The Shepherd of Weeds (37 page)

As Rowan inspected the dizzying array, he gripped the brown box from Grig. He had planned to disable the inkworks the old-fashioned way—with the aid of his borrowed club—but this was much, much better. Stepping up to the largest of the open vats, Rowan suppressed a wave of nausea. The putrid smell was overpowering, and the former taster’s eyes began watering in the heat and stench. A few stray tufts of dandelion silk caught upon his cloak. He wrenched Ivy’s box open as the roiling brew spewed out its deadly scent.

Too late, he saw a movement just behind him.

“Rowan Truax.” A hoarse whisper was at his ear.

A splattered arm snaked its way around the former taster’s neck. Rowan was coughing now, his lungs rebelling against the foul air. Whoever it was that held him seemed unaffected by the stench, quite at home in the inhospitable room.

“I couldn’t believe my fortune when my lady called your vile, worthless name!” the raspy voice continued. “I thought: What luck! What destiny shines upon my wretched soul!
Tru-ax, Tru-ax
 …” The voice sang a small lullaby of hatred.
“I swore in that dank cell my vengeance on you—how I planned your suffering. Those Taxus brutes, their lien upon you, brought me utter misery! It is all your fault, Rowan Truax! I am here, in this befouled city, because of you.”

Shooting specks of light erupted before Rowan’s eyes as Dumbcane’s arm tightened around his neck. He summoned up a last, urgent surge of strength and elbowed the forger, aiming for the ribs, but found nothing behind him but empty space.

In his last few moments of consciousness, Rowan frantically dropped the open box of powdered staunchweed into the simmering vat before him, and, falling back, he met the ground in a disturbing heap.

hat vapid thing, this light—this dreary scrim! It dulls my senses as it burns my retinas!” Vidal Verjouce wailed. “Agony! Oh, agony—Snaith!” he howled. “Snaith! Get me a blindfold!”

The Director stood unsteadily, hands desperately clawing his face.

“Snaith is currently … unavailable,” Sorrel Flux replied in his thin, nasally voice. Flux, in a burlap shirt and overalls and with straw jutting from his collar and cuffs, was seated in the Director’s chair, his feet upon the stone table.

He was thoroughly enjoying himself.

At the sound of his former assistant’s voice, Verjouce spun around. “Who—who’s there?”

Verjouce removed his hands from his eyes and squinted. His vision had indeed returned, but his brain was uncooperative,
and the world was a swirl of lights and darks, spun shadows of dreary, pale color and hints of shapes. After a minute, he managed to determine that a scarecrow was seated before him (at his desk!) and immediately dismissed the hallucination.

A new question bubbled up within him.

“What is this place?” Verjouce knew himself to be in the room atop the spire, but what he now faced was unrecognizable. Etchings, like gravestones—endless epitaphs—lined every inch of the walls. He was in a tomb of his own making. Gone were the elegant, rich tapestries that once lined the chamber, alongside vast bookshelves of immense, leather-bound books. Where gold letters once glinted were ruined walls, pitted and stained. The floors, too, were soiled with hardened puddles of dark lacquer. His hands, the nails broken and blackened, and his robes and collar—everything had been abandoned to this oily blackness. The frigid wind blew about him from his shattered window, his ravaged hair whipping about his face. Sight, he thought, was overrated.

How had this happened?

He saw nothing but decay.

Decay, and that persistent scarecrow.

Vidal Verjouce closed his eyes and steadied himself. My Mind Garden. My source of strength, he thought. It was the one place to which he might return and find solace. He tried to imagine it, to conjure it up in the dark recess of his imagination—but there was nothing.

His Mind Garden lay crumbled, in ruins.

With the return of his sight, his mind abandoned him, overwhelmed and misfiring. Nothing remained but confusion. He fell to his knees, howling.

“Those watery things rolling down your cheeks are called
tears
—remember them?” Flux piped up. “It’s a regrettable thing that eyes do. That, and allow you to see.”

“Yesss—” Verjouce whispered. He was grasping to make sense of the shreds of visions, the wisps of light and dark returning to him. “A girl!” Verjouce told the scarecrow. His voice trailed off. “I saw a girl, here—in my chambers. Princess Violet!”

“Hardly,” Flux scoffed.

“My eyes deceive me, then. Surely it is so—for it appears I’m talking to a scarecrow.”

“The King’s daughter is dead.” The scarecrow yawned. “What you saw was your own daughter. Ivy, she is called. A tedious creature at best—but, yes, admittedly, she does bear a striking resemblance to Princess Violet.”

Verjouce stared at the creature before him, this strawman. His face was pinched and his nose long and crooked—his skin the color of marigolds. Verjouce’s newly acquired eyes narrowed as a deep memory stirred. His mind had returned him to the time before his blinding, the events that followed it—the truly awful events that followed it. Everything was now curiously relegated to a dark fog.

“Princess Violet,” the Guild’s Director continued. “What’s become of her?”

“Poison hemlock,” Flux gloated. “One of your favorites, wasn’t it, Vidal?”

