Raven's Ladder (46 page)

“Don’t block the river,” said Jaralaine, who sat enshrouded in a plain grey cape on the opposite side of the boat, clutching a bundle of cloth against her breast. Jordam had noticed how the Abascar king jumped whenever she spoke. “We’re coming back. There are more prisoners. Bel Amicans, merchants, and others.”

Cal-raven looked around. “Why did they keep Abascar separate?”

Irimus shrugged. “They supposed that Abascar people knew how to dig.”

“When the Cent Regus learn that my mother and the Abascar slaves have escaped, they’ll watch this passage. We’ll have to find another way.”

Jaralaine narrowed her eyes. “Don’t talk like you know this place.”

Jordam saw Cal-raven smile and wondered why such a stern order would please him.

He turned his attention back to the slow roll of the ugly waves. One of the bear-beasts glanced at him nervously, and Jordam spoke to him in the Cent Regus tongue. “No more beatings. No more chieftain. You can drink more water from O-raya’s well. Soon. rrRow harder. Watch the tunnels. We can’t let any others find us here.”

The people were silent, peering out from between the shields.

There—Jordam could smell open air. They would need every arrow. They would need Cal-raven’s stonemastery. The ale boy claimed to have called for the Keeper. Jordam remembered his encounter with the Keeper. He had no desire to see that creature again.

Plup
.

Something had gone into the water.

He looked back, glanced to the banks on either side, listened. No one said anything.

“What did you hear?” asked Cal-raven.

He shrugged and turned forward again. “rrWatch close,” he warned the rowers.

“Jordam,” said Irimus, “the feelers have not come for us.”

“Feelers,” he said, “don’t hunt here. Unless Skell Wra tells them to. But Skell Wra is not the chieftain. Maybe the feelers are confused.”

“And the observers,” said Irimus. “What of them?”

“The white giants protect the new chieftain,” Jordam growled.

“I am proud of my father,” said Cal-raven suddenly. “He made our house the only one that utterly refused to do business with the Seers.”

Abascar’s queen looked up. The words seemed to amaze her.

“But what game are they playing?” asked Irimus.

The river’s reflections swirled above them the color of blue flame. Then Owen quietly asked, “Is it time to sing yet?”

Jaralaine looked back at him. “Not until the Morning Verse. Soon. But we may have to whisper this time. Follow my son’s example.”

Cal-raven looked up at her, but the queen was looking back across the rafts. “My son,” she said softly. “Where is my son?”

“Mother?” Cal-raven answered softly.

“No!” she shouted, rising to her feet. “Not you. Where is my son?”

“rrQuiet!” Jordam whined.

“He was right there!” she shrieked, and then she tried to step through those around her as if she would jump to the boat behind them. Cal-raven stood up. Everyone turned. Owen bowed his head.

“Where’s the ale boy?” Cal-raven asked. “Where’s Rescue?”

Jordam responded at once. He leapt off the boat into the water. The river was just shallow enough that he could stride. Step by step, he searched the waters behind the boats, the cold, slimy current coursing all about him. “O-raya’s boy!” he roared.

Cal-raven stepped to the next boat and knelt beside Owen. “Did you see anything?”

“Master,” said Owen, “I promised I wouldn’t say.”

“You promised what?”

Owen sighed. “He said he’d done his part. The Keeper’s coming to help him find the others who need rescuing.”

“That boy wants to save the whole world,” Irimus wheezed.

“rrMust keep going,” Jordam growled. “Can’t stop now.” A tremendous splash sounded, and everyone turned. Jaralaine had gone into the water.

They did not see her come up until she staggered onto the rocky river-bank, soaked in sludge, her arms wrapped tight around the bundle she had brought to the boat. “Son!” she was crying.

Jordam held up his hands to Cal-raven. “rrStay! No stopping the boats!”

Cal-raven followed his mother into the water.

Jordam turned, terrified.
They will awaken things. The Cent Regus will come after us
. He pushed against the current but saw Cal-raven’s head bob as he was carried past. Struggling to surface, the man grabbed hold of a rolling tree branch. Jordam surged after him. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Jaralaine disappear into a crevasse in the wall.

Jordam reached out and seized the tree branch, then drew it close until he could grasp Cal-raven’s sleeve. Soon he had the man in his arms.

