The Ale Boy's Feast

  Why is it Luci who asks to hold my hand? Why not Obrey? Those triplets are stonemasters. Their hands scare me.

  He walked past the girls, trying to adopt the look of grim determination that Captain Tabor Jan always wore. But Luci’s sister Margi came running through the stablehouse, looking grim herself. When she saw her sister and Obrey sitting on the shelf and Wynn standing at their feet, she scowled and reached up to her sister. “Help me up.”

  “Brevolo asked me to cheer Obrey up,” Luci replied proudly while Obrey reached down to help Margi up.

  “You’re not the third sister,” Margi muttered, deciding to climb up on her own.

  “I’ll come back to visit you, Obrey,” said Luci. “I rather like the light here.”

  “Yes,” said Obrey. “It tastes like snow.” She handed Margi a pair of bark-fold shoes to match their own. “We made these for you.”

  Margi put them on and smiled, all jealousy forgotten, and soon all three girls were swinging their feet.

  “Madi tells me we’re getting closer all the time,” said Margi. “And she says we’re being watched over.”

  “Shut up with all the pretending,” Wynn snapped. “You’re such children. Madi’s not talking to you, Margi. My mum and papa are dead, and they don’t talk to me. And there’s nobody watching over us. If we aren’t ready to fight, we’ll end up dead as your sister. I’m done with all that pretending. I’m ready to fight the Deathweed. I stopped the Seers and the beastmen in Bel Amica.”

  “You didn’t do that all by yourself,” said Obrey in the tone of a condescending adult. “Luci and Margi helped. And Cyndere shot an arrow. And it was Tabor Jan who found the trouble in the first place. You can’t be a soldier yet. We’re not even old enough to be parents.”

  “Someday Wynn and I will be parents,” said Luci flirtatiously.

  “You should be in the children’s tent with Cortie,” he barked. “We should have left you in Bel Amica.”

  “Captain said we had to come,” said Luci. “He needs stonemasters ’til the king comes back.”

  “Well … he needs me too.” Wynn cringed even as he spoke, each word making him feel more ridiculous. I’ll show them, he thought.

  He marched down the path between the many stable stalls. When he reached the vawns of the Abascar company, he began to brush them slowly, keeping himself inconspicuous while Jes-hawk, Brevolo, and Tabor Jan were having a hushed conversation nearby.

  As silvery scales fell around his feet, he heard Jes-hawk say, “I don’t like this. We’re already welcoming people into Abascar who haven’t earned our trust. People who haven’t fought for survival beside us.”

  “Take another look at her, Jes-hawk,” mumbled Brevolo. “If Milora tried to do us any harm, she’d probably hurt herself.”

  “House Bel Amica robs people of their loyalty. I never imagined my sister could give us trouble. But Lynna betrayed us to Ryllion.” He drew an X in the dust on the stable floor as if imagining a target on Ryllion’s forehead. “Now he and my sister are out there somewhere laughing at how she humiliated me.”

  “Ryllion’s not laughing,” said Brevolo. “He’s running for his life.”

  “We can’t punish Milora for something your sister did,” said Tabor Jan. “We’ll accept her pledge of service because we need a strong bond with these miners. They know these mountains much better than we do. Jes-hawk, you have to bury this grudge.”

  Wynn moved from the line of vawns to the horses, brushing the mane of a sturdy black colt as he listened.

  “Besides,” Tabor Jan was saying, “Milora seems sincere in her desire to support Cal-raven. He’ll need those who respect him. Some of our own people have lost faith.”

  “But should we bring the glassworker with us now?” asked the archer. “Maybe someday when New Abascar is ready. But right now she’ll be just another mouth to feed.”

  Brevolo scowled, nodding. “Now that’s true. And when we find New Abascar, we’ll need muscle, not pretty windows.”

  Tabor Jan did not answer, but he looked suddenly tired.

  “I’m sorry,” said Brevolo softly. “That was harsh. I know Cal-raven wants to make room for everybody. He’ll think it’s wonderful to welcome a quiet, muddle-headed glassworker just the way he’s been sweet to those poor orphans.”

  Jes-hawk elbowed her sharply, and she turned, readying an angry retort, only to see Wynn standing there, frozen.

