Thornghost (17 page)

H
e could almost hear her voice, bound to the memory by white tubes and taped needles.
Keep him away from me. I'm dangerous. I'm a Thornghost.

“But if she didn't come, then . . . the Breaking was my mother's fault?”

“The Rosa Torquata presents you with a key,” Idun said. “It can't make you use it. You must choose to come. Some don't.”

“That's why they hate her.” Niklas had been convinced it was because his mother had created Rafsa. But it was because she failed to save them.

She didn't come.

“We call them Thornghosts because they remain shadows of what could have been. It is a kindness that they never know the destruction they cause. For them it is
merely a road not taken. An invitation passed up. But for us it means disaster.”

Erika knew, of that Niklas was certain. He remembered Anne Rosenquist's scratchy tape and the awkward conversation before the lullaby.

Every legend starts somewhere. Why not with you?

Because it didn't.

What he didn't know was
why
she hadn't come.

The pages had begun to shift, slipping into a more familiar place in the book. Niklas lifted his hand to stop them, but Idun gave a little gasp as if she remembered something. She locked her fingers around his wrist with surprising strength for one so frail-looking.

Secret growled at her.

Niklas felt a pang of relief that she still wanted to protect him.

“I apologize,” Idun said quickly. She let go of Niklas's hand, but closed the book. “Odar?” Her brittle voice suddenly carried, amplified by echoes and whispers. “Come back inside. We must go to the map room. There is something you all should know.”

• • •

N
o daylight could ever reach so deep into the ground, but glossy, serrated leaves grew in the map room anyway, covering the walls in dense layers. At first Niklas didn't understand how the chamber had earned its name, because
the only feature that reminded him of maps was a silver star in the stone floor that showed north, south, east, and west. But when Idun brushed her hand over the leaves, she woke up a pattern of twinkles that spread around the chamber, some linked with flashing lines.

It looked like a star chart.

“Are they constellations?”

“Not quite,” Idun said, “though the light is related, all taken from the sun. This is a map of the Rosa Torquata. Each node of light represents a place where the Rosa's power is active. Palisades and guard posts. Speakwoods and maps. Every possible gate that links our world to yours.”

“Like the one in Sebastifer's canyon?”

“Yes. We call them scargates.” Idun walked over to the northern reach of the map and traced a line to a node that glowed steady. “You are right. This gate is open. Do you see how the light is too bright? Feverish, almost?” She cupped the glowing leaf in her hand and lifted it.

A chill trickled down Niklas's spine.

The wood beneath was riddled with withered vine. Idun was right. It did look infected.

Or tainted.

“Dark vine,” he whispered.

At the sound of Niklas's voice, a small tendril of the dark vine broke free from the wall. Its thorns creaked softly as they slid out.

Niklas backed into Secret.

The vine hovered in the air, swaying like a snake.

For a moment, they all held their breath. Then the branches of the map room shuddered, and the tendril slithered back behind the leaf. Niklas felt as if he had just escaped a hunter.

“You have seen it before.” Idun did not sound surprised.

“It catches raiders in the garden,” Secret said. “Tangles them until the skullbeaks come.”

“Skullbeaks?” Idun said. “It helps the
skullbeaks?
”

“It sure looked that way. It also grows in the tunnel where we came through the mountain,” Niklas added.

Idun's whiskers trembled. “And what happened in the tunnel?”

“It got a little heated,” Niklas said. “There were two voices, two creatures arguing with each other. Old voice and nasty voice, I called them. One wanted to help us, but the other wanted us dead.”

“Two voices? That might perhaps be the dark vine and the Rosa Torquata, but only rarely does the Rosa speak to someone other than a Greenhood. But of course it could not watch someone try to kill a human boy.” Idun stroked the leaf gently. “No more than it could watch the dark vine attack its guardian in her sleep.”

Odar startled. “That's what happened to your arm?”

“The vine did it,” Idun said. She lifted leaf after leaf.
The dark vine lurked under all of them. “It is vile, and it is spreading everywhere in the world.”

“Even in the Nickwood?” Odar said.

“Even in the Nickwood, even as we speak.”

“But I've never seen such a plant,” the raccoon said. “Where does it come from?”

“I've been pondering that question for a long time. It began as one blackened creeper coiled around a root where the Rosa comes near the garden's edge. I cut it off and closed the wound from the thorns. But the dark vine returned, smothering the sunbursts of the Rosa Torquata. One creeper became many, and more, until I couldn't keep up.” She tugged at her cowl. “A few months ago, it gained the upper hand. So I tried to call a Twistrose.”

