Raven's Ladder

  “No,” Henryk chuckled. “No, he would not be. He would know I’m doing this for him.”

  Cal-raven stared at him. “Of course,” he said. “I’ve been a fool not to see it before.” He smiled wryly at his protector. “You’re Deuneroi’s father.”

  A sour horn bleated, and the rumbling grew louder. Then as if emerging from the curtains of a stage, Jordam appeared astride a bellowing prong-bull that thrashed the air with its powerful horns.

  Henryk’s men were on their feet with arrows to bows, but Cal-raven raised his hand. “Wait.”

  “Ey, now, would you look at that?” Henryk shook his head. “He’s going to carry you on that?”

  Jordam held the bull at bay for a moment, then urged him a few cautious steps toward the camp and turned him sideways. “You,” Jordam grumbled to Cal-raven, “sit behind me.”

  Cal-raven could not take his attention off the animal’s glowing red eyes.

  “Ready?” Jordam laughed to the Bel Amicans. “rrKeep up.”

  Cal-raven clung to Jordam as the prongbull charged across rugged open ground.

  As they passed through the northern stretches of Cent Regus territory, he searched every hillock for a familiar landmark. He came to suspect that the landscape here was as fluid as the nature of the beastmen—shapes changing as if the world had forgotten its design.

  Jordam slowed at one point and gazed up a steep slope to an old, crumbling shelter—a disintegrating barn with a weather-battered shack leaning against it. The beastman sniffed the air like a hunting hound, then growled.

  “Are we in danger?” Cal-raven almost asked, but the beastman spurred the bull forward again.

  The animal’s mercurial temper kept the whip in Jordam’s hand. It became increasingly agitated the farther they moved toward the Cent Regus Core. It moved so quickly that Cal-raven could not imagine any creature capable of catching it—except the Keeper.

  The thought caught him by surprise. He began to speak into the air as they rode, his words ripped from his lips by the rush of air. “Keeper, guide me. Keeper, protect me. Keeper, help me in the Core.” But with every word he felt more foolish, for the Keeper had led him north to the vision. His way had been clear before him. He’d seen no tracks pointing him any other way. “I’ll go north,” he said. “Just help me bring my mother out of the dark.”

  As they came out of the hills and into the haze of the wasteland, the horizon faded in all directions. They moved through a stifling space beneath low clouds that looked like muddy rags. These clouds carried no rain—only dust that streamed down into his face like angry swarms of stingers.

  Winding like a restless snake through reeds in the lowlands beneath them, a tributary of the Throanscall looked lost, resigned to a slow death among these hills. As Jordam brought the bull down to its bank, Cal-raven saw that the waters were foul with corruption and debris.

  Jordam leapt off the bull, and not wanting to be stranded or launched into the sky, Cal-raven quickly followed. Jordam gave the bull’s flank a sharp slap. The bull made a sound almost like a horse’s whinny, then shook the ground with the force of its departure.

  The reeds surrendered a long raft of oiltree bark, which Jordam had concealed for his return.

  In Abascar, oiltree bark had made barn-stall walls strong against vawns and horses. In Bel Amica, it was valuable for ship’s hulls. And for Jordam’s purposes, it would serve to keep them dry on this reeking river.

  “rrMore boats like this waiting,” the beastman said. “Waiting for escape.”

  Jordam watched the dustclouds withdraw across the dry, cracked ground as if they’d grown too tired to pursue him down the river.

  He pulled the cloth cover off the honeycomb candle, the only one he’d brought from the collection he had crafted to bless Auralia’s caves with light.

  He remembered finding a candle lying on its side in a corner of Auralia’s chambers. He had studied it for a long time before realizing that he understood its basic construction. Auralia had pressed tiny beads into the wax—weaving intricate designs all around it. He could not begin to imagine how to achieve such pleasing patterns, but he could make the candle itself. And there would be nothing suspicious about a hunk of honeycomb among beastmen, so he could carry these candles into the Core to help the prisoners move through the dark, winding passages in their escape.

  But the more candles he made, the more he made them for pleasure than for any practical purpose. He played with differing shapes and even tried threading grasses through their wax.

