Raven's Ladder (8 page)

E
xhausted by its tantrums, the storm that had pursued Cal-raven’s company for a night, a day, and another night finally subsided. The sun came up smug and bold, casting golden rays. The continent of cloud broke apart, its remnants melting away like dollops of butter across a hot pan.

In the boughs of a full-grown cloudgrasper, a giant in this patch of the Cragavar forest, the king lay in his hammock. His mind was inclined to see in metaphors, for he was fresh from dreams, spectacles inspired by the campfire story Krawg had shared the night before.

Krawg was fond of stories about magicians and enchantments. His art improved with every telling. In this particular story, a stranger paid a gang of pickpocket brothers to rob a magician who ruled the Expanse. After the robbery’s success, the robbers fought one another, arguing over some foolishness such as the true and proper name of the one who had hired them. They forgot that they were brothers, calling each other “bushpig” and “snake in the weeds.” In the commotion the treasure they had stolen was smashed, and they raised jagged shards to attack one another. Lanterns fell sideways in the melee that ensued, and their hideaway caught fire.

Walls burned away, revealing the magician, torch in hand. As the brothers called out for his help, he smiled, and his face changed. Lo, the man they had robbed was the man who had hired them, tricking them into exposing their wicked nature. Their crimes were undeniable now, and they would pay a terrible price. Laughing, the magician turned and walked away while the fiery house collapsed upon the thieves.

The story had clearly shaken its teller, past crimes paining his conscience.

But in Cal-raven’s dream, the scroll had unfurled to reveal a different ending. The Keeper had burned the house down on the thieves and then, with a sweeping thrust of its mighty wing, scattered the story’s characters and sent them off in flares like shooting stars.

Cal-raven felt the dream slip away. But one element remained as clear as these sideways rays of daytime.
It’s not just a dream anymore. The Keeper is real
.

The hammock swayed slightly among leafy fans. Birdsong spread. He pushed off the rainskin and hung it from a tree branch to dry in the sun.

I know the truth at last. And it’s just what I always claimed. I call for the Keeper’s help, and it hears me. I must have won its favor somehow, searching for its tracks or sculpting its likeness
.

Birdsong was not the only music rising from the Cragavar. The breeze spilled rainwater from the leafy boughs, from one broad green hand down to be caught by another, surrounding Cal-raven with a pitter-patter symphony. Far below, he heard the happy concert of humming vawns. Mouthless, the reptiles sang in short, dissonant hoots and snorts with no discernible pattern or rhythm. Between the notes they noisily sucked mud through their nostrils, chewed the worms and grubs with the teeth that lined their throats, then sneezed out the leftover soil.

As if joining in with the vawns, Snyde was singing an old Abascar folk tune, “Up the River Throanscall.”

Cal-raven closed his eyes and fought against thoughts of the coming confrontation, the ugly business he must carry out along the way to Mawrnash. Breathing deeply, he tried to remember childhood lessons in how to be still.

We have far to go. I cannot afford any delays
.

His worries were as aggressive as weeds. He could not forget his last sight of Say-ressa in bandages, her fists clenched as she battled against death’s ruthless agents.

A strange gravity from the east tugged at his attention. Were he to give in to those beckoning phantoms, he would be drawn back across familiar ground to the desolation of his father’s house. He lifted a shield against that temptation. No hope could be found in those ruins.

He turned westward, drawn by another sort of gravity. Bel Amica. The beastman who had warned him, saving Abascar’s remnant from a siege, had
said that only Cyndere, the heiress of House Bel Amica, could be trusted to help House Abascar. Cyndere would welcome them with shelter, sustenance, and a future. It would take only a few days’ ride to enter an opulent house.

