The Ale Boy's Feast

  Beside her, Shanyn was saying, “You’re making a habit of dramatic returns.”

  “Not on purpose,” said the king. “Get this wagon rolling.”

  There was a commotion behind them. The path was blackening with viscorclaws. Brevolo spat at Ryllion. “If my king would let me, I’d knock out your teeth for a necklace.” Then she clambered onto the blood-stained driver’s bench and slapped the reins. “Move!”

  The animals could not have been more eager, as they pulled the wooden cart around the disintegrating tree.

  Advancing crawlers made a sound like a stream of snakes. Cal-raven and Ryllion raised torches and swords and strode to meet them. They became a frenzy of motion, scattering black branches across the ground around them.

  Brevolo urged the horses on, then glanced back to see a small twist of smoke rising from the wagon’s tarp. She abandoned the reins and climbed on top of it. There she found a viscorclaw’s dead, burning husk. She swept it off with her hand before the flames could burn through the tarp, and it fell into the dirt on the path behind, flowering into a blaze.

  Then she saw the spray of oil from the cargo bag, showering the ground behind the wagon. She slid back down to the rider’s bench. The horses were running hard now, without anyone steering them, and the rugged ground set the wagon to bucking as if it were trying to break free.

  Lying against her numb left arm, she reached to one of the rods that bound the wagon to the horses’ harness. “Gonna let … this one … go.” With her knife she sawed through it. It snapped. The wagon veered sharply to the right, bound to the horses now with only one harness strap. She shifted and cut at the last tether.

  The horses stumbled forward as they suddenly lost the weight of the wagon. They sprawled in the dirt, then kicked themselves back upright and leaned forward into a desperate run.

  The wagon, stopping suddenly, threw Brevolo into the dirt and cast its cargo forward as well. She felt the weight of the oil bag fall on her, a splash of warm fuel seeping through her hair and running in syrupy lines down her back. She crawled out from beneath the bag, spitting out dirt and debris.

  Several crawlers dropped from beneath the wagon and advanced.

  With her teeth Brevolo pulled off her riding glove and looked at the fresh, blue marriage tattoo on her left hand.

  She could still feel the burn of it.

  Tabor Jan had tenderly sketched it the night before while she lay stretched across him, the breeze cooling their warm, exhausted bodies in the chamber that Frits had given them as a gesture of privilege. She had brushed tears from her husband’s face—her own tears. That had made him laugh. For the first time since the days before Abascar’s fall, a deep line in his brow had smoothed over as if it had never existed.

  “I understand that you live for Cal-raven,” she had whispered. “Not anymore,” Tabor Jan had said, and she had felt his voice reverberate in his ribs.

  “No, you mustn’t say that,” she said. “These people must think that you are New Abascar itself. That they can depend on you. That you will act always and only in its best interest.”

  “Even if Cal-raven returns? Even if he charts a course that drives you mad?”

  “I am pledging myself to you, Tabor Jan. And you are a man who keeps his promises. I may not always trust those you trust. But while the people of Abascar depend on you, you can depend on me. I’ll keep you safe.”

  “You’ll be my foundation?” he murmured, touching her eyelashes with his fingertips. “If that’s so, shouldn’t we trade places?”

  And then she had laughed, resting her brow on his shoulder.

  Remembering this, Brevolo raised her hand and kissed the rune of Tabor Jan’s name.

  Then she reached down for her sputtering torch and growled at the viscorclaws as if she were a fangbear protecting her den from predators.

  As Cal-raven swept away the last of the viscorclaws from the path behind the wagons, he heard horses shriek, and he turned.

  He saw the horses charging off without the fourth wagon. He saw the cargo lying on the ground before the halted cart. A cluster of viscorclaws dropped from their hold beneath the wagon and stalked a torch-bearing figure.

  “Brevolo?”

  One of the viscorclaws sprang at her. She fought with it, falling back. The attacker sprang away, its back ablaze. Others came scrambling down to keep her from rising. The torch fell from her hand and touched a trail of seeping oil. It looked like a snake of flame was born, and it slithered from the torch toward the cargo.

