The Ale Boy's Feast

  With a deep and shuddering breath, the ale boy released a high, piercing arrow of sound that flared from the trumpet’s bright bell.

  The sound—a cry of desire—brought Cal-raven to his knees beside them. As he put his hand to the boy’s forehead, he saw a line of dark blood run down from Auralia’s sleeve and fill her open hand. “You’re hurt!” He reached for her robe and drew it off over her shoulders, leaving her draped in a fragile, silk nightgown. Through it he could see the wound—three deep gashes in her side.

  “There was a viscorclaw by the river before we went through the gate,” she whispered.

  He shouted up at the clouds, but she seized his wrist. “Don’t be afraid,” she said. At her touch he began to tremble, for she was more beautiful than ever, her tenderness toward the child all the more affecting for the ugliness of the wound she’d suffered.

  The trumpet blast still sang in the air, and the ale boy seemed to be listening to see just how long the clouds would sustain it.

  Then came an answering note from the mountain above. The great darkness, framed by the green fringe of the hanging gardens, began to glow with the heat of a furnace. Sweeping arches of color were flung in all directions through the clouds, which were drifting down now in ever greater density.

  “Listen.” Auralia’s gaze met Cal-raven’s. “The Witnesses are singing. One of the Seers has given himself up. The Keeper has carried him home.”

  In that moment the clouds rolled and curled around them like waves, soft as feathers.

  Together they watched a shadow appear, descending on a vast array of wings.

  “It’s time,” said Auralia. “Look. One of the mystery’s greatest dancers.”

  The ale boy closed his eyes, his hands still clasping the king’s trumpet as if he were gathering the strength to sound another summons.

  “So I wasn’t fooling myself, following the Keeper’s tracks.”

  Auralia touched Cal-raven’s chest. “You’ve been faithful.” She slid her fingers up into his hair, then leaned up into his kiss.

  Cal-raven looked up again. “For one of us, this is farewell, then.”

  He saw with a measure of relief that it was familiar, bearing the shape he had sculpted a hundred times. And yet, there was something oddly indefinite about it as it passed between the shining light and the clouds, for it cast shadows in many directions, each one different, each one strange.

  As the singing witnesses surrounded them with a song of sorrow and joy, the chorus full of voices that sounded strangely familiar, something changed.

  The magnificent shadow above him divided.

  Auralia and Cal-raven breathed dissonant gasps. For there was not one Keeper descending, but two.

  Once again Cal-raven found that what he had perceived and said was not precisely true, and what unfolded was rather a wondrous surprise.

  EPILOGUE

  any days later Kar-balter and Em-emyt took a shift guarding the black gate beneath House Auralia’s kitchens.

  Em-emyt disliked Tabor Jan’s orders forbidding anyone to go through in search of King Cal-raven, Jordam, Ryllion, and Milora. Discussion of the matter had inspired myriad rumors and theories throughout House Auralia, and its ruler had promised to organize a second search effort, as the first had been a failure.

  But Kar-balter was terrified of the black gate, so Em-emyt tried to allay his fears by changing the subject and reviewing all the recent good news, especially the absence of any viscorclaw sightings. As he did, Kar-balter opened the small jars of nuts and berries they’d brought along and were surprised by a pungent wave of slumberseed oil.

  “This is unexpected,” Em-emyt had time to announce before they were both asleep.

  A shaft opened in the stone ceiling. A rope fell through. Knotted at intervals, it gave Luci and Margi, followed by Emeriene, Krawg, and Warney, an easy climb down.

  “A few hours,” said Emeriene holding her sleeve to her nose. “Thank you, girls. Now, seal up the ceiling, and come back for us when you hear the Late Afternoon Verse.”

  And that was how Emeriene and the two Gatherers managed to sneak through the gate in search of their friends.

  They were astonished at the strange magic at work, that they could step through a door on one side of a mountain range and emerge on the other. Even more astonishing was the thick country of fog.

  It was a quiet, still day, and the clouds appeared suspended, unmoving. The landscape ahead seemed only the first cautious outlines of a drawing, save for that clear and shining span of water.

  They descended for a while, and then Emeriene, brushing tears from her cheeks, admitted that she could go no farther. She sat under a tree.

