Warney glanced toward the furnace. “I think we should burn it.”
“Yes, yes, practical and good,” said Myrton. “But we need better than good. We need wisdom. We must know the truth of this box’s secret. It’s the first step toward being free of its threat.”
Raising the box with his gloved hands, Myrton set it on a device that looked like a mousetrap with a razor wire. He turned a crank, then threw a switch, and jerked his hands out of the gloves, which fell limp within the dome.
The lid of the box was sliced free, and it toppled to the side.
Nothing happened.
Myrton leaned over the dome and looked into the box. “Hmm.”
“What’s inside?”
“A branch. A dead branch. But it drips the same dark pitch I was telling you about. That pitch is a poison. And it’s spreading through the Cragavar.” Myrton’s hands twitched as if he were thinking about putting them back into the gloves.
“They twisted men into beastmen,” said Warney. “What’ll they do to the trees?”
“There’s a troubling family resemblance,” said Myrton. “It looks like Deathweed, but Deathweed’s anchored to the ground.” He put a hand back into one of the gloves and flexed its fingers over the box. “Deathweed works like a puppet. All of its lines move with one purpose, to seize and destroy.”
“So who’s the puppeteer?”
Myrton blinked, then looked past Warney toward the glass door. “Is that your friend out there, hiding behind my starcrown tree?” In half a heartbeat, everything changed.
The many-fingered branch leapt from its box and seized Myrton’s gloved hand. He yelped in surprise. The branches tightened their grip like a snake’s jaws slowly crushing its struggling prey. Myrton threw himself back, trying to pull his hand from the glove, but as he did, he pulled the glass dome with him. It slid off the table and fell, shattering against the floor. The empty box toppled aside.
Three moths skittered out of Myrton’s cloak into the air.
Cesylle came to the closed door, wide-eyed, hands pressed against the glass.
The green-black terror tumbled to the floor in a bundle like a clenched fist.
Myrton, his hand spraying blood, dashed to the opposite side of the room beside the furnace. He picked up the ember-fork with his good hand and surveyed the room.
“Better bandage that,” said Warney.
“I’ll soak it in a blood-cure first,” Myrton snarled. “But later. Warney, we can’t let that thing out of this room … alive, for lack of a better word.” He fixed Cesylle with a look. “So you really have brought me that traitor.” He raised the ember-fork and shook it. “It’s too late for apologies, wretch! You’ve poisoned my daughter’s life and her children.”
The creature sprang up on the sharp tips of its twigs.
“It can see me,” Myrton cursed. “It doesn’t have eyes. How can it see me?” Then he paused. “Warney, I’ll distract it. Go close the other door.”
“The other door?” Warney looked around. “What other door?” It was difficult to discern an open space from a transparent barrier.
“Fire.” Cesylle had slid through the main door holding a stick he’d taken from the green room table. The end was lit. “Fire’s the only thing that can stop a viscorclaw, Master Myrton.”
“A viscorclaw?”
“Tree branches quick and vicious as viscorcats. I heard Malefyk Xa whisper about them. Never thought they’d be real.”
Warney found the second glass door open and slid its slight wooden frame along the runners until its notched edge snapped into the groove, latching the room shut tight. I should be on the other side of this door, he thought.
Myrton looked at Cesylle. He looked at the twitching wooden spider. And then he moved to stand before the fireplace. “Chase it to me. I’ll catch it and throw it in the—”
The creature threw itself at Myrton. He had time enough to turn, but it scraped his face before seizing the back of his neck and wrapping its sharp tendrils around his throat. He choked, clawing at its tightening grip, and fell. His chin hit the edge of the raised stone ring around the furnace, snapping his head back.
Warney cried out and dove to help the old man. Seizing the fork, he tried to pry loose the monster’s grip. Hot metal seared the viscorclaw’s limbs. It sprang away and scuttled toward the other door, its steps tapping sounds like the clatter of woodpeckers’ beaks against a pipe.
“Father!” came a muffled cry.
Emeriene and her boys stood with their faces and hands pressed against the glass. Before Warney could warn her, Emeriene opened the back door.
She did not see the viscorclaw even as it sprang at her.
