The Shepherd of Weeds (40 page)

So, torch in hand, Flux set off on his own. The crypt could not be far and, in it, his small, stony heart’s desire: Kingmaker.

His first few strides were long and jaunty, but quite soon thereafter they shortened some, until he found himself inching forward on mere hubris. The catacombs, after all, were a place for the dead—not the living—and Sorrel Flux was feeling a strange chill on the back of his straw-studded neck. The dead kept to their own, didn’t they?

Again he took to waving his torch about him, but the shadows it created were troubling, and he soon stopped.

What if the Director had been right—that something lurked before him in this passage?

His swagger gone, he paused uneasily.

He seemed to be in some small chamber, skulls and bones stacked neatly in rows on an upper shelf, larger vaults resting upon the earthen floor. There was one way out, ahead. Peering carefully in that direction, Flux jumped.

Something was glowing red in the gloomy passage, a small prick of firelight. It bobbed ever so, floating at eye level. Squinting, he dismissed it, finally, as a trick of his imagination—only to see the small ember flare from crimson to a burnt orange, and back again. Stepping back—and cursing Verjouce—he dropped his torch. The heavy dark pressed in—for there is no dark like that of a crypt. A bead of cold sweat trickled down his pounding temple as he struggled to maintain his composure.

His torch—he saw it now, glowing dimly against a near wall. Floundering about on the cold floor before him, eyes never leaving the strange floating ember, he regained the lantern—along with a surge of relief and renewed confidence.

There is nothing to fear, Flux scolded himself.

But his torch disputed this, its light falling upon a figure—an ample figure—standing before him. He screamed, after which he endured a moment of confusion—the figure was one easily mistaken for a scarecrow, like he. But as recognition dawned, he again shrieked, dropping the torch for a final time.

“You!” he cried.

The light flared from the corner, where it had come to rest.

Standing before him was Lumpen Gorse, arms crossed over her broad chest, corncob pipe aglow. She had survived Dumbcane’s inky thumbprint and Snaith’s poisoned burr—for Lumpen was made of some sturdy stock, and there was life in those old bones yet.

naith scurried like a crab, his ruined body refusing to face forward, instead skittering along with an awkward sidestep. He threw a backward glance over his left shoulder, but his hood fell forward and his vision was blocked by the scarlet velvet. The cat—that awful, monstrous, mangy beast—had been pursuing him for nearly an hour, and he was beginning to seriously tire. He had been forced humiliatingly from his lecture hall as the thing pounced at him; Snaith had pushed his former assistant Rue at the attacking animal—offering up the girl in hopes she would quell the thing’s hunger. But it was as if the cat had not even seen her—his amber eyes never left Snaith’s own. He had felt his robes captured, snagged—but with a terrible rending noise, he had managed to rip free.

Snaith had scurried in wild abandon, darting, hiding, only to emerge to the evil moon face of that beast at every turn. The thing was
toying
with him.

Again his progress was thwarted by his attire. He shook his hood roughly from his head. What he saw made him shriek—the scream fell on his own ears harshly, high-pitched, that of a young girl.

Incredibly, Six waited
before
him. He was certain he had left the cat many twisting streets behind—yet here the thing was, swatting the turf with its tail. Blinking uncivilly. He raised a paw to preen, spreading wide his padded toes and stretching out his glinting claws one at a time, torturously.

Back-stepping, the Watchman was off again, stumbling, tripping on his long cloak, desperation writ upon his scarred face.

Six watched placidly for a moment, and then meandered off after him.

Soon Snaith had retreated as far as his slippered feet would carry him, and he stood breathless against a slick pillar. He had fled through an open door, into the Chapter Room. His chest heaved and he bent forward, catching his breath. His delicate feet were blistered, hobbled.

When he had regained his composure and set off limping down the carpeted entryway, he found himself drawn to a particular wall hanging. He knew the contents of the Chapter
Room thoroughly, for he often hosted dignitaries or devised secret punishments within its solid walls. Yet this was something new. A wall hanging.

A childhood dream returned to him then.

As a young boy, it had been a recurring dream, a pleasant one, where in a hallway, he would find himself at a door that he was certain had not been there before. He would enter the door, and, behind it, he would be treated to a delightful number of unexplored rooms and unexpected surprises. (Perhaps here was the seed for the pleasure he found in the catacombs.)

To the subrector Snaith’s delight, the wall hanging now before him bore the very image of a door. So realistic—the knob was even newly polished.

A guttural meow issued from the entrance of the Chapter Room. The cat was meandering toward him slowly, pausing every now and then to sniff the air. Snaith was cornered.

He made a quick decision.

As in his childhood dream, he opened the door upon Clothilde’s tapestry and stepped inside.

His ugly heart surged at what he saw—indeed, there were rooms, many, many rooms of all sizes, one leading to the next, and all thrilling to the subrector’s sense of endless possibilities. An utter quiet descended.