  Krawg and Warney stared at the tree—a tall conifer, its branches spread and raised as if in praise. A bird with a tail of red ribbons stared down at them in amazement.

  “Is that a kite stuck in the branches?” asked Warney. “Certainly is,” muttered Krawg. “Who does it belong to, do you suppose?”

  “What a mystery,” said Emeriene.

  “Puzzle, puzzle,” said Warney, and that made Emeriene laugh through her tears, which pleased him more than he dared admit.

  “What will you do while we’re searching?” asked Krawg. “I’ll look through the farglass.”

  “For Cal-raven?”

  “For understanding.”

  Far to the south at Tilianpurth, the aging guard Wilus Caroon awoke suddenly as a massive shadow passed over and eclipsed his sunshine.

  He was sitting in his wagonchair on the wall, watching the woods around him—a vast graveyard of fallen trees, where new green shoots were sprouting up with surprising speed and fecundity.

  “Wasn’t so long ago this place was goin’ to pieces,” Caroon muttered. “I’ll never understand it, but I’m glad it’s over.”

  In the yard below, a new helper—a quiet old fellow who had walked out of the trees and volunteered for service—was lighting torches with sparksticks he kept in the tangles of his beard. Caroon was still uncertain about the stranger, but he worked hard and never complained.

  “Say,” Caroon shouted down. “What was that shadow just flew over? A big black thing, came straight toward me, and I shooed it away. Didn’t get a good look at it.”

  The volunteer squinted up into the sky and shrugged.

  Caroon snorted. “Probably just a bird. But there’ve been so many rumors of a sky-man that I’m startin’ to see things that aren’t there.” He scowled and notched an arrow to his bow anyway, just in case.

  The volunteer marched up the stairs, and reaching into his vest, he offered Caroon a dry bun of bread.

  “What’s this?” Caroon took the bread and sniffed it.

  The man didn’t answer. He drew a flask from his vest, poured red wine into a cup, and handed that over.

  “I should report you, you know,” said Caroon. But he drank the wine anyway. “Aw, never mind. I ’spose I rather pity you. Havin’ to live with that and all.” He gestured to the hunch between the old man’s shoulders. “Must be a burden, carrying that around all the time.”

  Caroon watched him trudge down to join the Bel Amicans who were working steadily to replant the Tilianpurth gardens and bring the place back to busy life. Then he looked up at the tower.

  Old Bauris was back in his chamber, looking out the window and smiling up at the clouds.

  Today, Partayn would arrive with a large company. Caroon grumbled to think that they were going to fill this place with beastmen. Wretched, feeble, sickly beastmen at that. “They call ’em patients,” he said. “I call them a herd.” Here, Cyndere and Myrton would attend to the creatures’ malnourished bodies and try to teach them self-discipline.

  Cyndere’s scouts were combing the newborn woods for another point of access to some kind of stream. Caroon had no idea what that was about. What was wrong with the water from the well inside the bastion?

  It all seemed to him a fool’s endeavor, especially those patrols Cyndere had sent in search of Jo
rdam. “She needs him to help her speak with the beastmen,” Myrton had explained. “And to help them learn to trust her.”

  “Sounds like askin’ for trouble,” Caroon had replied. “But if a beastman goes free here, I’m not sleepin’ without this weapon at my side.”

  A cry rang out from the tower window. He pushed his wagonchair to the ramp and let himself rush down the incline to the ground. Truth be told, Caroon loved any excuse to plunge down that ramp.

  Inside Tilianpurth, he took the lift up to Cyndere’s chamber. Myrton stood by the open door.

  “Puzzle, puzzle,” the chemist whispered. “Cyndere walked in to find Jordam snoring like a happy hog in a mud bath. It’s like something flew him in through the window.”

  They peered through the narrow span. Caroon scowled. What he saw did not look much like a beastman. A giant, yes—muscled and scarred. But not a monster. Cyndere, the beastchild anxiously clinging to her hand, knelt beside the murmuring sleeper, leaned down, and kissed him on the brow.

  His eyes opened.

  At last Krawg led Warney to the frothy edge of the lake in the cloud world beyond the Forbidding Wall.