  She laughed, raising a hand to her mouth. “Wynn! Oh, child, I didn’t see you there!”

  He did not answer. He just tightened his grip on the brush as if it were a weapon drawn in a challenge.

  20

  FIRE IN FRAUGHTENWOOD

  he glass whistle that knifed the silence brought Jes-hawk leaping from sleep toward the flap of his tent, where his forehead met Tabor Jan’s formidable chin.

  “I need an archer,” said Tabor Jan, now on his knees and clutching his bearded jaw.

  “I was dreaming,” said Jes-hawk blearily, lying on his back and waiting for his vision to return. “My sister … she attacked us with a shard of glass.”

  “Forget Lynna. We’ve a real nightmare.”

  Jes-hawk struggled to his feet, pulled on his riding jacket, and shouldered his quiver. “Have the miners turned against us?”

  “No. A Bel Amican distress flare. South of here. In Fraughtenwood.”

  “Did we leave someone behind?” He moved toward the door.

  “Behind?” Tabor Jan snorted. “Jes-hawk, aren’t you forgetting something?”

  Cursing, Jes-hawk turned back for his trousers. When he was fully dressed, Tabor Jan took him by the arm and pulled him out into the dim early morning. “You think it’s the king, don’t you, Captain?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Who’s riding? You, me … Brevolo?”

  “She’s already gone.”

  “Ahead of us?”

  “Couldn’t stop her,” Tabor Jan growled.

  “Nobody should ride into Fraughtenwood without—”

  “Don’t tell me what I already know.” The captain was running now, and there was Krawg, holding a torch and leading the horses. “I’ve sent Shanyn to catch her.”

  “But why did Brevolo leave?”

  Tabor Jan thanked Krawg and mounted the horse. “Wynn, that impossible child. He was listening when the watchman told me they’d sighted a flare. I told the boy to prepare our three best animals. A few moments later he charged out of the stablehouse on that colt he stole from Bel Amica. Frits’s watchmen let him go. He’s off to play hero. Again.” Tabor Jan’s clenched teeth were bright through his beard. “Brevolo found out. I told her to let him go.”

  “Why didn’t she?” Jes-hawk was on his horse, and they moved through the settlement, which was coming to life.

  “She thinks Wynn wants to prove himself. You’ll remember that she said something last night that kicked him in the arrogance, so she blames herself for this … this foolishness.”

  At the torchlit gate, the watchmen waved them through. Tabor Jan reprimanded them for letting the boy pass.

  “Where are we going?” Jes-hawk’s forehead throbbed.

  “We answer the distress call. And hope we all come back alive.”

  They rode up from the valley of fern trees, southwest across the gloom-dark hills, and descended back into Fraughtenwood.

  Under dawn’s first flush, Brevolo’s vawn slowed, then skidded in the chalky dust beneath the trees, and stopped beside a tangle of brambles. The light of her torch revealed that something was moving beneath the thorns. It was the colt, collapsed, half-covered as if someone had tried to conceal it.

  Keeping one hand on the reins, Brevolo jumped from the saddle and knelt before the colt, then stood up, sticky with blood that was spreading across the ground. The animal was wheezing and twitching, nearly dead.

  Shanyn arrived and rode a circle around the scene. “Tabor Jan is …”

  “Furious. I know.” She looked again at the scrap of brambl
e that lay over the horse’s haunches. “Strange.” She surveyed the clearing, then took cautious steps into the trees. “Did the boy kill the horse and try to cover the evidence before he ran off? I don’t understand.”

  Something hot splashed her head. She turned. Two bare feet dangled right before her eyes. Blood poured down on the dust. She looked up.

  Wynn was hanging from a tree limb.

  At first she thought the colt had slammed him directly into a low-hanging, spear-sharp branch. But then she saw that the boy’s back was to the tree and that the branch had struck him from behind. Even stranger, the limb was raising him slowly into a bundle of sharp branches that were clutching at the air like the legs of some gigantic insect. Wynn stared forward, open-mouthed, hands raised as if he’d been clawing at the back of his head. Then his arms fell limp, and he kicked Brevolo sharply in the mouth. She crouched, blood spilling from her lips, moaning in shock.

  Wynn made no sound. There was only the creak of the branches as they lifted him and then the snap of bones breaking.

  Shanyn screamed and looked away.

