The Ale Boy's Feast

  The kites ascended to the tops of the trees, then higher and faster, in wide circles around the clearing. Cal-raven found himself turning in place, open-mouthed. And then they began to pick up speed, gliding swiftly on stronger currents, straightening their paths, and moving north and west, their backs to him.

  “Wait!” He began to walk forward. “Wait! Don’t go yet!” He started to run. And soon he was dashing hard and anxious after the rising kites and their passengers. “Take me with you!”

  The three kite fliers gripped the cords and gazed wide-eyed at the forest beneath them, the trees painted gold by the sunset’s flood of light.

  Cal-raven, strapped in a harness Soro had drawn from his pack, had already forgotten the first sight he had seen in the moments after the cords pulled sharply and broke his run, lifting him in a graceful curve over the ruins of House Abascar. The crater in the stone below had seemed an open mouth, a throat, a devouring emptiness swallowing all that Abascar’s people had built to make themselves the world’s glory.

  Abascar seemed so small as Cal-raven was carried up toward the low, streaming clouds. And as they turned and accelerated westward, he marveled that such simple constructions—wooden beams fixed crosswise, with canvas stretched to catch the invisible forces around them—could lift him so easily above his troubles and give him hope, could raise him to such a staggering view.

  It was as if he could see the whole world.

  As they rushed across the Cragavar, he saw highwatches far below, the platforms he and his soldiers had built to send messages over the trees. They were small wooden squares, tiny pieces from a game he had played long ago. When the mist of the low clouds moistened his brow, he found himself laughing. Nothing—not even the fastest charge on a horse—had ever given him such a thrill. He felt as if he were escaping the world to touch the fiery sky. He was free in a nameless country. Anything seemed possible now.

  The world blurred—colors, motion. They moved in a cool dream, a concert of whispers, and the wind told the kites just where to fly.

  Cal-raven watched Old Soro, admiring the way he could steer the kites with the slightest tugs on the line. It was as though they were knives and he was sculpting the air, finding the right contours.

  When the gleaming lake came into view—a pink mirror of the evening sky—they began to descend.

  Hearing the kite-maker’s instructions, Cal-raven and Nat-ryan raised their feet and then landed in a run. Soro guided the kites to gently scud along the pebbled beach until they stopped, their canvas sagging wearily.

  The beach ran along between the rippling lake water and three dark cave mouths at the base of a cliff that rose high and smooth above them.

  The high stone wall gained his full attention, for it was painted in grand, vivid stripes of color.

  “Auralia,” he whispered.

  4

  AWAKENINGS

  s the ale boy emerged from the earth’s crooked mouth, he breathed deep, relieved to escape the stagnant air of the maze below. Any light, even the sickly glow of the sun’s cold coin over a world drained of colors, was better than the subterranean dark.

  Auralia’s out there somewhere.

  He looked down at himself, an unfamiliar clown. The tunic and torn trousers that Jordam had found in the Cent Regus’s plunder did nothing to muffle the bite in the breeze. Had winter lost its patience and pushed autumn aside?

  How he longed for a hot bath. He thought of the wine barrel that Abascar’s brewer, Obsidia Dram, had given him for a washtub, where he could bathe after carrying heavy harvest from the forest to the Underkeep. The steam had smelled faintly of the wine that had once filled it. Obsidia would hunch over the barrel—she was always hunched—and redden his back and shoulders with a harshbristle brush while she sang a strange, comforting melody fourteen notes long.

  He sang it now, limping along the river’s slick bank on his half broom-handle crutch, his body slow in remembering how to walk.

  The river slithered past, its skin opaque and filthy, spilling down into the Core. Brascles crazed the sky’s brown haze, waiting for the beastmen they served to come out of their burrows and take them hunting. He could see their beady eyes.

  “Sometimes,” he said, “I miss the Underkeep.”

  His words startled a heap of branches. It leapt from the riverbank, shrieking. The ale boy dropped the crutch and slid on his backside down the incline to the river’s edge.

  The branch-tangle pursued him, snatching up the crutch as a weapon. Then it stopped. Amid the thicket costume, a bearded face peered down at him.

