Raven's Ladder (5 page)

At the darkening of the next long day of recovery, what had been a fuss of guesses over the missing defenders’ fate settled into a burdensome quiet punctuated by fitful coughing from the quakedust.

Krawg crawled into his blankets, assuring himself that the distant thunder came from the sky and not from the ground beneath. Beside him, Warney’s bed lay empty, but Krawg was too wrung out to worry, sore from the toil of hauling debris.

Soon after the last thought left his head, footsteps awakened him.

Lurching awkwardly between the sprawl of slumbering laborers, Warney’s scarecrow silhouette advanced. In the faint candlelight, Krawg watched him kneel and pat the floor to find his folded mat of reeds.

“Spit it out, Warney. Somethin’s got you running scared. Are the beastmen back?”

“Hope not.” The mat crackled as Warney smoothed it. “I’m just losin’ my mind.”

“That’s been certain for years. But what’s the story?”

“It’s the season, Krawg. Bad things happen when a red moon’s up. Say-ressa’s half-crushed. Some say the quake’s a sign we don’t belong here. And
there’s something else.” Warney shivered, wrapping himself in bug-eaten blankets. “Don’t make me say.”

“How can I sleep if your bones keep rattling? What do you think you saw with the eye you haven’t lost?”

“Saw? It’s what I
heard
that bothers me.” Warney burrowed deeper into his cocoon. “Help me forget. Tell me an Auralia story.”

“I’ve told you—no bedtime stories about our little girl.” Krawg pressed his head into the yellow scarf he had rolled for a pillow. “I have bad dreams about what happened to her.”

“Gimme riddles then.”

Krawg picked at his fingertip calluses. “Fine, I’ll fold you a riddle if you promise to tell me what’s tied you in knots.”

“If our cave don’t collapse, I’ll tell.”

Krawg sat up and cleared his throat. “Who am I?” He stared into the darkness of the cave’s high ceiling.

Warney’s silence might have been deep thought. Impatient, Krawg embellished his trick.

Warney noisily gnawed at his lips. “Fish nibble my toes,” he repeated. “Is it a ship?”

“You’re close. Bring her in to port.”

“House Bel Amica!” Warney gasped. “Built on a rock in the Rushtide Inlet. Clouds around its head.”

“And the two crowns?”

“King Helpryn, dead in a shipwreck. His heir, Partayn, slain by beastmen. But what’s that line… ‘blinded by moonlit skies’?”

“Moon worshipers, Warney. Those fish-brained Bel Amicans spend too much time out on their boats, I tell you.”

“Maybe
we
should pray to the moon.” Anger flared on the edges of Warney’s words. “Ask it to help us outta this mess. Gimme another riddle, Krawg.”

“Tell me what scared you.”

“In the morning.”

Another breeze wafted through the cave, the earthy perfume of a warm rain stirring up another wave of sneezes.

“Cal-raven,” Warney almost shouted. “House Abascar.”

“Until we get to some new home and become New Abascar, that’s the whole of it.”

“What’ll we be when we get there, Krawg? Will they need us anymore?”

“Someone’s coming!”

A torch bobbed in the dark as a soldier found his way through the maze of sleepers.

“He’s looking for you,” said Krawg.

“I had nothing to do with it,” blurted Warney. “But I heard the screams. Screams, Krawg. Coming from a solid stone wall.”

“I’ve come for you, Krawg,” said the torchbearer.

“Tabor Jan?” Krawg recognized that broad jaw line, the obvious displeasure.
His fingers clenched his pillow as if he might wring comfort from it. “I gave up thievin’ many years ago. Ask anybody! They’ll tell you—”

“King’s called for you. Bring your stormcloak.”

Krawg lurched from the blankets. Warney’s whimpers returned. “Where—”

“Think I know?” he snapped. “Don’t expect me anytime soon. And, Warney, don’t let anyone take my bed.”

The stone underfoot gasped at the rain’s beating, and the streams that washed over the clawed feet of six groaning vawns were heavy with sludge from the quake.

Did you come to Barnashum because I called for you?

Cal-raven closed his eyes and tried to remember the creature. Its scales had rustled like leaves of ivy layered on a stone wall. Its wings had struck at the air like great sheets shaken free of dust. He had called; it had appeared. He had asked for guidance. If he could befriend it, summon it for help….

Lightning shattered night’s dark glass. The flash revealed two figures advancing from the cliffs—Tabor Jan with his hand fastened on Krawg’s shoulder.

The one riderless vawn in this half circle of six sneezed a spluttering hello to the shadows that approached. The animal seemed eager for a rider so they could all charge north to the shelter of the forest.

Tabor Jan shouted back toward the descending path. “Wynn! I won’t say it again.”

Again? Pugnacious, that merchants’ orphan
. In the next faint flicker, Cal-raven glimpsed the boy standing still on the path.

Wynn’s fierce voice cut through the rain. “I gotta talk to the king!”

Tabor Jan’s tone made it clear that his forbearance was at an end. “You’ve got your own tasks. Go back to the stables. This work’s for men, not boys. Soldiers’ business.”

No
, Cal-raven thought.
This isn’t even soldiers’ business. This is in that uncertain region between revelation and madness
.

The next storm blast rang out like a threat.

“Fine!” the boy barked. “I won’t tell where to find the missing soldiers.” With that, he turned and ran back up into Barnashum’s heavy shadows. Cal-raven scowled down to Tabor Jan.