As he stepped farther into the ancient tapestry, and further into the enchantment, Snaith’s footsteps became increasingly
matted, like he was walking upon a fine weave. His velvet cloak—the color of which was a rich span of scarlets—now faded to a single swatch of red dye. His throat felt scratchy. He coughed once—an intricate knot of thread fell from his mouth. The raised and bulbous scars upon his face flattened—indeed, his entire body seemed uncomfortably thin and stretched, and, as he regarded his hands, he found them to be perforated with seams.

Soon all thought drifted away, all memories of his childhood, his recurrent dreams, the Tasters’ Guild, his evil ambitions. He was conscious only of a lightness inside, a dryness, and then this final awareness was gone—extinguished forever.

t was the edge of night—daylight’s last tendrils were rising up from the west—and Ivy Manx and her uncle Cecil stood huddled together before the impenetrable Hawthorn Wood. Together, they had traveled from Underwood to the dreaded forest with a single goal. Ivy was needed here, Cecil had explained, before their return to the battlefield. In exchange for releasing Babette from the tapestry, the sisters had granted him this one concession.

The gloomy forest was expecting them.

“Are you sure this will work?” Ivy asked, a shiver of doubt creeping across the back of her neck.

“These ancient trees contain the souls of poisoners, murderers, and villains—and the occasional lost traveler. They will
answer to you,” Cecil explained. “Without them, Ivy, all is lost.”

Hawthorns bind and imprison people, Ivy knew. But this was also their advantage. Before her was an imprisoned army, and Ivy would free them. Everywhere the silvery tufts of spent dandelions swirled, and the perilous trees were made ashen.

Something moved beneath Ivy’s cloak. Reaching into one of the many pockets, she removed the white rabbit, bringing him close to her neck and feeling his warmth.

Ivy nodded to her uncle. She was ready. She had spoken to the silver and gold oak trees in Pimcaux, and she would speak to the hawthorns. She would call forth the forest to her aid.

“I am Ivy Manx,” she said, her small voice carrying farther than she thought it could, reverberating throughout the shadowy barbs, the sinister thorns. “And I release you.”

First, nothing.

Ivy shivered in the cold.

Then, a great rending noise—the cracking of hundreds of limbs, the unpleasant splintering of green wood—shook the earth. The rabbit disappeared, shivering, beneath Ivy’s wrap, but Ivy stood her ground.

A wind blew in from the west, and it gathered strength, carrying the dandelion seeds everywhere. It coursed through the ancient wood, picking up speed, until, in a massive gust, it rose high, high above Ivy’s and Cecil’s heads.

The air was suddenly clear.

Where the forest stood were the twisted figures of dreary souls, ghostly pale faces clad in moss and tangled in ivy, a mass snarled together in bitter entrapment. They wore on their eyes tarnished coins of gold and silver—minims and scruples—and their mouths hung open in silent screams.

The brutal wind was whipping Ivy’s and Cecil’s cloaks against their bodies, but the pair held still. Cecil nodded at his niece, and she spoke two words to the waiting army.

“The Guild.”

The wall of souls reared above the two—agonized faces pressing outward at its limits, a surging crest that threatened to engulf them. For a brief moment, the ghostly army loomed silently above them. Then, with a deafening roar, they dashed down to the earth behind Ivy and her uncle, tumbling over each other in confusion and bedlam, bound for Rocamadour.

They were not long.

They came in a deluge, as if a tidal wave, and reached the city gates at twilight—when the dead are said to walk among the living. And there the lost souls of the Hawthorn Wood scoured the city of its mold and mildew, its remaining Outriders and Watchmen, and then, just as quickly, they were gone, leaving behind the broken statues and fountains of the famed city and a single shining star. A silver hairpin.

fter a long period of gentle rain, the sun was finally shining, its yellow beams thrown down to the earth from between mountainous white clouds. It shone on rolling hills and deep wooded thickets of Caux alike, warming the land into an early spring.

Small green buds had opened on the maples and oaks, and there in a humble walled orchard, Cecil’s apple trees had finally burst into bloom—white and rosy pink flowers welcomed the bees. The air was alive with their persistent, happy buzzing, for spring was finally here and there was much to do. On a low branch a mockingbird sang.

Today the river Marcel was muddy, silt from the runoff being swept downstream, scrubbing clean the river floor. It rolled patiently alongside the limestone shore, cutting a
watery line between Ivy’s childhood home and the Southern Wood before meandering beneath the old iron grid of one of Caux’s most cherished trestles.

There was activity beneath this trestle, with several stately houseboats and polished travel crafts docked in the water. Above, royal footmen and servants were patiently scraping the rust from the iron of the old bridge and, onshore, applying new paint to the old tavern. A white flag rippled upon Cecil’s old flagpole—where once the Belladonna flew, now the three-pronged leaf of poison ivy hung, a vivid, lively green.