  The ale boy noticed the tall forehead and the wiry grey hair. A name found his voice. “Kar-balter?”

  The man in the suit of twigs paused. “Rescue? Is that you?” He turned the crutch to offer the blunt end.

  Relieved to recognize the former Abascar guard, the ale boy took the offer. Upright, he nearly fell again under a barrage of anxious words.

  “That beastman, the good one, he went to look for you, boy, and he hasn’t come back and—forgive me—I told him you were shot or eaten or ruined, in some way dead like the rest of our people, and it’s true about them, I’ve seen them, just back in there, downstream, where you came from, but shut my jaw like a window! You’re … you’re not dead! Where’ve you been?”

  “Far below,” the boy whispered. “On a different river. Jordam told me to bring you back in.”

  “Go back? No, you have it wrong. We’re leaving.”

  “He told me he asked you to watch over the dead.”

  “You came out of there, so you’ve seen them, the bodies, back there beside the river where we started our escape. Awful, how they’re piled on top of one another, like firewood. You, you’re lucky, only a bad leg to show for it all. But, oh.” He leaned in closer. “Oh, you’re burnt like bacon on the spit too long.”

  The ale boy hobbled toward a rowboat that someone—probably Kar-balter—had half covered with dead reeds. “Beastmen’re distracted for now. They’re fighting each other and digging for Essence. When they find it, they’ll be dangerous. And hungry.”

  “Sure as vultures.” He brushed the reeds away. The rowboat’s sides had been smashed, but the remains still worked as a raft.

  “So we gotta finish what we started.”

  “Finish?” Kar-balter glanced over his shoulder, then followed. “Maybe you’ve not noticed, Rescue, but our adventures here are over. Beastmen are swarming back to the Core like flies to … well … We’ll be lucky to get away alive. The Strongbreed have arrows as thick as tent stakes and spears heavy as flagpoles. They came over the rise and attacked. Thought sure I was dead, but Nella Bye, she …” He paused, trying to wipe at tears, but poked himself in the eye with a twig glued to the back of his hand.

  The ale boy clutched at his chest. “I don’t want to know.”

  “She stepped in front of me. Arrow hit her hard.” Kar-balter pointed to a purple lump over his left eyebrow. “Back of her head knocked me overboard. Splash! Splat! Arrows. Arrows everywhere.”

  The ale boy knelt and pushed the makeshift raft back into the stream.

  “You were an Abascar ale boy, weren’t you?” Kar-balter stepped carefully on and crouched down, ten fingers splayed on the raft’s wet wood, while the boy lifted his long, spiked pole from the bank. “Know where I could get a drink around here?”

  “Nothing fit for us to drink.”

  “Remember those days? You’d bring juice to the top of the wall. I’d bother you for something stronger.”

  “I remember.”

  “You were a torment, flaunting wines and liquors and even the king’s blasted hajka. Thought I had it bad back then. But now … to have just one more day pacing Abascar’s wall—that’d be grand as a birthday party. Wish I could stuff King Cal-marcus’s skull with—”

  “Don’t go blamin’ the king for Abascar’s collapse,” the boy growled.

  Kar-balter quieted for a moment, then cupped his hand into the dark soup, sniffed it, an
d cast it back. “Ballyflies! I’d suck down water like it was sweet cream if I could find some.”

  “Throw yourself into the abyss, and you’ll find some.”

  “What’s that, boy?”

  “If we stick together, maybe we can find some.”

  They drifted along the river’s edge, leaving daylight behind. Kar-balter began to weep. The ale boy understood. This was like falling back down the throat of a monster that had just coughed them out.

  “Tell me again why Jordam can’t come to us.”

  “He’s at the dock collecting what we need to save the rest.”

  “The rest? They’re dead! The only slaves alive in this hole are Bel Amicans and …” Kar-balter pulled his hat of branches slowly off his head. “No. We’re not gonna risk … no. We couldn’t even save our own!” Kar-balter sank lower. “Not even Cal-raven could manage a rescue.”

  “It wasn’t Cal-raven’s fault!” the boy shouted. “Don’t ever say that!” Then he seized the pole and attacked the water as if it had offended him. “It was me. Don’t you remember? We’d almost escaped. The rafts were moving out. I tried to slip away. I didn’t expect Queen Jaralaine would come after me. But she wasn’t right in the head. She thought I was her son.”