The Princess’s death had the distinction of being the very first poisoning—a new and horrible crime, and her sad end began a new chapter in Caux’s misery.

Vidal Verjouce blinked—a new sensation. The terrible Director of the infamous Tasters’ Guild was responsible for many, many poisonings—but not this one.

“There, there,” Flux soothed. “I can hardly take all the credit. I
did
have a wonderful teacher.”

“Bite your tongue, you traitorous minion! I will be sure to give you all that you are due. Now fetch me my cane!”

Flux stood, hayseed floating in the air about him. “Looking for this?”

He flaunted the Director’s infamous barbed cane triumphantly. In an instant Flux was before his former employer, brandishing the weapon.

“We’re going on a little field trip, master and servant. You will take me to the place where this Kingmaker grows. And hurry. Your current state of weakness is revolting—it must be so very disappointing for you. I hope redemption isn’t catching.”

And with that, the former servant ushered the Director from his ill-gotten chambers, the poisoned tip of his own cane at his back.

vy stood before the King’s Cottage.

She had found her way to a King’s outpost before—once in the Southern Wood with Rowan, at the beginning of her adventures, and then again at the glorious Lake District before flying to the waiting hovel of the Mildew Sisters. But she had never traveled so far as this.

She had vanquished her father, toppled his Mind Garden, and sailed across a still sea to find herself at this familiar hut—an enchanted cottage, a place frozen in time, waiting to welcome King Verdigris.

But unlike the others, this cottage was occupied.

The flower boxes before the tidy windows sprouted small yellow flowers, cinquefoils, the flower of the King. Candles glittered with sparkling life upon a table within. Smoke
drifted amiably from a plump chimney, and the door was unlocked. Shoo alighted happily upon a windowsill, peering in, shifting his weight from side to side in an effort to defy his own reflection.

Ivy stood on the threshold, suddenly unsure. She thought of the small boat—it wasn’t too late to turn around. She could just see the still lake in the distance from where they came. A great nervousness swelled inside her, and as she made to call for Shoo, she saw that he was gone.

“My dear Ivy,” an exquisite voice spoke.

Inside, a figure stood at a simple stove with his back to her.

“King Verdigris?” Ivy asked, hesitant.

The man turned from his preparations to face her. It was indeed the King, Ivy saw—but the King transformed. Gone were the cruel hawthorns, the imprisoning throne from their first encounter. His blue eyes were sharp and unhindered by age, and his cloak of green was replaced with a rich fur of the purest white, which draped regally across his shoulders, sweeping down to the floor. His long hair and beard were still tied in erratically placed ribbons, as they had been in Pimcaux, but his body seemed insubstantial somehow—as if made more of light than of flesh. And more amazingly, Ivy noticed, the old man cast no shadow, for he was made of something as rarefied as the stars.

Ivy looked anxiously around for Shoo, but he was nowhere to be found.

“Great-granddaughter. Noble One,” the King addressed her. “Welcome.”

Ivy frowned, looking about the room. Where had Shoo gotten to?

“You must be hungry from your travels.”

Ivy was indeed aware of a growing hunger—and whatever was on the small stove smelled captivating. Soon they were at the table, a single bowl before her. Ivy examined it—a clear broth, small yellow cinquefoils floating at the surface. It smelled sublime. But Ivy’s bowl went ignored—the lump in her throat was ruining her appetite.

After poking at the floating flowers, Ivy raised her head to the King, who sat at the far end of the table. She inspected Good King Verdigris closely. He had chosen no bowl for himself. Ivy cleared her throat, summoning her courage. A few stray dandelion wisps floated by lazily.

“Er, excuse me, Great-grandfather. Have you seen my crow, Shoo?”

“Shoo? He has gone on ahead.”

“Ahead?” Ivy looked around, her eyes falling on the stone-studded fireplace. She remembered what her mother had once told her, at a similar cottage at the Lake District. All the King’s Cottages led to just one place.

“Underwood?” Ivy asked excitedly.

“Yes.” The King nodded.

A great surge of relief now swept over the girl—leaving her both thrilled and drained. Underwood. The improbable retreat beneath Southern Wood—so very close to the tavern she grew up in. She was returning home.

“And if we hurry, we’ll be just in time for tea,” King Verdigris announced.

hey turned from the homey table, the King and Ivy, and walked to the ample fireplace. Rounding the far side, where in each cottage Ivy knew a hidden door was located, the King paused. At his touch, it sprang open.

Together, they entered a length of stone stairs. The King shone slightly in the darkness, a twilight halo about his figure. Ivy felt for her crown of interlaced violets, which encircled her head still. At the end of the stairs, the great King placed his long fingers upon the wall of entwined twigs that grew before him. These parted, dripping sap, as a door sprang forth in their midst. Ahead, the familiar cavernous great room of Underwood.

Ivy felt the solid earth beneath her feet, and indeed knew that they were home. And while all of Caux stretched out above them, ahead Ivy was greeted with a spectacular sight.