  “I know what you need,” said Cal-raven. Reaching into the water, he scooped up a heavy stone from the riverbed. His hands softened it like bread dough. Jordam watched him, amazed again and unsettled. It reminded him of falling through the collapsing floor of a cave as the king of Abascar sought to kill him.

  Cal-raven elongated the claylike mass to the size of a bread loaf, then gouged a hollow within it. “There.” He placed Jordam’s invention inside, then carved a grip atop the stone so the beastman could carry it easily.

  “Lantern,” Jordam grunted. “rrGood.”

  When Jordam observed Cal-raven murmuring fitfully in a dream, he reached into the crude bag he had made from a sun-baked vawn bladder and pulled out a tiny blue vial. He let a drop of oil fall onto the edge of the muskgrazer skin Cal-raven had pulled over himself as a shield against biting riverbugs. Cal-raven quieted and soon was snoring softly. Jordam smiled.

  The day had passed without trouble, save for brascle sightings that caused Cal-raven to fitfully test his knife’s sharpness. They had left Henryk’s company far behind, trusting them to follow the river and set up a defense for their escape.

  As dusk’s blue darkened, Jordam scanned the land on both sides of the river relentlessly. Then he drew back the cover so Cal-raven could breathe the cooling air. Soon swarms of Cent Regus pests would gather over the river, and the cover would save him from poisons.

  The beastman had become accustomed to strange sights like this—these almost-hairless people forgetting their fear of the Cent Regus. He had seen it in the Cent Regus Core while he helped the Treasure and the ale boy prepare the prisoners for escape. The slaves had not trusted him at first. But one by one their bravest began to risk it, following him to the underground caves where the river flowed. There, they had begun crafting rafts for the coming escape. With every raft constructed, their hope grew stronger. The first crowd would have to escape unobserved, or there would never be a second endeavor.

  Jordam found hope in the determination of O-raya’s boy.

  That boy had been the first of the smooth-skinned people from beyond the Cent Regus world to travel with him, to ride upon his shoulders in a swift journey through winter’s worst. The ale boy, he had called himself. But Cent Regus prisoners called him Rescue. A boy who could hold and play with fire. A boy who had learned, passage by passage, the network of tunnels in the Core, somehow evading the sight of his captors. He was tireless, but whenever anyone sought to show him gratitude, he told them to thank the Keeper who had brought him.

  Jordam understood that. Without the Keeper, he never would have discovered Auralia’s colors. He would have remained a savage, addicted to the Essence that corrupted his kind and filled them with violence.

  “Jordam.” Cal-raven was awake, but his eyelids were half closed. “You keep saying Auralia’s name. Tell me what you know about her.”

  Jordam spoke of the young woman who lived in caves beside Deep Lake. He had crawled into those caves, injured from a terrible fall, and he had watched her spend mornings in the forest climbing trees, following animals, digging in the dirt, swimming in the lake. He described to Cal-raven the things she would bring back to the cave—stones, seeds, shells, bones and berries, tufts of fur and fangbear teeth, curtains of cobweb and ears of corn.

  “rrWatched her,” he said. “Watched her long, long time. Strange. Always I go away…better inside. Like having a belly full of good things.”

  “I must see these c
aves.” Cal-raven stared into the blue light of Jordam’s candle as they floated along. “You could show me the way someday.”

  “rrNo Auralia anymore.”

  “I know.”

  Jordam shrugged. “Someday.”

  “I’m a king, Jordam, and what have I ever done that could inspire anyone as Auralia did? I’d rather craft one meaningful thing, one beautiful work, than spend my days trying to hold a house together.”

  Jordam let go of an oar to scratch the scarring on his forehead. “Stone people.”

  “Oh. In the Hall of the Lost. How did you know I made them?” Before Jordam could answer, he saw Cal-raven’s face contort. “You saw me changing stone. When I tried to.” The king looked down at the blue candle. “It surprised me. I didn’t know I could be so hateful, so terrible as I was that day. I’m sorry.”

  “I scared you. I’m Cent Regus.”

  “Do you understand those words—‘I’m sorry’? It’s not fair of me to ask you to forget what I did to you. But I wish I had not been cruel. I wish I’d listened.”

