The Farwalker's Quest (38 page)

“That's okay.” She shook her head. As much as she'd always yearned for that thrill, no speed or wind could wash away the sadness of a bike made from Mirayna's sick chair. “I mean, thank you,” she added hastily. “But someone else might need a wheeled chair.”

He sighed. “Maybe so.” He nudged the horse into a walk.

As they drew near Canberra Docks, Ariel understood better why Scarl hadn't wanted to linger in Hartwater. Her insides cramped and her skin crawled with apprehension. The familiar smells of cottonwoods and the sea, the distant cries of gulls, the salt-damp air on her cheeks all welcomed her home. But they also reminded her that while these wild things remained, the most significant face of her home had been lost.

The horse crested a rise, and its riders looked down on the docks. With the sun low, boats angled back from the sea. A few roofs winked in the distance. Ariel realized with a start which one had been hers. Slate shingles were missing, snatched by some storm. No one had replaced them. No peat smoke rose from the chimney, no herbs hung to dry from the eaves. The windows were shuttered, the rear garden bare. Behind this sharp reality flickered an image Ariel had seen in a dream: the village square as a graveyard. It wasn't unreal enough.

“Stop,” she said, her voice shrill. “Scarl, stop!”

He reined in the horse.

“I don't want to go in,” she whispered.

“I do,” said Zeke. “For a little while. Maybe not long.”

“They'll lynch me if they see me,” Scarl said. “I'd planned to set you down about here and say good-bye.”

“No.” Ariel clutched his arm where it reached around her for the reins. “You can't.”

“Where else could I take you?” Scarl asked quietly. “Surely you've seen enough of me.”

Where else indeed? The question wormed through Ariel's mind.

“Ashes,” she murmured.

Like a telling dart springing open, the Farwalker dozing
inside her snapped awake. Ariel twisted hard on the horse, nearly knocking Zeke off with her elbow. She beamed up at Scarl. They hadn't spoken of the dart since their meeting with Mason, but its riddle, understood, now shone in her eyes.

“You can take me to the Vault,” Ariel said. “It does exist, and I know where it is.”

At Tree-Singer Abbey, only the seasons had changed. Goats grazed the hillside. Ash knelt plucking weeds from a garden. He straightened to see two young people and a Finder crossing the yard on a horse.

“Oh, great boughs and branches!” he cried. “My lost goats, are you safe?” He peered with suspicion at Scarl. “My old limbs can't fight, but the trees on these hills hear me well. Shall I beg them to thwart this man's path?”

Ariel threw her leg over the horse's neck, slid to the ground, and ran to give Ash a hug. “He's my friend,” she told him. “We've come for a visit.”

“If anyone here is a prisoner, good Tree-Singer,” called Scarl, “it's me.”

A smile lit the Tree-Singer's face. He returned Ariel's hug, then spread his arms wide. “Welcome, then! I didn't expect you this time. The trees have their secrets yet.”

Impatient with courtesies, Ariel broke in before Scarl and Ash had even finished introducing themselves.

“We know about the Vault,” she announced.

“Vault?” Ash repeated. “The Vault of long legend? The trees laugh at those who ask about it, you know.” He genuinely didn't seem to know more.

He insisted on serving them tea. When he'd heard the barest bones of their reason for coming, Ash again shook his head.

“Storians have come here before,” he said, “though it's been a long while since the last. They spend a lot of time in our goat pen. There's nothing there but goat droppings and ghosts. I've lived at the abbey for most of my life, and I've never found a hint of any other mystery, either. Not within these walls.”

His bewilderment scratched Ariel's confidence. Until then, she'd known absolutely that the second telling dart pointed here. Zeke had said it: “The Vault is in ashes”—not the dust of a fire, but the place of someone named Ash. Ash's home, Ash's abbey. And Ash had told them himself that his name had been used at the abbey for long generations.

“Has Mason Tree-Singer ever come here?” Scarl asked.

Ash's wrinkles shifted subtly. “Mason? No. A few of our group are from Libros. They may have spoken with him in the past. But not here, nor recently. And not me.”

