Brave Story (85 page)

Uh-oh.

The main entrance was looking less and less like a viable escape route. Wataru lifted his sword to make another barrier, but he was too tired. Just beginning to form the cross with the tip of his sword made him so dizzy he nearly toppled over.

They’ll catch me…

“What happened here?!”

Wataru looked up. There, from the flower-covered pedestal where the statue of Cistina had stood, a man’s face had emerged, his eyes wide.

The pedestal!
The pedestal where Cistina stood crushing the beastkin under her feet was the entrance to the dungeons.
How like Branch Chief Pam and Father Diamon.

Before the man had time to duck out of sight, Wataru summoned the last of his strength and fired another magebullet. The man shrieked and disappeared, making a
bonk bonk bonk
sound that faded into the distance as he fell.

Downward.

Wataru dragged his feet into reluctant motion, running over to the pedestal. As expected, the pedestal slid easily off to one side, revealing a ladder stretching into dim light below. Wataru peered down and saw the man from before lying unconscious at the foot of the ladder.

With trembling hands, Wataru grabbed the ladder and began to descend. At the bottom, he found himself in a narrow corridor with stone walls, lit here and there by shaded lanterns. Directly to his right was a small room with a chair and a desk, covered with piles of documents.
That must be the guard room.

There was no mistaking it—he had found the dungeons. Directly in front of him was a gate, and Wataru saw bars running down the sides of the corridor beyond it. The people trapped inside scampered in their cages to see who had arrived.

Apparently, the man Wataru had knocked out was the dungeon master because he had a keyring at his waist. Wataru grabbed it, and pressing himself against the gates to the corridor, he called out, “Is everybody okay? Are the people from Bricklayer Street here?”

A great commotion answered his call, and a thousand questions came at him so fast he couldn’t hear them all. “Who are you?” “Have you come to save us?” “What happened upstairs? The ceiling was shaking!”

“I’m a Highlander! I’ve come to get you out of here!” Wataru shouted, then he returned to the base of the ladder, climbed it, and closed the pedestal door. Using a coiled rope he found hanging on the guard room wall, he tied up the unconscious man and pushed him beneath the desk.

There were so many keys hanging from the ring that it took Wataru a while to find the one that opened the gate to the corridor. Meanwhile, the shouts of joy and frustration coming from the people trapped in the cells filled the narrow hall with a cacophony of noise.

Finally, he got the gate open. Everyone was shouting so loudly, that even when he put his hands to his mouth and bellowed back, no one could hear him. Wataru drew his sword and banged it against the bars of the gate.

“Quiet! Everybody quiet!”

When the prisoners had finally quieted down, Wataru called out, “Is Mr. Fanlon down here?” He heard Toni’s excited reply from a cage a little ways down the corridor. Wataru ran up to the bars.

Toni Fanlon was as emaciated as Elza. His long days of incarceration had left him pale as a ghost, and the bones of his cheek jutted out from his face. Even his long black hair, bound into a ponytail, seemed thinner than when they had met before. But his eyes were open, and when he saw Wataru, they gleamed with a lively light. “You’re the Highlander from Gasara.” Toni grabbed the bars of his cage with both hands. “Did you come here alone? Do you have friends?”

“Sorry, it’s just me,” Wataru said, grabbing the bars himself to stay on his feet. “I meant to sneak in, but things kind of got out of hand. We can’t go back up there. I’m afraid that by now, Branch Chief Pam and his men and the Knights of Stengel are out there surrounding the cathedral.”

Another chorus of cries, this time cursing him, went up from the beastkin and waterkin in the cages. Only Toni was smiling. “So then, you haven’t come to save us. You come to join us.”

“I’m afraid so. Sorry.”

“What did you plan to do?”

“Is there another way out of here, besides that ladder?”

“Of course not,” Toni said, laughing out loud, then he turned to the beastkin and waterkin sharing his cell. Together, they howled with laughter. “Of course there isn’t, which is why we made one. In secret, of course.”