“We’ve. Got to. Catch her.” Cal-raven coughed out sludge.

Jordam carried Cal-raven to the shore, and the man stumbled into a run.

Jordam turned to the boats. “Go on,” he said. “Arrows ready. We will find you.” He stared intensely at the oarsman who steered the last boat. “rrDon’t fail me.”

Charging into the tunnels, he could hear both of them—Jaralaine’s frantic breath, her light footsteps, Cal-raven’s calls for her to stop, his swift heartbeat.

Jordam bounded up seven stairs at a time.

Behind him he heard the Abascar slaves whispering. The bear-beasts grunted with quiet, urgent complaints. The rafts bumped against one another.
If I can hear all this, then others will too
. He smelled rat-beasts. He heard their scuttling.

And then, boots. The altered guard. Strongbreed. They were coming. By the time he reached the crossing, the passage behind him was silent. The passengers had managed to quiet themselves.
I do not know this corridor
.

He smelled blood. Something deep inside him opened up, begging for
Essence that would give him strength. He growled, fighting against that itch. He had not given in for so long, and he did not dare give in now. Essence would make him faster, yes, and stronger. But it would also weaken his mind and heart.

Where did they go?
He stopped and listened.

He felt a dark and open space to his left. Someone was there. He unsheathed his blade and turned.

A mighty hand struck his, the shield on the back of the glove jarring the knife from his grip. Another hand struck him in the jaw, lifting him from the ground and throwing him back against the wall. The impact stole the breath from his lungs, and before he could get his feet under him, one of the altered guard seized him by the throat, lifted him, and cast him into the adjoining corridor, where three more guards were waiting.

Jordam fought them, brandishing his remaining claws like knives. He smelled their blood—a mingling scent of human and animal—heard their excitement, smelled Essence on their breath. Two guards held his feet, two more held his hands, and one, his armor painted red, drew a long gleaming pin from a sheath and drove it into his back, paralyzing him so fast that he froze in a contorted twist.

The guards turned and carried him down the dark corridor, laughing. “What are you?” one of them asked him. “Running around with slaves? Trying to steal a few for yourself?”

They don’t know about the boats
, he thought.

“rrNo,” he barked. “Abascar slave tried to switch camps. rrRan from the diggers to the scavengers. The Treasure is chasing him. No trouble.”

“Don’t explain to us,” they said. “Explain to the chieftain.”

They broke into a run, carrying Jordam between them.

When they stepped through the gates into the throne room, they flung him forward as if casting wood on a fire. He skidded on his chest through puddles and piles of carnage and came to a stop facedown at the foot of the dais.

It was quiet, but he knew there were Cent Regus all around, watching, uncertain, wondering how this new chieftain would behave. He heard the labored breathing of the creature at the top of the dais stair.

“rrMy massster,” Jordam wheezed, wishing he could get his disguise back. “I welcome…and honor you.”

At that, he heard the sound of snakes uncoiling—great, slithering sounds of the throne’s arms. He felt one of those tentacles coil about his ankles, and suddenly he was lifted through the air, his head a pendulum. He was carried up the stairs, his forehead slamming against the edge of each step until his head was full of light, and he sneezed blood. The arm turned him around and raised him up, and he saw the chieftain lean forward in eager anticipation.

Through flashes of pain, he saw the face of this chieftain and was thoroughly bewildered. For he was not like any Cent Regus he had seen before. “You,” said the chieftain, “smell wrong.”

This beastman had been cut open and sewn shut. This was something new, and Jordam knew at once that the white giants had been hard at work, giving the Cent Regus curse a new shape.

“Only one Cent Regus was ever such a fool as to refuse Essence,” said the chieftain.

Something smelled familiar.

“Mordafey told you once,” said the chieftain’s voice in soft delight. “He told you that if you ever betrayed him, he would meet you again in some dark place. And you would not recognize him.”

Everything within Jordam strained to writhe in shock and sudden, overwhelming fear.

Mordafey
.

The creature went on, emboldened. In his rising enthusiasm, his voice had become many—a predator bird, a slavering wolf, a serpent—the tones of a cluster of creatures twisted together within his body. “Four brothers,” said Mordafey. “You all could have been here. Beside Mordafey. Do you even think about the brothers, Jordam?”

“rrBetter things. To think about,” Jordam spluttered. “You’ll never know what I know.”