  The raft spun slowly.

  “Then Cal-raven came after her. And you all got caught by beastmen. Everything was spoiled except for them that got away in time. And now …”

  Kar-balter awkwardly embraced the boy, branches on his arms and legs crackling and poking. “No, no, Rescue. It’s not your fault. Sometimes your heart’s so big it gets in the way, that’s all.”

  The raft carried them quietly until a soft splash turned their heads.

  The river’s skin, barely visible in the soft shine of glowstones, seemed troubled to a cold boil. Waves splashed the banks. A tentacle broke the surface, spiny and tall as a cloudgrasper. It strained to touch the ceiling, then slid down the wall until it slapped the stony bank opposite them.

  “Prowling,” said Kar-balter.

  “Shh,” said the boy. He could almost swear he heard it sniffing. Beastmen aren’t guarding the Core anymore. So the feelers are rising to protect this place. He grabbed Kar-balter’s wagging beard and held a finger to his lips.

  They let the current carry them.

  The tentacle slowly retreated into the water. Then a swarm of limbs rose and slithered against the current back toward the tunnel’s entrance.

  The raft rounded a bend. Kar-balter reached into the sludge and hauled up a two-ended oar. He snapped it over his knee and gave half to the boy. Without a word they paddled, propelling themselves into the Core.

  The river broadened, and they drifted into a swirling pool, then came to rest against the edge of a stone plate that jutted out over the water. Jordam waved a torch from the edge of it. The ale boy could see that the beastman had recovered two of the damaged boats from their failed escape.

  He kept his eyes on his scowling friend. He did not want to see what torchlight revealed in the shadows. As Jordam had carried him up from the river at the bottom of the abyss, he had glimpsed the stacked bodies of those who had fallen when the red-armored Strongbreed attacked.

  One image burned in his mind’s eye—a white face and a white arm, fallen outward from the bodies as if reaching for him. Nella Bye’s golden hair spilled down. Nella Bye, who had moved among the Cent Regus slaves as a gentle comforter.

  He had seen her arrested in House Abascar. He had come to collect hajka peppers from the garden alongside her house, only to find a duty officer stuffing his pockets with them. The officer fled, but Nella Bye pursued him, demanding that he empty his pockets in front of onlookers. Instead, the officer arrested her for growing the peppers in plain sight—he insisted that the colorful array was an open act of rebellion against Abascar’s “wintering.” Due to his high rank, he was given permission to cast her outside the walls to live as a Gatherer, condemned until she could earn her way back into safety.

  Living among the Gatherers, Nella Bye might have withdrawn in bitterness. Instead, she had served the others with motherly grace. Now she was cast aside like rubbish.

  As Jordam secured the raft, he saw their anxious backward glances. “rrTrouble?”

  They heard a rumble like an avalanche upriver. Black dust wafted downstream, and they shielded their faces.

  “Feelers,” Kar-balter squealed.

  Jordam’s teeth gleamed in the torchlight. “rrNeed a new way out.”

  A feeble sound like a cough silenced him. Kar-balter turned and squinted toward the darkness where the dead were piled.

  “Don’t look at the bodies,” whispered the boy. But then the cough recurred, and there was a rustle of cloth.

  Kar-balter’s emaciated face twitched as he tried to make sense of what he saw.

  Jordam knelt beside the boy. “rrDon’t run.”

  “Nella Bye?” Kar-balter said.

  When a feeble voice answered “Yes,” the ale boy turned, astonished.

  Like weary travelers rising before dawn, shapes were crawling from the pile. Nella Bye’s hands were flat on the stone, her hair trailing to the floor. As she crawled toward them, she patted the floor before her cautiously, unseeing.

  “It’s the Curse,” hissed the boy.

  “No,” said Jordam.

  Nella Bye raised her head. Her eyes were bright, and while her face was still grey as a fish, a thin and ragged breath escaped her lips. Then she came to her knees and clasped the arrowshaft protruding from her belly, looking surprised.

  “rrWait!” Jordam shouted. He thrust the heavy torch at the ale boy, then hurried to kneel beside the struggling woman. “rrWait.”