Niklas stared up at the flickering nodes. The infected canyon gate was a single star in a sky of leaves. “These lights are places all over your world. If the Rosa is taken over, would they be in trouble, too? Not just everyone in Broken?”

Idun shook her head. “If the Rosa Torquata loses to this enemy,
everyone
is in danger. Not just everyone in this world. Do not forget, it was in the tunnel. It is probably the reason the gate is open and infected.”

Niklas and Secret shared a glance. At last they knew the source of the taint that threatened Summerhill. No garden shears in this world, or any world, were big enough to cut it. “Do you know how to get rid of it?”

“I'm afraid not,” Idun said. “But I am convinced it is not natural. Someone is behind this.”

“Someone is growing the dark vine on purpose?” Odar's voice was small.

“Yes. And with your news of the canyon and the skullbeaks, I have an idea who it is. The Rosa is very powerful, very capable of defending itself. To get close enough to hurt it in any way, I think you would need to use a speakwood.”

She found two bright nodes, neither very far from Sebastifer's canyon. “This easternmost node is the speakwood I guard, and this . . .”

She tried touching the other, but snatched her hand away as if stung. “Is its twin. Jewelgard was special among the Realms. It had not only one, but two speakwoods within its borders. One a secret, nestled deep among the Rosa's roots. The other placed on a magnificent rose tree that sent its rays of sunlight into the night. A beacon, to show the way for travelers.”

Odar gawked at her. “Surely you're not serious? There is a speakwood in the Nighthouse?”

“I'm afraid so. An old one inside the tower itself.”

“And you've left it to the Sparrow King all these years?” Niklas rubbed his forehead. “Isn't that a bit stupid?”

“The beacon was extinguished a while after the Breaking, so I assumed he had destroyed it. Only the Rosa's
chosen guardians could use a speakwood. If the Sparrow King tried, the Rosa would kill him. It does not tolerate Nightmares. Or so I believed.” Idun bowed her head. “It seems we must all pay the price for my carelessness.”

“The Sparrow King is no ordinary Nightmare,” Odar said. “He may look the part, but his actions are far more deliberate. He conducts experiments. He rules, and he is clever.”

And he has a new and better plan,
thought Niklas
.

Idun nodded. “The Sparrow King is behind this, though I do not know how he does it, or why. I wonder if he knows the magnitude of ruin he is about to cause.”

T
hey had begun the slow and meticulous trip back to the Second Ruby when Secret said, “You want to go to the Nighthouse, don't you.”

She kept her voice hushed, the words calm. If Niklas hadn't known her, he might have believed she asked so quietly to keep Odar from hearing. But he did know her. She might as well have snarled at him.

“I think that my mother . . .” He hesitated, not sure what to call the creature that had appeared on the Oldmeadow trail. “I don't think the Erika we saw before we left Summerhill was an ordinary Nightmare, either. I don't know why my mother failed these people. She's a Thornghost, so maybe she deserves their hate. But she pointed up toward the gate. I think she wanted me to come here. To fix her mess.”

Secret didn't reply. Niklas pressed on.

“You heard what Idun said. The Nighthouse is the
source of the dark vine, which means it's the source of the taint. We have to—”

Secret cut him off. “I also heard what Odar said. The Nighthouse was considered impossible to take, even before the trolls and the skullbeak nests. Sheer drops and slick rock and runes that guard the skies.”

“The Sparrow King took it.”

“He had an army.” Secret sighed. “When we went after Kepler, you said we would do the impossible, crazy thing just this once. I agreed. Once. Niklas, you can't sneak, you can't fight, and you can't defeat an army of Nightmares.”

“Then you won't come with me?” Niklas fought hard to keep his voice level.

“That depends,” Secret said. “I'll come if you stop lying. If you stop trying to trick me into doing things, or pretending you don't hear me when I say things you don't like. If you trust me as much as I trust you.”

Niklas swallowed. “That sounds fair. I've thought about your question. Why I prefer crazy over coward.”

As they climbed through the thickets and thorns, Niklas told Secret what happened the day his mother died. He told her why the word
Thornghost
made his heart pound, and what he had promised himself in Oldmeadow that evening. “I decided that I'd rather be the rascal prince than the pitiful orphan.”

“Oh my stupid, stupid cub,” Secret said. “Whoever said you had only two choices?”

Niklas had to think on that one, too. And when the lights of the inn appeared behind the branches, winking them home through the softness of purpledusk, he thought he might have an answer.

He just hoped it wouldn't cost him his head.

T
hey sat gathered in the common room, foxes, badgers, rabbits and mice, and the Second Ruby regulars. All forty-one souls in Broken plus their two guests, crammed in between looted art and memories. Their faces glowed with firelight as Odar told them of the dark vine, and the Sparrow King, and the speakwood that was hidden in the very heart of his nest.

