Raven's Ladder (41 page)

“That…would be useful. Are they for Ryllion?”

“In a manner of speaking. Partayn wants you to patrol the harbor caves with these birds. Tell no one about their…particular purpose.”

“Why?”

“I’m not sure. But when Jordam the beastman came in last night, he told Officer Henryk that he smelled something. Something that doesn’t belong.”

“He smelled House Abascar,” he snapped.

“No, no,” she laughed. “Rest, Tabor Jan. You might as well since you won’t be able to move for a while. Your body’s sleeping. Let your mind follow. Just for a while.” Emeriene motioned to the Kneader.

The Kneader seized him, lifted him from the chair, and set him in a wheelchair, where his arms hung limp at his sides. Emeriene planted the birdcage in his lap, then drew a circlet of feathers from a pocket in her robe and placed it on his head with great ceremony. “I crown you, Tabor Jan, king of tetherwings.”

“Sleep? Bird-watching? I’m Abascar’s captain of the guard.”

“I wonder, did Cal-raven learn his insolence from you, or was it the other way around?” She smiled to the Kneader. “We’ll let you find your own way out. When you’re ready.”

Emeriene and the Kneader walked away.

Tabor Jan tried to lift his head. He tried to lift an arm. But he could only sit and stare at the silent birds while the breeze teased the garden leaves.

A
re you certain you won’t rest?” Officer Henryk looked through the trees into the pond of fog that submerged the valley. “When this clears, you’ll see it—the tower of Tilianpurth. We could get good rest there. Better meals. Would do you good, boyo.”

Cal-raven tightened the clamp on the bow Cyndere had given him from her own collection, pulling the string taut again. “You keep calling me boyo, Officer.”

“Do I?” Henryk gazed into the crumblewood campfire, turning the brascle over the flames. “Ey, now, forgive me. You just remind me so much of him.”

“Who do I remind you of?”

“My son.”

Cal-raven rose and walked a slow circle around the soldiers who were sharpening jags of heavy wood. They would sink a barrage of these bulky spears in the river near the Cent Regus Core to gut any boats that tried to follow them out.

“At what point do we come in after you?” Henryk asked. “And tell me twice.”

“You don’t. You don’t come in after me.”

Henryk puffed up his cheeks, then whistled long and low. “The courage of youth.”

Cal-raven half turned, suspecting he was being insulted.

“Let us consider,” Henryk continued, “the possibility that things could go wrong in the Core.” He lifted the spit and shoved the dripping bird at
Cal-raven. “You end up slow-roasted over a fire, and with every turn you’re thinking, ‘Ey, now. I told them to stay. I told them I couldn’t fail.’”

“Three days,” said Cal-raven. “If I have not sent you some kind of sign in three days, then something is awry.”

Henryk shook his head. “I wish my son had lived to see this. The king of Abascar taking a beastman as his guide.”

A troubling rumble began beneath the fog, drawing their attention. Cal-raven stood up and put his hand on his hilt. “Maybe he does see it,” he said. “If he does, he must be similarly surprised to see his father protecting an Abascar man.”

“No,” Henryk chuckled. “No, he would not be. He would know I’m doing this for him.”

Cal-raven stared at him. “Of course,” he said. “I’ve been a fool not to see it before.” He smiled wryly at his protector. “You’re Deuneroi’s father.”

A sour horn bleated, and the rumbling grew louder. Then as if emerging from the curtains of a stage, Jordam appeared astride a bellowing prong-bull that thrashed the air with its powerful horns.

Henryk’s men were on their feet with arrows to bows, but Cal-raven raised his hand. “Wait.”

“Ey, now, would you look at that?” Henryk shook his head. “He’s going to carry you on that?”

Jordam held the bull at bay for a moment, then urged him a few cautious steps toward the camp and turned him sideways. “You,” Jordam grumbled to Cal-raven, “sit behind me.”

Cal-raven could not take his attention off the animal’s glowing red eyes.

“Ready?” Jordam laughed to the Bel Amicans. “rrKeep up.”