Mordafey drew Jordam in closer, hanging him like a piece of meat on a rack, and as he spoke, he spat in Jordam’s face. “Jorn, sssshot by an old Bel Amican man. Goreth, ripped into pieces. And Mordafey—you spit poison
into Mordafey’s face. Mordafey could hardly run fast enough to escape the arrows. And then…then the white giant punished Mordafey.”

“rrLooks like the white giant gave you everything you wanted,” Jordam answered. “You don’t need brothers anymore. You never wanted them anyway.”

Mordafey laughed long, loud, triumphant. “Mordafey holds the whole Expanse in his new arms. You can’t escape him. Not even on a prongbull. Nor can you refuse his gifts. So take this, Jordam, as your second chance. Mordafey wants to see you kill again.”

Jordam was driven hard and fast down through a steaming vent that had opened in the floor. Headfirst he was carried down, down, down.

He saw the cauldron of boiling Essence for only a moment, dark as a bottomless pit, before he was submerged in it.

N
uch to Wynn’s dismay, Gelina wore even more perfume when she returned to the harbor dock the following night. Even among stacks of damp cargo crates and the scent of hot torch oil, he could smell her before he saw her, and so the scratching began.

Slinking down the marketplace stair, she pranced past the ogling harbor workers, a cork in her crooked white teeth and a beveled green glass bottle in her hand.

Balax the guard stood up from his guard post like a dog smelling dinner. Whether he rose for the cider or the seductress, Wynn did not know or care. “Like a bull-gully fish to a big fat worm,” he muttered.

Gelina’s beads clicked and snapped together, strategically strung over her gown, every visible region of her buxom body dancing as she frolicked up to Balax. Balax’s eyes were on the bottle. She set the cider on the step in front of the forbidden corridor. “Don’t touch,” she laughed. “You’re on duty.”

Balax glanced about.

Alert as cats in a fishyard, Balax’s brothers, Biggas and Broot, were on their feet, all but drooling for a taste of the cider.

Balax snatched the bottle, lumbered out to the edge of the dock, and made as if to cast it into the harbor.

Wynn held his breath. Gelina cried out, “Stop!”

Then Balax laughed. “Had you worried, didn’t I?” He took one quick swig. “Just to clear my throat, mind you.” Returning to his post, he handed the bottle to his brothers. “No more than a drop,” he admonished them.

“And afterward, we’ll have orange-chew. Can’t have Captain Ryllion sniffing your beards for drink.”

He sat down on the step of the tunnel’s entrance. Gelina sat beside him, drew the guard’s head down to her bosom, and rested her chin on his ear.

Wynn waited, scratching his elbows, hoping the perfume and cider would work their magic.

Slowly Balax raised one of his hands and spread his fingers as if he had never seen them before in his life. He voiced an unintelligible question, confused. Gelina began to laugh that rolling, resonant music. Balax giggled. They rose together, and Gelina drew him back into the tunnel. Just before the darkness erased them both, she cast an urgent glance at Wynn.

Biggas and Broot replaced Balax on the step and set the bottle between them, eying it as if it might attack them.

Drink the cider. Sleep
.

Biggas picked up the bottle, sniffed it, then took a deep gulp.

Broot leapt to his feet and cursed. “Has your head come off? Ryllion will open you up and pour that swallow out on the rocks! We’re gonna get the lash!” He marched past the pallet of barrels, muttering, “If I’m gonna be the last one standing, I’d better clear my head.” He knelt to scoop cold water onto his face. “Gotta wake up.”

Biggas was already failing, his hands hanging down to his ankles, his head swaying low. He fell forward so that his forehead hit the boards, held that awkward pose, and then collapsed onto his side, asleep.

Wynn climbed onto one of the barrels and peered into an empty space among them. “Now.”

Tabor Jan stood up, then ducked back down. “One of them’s still awake!”

“Broot’s not gonna drink it,” Wynn whispered back. “Go now, while he’s talking to himself!”

“Too risky.” Tabor Jan remained in the shadows.

Shouts broke the quiet. Wynn looked across the harbor. One of the boats listed, and a violent clamor came from its hull. Red torches converged on the dock beside the boat, and men were calling for arrows and axes.

“The scourge,” Wynn whispered.

“What’s that?”