Raven's Ladder (33 page)

Krawg halted, scowling and tugging at the loose flesh beneath his chin. “Down to the water. I like the waves.”

“May I walk with you?” Cal-raven offered him the bottle.

Krawg took the bottle and embraced it tight against his chest. “Honored, my king.”

Cal-raven limped away from the noise, out of the brightness, onto the dimly lit rubblestone paths that led toward the harbor. The Gatherer kept glancing back at him in disbelief.

“I’m sorry we haven’t found Warney yet, Krawg. We will.”

“Told him I was goin’ out on a ship,” Krawg groaned. “Thought I’d brave the waves with sailors. Warney got a rockbeetle in his belly over that. Tried to tie me down, bless his broken eye. Then them sailors wouldn’t take me. Now I can’t find Warney.”

“You two have quite a history. Thieving. Hard years of harvesting. Then you rescued Auralia. And what a surprise she turned out to be.”

Krawg paused on a broad stairway, his shoulders sinking. “We miss her so.” His voice was hoarse and heavy.

Cal-raven put his hand on the old man’s shoulder, and that spurred Krawg into descending again.

“Making stuff up,” he rasped, “Auralia made it fun. She played harder than a yard full of kittens. Made things that surprised folks and got their eyes to go huge. But here, it’s different. Everything’s about gettin’ cheered or bashed. Nobody plays.” He paused, staring at something in the road. Cal-raven saw it was a seashell. Krawg put it to his ear. “Ballyworms,” he whispered, amazed. “This one’s magic too!”

“You’re a good storyteller, Krawg. In New Abascar you’ll tell Auralia’s story.”

“Have you heard what they’ve done to Auralia?” Krawg’s lip curled in revulsion. “You haven’t heard?” He threw the shell into the shadows. “Follow me.”

They wound their way through marketplace pavilions, canvases rippling with the incoming breeze. The marketers’ wares had all been cleared away, but a few figures lurked about, picking at the cobblestones under the tables like wild dogs or giant ruffled birds. Through the dusk blue air, Krawg led Cal-raven down a long aisle between the empty tables to a stair.

A stench wafted from below like a warning. “Where exactly are you taking me?”

“I was out lookin’ for Warney. Thought I’d sniff about in places where the least of all Bel Amicans go—the worried, the tangled up, the sobbers and complainers. I found a nest of smelly critters…”

Covering his face, Cal-raven followed Krawg down to a platform that spread out just above the silverblue water. It was crowded with rickety, wheezy shacks, some dark and some alive with color and noise. Women’s laughter cascaded from one. Men were shouting in fevered argument about numbers in another.

A formidable figure burst from the shadows and rushed toward Cal-raven. She wore little more than seashell necklaces above rustling skirts of
dried seaweed. She was as large as the thugs that Captain Ark-robin had posted at Abascar’s main gate, and her arms were thicker than most soldiers’ legs. She walked in a cloud of perfumes that caused his eyes and throat to burn even before she came close enough to touch his arm. Through a flimsy veil that rippled with her breath, a mischievous smile shone.

“Please,” she asked in a tremulous whisper, “Gelina’s lost out here.”

“You’re lost?” Cal-raven fought the urge to run as her curling fingernails scratched faint lines up his arm.

“We’re all lost down here,” she moaned. “But Gelina’s learned that being lost can be beautiful.” A lascivious music had entered her voice. “And oh my. From a distance you strike quite a stature, but up close Gelina can sense that you’re feeling lonesome and weary. Why don’t we put our burdens down awhile. Maybe we can help each other.”

“I’m busy.”

“You don’t even know what I’m offering you,” she persisted, draping her arms around him and pressing her claws into the small of his back. “Gelina normally makes a man work hard to earn her privileges, but her moon-spirit has led her to you. It’s her duty to fulfill…”

Krawg called after him from a distance, and Cal-raven dropped out of the woman’s embrace. He ran, leaving her there, hearing her heave an expansive sigh.

Krawg waved the unopened bottle toward a crowd waiting outside a wedge-shaped structure near the platform’s edge. Then he urged Cal-raven around a corner, out of sight of the crowd. Backing into a recess in the wall, he said, “You’ll have to go in without me. They threw me out last time.”

“Who?”

“They call themselves ‘Auralia’s Defenders.’”