As Cesylle dashed across the room, he reached into the furnace with a bandaged hand and snatched a blazing coal. He leapt as Emeriene fell, and, screaming as the coal blazed through his bandage into his hand, he pressed the flames against the attacker’s black spine while it tightened around her throat.
The creature reversed itself, its legs bending back. It leapt at Cesylle and seized his face, thrusting two sharp limbs into his eyes. Howling, Cesylle threw himself backward toward the fire, the coal falling from his hand.
“Father!” shouted the boys.
Emeriene scrambled backward, dark blood streaming down her neck and darkening her gown. “Cesylle!” she screamed as her husband dove into the furnace.
She flung herself at the flames, reaching in for Cesylle’s feet. But he kicked at her and disappeared in the blaze. She called for help. Fire flared into the room as Cesylle became a thrashing storm in the inferno.
Cesyr and Channy backed toward the door.
Myrton rose, groaning, and grabbed Emeriene by the shoulders. “Get back, Em.”
A hissing, sizzling spray burst from the furnace and shot black, viscous lines across the floor. Smoke billowed into the room. The viscorclaw appeared again on the floor before the furnace, its spine unfurling flags of fire.
“Get out of here,” Myrton rasped to Emeriene. When she failed to respond, he said, “Save my grandchildren.”
Warney opened the door, and as Emeriene fled, he followed, closing it behind them. “To the infirmary,” he shouted at her, surprised at his own forcefulness. “Fast.”
But Emeriene, taking the boys under her arms and pressing their faces against her, turned back to watch her father.
Blood-masked, Myrton faced the burning creature with the ember-fork. He took a deep breath, put his bloodied hand into a pocket, and pulled out a carrot. He crunched three quick bites of the root and swallowed them. Then he lunged at the viscorclaw, scooped it up, and flung it hard back into the furnace. They all gasped as they saw it turn and spider its way up the chimney.
“The roof!” gasped Emeriene.
Myrton wasn’t finished. He reached for a lever on the furnace’s side and pulled it down, sealing the chimney shut. The furnace filled the room with smoke, and the fire within shuddered and shrank.
In a flash Myrton seized a heavy brick of mossy earth from the platform beside the furnace, flung it inside, and then dove to the floor, covering his face.
The fuel exploded. They all felt the tremor as fire poured from the furnace’s mouth and filled the closed chimney.
The smoke dissipated. Fire crackled steadily inside. And a ruined mass dropped from the chimney, hissing and spitting, then crumbling into ash.
Myrton picked himself up, a man painted black and red. Coughing, he staggered to the door and slid it open.
“It’s over,” said Warney as Myrton embraced his daughter and her children.
“No,” said Myrton. “No, it isn’t. What we saw today … Viscorclaws’ll be crawling over the Cragavar like flea-mice on a muskgrazer. Panic, panic … It’s all going to come alive. For lack of a better word.”
Cesyr and Channy clung to their mother, shaking, staring wild-eyed back through the windows at the stove’s hot storm. Their sparkling eyes reflected fire and darkness.
Emeriene whisper
ed a name. “Cal-raven.”
The morning fog muted the sounds of the city as Cyndere followed the bounding hounds along the suspended arch between the Royal Tower and the Heir’s Tower. She looked out over the domes of the auditoriums, the flags, the subdued marketplaces, and the gossiping crowds.
Mother’s ship will be at sea now.
She could not see any ships. Only a storm of troubles, and whenever she sought to make sense of one, another threatened to disrupt her focus.
Some of our subjects are lost with the ale boy. Cal-raven’s alive, but where? Jordam’s off again, convinced that Auralia has returned. Me—why, I have a beastchild in my care. A beastchild. I’ve put her in a sealed chamber in the infirmary. Deuneroi, how do I do this?
She looked north and east over the Cragavar horizon toward Fraughtenwood.
And Tabor Jan is moving farther and farther away.
A rock sailed past her head, so close to her cheek that she felt the air of its passage. Before she realized what it was, an angry shriek sounded from a mob below: “Jaralaine!”
And then the crowd took up the cry. “Jaralaine! Jaralaine! Just another Jaralaine!”