  Brevolo leaned forward and lost everything that was in her stomach. Then anger caught fire within her. She roared in a fury, drew an arrow, sparked its tip with her torch, and fired it into the trunk of the tree.

  Something curled around her foot. She put another arrow to the string, lit it, and fired it into the slithering root. It recoiled, the tree pulling it back like a whip.

  Then all the tree’s roots burst from the ground, tearing themselves off the tree to thrash toward her.

  “Get out of here, Brev!” shouted Shanyn. “Go back. I’ll follow you.”

  Brevolo turned to answer her, and she saw the brambles that lay over the dead colt slide off like a blanket and begin to crawl in spasms toward her.

  Shanyn’s vawn, terrified, threw the rider free and bolted. Shanyn landed, tumbling, and Brevolo caught her by the arm and pulled her away from the advancing branches. “We’ll take my vawn. We have to answer that alarm.”

  In the distance Shanyn’s vawn shrieked as if it were fighting something.

  “What’s happening?” Shanyn gasped.

  “The woods are cursed.” Brevolo caught the reins of her frightened vawn, and she and Shanyn rode together.

  Trees began to move as if in a windstorm. She tried not to look at the canopy of branches over and around her, for she thought she saw the shapes of long-legged, skeletal creatures stalking them through the boughs.

  Shanyn pointed to a flickering red hue on a hilltop ahead. In the increasing light they could see a dark pillar billowing skyward and bending west across Fraughtenwood.

  “We’ve found them,” said Brevolo.

  On the hilltop they found small fires scattered all around an ancient barn that appeared to have caught itself in midcollapse. Archers and torchbearers were striking at predators—creatures like bizarre beetles and crickets made of branches and bark.

  Brevolo rode the vawn in a circle around the scene, calling out that help had come.

  “These kramming monsters,” said Shanyn. “What’s in the barn that they want?”

  “Life, I suppose,” said Brevolo, reining the vawn to a halt. “We’re going in there.” She spurred the vawn forward, and as they reached the door, they met an old man on his way out to blow an alarm horn. He saw them and stumbled aside. “Warney!” Brevolo was astonished.

  “Brevolo! Shanyn!” Warney pulled at his wisps of hair. “Help us! The Seers have cursed the forest!” He pointed to the leaning barn. “Bel Amicans! Children!”

  Inside, between the animal stalls where horses were rearing and shrieking, they found four wagons loaded with large sacks made of seabull hide and covered with heavy tarps.

  Someone stepped out from one of the stalls—a woman with her arms around two small boys.

  “Sisterly Emeriene?” Brevolo gasped. “What are you doing here?”

  Emeriene limped toward them. Something about her had changed. Her eyes were red, her face haunted, and she clung to her sons as if they would keep her afloat on stormy waters. “These wagons,” she was shouting like a deranged patient in the Bel Amican infirmary. “They’re filled with torch oil.”

  Brevolo blinked.

  “Partayn sent them. He knew you’d need fire to save yourselves from viscorclaws.”

  “From what?”

  Emeriene pointed out toward the violence. “Viscorclaws. Deathweed’s corrupting the trees. It’s the Seers’ revenge. And fire’s our only defense. But we can’t let the fire touch our cargo …”

  Brevolo looked up into the rafters, where smoke was coiling as if readying to strike. “Blazing Tower of Tammos Raak … if the fire reaches the cargo, this hilltop and everything on it will turn to ash in a heartbeat. Let’s get you out of here.”

  “You need this cargo,” Emeriene insisted. “And we need these wagons. There aren’t enough horses and vawns for all of us. The whole forest is turning to viscorclaws.”

  Brevolo looked back to the entrance. “We’re taking all of it north through Fraughtenwood. As fast as we can.”

  The four horse-drawn wagons—the first crowded with passengers, the others heavy with oil sacks—were brought out of the barn into beams of the eastern sunrise.

  Archers lined up alongside the wagons, armed with flaming arrows and shooting whenever another tangle of vicious branches came crawling forward.

  From her vawn Brevolo issued the command. Shanyn echoed the cry from behind her.

  The horses charged forward, as terrified of the flames around them as they were of the viscorclaws beyond. More of the monsters were waiting, clearly visible, some the size of thorn bushes, some the size of trees.