Ariel studied Ash's kind, watery eyes. She didn't think he was lying, but he knew something about Mason that had not been said. Perhaps Mason had changed his mind about letting her go. She couldn't believe Ash would harm them, but coming here still may have been a mistake. A knot of anxiety formed in her belly. She was tired of fleeing, of living in dread. And she wasn't sure she could bear to have her hopes dashed again.

Her fingers sought the bead at her throat. Having seen her through many difficult trials, it renewed her faith in her instincts
and skills. She reminded herself that this particular Ash needn't know it for the Vault to be there.

“Can we look around, anyhow?” she asked.

“Of course.” Ash gestured to the doorway. “Wander as you like.”

As they rose, Zeke asked if the Tree-Singers had seen or heard Misha lately.

“Not since you left,” Ash replied. “We'd noticed that our rafters had emptied.”

“He came with us,” Ariel told him.

“I suspected as much. Either that, or you scared him away!” Ash's smile faded. He dropped a hand on Ariel's shoulder. “Spirits may be drawn to great good or great evil. I feared for what you would find with him on your shoulder.”

“Both,” Zeke muttered.

Ash studied his face. “If you will, Zeke, and you have time, come find me. Let us chat as we did before. I'm curious about things the trees have hinted to me.”

Zeke glanced at Ariel, then shrugged. “We can talk now.”

He and Ash returned to the hearth, leaving Ariel and Scarl alone in the hall.

“If you're waiting for me, don't,” Scarl murmured. “If pure finding could do it, it would have been found long ago.”

“I'm not sure where to look.” That wasn't quite true. Ariel wanted to start with Misha's grand, sunlit room, if it truly existed. She doubted, however, that the Vault simply awaited on the far side of a door.

“Don't look for it at all, Ariel. You're the Farwalker. Walk to it.”

Ariel asked her feet where they wanted to go. Not sure of
their answer, she drifted down the hall. Scarl followed a few paces behind.

They wandered to the cherry tree's courtyard. Entering it again under sunlight, rather than dreamlight, made Ariel smile. Then her eyes fell on the stone bench. An entire handful of long, pale feathers lay there.

Seeing the smile drop from her face, Scarl touched her arm. “What?”

Ariel shivered. Hoping Misha had left them as a sign, she picked them up. They whispered to her fingers of creatures long dead.

They also, it seemed, whispered to her feet. A familiar tugging drew at Ariel's boots after long weeks without it. She crossed the courtyard and ducked back inside, passing several wooden doors. None were the one that she wanted.

Turning a corner, Ariel stopped. Misha's door stood before her, no dream. Feeling his absence like a missing tooth in her mouth, she raised her palms to rest them flat on the wood. Its carved whorls seemed to speak.

She pushed, confident she had shoved it open before.

The room behind it didn't blaze with light as it had in her dreams. Many of the windows had busted, their cracks carefully pasted, bigger gaps plugged with bits of cork or carved wood. A few were shuttered instead. Nonetheless, sunshine gleamed on the many long tables. They were just as empty as Ariel had seen them before.

A motion behind the door caught her eye. Expecting Misha, Ariel stepped eagerly in. A startled squeak escaped her. Tucked in the corner beneath one of the windows, Madrona Tree-Singer regarded Ariel with surprise. The table before her
was spread with tanned goatskins. Ariel would have guessed the woman was busy making boots but for one thing—her fingers cradled a feather.

Madrona smiled. With a swish of the feather, she invited Ariel and Scarl closer. Dishes on the table held what looked like strong tea, but in colors: red, white, black, two greens, rust, brown. Paint, Ariel guessed, though she'd only seen whitewash on boats. This paint created trees on the goatskins, sweeps of color evoking trunks, boughs, and leaves.

Madrona dipped the stem of her feather in a dish. It lifted a few drops of red. The woman shifted her arm and the drops became cherries on a tree.

“Ah.” With compliments on the beautiful work, Ariel handed Madrona the feathers she'd found in the courtyard. Dipping her head in thanks, the woman set them on the windowsill, which already held an entire collection. Many were stained with paint on their feathery edges.

While Scarl lingered near the Tree-Singer to watch, Ariel wandered the length of the room. Confused but not yet despairing, she trailed her fingers on the tables just as Misha had done. She could imagine him in a room full of painters, all bent over goatskins. But how many paintings of trees could even an abbey of Tree-Singers need? Something didn't fit.