A
t first it seemed the darkest space in Bel Amica.

They have no mirrors
, Cal-raven realized.

Then he noticed that the people crowding about the stage were all looking up. One enormous mirror hung suspended, tilted to reflect the people themselves, faces pale as blurred constellations on Deep Lake.

The stage itself was tiled with blue glowstones, cut so flat they seemed a frozen pond.

The purple curtain behind the stage still wavered where a small man had just emerged. In his simple brown robe, he might have been a stablehand, perhaps eight years old, still skin and bones.

In the mirror above, his image was cast in a blue shimmer. He performed his speech with his back to the crowd so that the mirror magnified his gaunt face to immense proportions. His eyes were fever wild, as if apprehending horrors no one else could see. The hair that framed his face was like silver feathers blown back by a gale-force wind. And his hands flashed about his face like angry birds.

“I know what we’re all thinking!”

Cal-raven was reminded of a teacher he had suffered as a child, an imperious woman who had always said “we” when she really meant “you.”

“I know,” he continued, eyes like a predator bird above a fish-crowded lake. “We’re thinking,
they
did this to her.
They
did it. And
they
should pay.”

The tone was as seductive as it was punishing, but the voice did not match the face. Was the speaker just an actor mouthing words while the lecturer hid behind the curtain?

The crowd stared up into the sea of their own mournful faces. Many held bundles of black thread, squeezing them or winding and unwinding them.
A ritual
, he wondered,
or just a popular nervous habit?

Their yarn twisting became fitful as a statue rose up through the stage floor. Cal-raven leaned to get a clearer view. It was a young woman hunched over and holding her head—a poor statue indeed, for the proportions of the child were wrong. The head was larger than it should have been, and the face twisted in exaggerated anguish. It was not the mirror’s distortion. The eyes had been sculpted large so her pain could not be ignored.

The speaker lifted a whip from the base of the statue. “This,” the speaker said, “is what
we
did to her. Again and again!”
Crack! Crack!

Cal-raven recoiled.

“Do we understand? No, we do not. I tell you that it was you—
you—
who did this to poor Auralia. And I—Bahrage of Bel Amica—am guilty too. We never lived in House Abascar, but we denied what our dreams told us every night. The Keeper exists!”

“The Keeper exists,” the assembly muttered in chorus.

“The Keeper exists,” said Cal-raven, surprising himself.

“You say that now. But no one said it when Auralia was dragged before House Abascar’s King Cal-marcus for claiming that very thing.”

Cal-raven pushed his way closer to the stage.

“No one would believe her.” The speaker’s eyes burned red. Spittle flew from his lips as he groaned, “The shhhhhame!”

At the next whip crack, one woman sobbed and broke from the assembly to run for the door. A man stepped to block her escape.

“Where are you going?” the speaker laughed. “Do you think that just because you never set foot in Abascar, you’re innocent? Her colors were meant to burn. Burn our guilty eyes.”

Bahrage eyed them all like some disapproving schoolteacher. “We gave up on the guardian that visited us in our dreams. We forgot the Keeper and turned instead to the colors and sensations of the Expanse. We must withdraw and think only of the glory that waits beyond the Expanse—the glory that Auralia promised us. Then the Keeper may return to our dreams, bringing comfort and consolation. All else is frivolous. Folly.”

Again the spitting.

“The Seers tell us to indulge our desires. But desire is the very root of all crime. We must surrender the paltry beauty of this world. Raise walls with me, brothers and sisters. Wait with me in dark rooms. The Keeper will see us. This life will not torment us much longer.”

Cal-raven blinked.

“When we are asleep,” Bahrage continued, pounding his fingertips against his forehead, “we are at our best, for then come the dreams. The Keeper draws near, and we cannot resist it. Our waking hours are fraught with dangers: food, drink, and distractions of the imagination.”

He leapt down off the stage into the mob, and his voice became commanding. “Withdraw from the city and its corruptions. Withdraw from the sea and its seductions. Withdraw, my fellow maggots.”

He walked to the woman who had tried to flee and put his arms around her. He was like a child embracing his mother, and she cradled his head under her chin and sobbed. He grinned out to the crowd. “Where can we hide from the Keeper? It hunts for us. We must withdraw from the world of pleasures and go where we belong: the darkness. When the Keeper finds us there, it will see that we are the awakened. Perhaps it will spare us the fire of its lash.”