The man applauded, then began removing simple boards from a section of the floor, revealing a large hole beneath.

“This tunnel goes all the way outside the village!” the beastkin next to Toni roared, brandishing his long, pointed claws with pride. “We could have left anytime we wanted—but we were worried about the men in the other cells. You came at just the right time, my little Highlander! Now get to opening those cages!”

Wataru was so stunned he almost collapsed on the spot. Toni reached through the bars in the nick of time and caught him by the arm, holding him up. “Stay with us. You look hurt. If you’re going to pass out, do it later. We need to get to safety first.”

“Right.”

Toni grabbed his hand holding the keys and pulled him toward the bars. His black eyes were wide. “That’s my toolbox!”

Wataru looked down at the belt around his waist. Miraculously, the box hadn’t come loose in the struggle upstairs.

“You’ve seen Elza?”

“Yes. She’s fine. She’s worried about you, but unharmed.”

“That is good news,” Toni said quietly.

“She gave me this for you. I want you to make me a wyrmflute. That’s why I came to Lyris, to find you.”

Toni’s haggard face filled with raw determination. “Understood. I don’t know exactly what you’re talking about, but whatever it is, I’ll make it. For now, let’s just get out of here!”

Chapter 37
Jozo’s Wings

Once they were through the long tunnel and into the mountains outside Lyris, the escapees parted ways.

“Tell the branches in other towns. When they hear of the situation in Lyris, they’re sure to come to our aid.”

Wataru looked at the crowd of mostly women and children and worried about their future. But despite the situation, the former residents of Bricklayer Street seemed to be euphoric.

“We know the lay of the land around here,” one beastkin who looked like a rabbit assured him. “They won’t catch us. You can be sure of that.”

Toni Fanlon at his side, Wataru made his way through the forest, crossing over a hill, toward the Great Marker Tree. Kee Keema’s darbaba cart, its wheels caked with mud from the long journey, was waiting for them as promised. Meena had climbed onto one of the branches of the tree, so she was the first to spot Wataru and Toni approaching. She nearly fell to the ground when she saw Wataru’s bedraggled condition.

“I guess even acrobats slip sometimes,” laughed Wataru. “I know it looks bad, but it’s just a lot of scrapes. Nothing too serious.”

“You lie. You look terrible. What happened?”

There would be time enough for talk later. The party piled onto the darbaba cart.

“We need to get out from under the eyes of the Lyris branch first, find some place where Toni can work on the flute. It’s a bit of a rocky ride, but hang in there. Taclou’s a bit farther up in the mountains. They’re pretty much cut off from the rest of the world, so we should be safe from Lyris—and the branch. That’s where we’ll head.”

Kee Keema gave his darbaba a hearty crack of the whip, and they took off, sending up dust in their wake.

The little village of Taclou wasn’t much to look at. A long, long time ago it had seen a rush when gold was found in the surrounding hills. But as soon as the veins were mined out, the town’s golden age came to an end. Now only a few lived here, most of them elderly, and they spent their days working quietly in fields cut from the mountainsides.

“The goldcraft of Taclou is famous among antiques dealers,” Toni said, looking over the collection of thatched-roof huts that made up the town. “I’ve handled them once or twice, to make repairs. Never imagined I’d see the place where they were made.”

When the darbaba cart pulled up to the entrance to town, a few wizened faces appeared at windows. Moments later, villagers were streaming around them, greeting Kee Keema warmly. Wataru was surprised. “It’s almost like they know you!”

“Oh, I’ve been here several times, though not really for work. Some of the older folks here can’t make it down into the larger towns, so we darbaba drivers buy supplies and other things and bring them up to the village.”

Most of the residents were beastkin who, in their youth, had worked in the mines. They were all very kind, and seemed overjoyed to see Kee Keema again. When he explained the situation, they were given a small hut to use, and someone brought them food and a little water to drink.

The town master was a beastkin with white hair all over his body—there were even tufts poking out of his ears. To Wataru, he looked like an extremely old but vigorous Siberian husky.