  “Do ya think they’ll string us up in the hangers if they find out we came down here?” asked Warney.

  “Yup,” said Krawg. “So don’t dally. Let’s look for clues and be on our way.”

  “It’s a good thing Tabor Jan’s away,” said Warney. “Otherwise, I’d be twice as worried.”

  “I suspect his journey will be longer than he told us,” said Krawg. “He may be takin’ all them goats and birds to Bel Amica for a gift, but you and I both know what’s on his mind. Remember those last days in Bel Amica? Lots of hushed meetings with Partayn’s sister. If you know what I mean.”

  “I caught sight of ’em one bright morning,” said Warney. “Just a few days before you left Bel Amica. They were walking slowly along a stretch of wall, lookin’ out to sea. I couldn’t hear a word they said, but they looked mighty uncomfortable. In a good way.”

  “Time wasn’t right.”

  “No. Not yet.”

  They moved on in silence.

  “Is the time right now?” Warney cautiously asked.

  Krawg shrugged. “House Auralia don’t seem to need defending, for now. No sign of Deathweed anywhere. Everything seems to be settlin’. And yet, nothin’s quite what we thought it would be.” He laughed, shaking his head. “Strange day, that day.”

  “Which?”

  “Day of the ceremony. Remember? All gathered in the Sanctuary, distraught. No sign of Cal-raven for five whole days. No sign of anybody. Nobody’s come back through the black gate. Then Scharr ben Fray steps up. We’re all silent. Tabor Jan’s standin’ there, lookin’ nervous and upset. We’re all sure it’s an announcement that the old mage is our new king.”

  “Oh, that day.” Warney puffed out his cheeks. “Strange day.”

  Krawg stepped up onto a rock and spread his arms, then boomed his voice as if to a great assembly. “People of House Auralia, for many generations, the line of Cal-raven, Cal-marcus, and Har-baron has ruled you. Now we’re a whole new house. But we’ve lost our leader. And due to history’s cruelty, we’ve got no child to sustain the line. So it falls to those Cal-raven favored. And among those, it must be one blessed with the gifts of Tammos Raak.”

  “Lucky for him, then,” muttered Warney.

  “I did not seek this privilege for myself,” said Krawg, continuing the charade. “But I would strive to learn from the trials of your past kings. And I would strive to recover the glory we saw in Auralia’s colors. Will you accept me as your king?”

  “And then,” said Warney.

  “And then,” said Krawg. “A shout.”

  “Not a shout. A great commotion.”

  “A trumpet of alarm from the Sanctuary gates.”

  “And those gates,” whispered Warney, “they opened.”

  “And House Auralia’s guardians ushered in she who had knocked.”

  “And she came right down the stair,” said Warney, “like a living flame. All draped in ’Ralia’s colors.”

  “That very same cloak,” said Krawg. “Not seen among the people in many a season. And her name came rippling across the crowd in waves. Jaralaine. Jaralaine. Jaralaine. Our queen.”

  “And she strode up the stair to stand before the cowering mage. And she said, ‘I declare—’ ”

  “Let me tell it!” Krawg growled. Then he raised his hands as if to bless the birds that flew around them in the mist, birds flying strong, sure arcs like kites on hard winds. “I proclaim today the beginning of House Auralia’s spring! A time for music and stories, for painting and sculpture, for discovery and new questions. A time to give shape to our gratitude.”

  “The people didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.”

  “Then Queen Jaralaine proclaimed that unless her son were to return through the Black Gate, Tabor Jan would sit at her right hand for his faithfulness to her son and that should he marry, the throne would pass to his firstborn.”

  “And then the people were cheering again.”

  “And then she went out, and all the assembly followed her in fear and amazement. And she stopped before the stonemasters’ statue.”

  “The beautiful statue,” said Warney.

  “Auralia wearing Cal-raven’s ring and the ale boy pointing to the mountains.”

  “Yes. And there Jaralaine asked our forgiveness. One by one.”

  They walked on in silence, making their way down to the shore.

  “Nobody’ll believe that story,” said Krawg.

  “Truth never seems very true, does it?” said Warney.