  “Bel.” Jordam looked off into the night. “Bel taught me. Me, sorry. Bel forgives.” At Cal-raven’s questioning expression, he added, “Sin-der. Bel.” Then he scratched again at his forehead’s scar, where the browbone had broken. “Want to forget many things. Essence. Killing. rrBrothers.”

  Cal-raven nodded. “Jordam, you don’t scare me anymore.”

  As they sailed along, the ground rising on both sides, the breeze stiffened, and the light in the lantern leapt up in alarm and went out. Jordam sniffed the gale, then snarled, “Hide.”

  Cal-raven covered himself with the heavy skin.

  The man’s eyes would not be sharp enough, but Jordam could see that they were approaching a low bridge. A figure leaned over the edge, arms reaching down as if he might try to snatch him from the boat.

  Jordam wrapped one hand around the grip of a shield, another around his spear. He had fought upon this bridge before. It had not gone well.

  The stranger was a beastman not unlike himself—large, apelike, with a jutting jaw, a hound’s nose, and powerful arms. And he could see now that the beastman would not attack them. It had collapsed on the bridge, sick and wounded as if it had barely escaped from a battle. It moaned and feebly groped at the air beside Jordam’s head as they passed beneath the dark span.

  “What did it say?” Cal-raven whispered beneath the blanket.

  Jordam did not answer. He only stood and sniffed the air, his ears twitching as if searching for some kind of news in the hush.

  A few hours later, the moonlight a sickly yellow through the ever-present haze, Cal-raven took cover again to escape the bombardment of heavy, droning insects.

  “Jordam,” he asked, “do you really think we can get the prisoners out?”

  “Bel’s plan—boats. rrFlat, hidden boats. Row them up the river at night. O-raya’s boy can get prisoners to the boats. Underground. Not many Cent Regus there. But dangerous. rrMust work fast.”

  “Are you sure these other beastmen will help us?”

  “Some,” he said. “Weak beastmen. Bad legs from too many lashings. Can’t run. But good arms. rrRow hard. Treasure promised them freedom. They like O-raya’s colors. Makes them think the Treasure is more powerful than the chieftain.”

  “Auralia’s colors—you have some of them there, in the Core?”

  “You will see.” Jordam scratched at his arm.

  “What is happening to you?”

  Jordam shrugged. “Change.”

  Deep in the Core, Jordam could move among the chieftain’s servants without being questioned or suspected. None of them seemed to recognize him as one of those four brothers who had caused such trouble for the chieftain during the last winter. He still smelled like the Cent Regus, so long as he layered himself in their reeking, rotting skins and cloaks. He still spoke like them to his own kind, even if he whispered in careful, clumsy Common to the slaves.

  But he was changing. His mane had thinned considerably, and patches of his head were bare. Similarly, the ragged fur of his legs and arms was shedding. His dark claws had grown brittle; three had crumbled from the tips of his fingers, and all the claws that once jutted out from his toes had come off in his running.

  And then there was the matter of his skin. The bumps, white and sore, had spread across his body so that he had been forced to go without any woodscloak for a time. When the blisters burst, dried, and disintegrated, the skin all around those wounds had gone crisp and cracking, then fallen away. The new skin was smoother and softer—copper colored, even freckled. Sometimes when he scratched it, it seemed to shine.

  The water from Auralia’s well sharpened his thoughts, illuminated his memories. It was helping him to despise the very thought of the Essence that had once fueled his bloodthirst.

  Partayn was the first one he had rescued. The endeavor had been easy, as the Cent Regus had no reason to suspect it. The trouble had come when they reached open ground. The feelers, sensing something uncorrupted by the Essence, had burst through and tried to seize Partayn. Jordam fought them back with a torch and a blade.

  Later, as he hollowed out another boat from a tree in the Cragavar, west of Deep Lake, a whistle had sounded from Tilianpurth in the valley below.

  He had learned to respond to this whistle—one carved from a tiny white stone into the shape of an oceandragon’s skull. Just as he had learned what to do when he saw a white flag raised over Tilianpurth. He had known to go to Bel Amica. There he had found another white flag flying over a campsite near a bridge.

