The Ale Boy's Feast (31 page)

The bell fell from Auralia’s hand, chiming a note of sugar on the air. The root released her, shocked.

Then the tree turned, an invisible hand twisting it around. The bark split and peeled. And as if they were suddenly too heavy, the boughs groaned, broke loose, and shattered into wriggling twigs.

Auralia snatched up the bell and pressed it to her breast as she ran down the hill. When she looked back, the roots were following her, having torn themselves loose from the tree, slithering and twitching along like worms.

ilver cave crickets flitted between blades of tall grasses in this whispering marsh tunnel. Puffs of grasswisp seemed to sleepwalk on the breeze, and when they drifted into torches on the travelers’ rafts, they dissolved in bright flares.

“I wish you could see this, ’Ralia,” murmured the ale boy, for in his exhaustion the details of his environment were illusory and deceptive. Faces blurred, time sped up and slowed down.

For a moment he remembered that it was not Auralia who cradled his head in her lap. Nella Bye stroked his forehead with her fingertips as if he were her child. And even though she could not see, she replied, “It’s beautiful.”

“It’s difficult,” answered Kar-balter, straining against the oar-stick, his torso running with sweat.

“It’s getting louder.” Em-emyt, poling on the next raft, cocked his head as a sound like soft drumbeats crescendoed into a cacophony.

“We’re sinking!” said Kar-balter.

The rafts dragged on grit and silt, slowing to a stop as the noise faded. Water rushed past as if in a hurry to escape. It disappeared, leaving the tunnel a muddy slick of silt and grass, stranding the raft parade.

“Since when do rivers just stop flowing?” Kar-balter stabbed at the silt as if he could shock the river into starting again. “Wait. What’s this?”

Slick, silver shapes writhed and flopped in the muck all around them.

“Ha-ha!” Kar-balter dropped the oar and jumped off the raft, groping for them. He knelt among a tumble of massive golden boulders, closing his hands around an eyeless eel with black-and-white stripes. Then he stood, eyes widening. “Umm …”

All around him the golden boulders were rising from the muck
—smuck, smack, slosh!
Sturdy feet lifted their flat undersides from the river’s floor. Kar-balter climbed back on the raft.

The shapes were all similar—rugged domes, each barbed with a single white horn that angled forward. They were shells, and from breaks in the edges emerged blunt-beaked heads to probe the air.

“Golden hermits,” said Em-emyt. “Some of the best eatin’ that rivers have ever served up.”

Kar-balter dropped the eel. “Let’s cook one.”

“Not yet,” said Irimus. “If the river stopped, it can start again, right?”

With their sharp horns aimed upriver, the turtles marched together as if to battle.

“Follow them,” rasped the ale boy, listening intently to the echoes. “There’s more water ahead. And a big open space.”

“It’s all our dreams come true,” Kar-balter groaned. “Another cave.” He began to cry.

They towed the rafts through the marsh until they came to a stone barrier and stared at it, astonished. It stood as high as Kar-balter’s shoulders, damming a vast lake from the tunnel.

“Did this just spring up like a gate?” Kar-balter peered over its edge. “By Cal-marcus’s booze. Not sure what we’ve found … but we’ve found it.”

Crystal stalactites hung from the ceiling as densely as brush-bristles. Glowing in subtle gradients of peacock blue, peach-skin gold, soft lavender, and the silverblue of Deep Lake’s twilight, they were the earth’s grandest chandelier, their lights mirrored in the lake. The river poured in from the north and flowed out through various shadowy exits where the voices of many streams sang and sighed.

“It’s like a crossing,” said the ale boy as Irimus lifted him to the view.

Em-emyt grunted, climbing over the barrier, then splashed into the lake. The ale boy laughed when the old soldier surfaced, for he looked like nothing more than a disembodied head bobbing along.

“Have we found the others? Do you see Batey?” The tallest in the company, Raechyl looked over the barrier for the man she loved. “Where could they be?”

Em-emyt paddled his way to the left along the edge of the bowl toward a place where the bank had been exposed. The ground was rumpled like disrupted blankets, thick with the roots of underground trees that grew in a small, silvery grove. The ale boy counted seventeen slender trunks with outspread boughs like shrug trees. When the breeze gusted, leaves like silver coils streamed out over the lake and spiraled down to glitter on its surface. Around the crooked bowl, more trees were submerged, branches straining to keep fruit-heavy foliage above the surface.

The turtles were rearing up, pawing the barrier with the stout stumps of their legs. So the passengers, three to a turtle, lifted them. The turtles’ legs flailed, but their craggy faces remained expressionless, accepting whatever was unfolding. When the turtles were released on the other side of the barrier, they splashed heavily and sank. Then their golden domes surfaced again to drift like barges with tarps thrown over their cargo.

“There goes a delicacy,” said Em-emyt as one paddled past his fat head.

Next they lifted the rafts over the barrier and climbed onto them to float across the lake. Currents swirled around them, winding toward the exits. Kar-balter suggested that they row after the turtles to the tree-grove shore, while the lake’s current tried to pull them aside and into another tunnel.

“Batey might have taken any of these passages,” said Raechyl. “How can it be that the river flowed through one gate and now it flows through another?”

“Rivers don’t move like Bel Amican trains, switching tracks and taking different routes,” mused Kar-balter.

“They do here,” said Irimus. “And I suspect that some of the sources are clearer than others.” He scanned the array of trickles, rushes, and streams spilling
into the bowl from different heights, and then pointed to the central source—the wide incoming river. Bright wings danced in the arch of its mouth. “Cavebirds.”

