Snyde’s reddening face resembled nothing more than an infant’s in a petulant outcry. “What authority?”
“May the Keeper show you patience that you might learn from your mistakes, as I hope to learn from mine. Go home. Of course, you don’t believe in the Keeper, do you?”
As Cal-raven turned his vawn about and rode on without another word, starlings crossed the sky, drawing night like a sheet behind them.
“You’re a disgrace!” came the ambassador’s roar behind them.
“Shall I silence him?” Jes-hawk raised his caster.
“No. We’ll see how far his divided mind will take him.”
9
WHITE DUST
Straying from the sight of the stag hunters, young Cal-raven, only eleven years old, prodded his horse off the trail.
A sharp chill had daggered him from the shadows of that dusty, overgrown rise to his right. It was summer. What was this sudden river of winter flowing over the hill? Moving through violet trees, he found a sort of stair—an old mudslide’s hard, rippled clay—to carry him up and over the ridge.
As he reached the top, his father joined him. Bracing for reprimand, he was surprised. “You are your father’s son,” King Cal-marcus boasted. “Such curiosity. But you must avoid this place, both for its history and its deathly air, even though it calls out to descendants of Tammos Raak.”
“Something’s wrong, Father.” Cal-raven shivered.
“It’s winter here.”
“It’s the dust. Ice that doesn’t melt.”
They stared across a vast white crater, a bowl full of wasteland.
“They call it the Mawrn. No one really knows what it is. It can’t be found anywhere else in the Expanse. Look there, at the way the crater’s edge stands jagged against the sky. My grandfather called it Two Giants. Trace that side and this, and you’ll see the outline of two people lying down.”
“Yes. Their foreheads meet.” Cal-raven pointed across the crater. “And where we’re standing, their toes touch. But why is this here? How’d it happen?”
“Did Scharr ben Fray never tell you the story of Tammos Raak’s escape?”
“Many times. Tammos Raak’s children rebelled in the house of Inius Throan. They all wanted his crown. He fled, and when they caught up to him, he climbed the tallest starcrown tree. Then something happened.”
“Yes, but what? Some say they burned the trees to catch Tammos Raak. And this crater’s full of toppled starcrown trees. But this—the Mawrn…” His father rubbed his thumb across his forefinger. “It isn’t really ash, is it?” Reaching to tousle his boy’s hair, he laughed. “Maybe you’ll solve this mystery someday, Raven. Still, promise me you’ll never let the question draw you down into that pit.”
Surveying the dusk-dim ground, Cal-raven was again troubled by the violence of the scene. The trees appeared to have been shattered and half buried by some tremendous plow. Boughs, trunks, and roots—all painted with bone white dust—seemed paralyzed in anguish.
“What is it?” Jes-hawk rode up and, gazing over the white cavity, whistled a long falling note through the window of his smile’s missing tooth.
Cal-raven unsheathed a farglass. Gazing through its lenses, he sifted the view for one great tree still standing. But there were no straight lines here. What appeared to be dragons made of dust crawled, wrestled, and leapt about the ground below.
Turning the scope, he considered the crater’s western wall. A cloud branched upward against the blue of evening like an ink-black coil tree. A constellation of lanterns and torches was awakening along that stretch—buildings connected by paths that spilled down to a complex of platforms deep in the crater.
In the dim light he saw high-reaching beams turning on pivots. From the beams, ropes carried miners and supplies down into dark pits as if to bait underground monsters. One of these cranes reeled in a pallet crowded with buckets, which were loaded onto wagons that crawled like beetles to an illuminated structure, its windows aglow. A chimney spewed smoke, drawing a line against the bleached landscape.
“A mine?” Jes-hawk shook his head. “What do they dig beneath cold ash?”
Cal-raven pointed to a cluster of cabins, dark boxes on the bluff of the crater’s western edge. “That’s a Bel Amican way station.” He slipped out of the saddle, knelt, and let the silvery sand run through his fingers. “We’ve seen this powder. And recently. Do you remember that Bel Amican Seer who said he would help us?”
“Do I remember the liar who led beastmen to attack us? Master, when I practice, I imagine he’s my target.”
