The Whispering Trees (26 page)

The sweet smell emanating from the chimneys was almost unbearably strong here. Kara could feel it on her teeth, as though she had eaten too much rock candy.

“What is that?” she asked, pointing toward the plumes of smoke.

“The sap from the Fenroot trees,” Safi said. “They burn it along with the leaves. It's not part of the process.”

Though she would never again be a Child of the Fold, Kara winced at the thought of the holy tree being treated with such casual disregard.

“What are they doing with the Fenroots, then?” Kara asked.

“It's easier if you see for yourself,” said Safi.

She gestured toward the nearest hole. Kara knelt before it and peered into the building.

The interior bustled with activity, lit by row upon row of candles. At one long worktable, several burly men shaved the bark from the Fenroot trunks that extended a third of the way into the open building, then sawed them into smaller sections. These were transported to the next table. Here, workers chopped the dark wood into tiny pieces that were gathered in wheelbarrows and rolled
across the dirt floor to the water-filled trough running across the center of the building. Women with long paddles and blank expressions stirred the water.

“What are they doing?” asked Taff.

“They're making pulp,” said Safi, “for paper.”

“That's your big secret?” Taff asked. “Paper?”

Safi motioned for them to continue. Remaining in a crouch, Kara followed her along the side of the building. She stopped to glance through another hole and saw five villagers standing at a table, mixing white pulp with their gloved hands like bakers kneading dough. One man paused and tilted a half-filled beaker over the mixture. Three drops of a thick crimson fluid fell into the pulp.

“What's that stuff?” Kara asked.

Safi shook her head. Either she didn't know—or didn't want to say.

At the next table sat a dozen workers, each holding a wooden frame enclosing a rectangular screen of wire mesh. Kara watched one tired-looking woman take two
handfuls of pulp from the wooden buckets stationed in the center of the table and spread it evenly over the screen. When she had pressed all the liquid out, the woman flipped the frame, and a thin rectangle of pulp fell onto waxed paper. A different worker took this to the adjoining room, where Kara assumed it would be left to dry. The woman shook out her frame and reached into the bucket, starting the process anew.

“There's plenty of other trees in the Thickety,” Kara said. “If you want to make paper, why use Fenroots?”

“And why are they doing all this in the middle of the night?” asked Taff.

Safi shrugged. “That's the way it's always been done. Bind at dark. Use Fenroots for the pulp. It won't work otherwise.”

“What won't work?”

“This way,” said Safi.

They followed her to the far end of the building. Shifting from foot to foot, Safi pointed at a horizontal
crack long enough for both Kara and Taff to look through at the same time.

“There,” she said.

This section of the building felt completely different than the others. There was none of the soft conversation Kara had heard at the other tables, idle workplace chatter characteristic of any job, even one as strange as this. The villagers seated before her—at desks, not tables—worked in complete silence, focused on the task at hand.

One of them was Breem.

On his desk was a stack of paper. He fanned the pages and, with a well-practiced movement, hit the stack against the desk until the edges of the paper fell perfectly in line. Once Breem was satisfied, he placed the straightened stack in a wooden frame nailed to the side of his desk, then twisted a handle that squeezed the pages together like a vise.

Reaching beneath his desk, Breem withdrew a single spool of what looked like thread. He passed it through the
eye of a needle and pulled it taut. Kara heard a thrumming noise. Slowly and steadily, Breem pulled the needle through a premade hole in the stack and began binding the pages together, pausing only once to wipe a glistening sheen of sweat from his forehead. Kara watched, mesmerized by his skill.

Why did Safi feel the need to show us this? This isn't dangerous! It's wonderful!

It was only as the binding drew to a close that everything changed.

Blue rays of light burst from the book's spine. Breem calmly leaned out of the light's path, squinting at the sudden brightness and twisting the vise tighter. He continued to sew with steady hands. The light sliced through a ceiling beam, raining ash onto his shoulders. Safi gasped. Breem looked up, just for a moment, and light nicked his forehead, puckering the skin there to a blackened welt. He shook his head at his own foolishness and continued sewing, faster now. The vise rattled as the pages of the book
struggled against their captor. Even the thread offered resistance, vibrating fast enough to slicken Breem's fingers with blood. Safi's father never hesitated, however, stopping only after he had pulled the knot tight and cut the thread with a hooked knife.

As though a flame had been extinguished, the rays of light vanished.

“This one's ready!” Breem exclaimed.

An old woman with a hunched back slunk into the room. Breem handed her the neat stack of bound pages. Over the woman's left arm hung a rectangular cut of unusual black leather. Kara recognized the material immediately. It looked wet, but would be dry to the touch.

“But you can't just
make
one,” she said. “That's not possible!”

But of course it's possible
, Kara thought.
Everything comes from something else. Everything has an origin
.

Even grimoires
.

Kara grabbed Safi by the shoulders. The girl's eyes widened in terror, but Kara didn't care about that right now. There was something she needed to know.

“How many?” she asked. “
How many has he made?
”

Safi's eyes shifted toward the smaller buildings behind them. In light of this new development, Kara recognized them for what they were immediately.

Storehouses.

She sprinted toward the nearest one and opened the door. It was unlocked. Kara supposed that made sense. The hundreds of books piled inside were useless to anyone except witches.

Grimoires.