“Food,” said Kar-balter. “See why they’re excited? Fish are jumping.”

“Can you see the colors?” the ale boy asked Nella Bye, touching her chin so she faced the ceiling’s blue and pink array.

“A little. Looks like a child’s painting.”

The ale boy remembered thinking the same thing in Auralia’s caves.

“Like the Northchildren say,” murmured Mulla Gee, “the world’s full of canvases.”

As the rafts coasted to the smooth bank, the passengers climbed off and lay down, famished and exhausted. Kar-balter pressed on toward the flowing source, eyes on the leaping fish. Some Bel Amicans followed with a net.

“It’s like we’re inside a body,” said the ale boy.

“And this is the heart,” said Irimus Rain.

“Look!” called Alysa. The tireless Bel Amican had moved through the trees and a field of jagged stone teeth to touch the smooth stone wall. “Someone was here. They’ve painted a story.”

Faint sketches illustrated a familiar sequence—a crowd of children following a giant who led them away from a rising line of mountains.

“And so our great ancestor Tammos Raak fled over the Forbidding Wall,” murmured Irimus, tracing the lines. “He set up the city of Inius Throan, but his children fought for power … here. They turned against him … here. He fled. Here he’s climbing the tallest starcrown tree. I’ve never seen this version. He’s sending a signal with a mirror or a glowstone. As if he’s calling for help from the northern mountains.”

“What’s this circle?” asked Alysa.

“I’m not sure. But it seems to be like a boat in the sky. A boat carrying ghosts.”

“Moon-spirits?” asked Raechyl.

“The boat.” Irimus stared at the picture, incredulous at this variation of a story he’d known since childhood. “The boat crashes into the starcrown trees. Tammos Raak falls. His tower topples. The earth breaks open.”

“I know where we are,” said Aronakt, gesturing to further reaches of the walls. They were lined with tremendous pillars, smooth columns crisscrossing, some as stout as marrowwood trees, others as slender as snakes. “Starcrown roots,” he said. “This story took place above us.”

“Mawrnash,” said Irimus.

“The water!” came Kar-balter’s voice from the mouth of the incoming river. “It’s clean here! And look!” All around him enormous otters swam, dove, wrestled, and blinked at him curiously.

“They’re well-fed,” laughed Em-emyt. “The birds seem healthy too. I’d say this current’s clean. We can eat these fish.”

“The birds,” mused Aronakt. “There are so many. There must be a way out and not far off.”

“Glory!” shouted Kar-balter. He had caught a heavy tree branch that had sailed into the lake. “Look at this!” He took the oar and began paddling toward shore, towing the branch.

As they drew it ashore, they marveled. Its leaves were green, and a shrillow’s nest rested in a clutch of twigs. As Kar-balter pried apart strands of the nest, eggs tumbled out. Alysa’s quick hands caught them and gathered them into a pile. “This grew above ground,” she said.

“Who will help me build a fire?” shouted Irimus. “We have what we need for a meal.”

Kar-balter burst into tears again, this time for joy.

As the Bel Amicans spread the net and cast the spear, gathering fish on the rafts, the Abascars moved about on the shoreline, gathering driftwood from the exposed banks and stacking it for kindling.

Leaning back against Nella Bye, who sat against one of the trees, the ale boy watched a fire bloom on the bank and passengers crowd around it. Ark-restor held one of the old Abascar shields upside down like a frying pan over the fire, and Alysa carefully cracked a shell. The crackle and spatter as the egg spilled across the hot metal was a pleasing sound, as was the scent of seared fish. The crowd groaned with longing and then laughed.

“I thought I’d brought everyone from slavery to starvation,” said the ale boy, his throat tightening with emotion.

“But we’ll eat tonight,” said Nella Bye. “You’ve fulfilled your promise, dear boy.”

“Not quite yet,” he said. “We’re still underground. But the air is fresher. I think we’re close.”

“Closer than you think,” said Nella Bye softly.

“What do you mean?”

“There’s a break in the wall here behind us. It goes up. All the way to the surface. I can smell it.”

“How do you know? What makes you—” The ale boy’s question caught in his throat as a cool breeze that smelled of needled trees brushed his face.

“Keep quiet for now,” said Nella Bye. “Don’t interrupt them. If they discover this path, they’ll all rush up through the wall.”

The boy stood and crept up the steep slope, slipping through the stone teeth as if trying not to wake a monster. He leaned into a break in the wall, where he saw muddy footprints that had dried upon the natural stair.

I’ve found them. Batey, Petch, and the others
.

Then he heard the sound—a man’s voice crying out, answered by the sound of a harsh, bitter shout. He leaned wearily against the edge of the break, closing his eyes.

And then, as the fireside crowd was entranced by the scents and sounds of their project, he quietly ventured up into the dark.

For Batey, Petch, and the five other Bel Amicans, leaf-sailing had been a thrill at first. Batey had surrendered himself to the rush, confident the others were not far behind.

But when they’d struck the narrow place, their sail slapping across the passageway and stifling the wind, his excitement had quickly collapsed. He was hungry and exhausted.

When Petch argued that they should fold up the sails and press on, Batey tried
to challenge him, saying they should wait for the others. But no one had found the strength to fight Petch’s passion to take charge.

Entering the large lake where streams flowed in and out, Petch had seen a cavebird escape through a break. He persuaded the others to follow him up the narrow crevasse.