“We recovered a box of this dust from a thief, and we returned it to that Seer. He treated it as precious. Mawrn. The Seers carry Mawrn. I think. I think they’re mining the dust itself.”
Jes-hawk’s gaze seemed fixed on the distant way station.
“You smell the hot meals. I know. But we didn’t come here for stew or soft pillows. We have people waiting for us.” Cal-raven flinched, bowing and casting his sleeve across his face as a breeze blasted them with the stinging white grit. His vawn groaned, agitated by the cold and frustrated that she could snuffle no grubs from this chalky ground.
“You’re going down there, aren’t you?”
“Yes, but I have no business with Bel Amicans. I’m looking for something else. A particular tree, if you really want to know. Or what’s left of it.”
“How do you expect to find it without interruption? They’ve seen us by now, surely.”
“Go back to the company.” Cal-raven eyed a feathered silhouette that waited patiently inside the edge of the crater, almost within reach, clinging sideways to a root that protruded from the gradual slope of the wall. “The ravens will show me the way.”
“I can’t let you—”
“When the Bel Amican welcome party arrives, introduce the company as travelers who have abandoned Abascar to seek a better fortune.”
“They won’t believe us. The best way to draw attention away from you is to go to that way station like reasonable travelers.”
“Kramm!” Cal-raven aimed a kick at the archer’s leg.
But Jes-hawk caught the king’s buckled boot of muskgrazer skin and pulled it right off his foot. He held it up as if threatening to cast it into the crater. “You know I’d rather go down into that cauldron of ash with you than sit among strangers with a glass of ale and wonder what’s become of you. Tell me you know that.”
“Bloody vawn crolca, Jes-hawk. I know it! You’ll have that hot meal. But you must be the blandest of visitors. Tell boring lies. Laugh at their jokes. Stare into your bowl. Offend no one. Accept no challenges. If the Bel Amicans will rent you a room, pay for two nights, just in case. Plant an arrow in your window frame so I can find you when I come back.”
“When do we come looking for you?” Jes-hawk handed back the boot.
“You don’t.”
Eager to make progress while faint blue light still lingered on the western horizon, Cal-raven descended into the lifeless jungle. Binding a scarf across his nose and mouth, he followed the birds through unmoving swells of earth, vines, branches, and roots.
“Great Keeper,” he spoke through the cloth. “You came to me last time I ventured out alone. Come again. Show me where to go.” Nothing happened. Nothing moved, save for boughs that twitched without any wind and ravens darting through the dusty tangles.
Soon after the sky’s last notes of purple had dissolved into black, a blue glow caught his eye. He crouched down, peering through a dark web of boughs. The light was quiet, delicate.
He worked his way cautiously through the maze until he found a passage straight to a patch of ground shrouded in blue mist. Seizing the farglass, he fingered the notched edges of various lenses, pulling some from their slots along its wooden span, fitting others into place. When he found a combination that magnified the clearing, a memory surprised him.
I’ve seen this blue before, in the cloak that Auralia wore.
Coiling out into the night
air on fragile green stems, delicate blue flowers emerged from between the bulky stones of what appeared to be an ancient well. Steam spilled from the ring of stones, infused with light from the flowers. It beckoned to him like an oasis in the eastern Heatlands.
Suddenly a shadow stepped into the picture. Surprised, Cal-raven reached out to catch himself against the wall of branches. His hand closed tight around a bough, and a thick, sturdy thorn ran right through his palm and out the other side.
His cry caught in his throat, and tears sprang into his eyes. Pain lanced his arm. He jerked his hand free and pressed its wound with his other palm. He rocked back and forth, then fumbled in the pocket of his jacket for a traveler’s bandage roll. When his left hand was wrapped, he raised the scope again with his right.
Enveloped in steam, the figure lifted a wooden cover, which brought from the well a new flood of cloud that filled the clearing.
It was a man, bearded and broad shouldered. He was clad in layers of rags, twigs, feathers, and fur, a costume made of all that had been she’d on the Cragavar’s forest floor. He was lifting a bucket from the well.
Surely, Cal-raven thought, there can’t be water in this pit of ash. But when the man placed the cover back over the well, Cal-raven saw a spill wash a dark line down the side of the bucket.