“That's how it is, my friends,” Odar finished. “We have to find a way to go to the Nighthouse and stop the Sparrow King from doing whatever it is he's doing to the Rosa Torquata. And we have to do it now.”

A map of Broken lay spread out on the long table, held down by splintered magnifying stones rescued from the city hall. The seven rings of the garden twinkled with gilded legends drawn in a time when pavilions and gazebos were more than burnt-out husks, and the Nighthouse's beacon
still cast its ray onto the Kolfjord. The Brokeners stared at all of it, as if a spark of hope would somehow present itself if they looked hard enough.

But the silence stretched, and from his stool by the bar, Niklas watched as tails lowered, ears drooped, heads sank.

“We'll never make it past the docks,” the fox Gidea said. Her injured eye was covered with a bandage, but the other held cold resignation. “We have no troll's bane. That evil witch Rafsa torched every oak tree within a hundred miles.”

“The skullbeaks will get us if we go by day,” Castine said, never looking up from her whittling. “They'll peck our hearts out in moments.”

Too had tucked in her tail. “And if the dark vine is everywhere . . .”

“Even if we got through all that,” a badger said, “at the top of the Frothcliff road, the drawbridge would still be up. The Nighthouse can't be taken.”

Odar nodded grimly. “I know. But we still have to find a way.”

Niklas noticed how the raccoon didn't use the word
impossible
.

“I know a way.”

Everyone turned toward the voice. It came from the corner where Kepler sat huddled under his cloak. “Actually, it's more of a staircase up the cliffs above the Frothsea, across the fjord. It leads directly into the castle.” He coughed. “I found it last spring.”

Odar showed his teeth, but it wasn't exactly a smile. “You want us to believe you crossed the Kolfjord? On your own?”

Kepler came up to the long table. “The fjord has changed since last winter. When the tide is out, a narrow bridge of sand rises from the water.” He drew a line at the mouth of the fjord.

Castine put down her carving iron. “But Kepler, why would you go there? Of all ridiculous risks to take, you—”

Kepler lifted his hand to silence her. “Because when I was out breaking Odar's no raiding rule, I overheard the trolls talking. The Sparrow King has a secret prisoner. One he won't lose for anything in the world. One that would destroy ‘the great plan' if he escaped.”

Niklas glanced at Secret. Rafsa had mentioned both a prisoner and a plan in the barracks. They had assumed she meant Kepler, but could there be another?

Kepler reached behind the counter and brought out the painting he had been hiding there since the beginning of the meeting. It was the portrait of Marcelius the gardener. Kepler's hero. The dark brown weasel now carried a pair of garden shears, which Kepler must have added while they were visiting the Greenhood. “That's why.”

“You can't believe it's him?” Castine twisted her fingers. “Marcelius died in the Breaking.”

“I don't know for certain it's him,” Kepler said. “But I don't care either, so long as rescuing the prisoner will
ruin the Sparrow King's plan.” He looked around at all the Brokeners. “Low tide is at the half-morning mark. The skullbeaks will be watching, but a few of us could make it. Two raiders, three at the most.”

Odar's nostrils flared. “The stairs lead into the castle, and no one is guarding it? That doesn't sound like the Sparrow King to me.”

“He might not know about it. It's very hard to find.” Kepler's eyes burned bright. “I didn't go inside, because the tide was coming in. But I meant to go back as soon as I found someone dedicated enough to come with me.”

“You mean crazy enough.” Odar's voice was calm, but he loomed over Kepler like a storm cloud. Castine looked utterly betrayed. She wore a brim-eyed face that could cut your heart in half.

Kepler didn't notice. “I mean someone who cares more about Broken than someone else's rules. Someone who is not too scared to risk their own skin.” His eyes flicked to Niklas. “Someone brave enough.”

No one spoke; the air in the common room felt static. Niklas felt the weight of everyone's stare, especially Secret's. He cleared his throat. “I have something to say.”

Muttering and whispers gathered under the beams like smoke.

Niklas couldn't hear all of it, but he picked out the words
not a Twistrose.

“That's true,” he said above the din. “I'm not a Twistrose. No one called me. I just stumbled through the mountain, and ever since I got here, I've been trying to fix my own problems. The thing is, my problems and your problems come from the same root. Because my mother was Erika Summerhill.” The whispers died out, and Niklas's voice sounded awfully loud and alone. “I'm the son of the Thornghost.”

There. It was out. No way back, and no escape, either, if the Brokeners decided to turn against him.