  “Beastmen. Arrows.” Her hands closed on Jordam’s forearm. “Save us.”

  Others—the boy counted eleven—squirmed and wheezed, trying to rise. They stared in confusion at the arrows bristling from their bodies and their bloodied rags. They fingered the edges of deep gashes. Some sucked in air as if they had been drawn from drowning. And they looked about with the bewildered expressions of infants trying to make sense of the world.

  “Jordam,” said the ale boy. “Jordam, what’s happening?”

  The beastman lifted something, then sent it skidding across the floor to the boy’s feet. It was the flask that had contained the well water from the Bel Amican bastion of Tilianpurth.

  “How …”

  Kar-balter picked up the flask and shook it. It was empty.

  “rrGood water from O-raya’s well,” said Jordam, shrugging. “Woke you up.”

  For a moment the boy had an unsteadying sensation. A flicker of memory—of being slipped back into his body as if it were an old set of clothes.

  The waking bodies reached for one another, voices faint in whispers, groans, and laughter. One had a hard case of hiccups. Jordam lit torches he had collected and gave them to those who could hold them. The ale boy felt sick. “Jordam, what have you done?”

  Jordam took hold of Nella Bye’s arrowshaft with one hand, raised a heavy knife with the other. “rrBreathe out,” he growled softly. As Nella Bye exhaled, Jordam reached around behind to where the sharp end had emerged from her back, and brought the knife down hard. The barbed end of the arrow clattered to the floor. Without hesitating, Jordam pulled hard and fast, and the arrow came out of her belly with a splash of blood. She shouted, then slumped against him, shaking. He put his hand over the wound.

  “rrPromised,” said Jordam through clenched teeth. “Promised Bel. Promised Abascar’s king. rrBring prisoners free.”

  The boy heard a squeak of disbelief, then a thump. It was Kar-balter’s turn to sprawl silent on the floor.

  “Jordam,” the ale boy gasped. “Where’s the queen? If we—”

  “rrGone,” the beastman moaned. “rrSearched everywhere.”

  Shuffling barefoot from the crowd, a man stout as a wine barrel, lumpy and bald as a toad, with an arrowshaft jutting from his neck like a flagpole from a tower, passed the ale boy. He
knelt and lifted Kar-balter’s head and shoulders to wake him. The ale boy recognized him at once—Em-emyt, who had often argued with Kar-balter on Abascar’s wall.

  Kar-balter’s eyes fluttered open, and when he beheld Em-emyt’s grinning face, he leapt up. “Get away! Get away! You’re dead!”

  “Am I?” Em-emyt opened his arms, standing. “Amends. Gotta make amends.”

  “A-what?”

  “I got you arrested. ’Member, Kar-balter? Back in Abascar. I revealed your drinking to the captain. He beat you worse than you deserved. Sorry ’bout it all.”

  Kar-balter shook his head. “I saw you die.”

  “And I tell you, just after I stepped into the air, it hit me hard. Regrets. So before I slip like a butt-gust into the air again, I gotta set this straight. I don’t expect your pardon. But I’m sorry for all of it.”

  Kar-balter covered his face with his hands. Em-emyt guffawed. “Lookit you. Scared like you’re seeing a ghost.”

  “Aren’t I?”

  “I know just what you need, brother.”

  Kar-balter’s face brightened with feeble hope. “A drink?”

  “And if I had one, I’d sell it to you!” Em-emyt punched him in the shoulder.

  He remembers being dead. The ale boy was amazed. He closed his eyes as that dizzying feeling returned. Whatever had happened to him, he was forgetting. There’s a reason I came back. I found out something. What was it?

  Cold hands gripped his shoulders. “Rescue?” It was Nella Bye, remembering him and pulling him close. He knew her by the smell of her hair and skin. Her cheek was warm against his. “It’s so strange,” she whispered. “I was somewhere … somewhere easier.”

  All around him the murmurs were growing clearer. Rumors of boats, of Northchildren, of strange lights and a feeling of flight. He put his arms around Nella Bye. “What’s happened to us? We were somewhere else. I saw shining people. Gentle, shining people. We were telling stories.”