Cyndere ducked and crawled within the scant protection that the bridge’s parapet offered while rocks clattered around her. Beside her, the dogs barked at the missiles as if they might scare the stones away.
Within a few more rapid heartbeats, guards surrounded her, their arrowcasters aimed down at the mob. She stood, dusted off her clothes, and finished crossing the bridge, straight and proud, her temples burning and her breath short.
Back in her tower, she crawled onto a corner of her couch and folded herself up tight, hugging a pillow to her breast. She stared at the floor with its scattering of chalk drawings. “Jaralaine,” she whispered. “Why would they call me Jaralaine?”
“Queen Jaralaine stole House Abascar’s colors.” Her brother Partayn stood in the other doorway. “She called it The Wintering of Abascar.”
“The Seers’ potions. We’ve taken away what our people loved. Is that it?”
Partayn stepped into the room, carrying his twelve-stringed tharpe. “You dodged the stones. Now dodge the words. They’re small-minded hind-heads.”
“They’ll find all manner of justifications for violence now.” Bitterness soured her voice. “They’ll cheer at any accusation hurled against the throne. Rage feels good. It’s easier than thinking.”
Partayn struck a cheerful chord, defiant hope resonating in the tharpe’s wooden frame. “How was beachcombing with the beastman this morning?”
“I showed Jordam where I found the oceandragon’s skeleton. We fed pieces of fish to the beastchild. You wouldn’t have believed it. I don’t think we should call Jordam a beastman anymore.”
She rose and walked to the wall where a mirror had once hung, took a cloth, and began to erase some of the details on Jordam’s chalk-drawn likeness—the rough edge of his mane, the large fang that bulged from his upper lip, and then she lightened the scar on his forehead where a horn had once protruded. “It’s like watching a fever break. I’m beginning to see it—the man he might have been without the Curse.”
“That’s your mission now, isn’t it? Breaking fevers.”
“It’s a beginning.”
“Where is Jordam now?”
“Gone. I told him I need his help to bring in any Cent Regus who will accept our care. But first, I said, we must cure our own problems. We must expose and abolish the lies here at home. When I said that, he became troubled. He said he needed to go and find Cal-raven. He said …” She drew a furrow in the beastman’s brow. “He said he’d told a terrible lie.”
Partayn arched an eyebrow. “Jordam’s feeling guilty? He’s gone to confess?”
Cyndere sat down and drew a chalk tattoo on the palm of her hand.
“You wish you’d gone with him.”
“You’d never allow it. And you’re master of Bel Amica.”
“Cyndere … the Deathweed.”
“I know. But Jordam’s out there.”
“Jordam might survive a Deathweed attack. But you …” He turned a tab on the tharpe’s wooden neck and a spring broke with a loud, sour sproing! “Krammed out-of-tune piece of butterfly dung!”
“I’m in just as much danger here.”
Partayn sat beside her and touched her forehead, her nose, and her chin as he had when they had played as children. “What’re you going to do, little sister? You can’t live with Jordam in the wild. You can’t keep him here. But you’re unhappy when he’s gone.”
“He’s my closest tie to my husband. When I’m with him, I feel like Deuneroi is close.”
Partayn rose and went to the window. “What if I were to find the source of the Deathweed, Cyndere?”
“Partayn, I don’t want to talk about this.”
“Just pretend. Like when we were kids dreaming up adventures. What if I led a force down into the Core?”
“You’re not leaving me here.”
“The beastmen are weakening, Cyn. They have no chieftain. I spent enough time in slavery there to know my way around. What if I were to find the source of the Curse and destroy it? Imagine.”
“We’ve just sent mother off. I won’t be left alone. Not with things in such a state.”
“Free the forest of Deathweed, and Tilianpurth could be a station where we work to cure the beastmen. Jordam could help you. You could live there. I know how you love the place.”
“The well’s gone, Partayn. We’d need to find another source of the enchanted waters. And Deathweed isn’t our only problem.”
“Ah, yes. Ryllion and Cesylle. That brings me to my news.”
She looked up.
Partayn leaned against the window frame. “Cesylle’s dead.”