  A soldier, Henryk, had met him there. Deuneroi’s father. Deuneroi, who had died at Mordafey’s hands in the ruins of Abascar. It had been difficult for Jordam to sit in Henryk’s tent, for he was overcome with shame.

  Henryk had explained that House Bel Amica was still too dangerous for Jordam. The Seers would have him killed. Ryllion would destroy him. But the queen herself had faced him to thank him for bringing home her son.

  It had been the most fleeting of meetings, the queen scratching and twitching and whimpering like a nervous pup. But Cyndere had embraced him and wept into his mane. And together they had plotted how to bring out more prisoners from the Core. Cyndere had shown him the whistle and told him to bring water to Bel Amica if he heard it.

  And so in his shelter of woven shell-bark stalks high in the trees just southwest of Tilianpurth, he had listened. During the day, as he carved a fleet of light boats to match those Cyndere had shown him, he listened. And now he often ventured back into Cent Regus territory on the prongbull he had tamed, speaking only with the ale boy and the woman that Skell Wra called Treasure.

  “Treasure,” he muttered, shaking his head.

  Cal-raven stirred.

  Jordam said, “If others find us going in, must make you look like a slave. I captured you. rrBringing you to the chieftain.”

  “I have an idea,” said Cal-raven, and for the first time Jordam heard him laugh—a strange sound in this wilderness. “I should do what I do best.” He raised his hands as if they were weapons drawn for battle. “Stone people.”

  29

  SUSPICION AT THE HARBOR CAVES

  No, I’m done with Abascar.” Wynn put another damp, sweet-smelling barrel of Bel Amican syrup onto the cargo sled, then sat on its edge. To Tabor Jan, he looked like a wet rat in the warm rain. Dark circles under his eyes were a burglar’s mask.

  “That bad, huh?” Tabor Jan set the birdcage down and sat beside him on the sled so he could speak quietly with the boy, their conversation cloaked by the wavewash against the docks, the bumping of the boats, and the weary loaders’ profanity.

  The yearning for sleep had begun to confuse him. While he had to admit that the Kneader had drawn the pain out of his body, something inside him still strained for slumber. If only she could have worked on his aching eyeballs. I think I’ve seen too much.

  “I coulda saved Cal-raven if he’d let me,” Wynn was saying, bitterness in his bark. “He
knows that, and yet he left me here doing meaningless work.” He gestured to the barrels as if they were a pile of vawn dung.

  Tabor Jan shrugged. “You have to earn his trust with simple things before you’re given anything complicated. And so far you haven’t convinced him.”

  He pulled his pipe from his pocket, stuffed some honeyweed into the bowl, then started searching the pockets of his watchman’s jacket for a spark-stick. “And what do you mean—meaningless work? You’re sharp enough to see what he’s done. He’s planted spies all over Bel Amica. You’re Abascar’s eyes and ears at the harbor caves. He could have thrown you to the wolves for your insolence, but he gave you an important position in the game. This is where you prove yourself, Wynn. Pay attention.” He lit the pipe, and the honeyweed flared.

  Wynn turned his nose away. “How do I prove myself here? I’m an invisible cargo boy.”

  “I know an ale boy who carried barrels around Abascar for years, Wynn. After all those seemingly insignificant errands, he played a heroic role during Abascar’s calamity. That’s because he’d been paying attention. Now they call him Rescue.”

  Wynn was silent. The story clearly impressed him, as he owed his own life to its hero.

  “Looking back, it’s like Rescue was training all along. He’s down in the Cent Regus Core, trying to rescue prisoners. So pay attention, Wynn. Watch for your moment to serve.” Tabor Jan suddenly heard his own message and began scanning the scene around him. “You see, Wynn, I don’t like it any more than you do. But Cal-raven’s risking the future of House Abascar on a vision he’s been given by the Keeper. He can’t afford surprises. He needs you to be vigilant, watching for any—”

  “You don’t drink what he’s drinkin’, do ya?” Wynn snapped. “The Keeper’s just kids’ play. I outgrowed that stuff ages ago. And besides, if something really was watchin’ us, well…”

  The captain knew that Wynn was thinking of his sister, Cortie. It had been a difficult moment when Wynn had asked him about Cortie. He hadn’t said a word about the Deathweeds that had taken her. She was “missing”—that was all.