She paced, her legs restless. Her boots tapped overloud on the flagstones.
Tap-tap, tap, tap … tap
. With a self-conscious glance toward Madrona, Ariel tried to step more softly. Fortunately, the echoing sound of her footsteps seemed to be irritating no one but her.

At the far end of the room, she grasped why. She turned suddenly to Scarl.

“I want Zeke.”

When Zeke learned what Ariel wanted, he simply picked a spot on the painting room floor, stretched out on his belly, and laid his ear against a flagstone. He closed his eyes. His lips moved. Ariel struggled to remain quiet and still. Her feet wanted to jitter.

Sooner than she expected, Zeke raised himself on one hand. “Bits of dead trees and dust.”

“There's something else under these stones,” Ariel insisted. “A tunnel. Or—” A Vault, she wanted to say. She bit the word back, not trusting herself.

Zeke shrugged. “That's not what the stones say.”

Ash and Madrona stood near her worktable, watching somberly.

“Lift one, if it will please you,” Ash offered. “Nothing but their weight holds them in place. It may not be easy, though. They have lain there for many a tree's life.”

Ariel turned a pleading look toward Scarl. Doubt cramped his face, but he cracked his knuckles.

“We can try.” He surveyed the floor. “Is there one you want most?”

Ariel's feet crossed the floor for at least the tenth time. The dark flagstones came in all sizes. The skill with which they'd been matched together had left little space for even dust to fall between them.

Ariel stopped. “This one.” Not much larger than the sole of her boot, it filled a spot between two greater brothers.

Scarl glanced at Zeke. “It can't hurt to ask for a little cooperation,” he said.

After Zeke whispered an appeal to Ariel's choice, Scarl knelt beside him. With a new knife he'd gotten in Hartwater,
he scratched at the gap around the stone to try to make a purchase for fingers. Then he wedged the knife into the crack.

“You pry with this and I'll try to get a hold beneath,” he told Zeke.

“No, let me pry it.” Ariel flounced down to join them, wrapping her fingers around the knife handle.

“The blade may snap,” Scarl warned. “Watch that it doesn't fly up and cut you.” He twitched an eyebrow at her. “You may owe me another knife in a moment.”

Zeke crowded nearer to Scarl, his hands also ready. After another warning about broken fingers, the Finder gave one more instruction.

“You did well enough in the cave, Zeke. You count it now.”

As Zeke whispered, “Three,” Ariel put her weight against the knife.

Either Zeke still didn't know his own skills, or the stone Ariel had chosen had long wished to shift from a tiresome place. The knife rocked the edge up immediately. Scarl's fingertips caught a grip. His wrists and forearms strained to keep it. A half-formed plea escaped Zeke and the flat rock abruptly flipped backward, banging against Scarl's knee.

“Ouch.”

“Strong work!” Ash, who had stepped up to watch, clapped his hands. “But it doesn't look as though anything lies beneath, does it?”

Ariel pawed at the flattened dirt. She uncovered nothing but more soil. To make sure, she slid the knife blade straight into the earth. It slipped in to the hilt. Drooping, she resisted the desire to yank it back out and throw it across the room.

“Ariel.”

She looked up at Scarl's soft call. He'd drawn back to rub
his bruised knee. Now his fingertips coursed the flat underside of the rock they had moved.

A handprint, once crimson but darkened with time, neatly marked the smooth stone. Overtop and along each of the fingers, spidery symbols had been added in white. They easily could have been drawn with the tip of a feather.

Although Ariel didn't know what it was, excitement skittered through her. “What's it mean?”

“Fives,” Scarl mused. “I think it's a lesson. Look. Five fingers. Dots of five colors, with symbols next to each—the names of the colors. White lines on each finger, counting up one to five, and symbols next to those—the names of the numbers. Five shapes, five trade symbols, five little animals. It looks like something you might use to teach children. But instead of reciting the names for each thing, they'd learn symbols.”

He handed it to her and turned to pry up another. The absence of the first made it easy. The second stone was covered with much more complex markings.

“Oh, how I wish my grandfather could see this.” Scarl traced the signs with one finger. “We'll need a host of Storians to explain these. But what a find.” He set it aside to flop over another.