“I’ll look into it, but I suspect it’s just another lie, my lord. Merchant trickery. He’s used to getting what he wants.”

Uneasy, Cal-raven surveyed the companions he had chosen.

He could read Shanyn’s face. She was wondering why he didn’t just trim the boy from Abascar’s story. Shanyn never liked unnecessary fuss, especially before a ride. He liked her bold, blunt counsel, and he depended on the strength of her sword arm in matters both military and practical. For a bonfire, she’d shear all the branches from a cloudgrasper in the space of a song. Nobody knew if she had sharp spurs or a gift for wildspeaking, but steeds responded to her with speed no other could inspire.

Bowlder shifted in his saddle, staring at Shanyn. Women were his only fear, and one so confident and strong set his broad, pulpy face to twitching. Cal-raven had chosen Bowlder for his muscles more than his mind, in case they stumbled into trouble.

They would also need accurate arrows, so Cal-raven had called on Jes-hawk as well.

Without explanation, Cal-raven had also summoned Snyde, his father’s ambassador of Abascar’s arts for thirty years before the collapse. But Snyde was no trained traveler; he bundled the reins tightly in his hands as if he might fall even before the vawns set out.

Tabor Jan waited beside the last vawn, hesitating to help Krawg into the saddle. “Are you sure about this, master?”

“Remember when we first arrived, Captain? I trusted you to ride out and investigate the smell of smoke. You were gone a long while. But, true to your word—”

“True to my word, I returned with good tidings,” Tabor Jan interrupted. “Your trust in me was well placed. That’s why you should take
me
, my lord.”

“My trust
is
well placed, Captain. That’s why I need you to stay. The quake unsettled us all. The people need a leader they trust.”

“What is so important,” snapped Snyde, “that we ride out in this tempest while the people are troubled?”

“We ride to find chillseed,” said Cal-raven. It was all he would tell the company for now. He didn’t want them frightened by his true destination. “Say-ressa’s fever is fierce, and chillseed is the surest help we know.” He turned to Krawg. “Gatherers learned how to find it in the wild, didn’t they?”

“Blindfold me, my lord, and I’ll still find it for you!” the old man exclaimed.

“Captain.” Cal-raven watched Tabor Jan reluctantly help the old man into the saddle. “Keep a close watch on the Cragavar. Keep our stonecrafting sisters close so they can—”

“We’ll be watchful, my lord.”

Cal-raven urged him to keep the people busy storing up food and fashioning wagons and wagon wheels in case they needed to set out from Barnashum soon. Then he turned abruptly to Krawg. “Why do you keep staring back at the caves? Have you forgotten something?”

Krawg bowed his head. “I reckon, my lord, that I can find chillseed faster if I have help.” His hands opened and closed as if they were swallowing the rain. “He’s light as a bundle of bird bones. He could sit behind me on this animal. Surely…”

“He?” Cal-raven smiled. He had expected this. He nodded to Tabor Jan, who hunched his shoulders against the rain, mumbled something, and trudged back into the caves.

Storm light splashed across the northern darkness, as seven riders on six vawns departed across the flooding plains. The distant Cragavar forest seemed frayed and worn in patches, a dark and ragged blanket.

Tabor Jan waited out in the open longer than was safe. He listened to the low wind and surveyed the star-glint on the thorns of rain-wet husker-brambles. Just as this weather would beat the summer’s loose husks from that sea of tangled boughs, so Abascar’s new troubles would purge the remnant’s weaker aspects. Only the most resilient would endure to the next season.

He knew he would survive. But what of his friendship with the man who knew him best?

His shadow leapt out ahead of him as a torchbearer came up from behind. “There you are.” It was Brevolo’s voice. She took his wrist and drew it around her hooded stormcloak, leaning into him. They stood watching the wind and rain. “So he didn’t take you with him. Look at it another way. Now you’re in charge.”

“I’ve never been a superstitious man,” he murmured. “Never glimpsed a ghost. Never heard voices. I think those who claim visions of Northchildren are a little too fond of madweed. I’ve inherited no magical gift, at least none that I’ve noticed.”

“There are still tricks you haven’t tried,” she laughed, relentless in flirtation.

“I tried to talk to an animal once—a rabbit. The thing ran away up a dry streambed, drawing about a dozen other long-ears into flight. Like it had warned the rest that there was a madman on the loose.”

“Let Cal-raven be Cal-raven,” she said. “You have your own path. And frankly, I’m uncomfortable following anybody who bases decisions on dreams. You should counsel him more forcefully. Abascar would do better with a practical leader like you.”

As a child, Tabor Jan had chopped wood, raised boulder walls, and hunted. His renown had increased because of the bundles of firewood he could carry on his shoulders and because of his willingness to carry them wherever the king’s men commanded. That strength had gained him armor, a horse, and responsibility. His rise after that came from a near-perfect record for hitting his mark with the first arrow shot, even from the back of a charging vawn.

Like anyone else, Tabor Jan had dreamed of the shadow that lurked in the forest. But he had been troubled by his father’s scorn for the idea, just as he was troubled by Cal-raven’s certainty that it existed and could be trusted like some infallible guide.

The myths that Scharr ben Fray had poured into every question Cal-raven raised seemed as unlikely as the fables about how the long-ear got his ears and why the vawn must suck for grubs.

“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “Cal-raven’s brought us this far.” He looked up at Barnashum, envisioned Cal-raven standing in many places at once, exhausted from sealing one tunnel after another, from toppling giant stone columns down upon the beastmen attackers.