The Shepherd of Weeds (39 page)

Ivy and King Verdigris stood now before the stark white tapestry.

“What is this?” Ivy asked. Clouds of dandelion seed and thick mist rolled forth, like the sea.

“It is what comes After,” the King answered.

“After?” Ivy squinted into the clouds. “Why can’t I see anything?”

“It is not your time.”

Suddenly she understood.

“All things in life—and what comes after—are made from these looms?” She turned to her uncle, who nodded imperceptibly. The Mildew Sisters—the Four Sisters of the Haberdashery—wove the very fabric of life.

The visitors were gone now, the ghostly entourage of Caux’s dead—Poppy, Calyx, her mother, the tavern regulars—for they had drifted into the billowing mists.

King Verdigris stood before the tapestry, his features smooth as marble. He turned to Ivy. He let the fur cape drop from his shoulders, and as it met the ground, it became a white rabbit—twitching its long pink ears idly and then loping away.

“Ivy,” the Good King said. “Your journey ends here. You must remain in Caux. All this—Underwood—is yours now. Use it, as I did, as a retreat. A place to renew.”

“No!” she cried. “I want to go with you!”

Shoo flew from her shoulder to the King’s outstretched
hand, and Ivy felt her heart break—the warmth where he sat beside her neck fading.

“Your place is here, child.” His voice was soft and sad. “Where I’m going is not a kingdom for the living.”

“No!” she cried again, bitterly. “Shoo—do not leave me!”

Great tufts of dandelion had picked up again, their whiteness matched only by the brilliant tapestry. They swirled playfully, their numbers growing thick. The room was a blur suddenly, their soft touch cushioning Ivy, gathering, trapped in her tears. She sank to her knees in despair, her uncle’s hand upon her shoulder her only comfort.

he Field Guild to the Poisons of Caux
, Axle’s preeminent reference book, is uncharacteristically dismissive on the topic of the will-o’-wisp, the ghostly vision that is blamed in many a traveler’s death. The writer prefers to take the cynic’s role, stating on page 1274:

“Hurry, you miserable wretch,” Flux growled at his former employer. “This way! Faster!” Flux had spirited away the Director, urging him quickly down the spire’s long stairs. Yet it seemed that at every step, the old man stumbled. “You were better off blind,” Flux muttered.

The unlikely pair swept past the dismal fountains and crooked alleys, keeping to the shadows. Everywhere, Outriders darted past on their murderous errands, black cloaks
streaming out behind them. From deep beneath the city they surged, dark ants from a wrecked hill. They searched their fallen comrades and fell upon any unfortunate in their way.

Broken-winged birds fluttered uselessly upon the ground. Heaps of old clothes and straw stuffing were all that remained of the scarecrow army. The Outriders had upended Grig’s eclectic cart, and its contents were spread about the cobbles—broken flasks and untidy coils of hemp rope were flung haphazardly about the square.

It was easy to overlook the drifting tufts of dandelion seed, silvery spores upon the dank air. They were everywhere now, drifting silently throughout the city. They caught in the gutters and slipways, bridged the dark grates that led to the sewers. The black stone of the slick walls held them fast, slowly turning to gray, then white.

Outside the breeched walls, in the thick forest of hawthorns that girdled the city, the silvery parachutes snagged upon the cruel barbs and stuck fast, their numbers growing. The enormous trees groaned, as if carrying a great weight.

This was the scene that was reflected in Vidal Verjouce’s new glistening eyes, and so strange a sight was it that he stared back uncomprehendingly. A great battle had been waged, and was winding down. Who was the victor? He shut his eyes finally, to return to his cherished darkness, as the poisoned barb of his own cane pierced the boiled wool of his cloak. With his
eyes closed, he found himself more surefooted, and it was in this way that he passed through the Warming Room blind to the dim fires and smoldering embers—the chaos that Rowan had wrought.

Onward Flux urged Verjouce, for the ink, while a great temptation, was not the ultimate prize. They wandered beneath the very foundation of the city, passing massive cut stones placed by ancient hands, and down the lonely, dispirited hall to the door of the dead.

“Kingmaker,” whispered Flux. They drifted beneath the depths of the city in search of it. And like so many before him, his was a vision of crowned glory at any cost.

The catacombs were once a source of strength for the blind Director, a fear-inspiring place of pride and dominance. A place to house his dark servants, to imprison his enemies. Without his eyes, Verjouce would have confidently found his way to the small crypt—the hallowed ground in which scourge bracken grew—in a matter of minutes.

