy the Beast, and the woman who dwelled in the Fortress of Thorns. David did not realize it, but in a way they were his fears, and he had brought aspects of them into being. What had surprised the Crooked Man was the way in which the boy had dealt with them. His anger and grief had enabled him to do what older men had not managed to achieve. The boy was strong, strong enough to conquer his fears. He was also beginning to master his hatreds and jealousies. Such a boy, if he could be controlled, would make a great king.
But time was running out for the Crooked Man. He needed another child’s life to drain. If he ate Georgie’s heart, the infant’s life span would become the Crooked Man’s. If Georgie was destined to live to be one hundred years old, then the Crooked Man would be granted that hundred years instead and Georgie’s spirit would remain trapped in one of the Crooked Man’s jars, and he would absorb its light as he slept in his hard, narrow bed. All that was necessary was for the boy David to say the child’s name aloud, to indulge his hatred and thus to damn them both.
The Crooked Man had less than one day of life left in his hourglass. He needed David to betray his half brother before midnight. Now, as he sat in his chamber of pools, he saw shapes appear on the hills around the castle, and for the first time in many decades he felt real fear, even as he put the finishing touches to his last, desperate plan.
For the wolves were gathering, and soon they would descend upon the castle.
While the Crooked Man was distracted by the approaching army, David, carrying Anna in her jar, made his way back through the warren of tunnels to the throne room. As they approached the door concealed by the tapestry, David could hear men shouting, and the running of feet and the clanking of weapons and armor. He wondered if his disappearance was the reason for the activity and tried to come up with the best way to explain his absence. He peered from behind the tapestry and saw Duncan standing nearby as he ordered men to the battlements and told others to make sure all entrances to the castle were secure. While the captain’s back was turned, David slipped out and ran as quickly as he could to the stairs leading up to the gallery. If anyone saw him, they paid him no attention, and he knew then that he was not the cause of all this trouble. Once he was back in his bedroom, he closed the door and removed from his sack the jar containing Anna’s ghost. Her light seemed to have grown dimmer in the short trip from the Crooked Man’s lair to the castle itself, and she was slumped at the base of the glass, her face even paler than before.
“What’s wrong?” David asked.
Anna held up her right hand, and David saw that it had faded to near-transparency.
“I feel weak,” said Anna. “And I’m changing. I seem to be growing fainter.”
David did not know what to say to console her. He tried to find somewhere to hide her, and decided eventually upon a shadowy corner of an enormous wardrobe, populated only by the husks of dead insects trapped in an ancient web.
But Anna cried out to him as he was about to place the jar in his chosen hiding place. “No,” she said. “Please, not there. I’ve been trapped alone in the darkness for so many years, and I don’t think I’m going to be in this world for much longer. Put me on the windowsill, so that I may look out and see trees and people. I’ll be quiet, and no one will think of searching for me there.”
So David opened one of the windows and saw that outside was a small, wrought-iron balcony. It was rusted in places and rattled when he touched it, but it would safely support the weight of the jar. He placed it carefully in one corner, and Anna moved forward and leaned against the glass.
For the first time since they had met, she smiled. “Oh,” she said, “it’s wonderful. Look at the river, and the trees beyond, and all of those people. Thank you, David. This is all that I wanted to see.”
But David was not listening to her, for as she spoke howls rose from the hills above, and he saw black and white and gray shapes moving across the landscape, thousands upon thousands of them. There was a discipline and purpose about the wolves, almost like divisions of an army preparing for battle. Upon the highest point overlooking the castle, he saw clothed figures standing on their hind legs while more wolves ran to and fro, carrying messages back and forth between the Loups and the animals on the front line.
“What’s happening?” asked Anna.
“The wolves have come,” said David. “They want to kill the king and take over his kingdom.”
“Kill Jonathan?” said Anna, and there was such horror in her voice that David looked away from the wolves and turned his attention back to the small, fading figure of the girl.
“Why are you so worried about him, after all that he’s done to you?” he asked. “He betrayed you and let the Crooked Man feed on you, then left you to rot in a jar in a dungeon. How can you feel anything but hatred for him?”
Anna shook her head and, for a moment, she seemed much older than before. She may have been a girl in form, but she had existed for far longer than her appearance suggested, and in that dark place she had learned wisdom and tolerance and forgiveness.
“He’s my brother,” she stated. “I love him, no matter what he has done to me. He was young and angry and foolish when he made his bargain, and if he could turn back the clock and undo all that has been done, then he would. I don’t want to see him hurt. And what will happen to all those people below if the wolves succeed and their rule replaces the rule of men and women? They will tear apart every living thing within these walls, and what little that is good here will cease to be.”
As he listened to her, David wondered again how Jonathan could have betrayed this girl. He must have been so angry and so sad, and that anger and sadness had consumed him.
David watched the wolves assemble, all with but one purpose: to take the castle and kill the king and everyone who stood by him. But the walls were thick and strong, and the gates were firmly closed against them. There were guards at the stinking holes where the waste left the castle, and armed men stood upon every roof and at every window. The wolves vastly outnumbered them, but they were outside and David could see no way for them to gain entry. As long as that situation continued, the wolves could howl all they wanted, and the Loups could send and receive as many messages as they chose. It would make no difference. The castle would remain impregnable.
XXX Of the Crooked Man’s Act of Betrayal
DEEP BELOW THE GROUND, the Crooked Man watched the sands of his life trickle away, one by one. He was growing steadily weaker. His system was collapsing. His teeth were coming loose in his mouth, and there were weeping sores on his lips. Blood dripped from his twisted fingernails, and his eyes were yellow and rheumy. His skin was dry and flaking; long, deep cuts opened upon it when he scratched at it, revealing the muscles and tendons beneath. His joints ached, and his hair fell from his head in clumps. He was dying, yet he did not panic. There had been times in his long, dreadful life when he had been even closer than this to death, when it had seemed that he’d chosen the wrong child and there would be no betrayal and no new king or queen for him to manipulate like a puppet upon the throne. But, in the end, he had always found a way to corrupt them or, as he preferred to think of it, for them to corrupt themselves.