Memories of his last visit to those foggy, busy avenues taunted him. All that his people needed, all that he could not give them, could be found within Bel Amica. He’d come close to the queen, mapped much of her palace labyrinth, and learned just how intoxicating that house by the sea could be. He had wandered in mirror-lined marketplaces, watched triumphal ships return from faraway islands, seen the fishing nets burgeoning. If his half-starved, exhausted people ever tasted those riches, all that had survived Abascar’s collapse would be ruined. He mouthed one of Scharr ben Fray’s lessons: “The greatest threat to what is best is something persuasively good.”

There was only one direction open to him now—the path into vision, the way to New Abascar.

An arrow slammed into the underside of a thick bough nearby. Dangling from its shaft was a sling, and glittering seeds were spilling down into the campsite.

Cal-raven laughed. “Chillseed!”

“The Gatherers found it, my lord!” came Jes-hawk’s happy cry. “And in less than two days! Let’s go home!”

The company was jubilant with relief, and the king proclaimed Krawg and Warney as “Abascar’s Masters of Herbs.”

But the joy dissolved as Cal-raven handed the sling of chillseed to Shanyn and announced that now they could begin the second stage of their mission.

Shanyn flinched. “You can’t mean it. You brought me because it’s dangerous out here. I beg you—”

“And I’ve begged myself to find a better solution. I covet your company. But the mind must rule the heart in these matters, and you can get back to Say-ressa faster than any of us.”

“Must I go alone?”

“Send Gatherers,” mumbled Bowlder.

“Starvation and illness are as dangerous as beastmen and bandits,” Cal-raven growled. “Krawg and Warney can find food and healing herbs. Further, they look like ordinary travelers. Where we’re going, we mustn’t attract attention. Shanyn looks like nothing less than a king’s defender.” He shrugged. “Really, must you be so impressive?”

He did not get the laugh he wanted.

“I can be ugly if I have to be.” Shanyn exchanged a furtive, troubled glance with Jes-hawk, a fleeting connection that told Cal-raven more than he had guessed about them.

“Shanyn will take the chillseed,” he said with finality. “We’ll go on, following signs Scharr ben Fray left for me. He says they’ll lead to an answer for Abascar. If Red Moon Season passes before we get there, the vision will fade.”

“Vision?” Snyde groaned.

“If my teacher is right,” said the king, “then we’ll return with a story more exciting than anything shared at this campfire. It may be that the people of Abascar will rise up and march out from Barnashum with new hope and a new purpose.” His speech inspired a worrying silence. Cal-raven cleared his throat. “Shanyn, I am grateful. Ride fast for Barnashum, and I suspect you’ll arrive before midnight.”

The bristling plains were restless. Seedpods crackled. Springnippers sprang. And the golden waves of brush seemed to undulate, a trick of the light as a gauzy haze muddied the sun’s glow.

Quarreling and distressed, the people made their way down Barnashum’s cliffs and out into the maze. Archers and soldiers formed a protective perimeter around them as they entered the dark sea of thorn-barbed branches through which a host of beastmen had charged only a few months past. Who could say what prowled there now?

Flies moved in clouds across the paths. A flock of peskies appeared, darting through the tapestry of boughs and twittering giddily as if the exodus were the most exciting thing they’d seen all summer. But when a brascle crossed the sky, the peskies vanished, and the people of Abascar wished that
they, too, could take cover.
When brascles soar, beastmen prowl
—so went the children’s verse.

Tabor Jan scanned the parade for the mage, eager to learn what he could about this new threat growing in the ground. But Scharr ben Fray had not appeared since their encounter in the corridor.

The sun had only begun to descend when Tabor Jan moved to the front of the line and entered the Cragavar. As he did, he heard the archers behind him hiss a warning.

A vawn skulked beneath the trees. The creature was not trying to hide; her head wagged low, her long reptilian tail swishing the ground behind her. She shifted from one heavy hind foot to the other, her pathetic little forelegs stuck in their perpetual crumb-begging pose. She seemed anxious and uncertain.

Scharr ben Fray emerged from the crowd. He uttered a call that sounded like a vawn’s own shrill salute. The creature raised its head high, trumpeted a three-toned reply, and knocked saplings aside as it tromped eagerly through the underbrush.