  Cal-raven drew in a breath, but his shout was erased by a noise like a thunderclap.

  The ground shook. A fireball engulfed the whole scene, leaping into the sky, red and gold on a pillar of luminous blue, bursting with tumors of smoke. A ring of dust and heat spread outward, slamming Cal-raven to the dirt.

  “Get up!” Ryllion dragged him to his feet. Now they were running past the mountain of smoldering debris as blazing shreds drifted down upon the dead forest underneath a spreading continent of smoke. “This fire’s just beginning.”

  “Brevolo,” the king groaned.

  “It’s too late,” Ryllion roared. “Go after the others. They need you. I’ll keep my distance.”

  Cal-raven nodded, numb with shock. Leaving Ryllion behind, he ran.

  A short distance ahead he found Shanyn riding her vawn in a circle to slow the two liberated horses. Cal-raven stepped toward the rearing, foam-spewing animals, speaking softly and holding out his hands. Then he stepped between them, grabbed the reins of one, and sprang onto the saddle of the other. “I’ve got them,” he shouted. “Go.”

  And so Cal-raven rode after Shanyn’s vawn in pursuit of the other wagons, north through Fraughtenwood. The horses needed no urging; they ran as if wolves snapped at their heels.

  He saw Tabor Jan just ahead, and a burden heavier than the thought of the threat surrounding him almost dragged him to the ground.

  21

  BATTLE IN THE FEARBLIND RAVINE

  s rubble spilled into the canyon and poured down toward Auralia, she stepped into a heavy boulder’s lee. The world seemed to be going to pieces. Behind her, Fraughtenwood was in flames, the smoke a swift tide breaking against these rising hills. The air still crackled as trees twisted and separated. And every few moments an unseen hammer smote the ground.

  Her ankles bled from scuffs and falls. But she knew she could not rest. The Abascar company, which had set out from the glass mine close-knit and ordered, had scattered in haste as a fiery rain and advancing viscorclaws besieged their caravan. Auralia did not want to be outside the circle of King Cal-raven’s protection come nightfall.

  When Cal-raven had arrived at the glass mine bloodied and severe, Auralia had wanted nothing more than to run to him, to hold out her hand with its emerjade ring, to awaken his memory of her. But as Krawg and Warney’s meeting became a riot of embraces, curses, and accusations, the king declared there would be no rest, no meal, no reunion celebration. He announced that the foothills of the Forbidding Wall were in the path of a rushing storm made of fire and predators. The Fraughtenwood flames were spreading fast, devouring viscorclaws and trees without distinction. It would not grant travelers any grace. Some from the Abascar company that had gone out from the glass mine to answer the hilltop distress call had lost their lives in the first surge of that storm.

  She could see in the king’s ravaged expression that he had witnessed horrible things. But he did not detail the dire tidings during his urgent appeal at the glass mine gates. Still, rumors did their damage, disheartening the company. At the sight of Tabor Jan, stumbling and colorless, her heart sank.

  The king wanted Tabor Jan’s company to assemble and depart at once, follow him north and east through the foothills, and seek refuge in the destination he had chosen. He wanted them ready, packed, and moving without the burden of broken hearts. Auralia was ready.

  He invited Frits to close the mine and bring his people along in search of higher ground, greater safety. Bow
ing in gratitude, Frits declined. He would seal his workers into their tunnels and meet viscorclaws with fire. So without any more ceremony than a promise of collaboration once the crisis passed, House Abascar and the miners parted ways.

  They did not leave without new companions. A host of the merchants camped in Frits’s settlement quickly pledged themselves to strengthen the exodus. Abascar’s company was larger now, armed with fire and a wealth of torch oil, trekking eastward through the barren hill country along Fraughtenwood’s northern border, toward a pass Cal-raven had found in old Bel Amican trade maps—a dry riverbed that wound its way up the sloping country toward the Forbidding Wall.

  A figure pushed through the dustclouds and seized Auralia’s wrist. Krawg.

  “If I tried to tell this blasted story,” Krawg shouted, kicking away the debris that had piled up around Auralia, “they’d say it was impossible. Too much badness crashing down on too many folks too fast. Fire, crawlers, now a quake? What’ve we done wrong?”