  Krawg kicked rocks into the water.

  “Where do you suppose they are now, the three of them?” asked Warney.

  “I don’t plan to go back until I know.”

  “Ballyworms, Krawg. Look!”

  Through a rift in the fog, a stone the shape of an altar emerged. From it rose a vertical line, bold as a binding promise against the water’s shining span. “Is that what I think?”

  “The king’s sword.”

  Krawg stood before it, thrilling in the storm of dread and hope that the sight inspired, troubled by all that it did not answer. “Not sure what this means,” he muttered. “Haven’t found what we came for. But we found somethin’.”

  “Look at that.” Warney opened his arms to the spectacle before them. The turbulent lake that spun as a great whirlpool, disappearing into the earth. The waterfall crashing down from the blazing clouds. The blasting spray that rose to merge with the continent of vapor.

  “Wish I was a painter,” Krawg sighed. “I’d paint … this.”

  And at that moment, they heard a clear and searing note ring out through the fog.

  “Someone is there!” Warney cried.

  A figure was approaching along the misty shore of that bright lake, playing on a gleaming glass trumpet a song as bright and as vivid as Auralia’s thread.

  “I don’t know that song,” said Warney. “It’s strange.”

  “But I know that face,” said Krawg.

  And Warney had to agree with him there.

  A GUIDE TO THE CHARACTERS

  House Abascar (AB-uh-skar)

  Adryen (AY-dree-en)—A cook.

  ale boy—A former errand-runner; a friend of Auralia; gifted as a firewalker who can pass through flames without burning; now a survivor beloved for rescuing hundreds from House Abascar’s collapse and from Cent Regus slavery. Some call him “Rescue.”

  Ark-restor (ark-RES-tor)—A former cook; later captured and enslaved to the beastmen.

  Auralia (o-RAY-lee-uh)—A young, artistic girl discovered by Krawg in the wilderness when she was an infant. Her artistry was an extraordinary revelation of colors with miraculous effects. But her artistry stirred up trouble in House Abascar, which culminated in the fiery destruction of the house. Only the ale boy witnessed what happened to Auralia in the calamity.

  Bowlder (BOL-der)—A de
fender, distinct in his size and strength.

  Brevolo (BREV-o-lo)—A soldier; daughter of Galarand, sister of Bryndei.

  Cal-raven (cal-RAY-ven)—A stonemaster; king of House Abascar; son of Cal-marcus.

  Cortie (KOR-tee)—Orphaned when her parents, the merchants Joss and Juney, were slain by beastmen, she and her brother, Wynn, were led by the ale boy into the care of the remnant of House Abascar.

  Em-emyt (em-EM-ut)—A soldier; eventually captured and enslaved to the beastmen.

  Irimus Rain (EER-i-mus RANE)—A strategist and advisor to kings of House Abascar; eventually captured and enslaved to the beastmen.

  Jaralaine (JARE-uh-lane)—Former queen of House Abascar; wife to King Cal-marcus, mother of Cal-raven. She ran away from Abascar and disappeared when Cal-raven was young. Later she was discovered in captivity to the beastmen.

  Jes-hawk (JES-hawk)—The finest archer among Abascar’s defenders; brother of Lynna.

  Kar-balter (kar-BAL-tur)—A soldier; eventually captured and enslaved to the beastmen.

  Krawg (KROG)—Once a thief known as “the Midnight Swindler”; arrested and cast out to be a Gatherer; now a harvester. Famous for discovering Auralia.

  Lesyl (LES-el)—A musician.

  Luci (LOO-see)—One of the triplets who have the gifts of stonemastery and thoughtspeaking.

  Lynna (LIN-uh)—Jes-hawk’s sister, who worked at the Mawrnash revelhouse after Abascar’s collapse; betrayed the Abascar remnant to Ryllion after their exodus from Barnashum.

  Madi (MAD-ee)—One of the triplets who have the gifts of stonemastery and thoughtspeaking; lost when she fell down a well while trying to hide from Ryllion. Her voice still speaks to Margi and Luci from beyond.

  Margi (MAR-gee)—One of the triplets who have the gifts of stonemastery and thoughtspeaking.