Cal-raven clung to Jordam as the prongbull charged across rugged open ground.

As they passed through the northern stretches of Cent Regus territory, he searched every hillock for a familiar landmark. He came to suspect that the landscape here was as fluid as the nature of the beastmen—shapes changing as if the world had forgotten its design.

Jordam slowed at one point and gazed up a steep slope to an old, crumbling shelter—a disintegrating barn with a weather-battered shack leaning against it. The beastman sniffed the air like a hunting hound, then growled.

“Are we in danger?” Cal-raven almost asked, but the beastman spurred the bull forward again.

The animal’s mercurial temper kept the whip in Jordam’s hand. It became increasingly agitated the farther they moved toward the Cent Regus Core. It moved so quickly that Cal-raven could not imagine any creature capable of catching it—except the Keeper.

The thought caught him by surprise. He began to speak into the air as they rode, his words ripped from his lips by the rush of air. “Keeper, guide me. Keeper, protect me. Keeper, help me in the Core.” But with every word he felt more foolish, for the Keeper had led him north to the vision. His way had been clear before him. He’d seen no tracks pointing him any other way. “I’ll go north,” he said. “Just help me bring my mother out of the dark.”

As they came out of the hills and into the haze of the wasteland, the horizon faded in all directions. They moved through a stifling space beneath low clouds that looked like muddy rags. These clouds carried no rain—only dust that streamed down into his face like angry swarms of stingers.

Winding like a restless snake through reeds in the lowlands beneath them, a tributary of the Throanscall looked lost, resigned to a slow death among these hills. As Jordam brought the bull down to its bank, Cal-raven saw that the waters were foul with corruption and debris.

Jordam leapt off the bull, and not wanting to be stranded or launched into the sky, Cal-raven quickly followed. Jordam gave the bull’s flank a sharp slap. The bull made a sound almost like a horse’s whinny, then shook the ground with the force of its departure.

The reeds surrendered a long raft of oiltree bark, which Jordam had concealed for his return.

In Abascar, oiltree bark had made barn-stall walls strong against vawns and horses. In Bel Amica, it was valuable for ship’s hulls. And for Jordam’s purposes, it would serve to keep them dry on this reeking river.

“rrMore boats like this waiting,” the beastman said. “Waiting for escape.”

Jordam watched the dustclouds withdraw across the dry, cracked ground as if they’d grown too tired to pursue him down the river.

He pulled the cloth cover off the honeycomb candle, the only one he’d brought from the collection he had crafted to bless Auralia’s caves with light.

He remembered finding a candle lying on its side in a corner of Auralia’s chambers. He had studied it for a long time before realizing that he understood its basic construction. Auralia had pressed tiny beads into the wax—weaving intricate designs all around it. He could not begin to imagine how to achieve such pleasing patterns, but he could make the candle itself. And there would be nothing suspicious about a hunk of honeycomb among beastmen, so he could carry these candles into the Core to help the prisoners move through the dark, winding passages in their escape.

But the more candles he made, the more he made them for pleasure than for any practical purpose. He played with differing shapes and even tried threading grasses through their wax.

“I know what you need,” said Cal-raven. Reaching into the water, he scooped up a heavy stone from the riverbed. His hands softened it like bread dough. Jordam watched him, amazed again and unsettled. It reminded him of falling through the collapsing floor of a cave as the king of Abascar sought to kill him.

Cal-raven elongated the claylike mass to the size of a bread loaf, then gouged a hollow within it. “There.” He placed Jordam’s invention inside, then carved a grip atop the stone so the beastman could carry it easily.

“Lantern,” Jordam grunted. “rrGood.”

When Jordam observed Cal-raven murmuring fitfully in a dream, he reached into the crude bag he had made from a sun-baked vawn bladder and pulled out a tiny blue vial. He let a drop of oil fall onto the edge of the muskgrazer skin Cal-raven had pulled over himself as a shield against biting riverbugs. Cal-raven quieted and soon was snoring softly. Jordam smiled.