“Rumpa!” The mage slapped the vawn’s shoulder with affection. “This is Rumpa,” he said to Tabor Jan. “She’s the ale boy’s vawn. But it seems she lost him somewhere.”

“The ale boy?”

“You call him Rescue.”

“Here’s Scharr ben Fray,” whispered a boy excitedly to the captain. “Will you ask him to tell us a story tonight?”

“I suspect he’ll have too much on his mind to bother.” Tabor Jan watched as Scharr ben Fray rode Rumpa on a winding progress between clusters of shoddy shieldfern tents. Sure enough, the old man was as immune to the awkward applause of his admirers as he was to the glares of those who distrusted him. His gaze seemed enthralled with scenes invisible to others. He leashed his vawn to a hanger-tree, then entered the glow of their smokeless, crumblewood bonfires without so much as a nod to anyone.

Despite his gratitude for the help of Cal-raven’s teacher, Tabor Jan became uneasy in his presence. That head held a library of history and experience.
But when the mage revealed any lines from those mysterious scrolls, he spoke with calculated restraint.

As the mage approached their makeshift bench, the boy sprang up. “He wants to talk with you!” It was almost a squeak, as if he did not understand that the old man was flesh and blood, could see and hear him.

Scharr ben Fray barely acknowledged the youth as he sat down, folding his legs beneath him and staring into—no, through—the flames. Tabor Jan refused to flatter the mage with questions. Instead, he lifted his shieldfern plate, folded it, and poured what remained of his supper into his mouth, then cast the leaf aside.

Scharr ben Fray answered as if he had been asked. “You’ll have chillseed soon. The rider will be here even before I’ve bid you farewell.”

Tabor Jan folded his arms, noisily chewing the seeds, berries, and roasted scratchwings. He would not ask how this secretive meddler came by such information about approaching riders. In the hour before the company had stopped for that first laborious endeavor of setting up camp in the trees, Scharr ben Fray had vanished.
Just when his wisdom might have been most useful
, Tabor Jan thought,
he’s off on secret business. And even now he seems uninterested in what’s going on around him. He’s solving puzzles only he can see
.

“Ravens,” said Scharr ben Fray, rocking back and forth slowly. “Gossipmongers, they are. And spies. Eager to impress me in hopes I’ll reward them. Interpreting their noise is a chore. But they give a good report. Cal-raven’s almost to Mawrnash. All according to plan.”

Mawrnash?
The captain choked on a seed.
Whose plan was that?

“Yes,” continued the mage. “I’m southbound for House Jenta, the garden that grew me. The brotherhood may be some help to us.”

“The brotherhood? Would you ask them for parchment for us to throw at the beastmen?” Standing, Tabor Jan seized a small, stripped sapling he had dragged to the fire and cast it onto the orange glow. “Those sulking scroll-readers have never shown Abascar kindness before.” He spat out a tough shred of scratchwing. “And I thought you’d left that world behind long ago.”

“Maps, journals—to reach Abascar’s destination, we’ll need reliable guidance. My older brother knows more than he lets on. Best to know the obstacles in our path before we face them. Don’t you agree?”

As the sapling crackled and blackened in the flames, it writhed in jerking spasms. It reminded Tabor Jan of the time he’d killed a bonestalker in just this fashion. He hadn’t seen one of those headless nighttime predators in years, but then, a bonestalker was hard to see at all. With limbs and body as narrow as sticks, the eyeless, bloodsucking insect wore its bones on the outside—coal black and unbreakable. Its knife-claws skewered prey, and a whiplike tongue drew blood as through a straw. He’d seen a bonestalker climb a man’s leg and kill him, and he swore from that point on that he’d seen the most frightening killer in the Expanse. Now he knew otherwise.

“The dangers we face out here consume my attention.” He brushed crumbs from his beard. “I cannot bother to worry about unknown obstacles just yet. I want you to tell me how we’re going to fight the menace that drove us from our caves.”