After a night’s rest, Toni began his work on the wyrmflute. His excitement when he first laid eyes upon Jozo’s scale was palpable. “This will be the greatest work of my life,” he said, his cheeks flushed. “Not even the master craftsmen who taught me ever worked with a dragon scale. And here I am. I cannot afford a mistake. We have only one scale.”

Toni asked for three days to make the flute. “I’m confident I can do it,” he said as he shut himself inside the hut.

“Did you see his eyes when he looked at that thing? That’s a craftsman for you, a real artist…” Kee Keema said, grinning. “It’s hard to imagine that he was locked up in a cage for days. Look at him now—like a little boy!”

“He just wants to lose himself in his work,” Meena suggested. “That way he doesn’t have to think about Elza back in Lyris.”

Wataru had been worried about Elza too. The escape of Toni and the others would surely cause a stir among the ankha in Lyris. Security would be tighter than ever. But still, even though she was on their side, Elza was Branch Chief Pam’s daughter. It was doubtful she would come in harm’s way. That’s what Wataru told himself.

At least he was back with his friends, and they were safe. As soon as he was lying on a flat surface he fell deep into sleep. As he slept, his temperature rose until he was feverish, causing Meena no end of worry. One of the village men brewed him some tea from a medicinal herb said to be efficacious in easing fevers from injuries. It was so bitter that Wataru had great difficulty choking it down. And so it was that Toni Fanlon was absorbed in his work, and Wataru was resting, when a group of Highlanders and Knights of Stengel paid a visit. Contrary to Kee Keema’s assumptions, the tiny village of Taclou had been included in the search for the escaped prisoners.

But the searchers didn’t stay long, and quickly became frustrated with the slow-talking, long-eared residents.

“The people here are made of stauncher stuff than you might think,” Meena whispered, sticking out her tongue and smiling. “They can hear much better than they let on—they just pretend to be deaf because they know it infuriates those Highlanders.”

Wataru was able to recover in peace and quiet. Slowly, and in bits and pieces, he told Meena what happened inside the Cistina Cathedral.

“I’m amazed you made it out of there alive,” Meena said, her gray eyes shimmering.

“It’s thanks to the sword, really,” Wataru said. “I just…I still can’t believe I killed Father Diamon.”

“He only got what he deserved. And if he’d been able to kill you, you know he would have. Then you wouldn’t have been able to save anyone—least of all yourself.”

Wataru knew it was true, but the guilt lingered in the corner of his mind. Lying there, looking up at the simple wooden rafters, listening to the wind rustling through the thatched roof, smelling the stew warming on the stove and freshly baked bread, it seemed like it all had been a bad dream. But, every time he stirred in his sleep or woke from a nap, he felt like he was back in the Cathedral, witnessing it all happen again. He saw the Cistina statue slowly toppling, crushing Father Diamon. Blood streamed from the wound on his forehead. He was screaming.

Whenever Wataru cried out in the middle of a dream, whether it was day or night, Meena would be there at his bedside. Sometimes he would look at her, and think that her profile looked much like his mother’s. Similar, but not the same. Maybe her face belonged to someone else—perhaps a girl Wataru might meet in the future. Whoever she was, she was gentle and kind, and Wataru wanted to meet her very much.

When he was at last able to get up and walk around, albeit still wrapped in bandages, Toni Fanlon emerged from his hut. In his hand he grasped a tiny, shining red flute.

“It is done,” he said, exhausted. He had gone for three days with no sleep or rest, and barely a drink of water.

Wataru picked up the flute. Though the scale was gone, its ruby-like brilliance lived on in the new form. The long, slender masterpiece looked less like a flute and more like the beak of a bird yet unknown to man. Wataru found himself wondering what sort of sound it made.

“This spot should do nicely.”

The village master of Taclou led Wataru and the others to a clearing in the forest a short distance from town. The grass was soft, sprinkled with small white flowers. In the village’s more prosperous days, the clearing had been used for festivals and town gatherings.