The day had passed without trouble, save for brascle sightings that caused Cal-raven to fitfully test his knife’s sharpness. They had left Henryk’s company far behind, trusting them to follow the river and set up a defense for their escape.

As dusk’s blue darkened, Jordam scanned the land on both sides of the river relentlessly. Then he drew back the cover so Cal-raven could breathe the cooling air. Soon swarms of Cent Regus pests would gather over the river, and the cover would save him from poisons.

The beastman had become accustomed to strange sights like this—these almost-hairless people forgetting their fear of the Cent Regus. He had seen it in the Cent Regus Core while he helped the Treasure and the ale boy prepare the prisoners for escape. The slaves had not trusted him at first. But one by one their bravest began to risk it, following him to the underground caves where the river flowed. There, they had begun crafting rafts for the coming escape. With every raft constructed, their hope grew stronger. The first crowd would have to escape unobserved, or there would never be a second endeavor.

Jordam found hope in the determination of O-raya’s boy.

That boy had been the first of the smooth-skinned people from beyond the Cent Regus world to travel with him, to ride upon his shoulders in a swift journey through winter’s worst. The ale boy, he had called himself. But Cent Regus prisoners called him Rescue. A boy who could hold and play with fire. A boy who had learned, passage by passage, the network of tunnels in the Core, somehow evading the sight of his captors. He was tireless, but whenever anyone sought to show him gratitude, he told them to thank the Keeper who had brought him.

Jordam understood that. Without the Keeper, he never would have discovered Auralia’s colors. He would have remained a savage, addicted to the Essence that corrupted his kind and filled them with violence.

“Jordam.” Cal-raven was awake, but his eyelids were half closed. “You keep saying Auralia’s name. Tell me what you know about her.”

Jordam spoke of the young woman who lived in caves beside Deep Lake. He had crawled into those caves, injured from a terrible fall, and he had watched her spend mornings in the forest climbing trees, following
animals, digging in the dirt, swimming in the lake. He described to Cal-raven the things she would bring back to the cave—stones, seeds, shells, bones and berries, tufts of fur and fangbear teeth, curtains of cobweb and ears of corn.

“rrWatched her,” he said. “Watched her long, long time. Strange. Always I go away…better inside. Like having a belly full of good things.”

“I must see these caves.” Cal-raven stared into the blue light of Jordam’s candle as they floated along. “You could show me the way someday.”

“rrNo Auralia anymore.”

“I know.”

Jordam shrugged. “Someday.”

“I’m a king, Jordam, and what have I ever done that could inspire anyone as Auralia did? I’d rather craft one meaningful thing, one beautiful work, than spend my days trying to hold a house together.”

Jordam let go of an oar to scratch the scarring on his forehead. “Stone people.”

“Oh. In the Hall of the Lost. How did you know I made them?” Before Jordam could answer, he saw Cal-raven’s face contort. “You saw me changing stone. When I tried to.” The king looked down at the blue candle. “It surprised me. I didn’t know I could be so hateful, so terrible as I was that day. I’m sorry.”

“I scared you. I’m Cent Regus.”

“Do you understand those words—‘I’m sorry’? It’s not fair of me to ask you to forget what I did to you. But I wish I had not been cruel. I wish I’d listened.”

“Bel.” Jordam looked off into the night. “Bel taught me. Me, sorry. Bel forgives.” At Cal-raven’s questioning expression, he added, “Sin-der. Bel.” Then he scratched again at his forehead’s scar, where the browbone had broken. “Want to forget many things. Essence. Killing. rrBrothers.”

Cal-raven nodded. “Jordam, you don’t scare me anymore.”

As they sailed along, the ground rising on both sides, the breeze stiffened, and the light in the lantern leapt up in alarm and went out. Jordam sniffed the gale, then snarled, “Hide.”

Cal-raven covered himself with the heavy skin.

The man’s eyes would not be sharp enough, but Jordam could see that
they were approaching a low bridge. A figure leaned over the edge, arms reaching down as if he might try to snatch him from the boat.