The stranger strode away slowly, bracing huge hands on both sides of the bucket to keep from spilling another drop. But for a prodigious nose, his face was hidden in a thick, filthy mane. His ponderous progress was almost comical, his steps uneven, as if his body were a burdensome suit. As he turned and disappeared up another path, Cal-raven glimpsed an unnatural bulge at the back of his neck that caused his robe to swell between the shoulders.
Cal-raven hurried to the clearing, his hand ablaze. Kneeling, he picked a few of the blue flowers. I’ll have to ask Krawg and Warney about these. They surrendered without resistance, and he wrapped them in another span of clean bandage.
The mist’s rising scent was sweet, promising water as pure as a mountain spring. He leaned over the well and inhaled deeply and thought he heard water flowing steadily below. His whole body tensed, demanding a drink. He had to fight the urge to climb down into the well’s mouth to submerge himself. “Bring back the bucket, Ragman,” he murmured.
And so he pursued the stranger, following the footprints until they ended at a solid wall of intertwining boughs. But as he paused, the branches untangled and opened for him. Ravens, gathering along the top of the hedge, clucked and muttered approvingly.
I’m getting close, Teacher.
The hunchback was not far ahead, ascending to a small dome encrusted with the same moon-pale grains that dusted the landscape. He climbed a stairway up the side, past glowing windows, the wooden steps groaning beneath his considerable weight. Someone opened a door for him.
Put the bucket down. Cal-raven almost spoke the wish aloud.
But the man ducked to push through the door, his effort casting a spray of dust and debris out onto the doorstep. The door swung almost closed, leaving a narrow line of golden lanternlight.
Cal-raven heard quiet, happy laughter, like musical gusts from the old wheeze-box Obsidia Dram used to play in the breweries.
The birds were behind Cal-raven now. And they were noisy. “Cal, rava. Cal, rava.”
This isn’t the way.
His tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. His throat felt coated with dust.
“Give me a moment.” He gripped the stair’s rail and moved up to the door.
But as he leaned to peer into this strange abode, the whole flock flew at him, greatly distressed. As he turned to hiss at them, the door burst open. His bandaged hand was seized in a cold, hard grip. He was pulled, stumbling, inside. The door slammed behind him.
He found himself face to face with a woman wrapped in a winding white shroud.
She seemed all bone and blue skin, withered and wretched. Wisps of long black curls fell down around her skull of a face. The lids of her eyes drew all the way back into her head so that her blazing, bloodshot gaze was impossible to meet. While one hand was fastened around his forearm, mean as a mousetrap, the other caged a bird’s broken, wing-splayed body.
She madly cackled through a thin-lipped grin, “We hope-hope-hoped you’d come.”
She shoved him down onto a rickety bench. “Help yourself to the wah…to the water,” the withered woman wheezed. The bucket steamed on the round table in a ring of three misshapen clay goblets.
As if new to walking, the woman staggered and collapsed onto another bench, then spidered her open hand across the tabletop to pick a few stray crumbs from an unwashed plate. She kept the other hand closed around the bird’s crushed body. “It’s what you’ve come for, isn’t it? Folks get thir-thir-thirsty out there. Out there in the Mawrn.”
“I’m in the wrong place,” he stammered. “I’m lost.”
“Haven’t we heard the same-same-same story from every strange-strange-stranger who visits us here?” She lifted her empty hand high over her head and let it fall back with a sharp crack! “Welcome to Panner Xa’s prison. What’ll we call you?”
Now it was Cal-raven’s turn to stammer. “P-prison?”
Under a ceiling of redbrown reeds tightly aligned, the walls curved to the floor, rugged with the crater’s crumbling pearl. Everything within that circumference—counters, basins, benches, tables, chairs—seemed crooked and badly made, broken in some small but distracting way. Skeletal wooden devices, each equipped with gleaming metal teeth, and pans holding portions of dust spoke of their work breaking down the crater’s crystal shards for mysterious purposes.
Moving among the tables, barrels, and chairs, the ragged giant carried plates and bowls in a teetering stack to something resembling a kitchen. He set them down, and the stack fell over, fragments of clay clattering and scattering. When he came back to the table, he stopped.