In the corner of his eye, Niklas saw Secret edge closer, ready to protect him.

But no one lifted a paw. No one even snarled or said an angry word. Instead Odar laughed, of all things. “You humans with your old wars and grudges,” he said, stroking his whiskers. “You thought we would care about that? It wasn't you who failed Jewelgard, Niklas. So Erika Summerhill happens to be your mother. That doesn't mean she guides your hand or makes your choices.”

“You don't hate me for being her son?”

Heads shook around the room. Too even smiled at him, and Kepler's eyes were liquid and dark. But it was Secret's face he looked for. Was this honest enough for her?

She squinted and looked away.

Niklas let out his breath. “Then I think that Secret and I should go with Kepler to the Nighthouse.”

• • •

M
orning would come swiftly, and there was no telling when. So the three secret raiders waited in the common room for the right time to enter the garden.

Secret climbed up under the rafters, and soon she snored softly above their heads. Kepler lay curled up in a chair by the fire. He couldn't seem to get warm enough, and he shivered in his sleep.

Niklas and Odar stayed up a while longer, poring over the map.

“Jewelgard had no wall or defensive works,” Odar explained. “We had always been protected by the land itself: the peaks, the fjord, and the magic of the earth. There were trolls in the mountains, sure, but they were made for darkness and deep caves, not a sundrenched valley. They could never take Jewelgard to hold. Not unless they had an ally. Someone to rule by day.”

“The Sparrow King,” Niklas said.

Odar nodded. “And his skullbeaks. They showed up a few weeks after the Breaking. Three at first, then more and more until the sky went dark with bones.”

The embers in the fireplace crackled, and Kepler buried his snout in his arms with a little cry. Niklas felt sick at the thought of dragging him back into the Nightmares' reach. He could only hope he was doing the right thing.

“All those names in the Book of Twistrose,” he said. “They were chosen.”

“That is true.” Odar nudged at the magnifying stone. “The Rosa Torquata chose them because they were somehow suited for their task. When your mother was picked, the news spread like dandelion seeds all over Jewelgard. The creator of Rafsa would return to bring the troll witch down. Sebastifer became a hero then. Never mind that he was a fresher who did nothing but sit and carve images of his girl. Everyone wanted to shake his paw. An honor guard went with him to the canyon to wait. He couldn't stop talking about this wonderful girl who had saved him from the shotgun. He was convinced she would save us all.”

“But she never came.”

“No. The gate withered day by day. The honor guard left to help defend the city. Only Sebastifer remained in that canyon. He refused to give up.”

Niklas thought about Erika's entry in the Book of Twistrose, marked by the shameful Thornghost name. Sebastifer must have been so heartbroken. “Even if she had answered the call, what could she have done against an army of trolls?”

Odar scraped at the red jewel that marked off the Ruby Inn. “Your mother knew Rafsa better than anyone, and she knew how to fight trolls. But I believe most of the magic lies in the legend itself. People expect the Twistrose to be able to save them. If she had come, many more Jewel­garders would have chosen to stay and fight instead of fleeing the city. We might have stood a chance.”

“That's what Kepler believes,” Niklas said. “You need a hero to lead, and the rest will find their courage.”

“Instead of putting all our faith in some legend, we should have found a way to fight them off. We had teeth and claws and heart. That's not nothing.” Odar sighed. “But Kepler is wrong. Hero or no, forty-one souls against a troll army isn't courage. It's crazy.”

Niklas nodded at the chair where Kepler slept. “Do you think he's strong enough for the raid?”

Odar grunted. “In all my years here, I've never met a more stubborn lad. He knows you need him to find the right cove. He won't fail you if you don't fail him.”

Niklas winced. “Maybe I'm the one who is crazy for volunteering. You heard the other Brokeners. I'm not a Twistrose. The Rosa didn't pick me. I came here uninvited.”

“But you came. Sometimes you have to choose yourself.”

Over by the fire, the whimpers had stopped. Though the ferret kept his eyes shut, Niklas thought that he was listening, too. “How?”

“Can you think of any reasons that you may be suited for this task?”

“Because my mother was a Thornghost and I should make up for what she did.”

“No. Why
you
are suited for
this
task.”

Niklas shrugged. “Unless you count by Secret's impossible standards, I am good at sneaking.”

“And?”

“I know Rafsa, and I know how to fight trolls.”

“Even better,” said Odar. “You're willing to risk your life for the sake of others. You proved as much when you went into those barracks to save Kepler.”

“And that makes me a Twistrose?”

“No.” Odar placed the magnifying stone over the Nighthouse. “It makes you perfect for a task with no hope.”