“The Keeper exists,” they agreed.

“This miserable box—this is the only home for the awakened. We have something they do not have. What do we have?”

“Evidence,” murmured the audience.

“Evidence,” Bahrage hissed, ecstatic. He marched back to the stage, climbed the small rungs of the iron ladder, and stalked about the statue like a crane hunting in the shallows.

As he did, a strange tone began to shimmer from the mirror, and he hesitated, his face contorted in alarm. Cal-raven recognized the sound.

Partayn is singing
.

Bahrage cast his arms wide, fingers pushing out as if he would break apart the sanctuary. “Do you hear that?” His robe swirled behind him, sweeping up clouds of white dust.

Every piece of glass or crystal in Bel Amica sang.

“They call this a gift. But this is corruption unless he sings the Keeper’s name. What do you hear?” He cupped his massive hands to his ears. “It’s a song of a man’s love for a woman. Is this how we should waste our voices? Nothing is worth our attention but the Keeper.”

“The Keeper exists,” the mob chanted. Aggravated by the thought of Partayn singing a love song within reach of Lesyl, Cal-raven chanted with them.

“I hear laughter. Laughter up there in the halls of revelry. Laughter and filthy talk. But the only true laughter, my friends, is ours.”

A bitter and condemning laughter rippled through the assembly.

“I hear appeals to moon-spirits.” Bahrage lifted a small clay bowl like the kind used to light the prayer lamps. And then he cast it down, smashing it upon the glowstones. “The only prayers worth raising are appeals for mercy from our magnificent Keeper. We must beg our way back into its favor.”

Suddenly aware that his hood had slipped, Cal-raven drew it over his head. The room was hot with the press of people. His hands felt heavy, and he brushed them together, only to find that they were grimy from the white grit clinging to the sweat on his flesh.
The Seers can see this. The dust is everywhere
. He glanced back toward the door.

“Some of us acknowledge how wretched we are. The rest are the Keeper’s enemy and so our enemies as well. In its sacred name, we must assail them at every corner. Assail them with the truth.”

He knelt down, took one of the sharp shards of the broken bowl, and then pressed its jagged edge into three of his fingertips, drawing dark drops of blood. “The Keeper’s hands have three fingers and a thumb,” he said.

Cal-raven almost laughed out loud.

“Let us bring forward that which Auralia left behind, those signs that our world is worthless and unworthy of our attention. Let us secure those things that they might not be lost, corrupted, mocked, or exploited by those who don’t understand.”

“Evidence,” chanted the mob.

The speaker seemed impressed. “Provide the evidence.” The crowd was silent for a moment. Then a man raised his trembling hand. Bowing, he advanced like a guilty dog to a cruel master. He carried a
glimmering glowstone, a gem split in two, revealing a core of shimmering crystal. Within that broken core, other gems had been placed, and in the center, the bloom of a thistle, which seemed as brilliantly alive now as it had been when it was planted.

As the man went forward, Cal-raven almost reached for his sleeve. For there was no question in his mind who had made this wonder.

“Tell us about this evidence you ask us to protect.” The overseer seemed to swell with satisfaction.

At that, the man hesitated. “My name is Daryus. When my daughter fell ill in Abascar, she sank into a deep sleep. My wife and I carried her out to Deep Lake, and my wife found this stone on the shore beside an abandoned campfire. We believe it belonged to Auralia.”

“It did, Daryus,” sighed the overseer. “We will protect it.” He reached out his hand.

“Evidence,” came the chorus.

“We gave it to my daughter,” Daryus continued. “We thought that if the Keeper had cared for Auralia, it might come and care for our daughter too. Even though she was asleep, she clutched this gemstone tightly with both hands. And in the morning, she was awake. When we came to work in Bel Amica, people laughed at our tale. So we are grateful to find others who revere Auralia and what she came to show us.”

The overseer took the stone from Daryus—a little too eagerly, Cal-raven thought—and clutched it in his bleeding hand. “We mark the beauty,” he sighed, “with the sign of the Keeper.”

Meanwhile, Daryus walked bowed and burdened, reminding Cal-raven of the slow, laborious progress of a sunclinger across sharp stones.