Now, he was racked with uncertainty and confusion. Everything was unfamiliar—his sense of sight a burden in the gloom. His hands felt desperately at the walls, searching for any familiar landmark; his ragged fingernails scraped at the chipped mortar.

“Where is it, you doddering old fool?” Flux demanded. His scrappy burlap shirt was itching, and he dreamed of
ermine robes and golden scepters. “What a pathetic spectacle you are!”

Verjouce had finally settled upon a direction and had taken a few hesitant steps along it when he stopped short—and no amount of prodding from the cane in Flux’s hand would make him continue.

“What now?” Flux sighed, exasperated.

“Do—do you see that?” Verjouce’s voice was hoarse, barely audible.

“What?” Flux waved his torch about recklessly. “See what? Where?”

“There.” Vidal’s long, ink-stained finger pointed off into the heavy darkness ahead. “Do you not see? A will-o’-wisp!”

After a moment’s deliberation, Flux shook his head. Vidal had begun babbling in tired, hoarse whispers.

“There’s nothing there, you fool. See?” Flux snorted, turning to his former master. “Get up from your knees immediately! I’ve got Kingmaker to find.”

But Verjouce did not hear him. He was cowering now, beyond reach, withered and defeated.

Ahead, a bobbing, glowing light both enthralled and dismayed.

There, in the dark catacombs, beside orderly stacks of the bones of the dead, stood King Verdigris, glowing, wavering, the passage ahead vaguely discernable through his translucent body.

ndeed, everywhere in Caux, people suddenly reported seeing the Good King.

Here he was, sidled up to a bar, sipping from a golden goblet.

There, a green sapling in his hand, fishing from the Knox.

A disgraced Librarian, contemplating a ruined book, raised his head to the vision of his beloved King, a sigh escaping his burnt lips and settling on his sooty robes.

A dying solider was comforted by the King beside a city of dark stone, a bouquet of meadowsweet and cinquefoils in his hand.

At once, everywhere, and for the briefest of moments, the glowing, refined apparition of the King was to be found.

“The King!” they cried. “The King! The King is among us!”

There, before the glazed eyes of Hemsen Dumbcane, a faint, glowing outline. He watched numbly as it grew stronger, finally taking shape.

He sat stricken with grief beside the lifeless body of his mistress and her horse. His hands, his face—his entire body—trembled, but he took no notice. The last of Clothilde’s stars had extinguished from her skirts, fizzling in the water of the fountain where they had perished. Her body, and that of her mount, were now indistinguishable from the agonized statues. Soon all that would remain of the doomed pair would be an indistinct clump of driftwood and lichen that—from just the right angle—could be mistaken for a horse and rider.

Tears ran down the forger’s gaunt face; a bitter sob escaped his lips. Looking up from the spectacle, he cursed his hands that they might have led to this. He shivered uncontrollably.

King Verdigris removed his flowing cloak, and, walking to the scribe, he placed it on his trembling shoulders.

Axlerod D. Roux lay cramped and desolate in the gilt cage, high above the city, more dead than alive. Dandelion tufts covered his small, frail body, erasing the soil of the cage’s floor in a white blanket.

The trestleman had not moved in many days. Yet now his eyes fluttered open.

The room was dark; he appeared to be alone. No ink monkeys, no vile Director.

No—wait.

A man was at the ruined window, studying the chambers. His outline was vague, and Axle had no problem seeing the stars right through him. The regal visitor called something to the air, and a magnificent seabird answered, and the wingbeats of some enormous creature filled the heavens. The King now turned to Axle, and the trestleman nodded.

His desperate mind, he reasoned, had given him a gracious gift. The vision of his beloved King would carry him through this dark night. He shut his eyes and slept peacefully for the first time in weeks.

In the morning, with the first streak of dawn, Axle would awaken to the welcome sight of Peps, the most unlikely warrior, at his side. Peps had freed himself from the barrel and, true to his promise, returned for his brother.

Through the shattered window, circling the clear skies, a pair of simply enormous albatrosses waited to take them home.

et up! Get up, I said.” Sorrel Flux’s voice was growing raspy from pleading. But no amount of prodding could get the Guild’s Director to shake his debilitating fit. “There is nothing there, I tell you! I see nothing at all.”