  “Wrong?” Auralia stepped out from the boulder’s protection. “With all this badness crashing down, I’d be more inclined to say we must be doing something right. And that wasn’t an earthquake. It was something heavy hitting the ground. I’ve felt it in these parts before.”

  “I’d say it was Old Wenjee falling down,” Krawg said with half a laugh. “But then, she’s dead, so I shouldn’t.”

  “Wenjee.” Auralia winced. “That name’s familiar.”

  Krawg fixed her with a startled gaze. “You know that name?”

  Auralia nodded softly. “I think so.” She could see the question in his bloodshot eyes again. He had recognized her before she recognized herself, and she knew that he was afraid to ask.

  “For the love of mashed beets, we can’t stop. Come on.” They pressed on through the desolate gullies and ravines. The hills here swelled like waves on a turbulent ocean, and all about them jags of crimson rock protruded like the prows of sinking ships.

  They picked their way cautiously through the maze, wary of landslides. Needle-bushes defied the bitter soil, and it seemed all the snakes, rats, and gorrels fleeing the Expanse had gathered in their sparse shade.

  As Auralia ran on, following Krawg’s awkward stumbling stride, her eyes were drawn to the pluming clouds above snowbound peaks. “Just … just look at that,” she exclaimed. “An endless white sheet strung on a line as long as the horizon.”

  “Or a dam pressed to breaking,” said Krawg, “and we’re all about to drown.”

  Auralia laughed in spite of the trouble. It was coming back to her, the way she and Krawg used to exchange wild descriptions.

  “It’s like … like the land itself is a ship and that’s the sail,” she said.

  “Come on, Milora.” Krawg scowled at the front line of the smoke’s dark tide as it advanced upon the Forbidding Wall.

  Auralia looked back. “Where is everyone?”

  “They can’t be far.”

  But all they heard was the burning, which moaned and whistled like some sinister choir. A ferocious noise turned Auralia around to find flames pursuing like a ravenous tiger, blackening one patch of scrappy green after another.

  “Keep going,” said Krawg. They moved in where the ground grew stonier, and the ravine became a deep canyon.

  She heard the crackle again. The knuckled limbs of a massive viscorclaw fingered the precipice of the rising ridge to her left. It appeared to be seeking refuge from the flames. It hissed, and she knew it sensed them now.

  She crouched down among the bushes, whispering a warning. Several steps ahead, Krawg saw the viscorclaw and stood very still.

  The crawler, about the size of a bear, tumbled down into the ravine, landing between them. It sprang up onto its spearlike feet, poised and tense. But then it slowly lifted two of its seven legs as if choosing Auralia as better prey.

  Backing toward the brush fires, she squinted through the smoke. Heat from the advancing flames engulfed her. She choked and collapsed, pressing her sleeve over her face. The needles of a bush beside her blackened and blazed.

  She thought she saw Stricia, Ark-robin’s daughter, a ghost from long ago, through the fierce red inferno, shards of lantern glass brilliant on the floor in front of her. “Wretched girl,” Auralia muttered, dizzy. “You don’t love Cal-raven at all. But I do.”

  The viscorclaw stalked toward her like a massive centipede, its oily sheen flickering in the firelight. Then she leapt and pressed her hands against the hot stone of the escarpment, crying out.

  “Auralia!” Krawg shouted, running to her.

  “Krawg, stop!” she answered.

  The rock liquefied under her hands, stone spilling down like a mudslide. The melt caught and engulfed the viscorclaw, and it fought like a giant insect trapped in honey, rolling in the slow wave. As the stone solidified, it became a new ridge that blocked the ravine, and the crawler’s muddied spikes jutted up through the surface like points of a dark crown. Auralia gulped in air, then spun to face the old Gatherer.

  “What did you call me?” Her voice wavered.