Cyndere slid from the edge of her seat to kneel on the floor. Her initial response—a surge of relief—was quickly erased by a wave of questions. “Emeriene. She must be devastated,” she said. But she’ll be free, she thought. “What happened?”
Partayn related Myrton’s account of the Seers’ deadly secret, the fire, and Cesylle’s demise.
“The forest,” Cyndere whispered. “What if Myrton’s right? We’ll have to seal up the city like a tomb and surround it with fire.”
“I must go back to the Core, Cyndere. It may be our only chance. We have to find the source and set it ablaze. Stop the Curse at its root.”
“Emeriene.” She climbed back to the couch. “Little Cesyr and Channy must be sick with all they witnessed. I should go to her.”
“Emeriene’s asked to be left alone with the boys. Even by you, Cyndere.”
“Even me?”
“She’s a wreck. She’s as upset about King Cal-raven as she is about losing Cesylle.”
“Cal-raven? Why is she upset about …” Then she gasped. “He’s out there. In the forest.”
“I’ve sent a company north. On vawns. They’ll catch up with Tabor Jan. They’re carrying torches and seabull sacks full of torch oil. We’ll hope they don’t need it.”
“Who? Who did you send?”
“Eight defenders, two healers from the infirmary, and that one-eyed glassworker.”
Cyndere joined him at the window. “Are you sure Emeriene said I couldn’t visit her?”
He shrugged. “You don’t have to obey her.” Cyndere walked out of the chamber.
She chose the stairs—she wanted to keep moving, without having to wait for the lift.
A couple of sisterlies passed her on the stairway, startled at her fierce demeanor.
Emeriene’s free of Cesylle. But it won’t give her any peace. And her boys … To see their father burned up before their eyes … They were already angry and reckless. What will she do?
She turned the corner and strode swiftly to Emeriene’s chamber. The answer to her own question hovered within reach, but she was too terrified to reach for it.
A rope dangled from the handle to Emeriene’s door—a cord of towels knotted together.
br /> “What is this?” She pushed the door open. “Emeriene?”
The room was quiet. The window’s curtains seemed restless in the chill. Everything was just as it had always been, except for the broken mirror and the arrow that lay among glass shards spattered with dark, dry blood.
Emeriene’s sisterly uniform was tossed across the table, cast aside like a cocoon.
Cyndere returned to the entryway and took the rope of towels in her hands. Her eyes stung with unshed tears.
And as she ached for yet another loss, the tower shook. A sound like a thousand shattering mirrors daggered the quiet. The air filled with dust. The Seers’ Keep had come crashing down, and nothing was left but chalk white clouds wisping away on the wind.
16
THE RIVER GUARDIANS
shadow among shadows, Aronakt clung batlike to the wall high above the gathered underground travelers. With the crisscrossing strands of elaborate ivy as his ladder, he ascended with his eyes on one of the narrow, daylit breaks in the cavern ceiling.
As others watched him, murmuring about his chances, the ale boy looked at the mouth of the river where the outgoing wind met the incoming water and stirred it into froth. The air sang a soft, whirring note, and he remembered blowing lightly into empty ale bottles in the Underkeep.
The river’s mouth was wide enough for five rafts side by side, and the passage upriver glittered green. “We should keep going,” he said to himself. “It’s too soon to climb back to the surface.”
Petch scowled at the ale boy. “We have no choice. That passage might become too narrow, or the ceiling might drop too low. And then where would we be?”
There was a sound like a ripping canvas. Aronakt scrabbled at the wall, the ivy tearing loose under his weight. As others backed away from the rain of dust, debris, and insects, Aronakt plummeted, his ragged overcoat fluttering like a brascle’s wings. “Aronakt, my love!” screamed two Bel Amican women, and then they looked at each other in disgruntled surprise.
Batey jumped forward, reached out, and caught the gangly climber.
Aronakt seemed unfazed. He stared intently at a tremendous ivy leaf he had torn from the wall. He tried to bite off a shred, but his teeth left only a dent, and he spat out red juice as he cast it down. He walked away, the two anxious women rushing to his sides, each eager to express greater concern than the other.