The woman had released the bird from her hand’s bony cage, and now Cal-raven could see it clearly. It was a common shrillow, lying on its back with sparsely feathered wings cast open, eyes closed, tiny yellow feet jutting into the air.
“Found it while I cleared webs from the tower’s tun-tun-tunnel,” she whispered to the hunchback. Her gestures seemed to direct his attention to a large, barred, black gate against the north wall.
The old man surrounded the bird with his heavy hands as if to warm it. Then he reached into the thick thatch of his coppery hair and drew out two long pins, which he gripped together as tightly as a dagger for a fight. He puffed a weary sigh. Scooping the bird up, he carried it across the room and tiptoed clumsily up a short stair and through an open door to a balcony.
“Old Soro fixes everything,” the woman muttered as Cal-raven watched for the giant to return. “The water. It’s what every-every-everyone needs. What else is worth a sideways spit in this graveyard? Hey!” As if slapped awake from a dream, she seized a goblet and plunged it into the bucket, then presented it to Cal-raven. “Drink up, young man. This-this-this is our only bit of joy today.”
When he didn’t obey, she planted it hard on the table before him and a splash spattered out. She poked at the drops and sucked her fingertips noisily. “Old Soro, he put out this cup for you. Drink it. The Seer returns. We’ll have to hide the bucket.”
Panner Xa. A Bel Amican Seer.
His obvious dismay set the woman laughing darkly. “Overseer of the Mawrnash Mine. Panner Xa.” She filled her own goblet and drained it in a rapid sequence of gulps that rocked her whole fragile frame. “That’s better,” she sighed, and her voice was softer.
The hunchback tiptoed back into the chamber, murmuring like Hagah when gnawing on bones. He marched to the table, filled the third goblet, and returned to the balcony.
“Be quick,” the woman hissed, “and you might get out of here without a beating. Not long until moonrise.”
“You called this a prison,” Cal-raven remarked. “How can I leave?”
“Oh, Panner’s not yet got her hooks in y
ou. Stay clear of her potions. Stick to the well water. And then it’s up, up, up Tammos Raak’s tower for you!”
He stood, knocking the bench down behind him. “How do you know?”
“I was right?” she gasped. “Old Soro! He’s come for the tower! Oh, you’ve come to the right place, young man. The Seer won’t let anyone near it. Forbidden to anybody except her monstrous ilk. Can’t say why. Don’t know why. Who are you, anyway? You speak like you’re from Abascar.”
“Abascar is gone.” Cal-raven set the bench right, sat down again cautiously, ready to run if necessary. “My purpose is my own. Why are you so eager to help me?”
“Because I’m getting stronger,” she said, lowering her voice. “The Seer doesn’t know it yet. But Old Soro’s helping me.”
Cal-raven lifted the goblet and sniffed the water. He was so terribly thirsty. “The two of you are slaves?”
“Captives. Let me see your injury.” Before he could devise a polite refusal, she stood, grabbed his arm with her cold fingers, and thrust his hand into the bucket.
“Oh.”
The water was warm at first, soaking through the bandage and stinging his wound. But then something like heat and cold spread from his hand into his arm. His thirst faded even though he hadn’t tasted a drop. He choked.
“Captives,” she said. “Me, ten years now. ’Twas the Seers’ potions did it.”
Dark tears were filling his eyes, as if his body were drawing water from the bucket and flushing some corruption from his head. He wiped them on his sleeve, a dark smear. The colors of the room brightened. “Is this a potion?”
“No,” she exclaimed, and he followed her bitter gaze toward uneven shelves on the wall. They were lined with jars of murky sludge. He realized he could smell the concoctions across the room.
“Panner Xa won my loyalty with those. I wanted to be beautiful. And, oh, they did the trick. I enjoyed some fame for a while. My sister wouldn’t walk with me through the market anymore. Jealous, you see. So I tried to quit the potions, and the headaches almost killed me. Then I ran out of money. I begged the Seers to give me more. But I couldn’t pay. So Panner Xa brought me here. Potions, if I’d help.” She pointed at the jars as if blaming criminals. “Years. They’ve taken years from me.”