  Krawg blinked, realizing the name he had shouted. Then he looked down and stammered, “I mean. I’m sorry … I …” He waved his hands in the air as if groping for a sure defense. “I knew a stonemaster once. An artist. She had that name. Your name is Milora, and I …”

  She rose, sparks glittering on her cloak, and stepped forward to wrap her arms around her old friend. She felt him tremble, and when he tried to speak, he could only cough. Then he pressed his hands to the sides of her head and touched her small nose with his, which was substantial.

  “You can’t tell Cal-raven,” she said. “You hear me? You can’t tell anybody. I’m not … I’m not ready.”

  “Well, ballyworms, Auralia,” he laughed through his tears. “I don’t understand this. But I’m never lettin’ you get out of my reach again. Good thing Warney caught up with me, because you got lots of explainin’ to do … to both of us.”

  Looking over her shoulder, he groaned, “We gotta move.”

  They climbed over the buried crawler, Krawg taking Auralia’s left hand in his right and drawing her along.

  “You’re famous, you know,” he said. “They tell stories about you in Bel Amica. The stories are all wrong, but I guess that happens.”

  “I don’t want stories,” she said. “I didn’t do anything much.”

  “Fire!” he said. “Run.”

  Smoke thickened, rolling over them like a stampede of frightened animals. Krawg was ahead of her again as walls of fire brightened alongside them, and his voice was lost in the inferno’s roar.

  And then there was a horse and a rider crashing through the barriers of memory and dream. The rider looked down through the smoke. He reached out for Auralia, clasped her hand, and lifted her up easily before him.

  “Cal-raven.” She leaned back against his smoky garments, turned, and felt his beard against her cheek.

  “Come, Milora. I think you’re the last one on my list.”

  “But Krawg—”

  “Jes-hawk’s got him. Jes-hawk tells me you have a bad habit of wandering off into danger. Don’t make me chase after you again.”

  They plunged through flame and darkness together.

  Much higher up the slope, Cal-raven rode the horse into a canyon wide enough for three horses abreast, and they slowed as they caught up to the company.

  “Seventy-seven,” he said. “The fire’s stalled back there, and there’s not much for it to burn here. This is our chance to—” He was interrupted as two men on vawns pushed through the company to face him.

  “We’re stuck, Cal-raven,” wheezed Tabor Jan, sliding from his vawn, his face hollowed by grief and rage. “We were wrong. I’ve gone up this ravine. It forks, and all its branches head back down.”

  Jes-hawk explained that, on closer inspection, what had seemed an open run ahead ended at a sheer reflective wall that had given the illusion of an ongoing corridor.

  It sounds, he tho
ught, as if a stonemaster has raised a barrier to stop us. As he listened, Cal-raven looked up and saw a figure crouched on the rim of the canyon. Ryllion, he thought. I told you to stay hidden. Jes-hawk whirled, notching an arrow. “Shall I shoot?”

  “Save your arrows for viscorclaws.” What little resolve Cal-raven had left began to crumble. The people were exhausted, if not injured, and the losses of Wynn, Brevolo, and two Bel Amican drivers were weighing them down. “We’ve no other enemies here.”

  As the exhausted company moved in closer to hear him speak, the ground trembled with another mysterious shock. A wide patch of slate broke free of the wall just behind them, sliding and shattering against the opposite wall.

  “What is shaking the world?” Warney cried.

  “They’re coming!” Tabor Jan roared, pointing to the path behind them.

  Spinning around, Cal-raven saw viscorclaws crawling up the ravine, scrambling like a swarm of insects newly hatched, moving with the single-minded purpose written in the poison of the Cent Regus Curse—to consume without a thought.

  Tabor Jan dismounted his vawn, snatched torches from a merchant and a Bel Amican, then marched past Cal-raven toward the river of predators, expressionless.

  “Help him!” Cal-raven cried, although he knew not who might answer.

  As if competing for the kill, viscorclaws climbed over one another. And the captain met them, swinging the torches, dodging their sharpened thrusts. The creatures’ aggression overwhelmed him. He became a figure clad in writhing branches, their claws striking like scorpion tails. He turned the torches back against himself, falling to his knees. Viscorclaws leapt free, burning and crumbling.

  Cal-raven sprang from his horse and raced empty-handed toward the blazing man.

  “Watch out!” Jes-hawk cried behind him.