  Leaving the smoking hilltop behind, the wagons thundered down the stony slope. The first, carrying Warney, Emeriene, her sons, and several other Bel Amicans, pulled away fast. The heavier cargo wagons were slow, and archers inside them held torches as far from the flammable cargo as they could.

  Viscorclaws scrambled and tumbled down the stony hillside on both sides as the frantic parade lumbered along. Those on the right prowled intently, but those on the left seemed to slow as if the ground had gone sticky.

  “What’s happening?” Brevolo called to Shanyn, gesturing to the slope.

  Mounds of stone were melting and sliding, drowning the crawlers in liquefied rock.

  They heard an explosion behind them. The barn had collapsed.

  Below them, Fraughtenwood was restless, branches shaking like the limbs of animals caught in traps. We’ll never get through.

  “There’s a rip in this oil bag!” an archer shouted from the hindmost wagon. “We’re spilling fuel.”

  “Patch it,” said Brevolo. “Patch it or drop it.”

  Brevolo looked back again. The whole hillside had changed. What had been a field of scattered boulders now looked like a sculpted shell. Except for a few clusters of jerking wooden limbs, the viscorclaw swarm was paralyzed, caught in a gluey tide.

  Stonemastery, she thought, looking about.

  “Look out!” called an archer from the second wagon.

  A tree, its roots ripping free of the ground, plunged down between the second and third wagons.

  The horses pulling the third wagon reared. The drivers steered them around the treetop. A crackle of splintering wood seared the air as blackening branches tore themselves free of the trunk and clutched at the earth for a hold.

  “Get the wagons away from the tree so we can burn it!” Brevolo roared.

  Already clusters of twigs were dragging themselves toward the wagons like scraps of metal drawn by a magnet. Shanyn shouted for arrows.

  Three wagons had escaped the scene. The fourth was motionless behind the tree.

  Brevolo’s heart sank. She leapt off the vawn and let it run ahead with the procession. Then she hurried back around the tree.

  One of the wagon’s drivers was already dead, a cluster of crawlers flinging pieces of him around the trail. She ran at them, pick
ing up his fallen torch and swiping at his attackers. The predators scattered, limbs aflame. Then she turned her attention to the wagon. Inside, another fallen man thrashed about, screaming, arms wrapped around what appeared to be a tangle of vines.

  She threw the torch away from the wagon. Then she reached with both hands into the man’s bloody embrace and seized the hard backbone of the many-legged monster that had torn into his chest. She raised its wriggling bundle, shouting with the effort. It bent its flailing limbs backward to aim sharpened claws at her. One of its talons punctured her left wrist, numbing it at once.

  As the wounded man slumped, silent and still, between the cargo and the wagon side, Brevolo stumbled to her knees in the puddle of his blood.

  A dark figure with a torch leapt aboard. He seized the viscorclaw with a massive hand and dragged it away from her, uprooting the claw from her arm. She drew her arm in close against her and blinked into hazy sunlight.

  Her rescuer, growling like a beastman, pressed the torch’s flame to the frantic viscorclaw. Then he flung the fiery predator away and thrust out a hand to Brevolo.

  She recognized his face with its terrible scars and gigantic, toothy grin.

  With her good arm she reached around behind her and unsheathed a dagger. “You lying, murderous, traitorous fiend!”

  Ryllion jumped from the wagon, the dagger sailing past his ear.

  Brevolo righted herself, found a loose arrow lying in the wagon, and leapt after him. “You don’t get to help us, you Seer-serving coward!” As she stalked toward him, someone sprang to her side and seized her arm.

  “Let him go, Brevolo.”

  She dropped the arrow.

  This soot-blackened newcomer picked up the dead driver’s sword. “Ryllion’s here to help. Settle things with him later.” He laughed. “Don’t you know me?”

  “Master!” It was Shanyn’s cry. She dropped from her saddle. With one hand grasping the reins of the frightened steed, she reached out with the other to clasp the king’s open hand. “You’re alive!” She did not even see Ryllion.

  Brevolo scowled. All she could think about was how Ryllion had lured her away from Bel Amica and sought to seduce her. She had not told Tabor Jan, although she knew he might suspect it. Worst of all, she had almost given in, enthralled with Ryllion’s strength and promises.