Wiktor found a narrow ascending staircase and went up, leaving drops of blood on the stones. Mikhail added his own blood to them. They got through a glassless window on the upper level, slid down the sloping roof, and crashed into the thicket beneath. Then they were running side by side into the forest, and when they’d gotten a safe distance, they both stood panting in the chill dawn light, the dead leaves beneath them spattered with drops of red. Wiktor burrowed into the leaves and lay there, half hidden, as he rasped with pain. Mikhail wandered in dazed circles until he fell, his strength gone. He began to lick his wounded side, but his tongue found no bullet; the slug had pierced the flesh and gone through at an angle, missing the ribs and internal organs. Still, Mikhail was losing a lot of blood. He crawled beneath the shelter of a pine tree and there he drifted into unconsciousness.
When he awakened, the wind had picked up, swirling through the treetops. The day had passed; the sun was almost gone. Mikhail saw Wiktor, the white wolf burrowed in the leaves. He got up on all fours, staggered to Wiktor, and nudged him. At first he thought Wiktor was dead, because he was so terribly still, but then Wiktor groaned and rose up, a crust of dried blood around his mouth and his eyes dull and lost.
Hunger gnawed in Mikhail’s belly, but he felt too drained to hunt. He staggered in one direction and then another, unable to decide what it was he should do. So he just stood in position, his head drooping and his side damp with blood again.
From the distance there was a hollow booming noise. Mikhail’s ears twitched. The sound repeated itself. He realized it was coming from the southeast, where the white palace was.
Wiktor walked through the forest and up a small, rocky ridge. He stood motionless, staring at something, and after a while Mikhail gathered his strength and climbed up the ridge to stand beside him.
Dark smoke was rising, whirling in the wind. A red center of flames burned. As Wiktor and Mikhail watched, there was a third explosion. They could see chunks of stone flying into the sky, and they both knew what was happening: the soldiers were blowing the white palace to pieces.
Two more blasts shot banners of fire into the falling dark. Mikhail saw the turreted tower-where his kite had been caught, long ago-crumple and go down. A larger explosion bloomed, and out of that blast flew what appeared to be fiery bats. They were caught in the wind, whirling around and around in fierce maelstroms, and in another moment Mikhail and Wiktor could smell the scorch and char of mindless destruction. Fiery bats spun over the forest, and began to fall.
Some of them drifted down around the two wolves. Neither one had to look to see what they were. The burning pages were written in Latin, German, and Russian. Many of them held the remnants of colored illustrations, rendered by a master’s hand. For a moment it snowed black flakes of civilization’s dreams, and then the wind swept them up and away, and there was nothing left.
Night claimed the world. The fires grew wild in the wind, and began to feed on trees. The two wolves stood atop their ridge of rocks. The flames gleamed redly in two sets of eyes: one that had seen the true nature of the beast, and hated that sight; and another that stared in dull submission, glazed with final tragedy. The flames leaped and danced, a mockery of happiness, and green pines shriveled to brown before their touch. Mikhail nudged Wiktor: it was time to go, to wherever they were going, but Wiktor didn’t move. Only much later, when they could both feel the advancing heat, did Wiktor make a noise: a deep, terrible groaning sound, the sound of defeat. Mikhail climbed down the ridge and barked for Wiktor to follow. Finally Wiktor turned away from the flames and came down, too, his body shivering and his head slung low.
It was as true for wolves as it was for humans, Mikhail thought as they wound their way through the forest. Life was for the living. Alekza, Franco, Nikita… all the others, gone. And what of Petyr? Did his bones lie in the ruins of the white palace, or had the soldiers taken him? What would happen to Petyr, out in the wilderness? Mikhail realized he would probably never know, and maybe that was for the best. It struck him, quite suddenly, that he was a murderer. He had killed human beings, broken their necks and ripped out their throats and… God help him… it had been easy.
And the worst thing was that there had been pleasure in the killing.
Though the books were in ashes, their voices remained in Mikhail’s mind. He heard one of those voices now, from Shakespeare’s Richard II:
With Cain go wander through the shade of night,
And never show thy head by day nor light.
Lords, I protest, my soul is full of woe,
That blood should sprinkle me to make me grow.
He went on into the forest, with Wiktor following, as the wind continued to whirl and the trees burned at their backs.
6
When the snow came, Mikhail and Wiktor had been living for more than ten days in one of the caves where Wiktor had hunted the berserker. There was room for two wolves, but not two humans. The wind grew bitter, raging from the north, and returning to human form would be suicide. Wiktor was lethargic, and slept day and night. Mikhail hunted for them both, grasping whatever he could from the forest’s plate.
True winter sank its icy roots. Mikhail traveled to the soldiers’ camp and found it empty. There was no trace of Petyr. The snow had filled in the wagon ruts and stolen all scent of men. Mikhail bypassed the large area of burned trees and the scorched ruin of stones where the white palace had been, and returned to the cave.
On clear nights, when the blue-rimmed moon shone down and the sky was ablaze with stars, Mikhail sang. His song was all pain and longing now; the joy had been seared out of him. Wiktor remained in the cave, a ball of white fur, and his ears twitched occasionally at the black wolf’s song, but Mikhail sang alone. His voice echoed over the forest, carried by the roaming wind. There was no answer.
Over the weeks and months that followed, Mikhail felt himself drifting further and further away from humanity. He had no need of that frail white body; four legs, claws, and fangs suited him now. Shakespeare, Socrates, higher mathematics, the languages of German, English, and Latin, history, and the theories of religion: they belonged to another world. In the realm to which Mikhail now belonged, the subject was survival. To fail those lessons meant death.
The winter broke. Blizzards turned to rainstorms, and fresh green appeared across the forest. Mikhail returned from hunting one morning to find a naked old man with a white beard, sitting on his haunches on a pile of rocks at the highest point above the chasm. Wiktor squinted in the hard sunshine, his face wrinkled and pale, but he took his portion of the dead muskrat and ate it raw. He watched the sun climbing into the sky, his amber eyes devoid of light. His head tilted to one side, as if he’d heard a familiar sound. “Renati?” he called, his voice fragile. “Renati?”
Mikhail lay down on his belly nearby, the chasm below them, chewing his food and trying to shut out the quavering voice. After a while, Wiktor put his hands to his face and wept, and Mikhail felt his heart shatter.
Wiktor looked up, and seemed to see the black wolf for the first time. “Who are you?” he asked. “What are you?”
Mikhail kept eating. He knew what he was.
“Renati?” Wiktor called again. “Ah, there you are.” Mikhail saw Wiktor smile faintly, addressing thin air. “Renati, he thinks he’s a wolf. He thinks he’s going to stay here forever, and run on four legs. He’s forgotten what the miracle really is, Renati: that he’s human, inside that skin. And after I’m dust and gone where you are he thinks he’ll still be here, catching muskrats for his dinner.” He laughed a little bit, sharing a joke with a ghost. “To think what I put in his head, hour after hour!” His feeble fingers picked at the dark scar on his shoulder and pressed against the hard outline of the bullet that was still lodged there. Then he turned his attention to the black wolf. “Change back,” he said.