Kara entered the storehouse, following a narrow path that wove between the carefully stacked piles. Most of the covers were black, but not all: one was the dark green of a long-extinct reptile, another the red of a dying sun. Another grimoire, leaning open on its side, had a splotch of fur still attached to its binding.
The tanner was careless
with this one
, Kara thought, and as she touched the cover a sibilant voice squirmed into her head.

YES
, WEXARI
! USE ME! WE CAN CREATE SUCH TEMPTING SPELLS TOGETHER AND DRAW THE OTHER WITCHES LIKE MAGGOTS TO . . .

Kara withdrew her finger.

The voice sickened her, but even worse was the small part of her that
wanted
to hold a grimoire again.

The temptation is still there. It always will be
.

“Be careful,” Safi said, catching up. “These books have magic in them.”

Taff gasped. “Wait? These are all
grimoires
!” He eyed the stacks of books. “That's not good.”

Kara bit her lower lip as a disturbing thought occurred to her. “Are there any witches in Kala Malta?”

“No,” Safi said, quickly shaking her head. “Definitely not. Sordyr tests us when we're very young. The girls, that is.”

“How does he test you?” Kara asked.

Safi shrugged. “When we turn six he asks us if we see anything in the book. I guess if you're a witch you see a spell or something.”

“No witches,” Kara said, pondering the books before her. “Why does he need all these grimoires, then?”

“He's going to bring them to the World,” said Safi, “and find witches to use them. That's what I saw in my vision.” She closed her eyes, remembering. “A girl speaks words from a book and the village below her shakes into dust. Another woman speaks words that pluck the dead from their graves like weeds. More women, more books. Too fast to see. Raging wind. Black clouds that blot out the sun.”

Safi opened her eyes.

“The scariest part of my vision,” she said, “is when all the images stop. Like there's nothing to see anymore.”

They stood in silence. Wind whistled through the gaps in the Divide, muffling the rhythmic sawing sounds coming from the large building.

“Please don't think ill of Father,” Safi said. “It's not like he
wants
to help Sordyr. He doesn't have a choice.” She trailed her fingers across the nearest grimoire, its cover as white as a blinding snowstorm. “My father says these books are the most dangerous things in the world.”

Kara pulled Safi's hand away from the grimoire.

“Your father's right,” she said.

K
ara woke early the next morning, eager to make the journey deep beneath the Thickety. She needed to tell Rygoth about the grimoires. Sordyr's oldest enemy would surely know what he was planning. She might even know how to stop him.

During the ride to the shaft, however, a steady rain began to fall. Though it was a balmy morning the drops were frigid ice picks against Kara's neck and hands. Within minutes the drops began to fall harder, turning the ground into a sloshy quagmire. Kara's hair flattened against her skull.

“This isn't going to happen today,” said Breem. “We're going back to the village.” The burn mark on his forehead sheened red, and a fresh wound sheared through his thick beard.
The newborn grimoires had not been kind to him last night
.

“A little rain doesn't bother me,” Kara said.

“That shaft is unstable to begin with!” Breem shouted. “Add water and it gets even worse. We send the cage down there and the mud might come loose, trap you in that cave forever. Does
that
bother you?”

Though Breem's tone was sharp, she thought she heard the slightest hint of concern in his voice.
He is not a bad man
, she thought.
He is simply trapped here. Like me
.

When they returned to the hut, Kara climbed beneath her blanket and fell instantly asleep. Though the past few months had taught her many things about magic, quite a few practical lessons had been imparted as well. Not the least of these was the value of sleeping when the opportunity presented itself.

It was late afternoon when she awoke. The rain had stopped. Kara laced her boots, expecting to head to Rygoth's cave directly, but Breem informed her that they would have to wait until the shaft dried out.

“How long?” Kara asked.

“At least two days,” he said. “Could be more if we get another storm. The air has that feel about it.”

“Sordyr won't be happy.”

Breem shrugged. “There are some things beyond even the Forest Demon's control,” he said. “You'd best get your rest. I'm sure he'll expect you to make up for lost time when the shaft is usable again.”

“Where's Taff?”

“There's a place water gathers after a heavy rainfall, makes a pool of sorts. It drains quickly, though, and the children like to swim there while they have the chance. Safi took your brother.”

“That was kind of her,” Kara said.

“There are not many children Safi's age in Kala Malta,” Breem said. “Really, there are not many children at all.”

“It's good then. Taff and her being friends.”

“I suppose.”

After Breem left, Kara decided to take a walk. As she traveled along the main stretch of road, she was astonished by the variety of faces she passed: dark-skinned and light-skinned, blue eyes and brown.

This place is so different from De'Noran
, she thought.

The road, rutted and muddy from the recent rain, ran parallel to the Divide, and every so often she passed a man or woman speaking to its shifting branches. Some spoke in hushed voices, others in a more conversational tone.
They're visiting their loved ones
, Kara thought,
like in a graveyard
. A little boy placed a wreath around a curved branch that resembled the sloping shoulders of a man, and Kara looked away, not wanting to trespass upon his grief.

Finally the road began to curve away from the Divide. Kara passed a few more villagers, most carrying baskets
on their head, their eyes set dead ahead. Only one man addressed Kara directly, nearly making her scream when he fell to his knees before her.

“You will free our master,” he whispered. He pushed back the hood of his purple cloak, revealing a twisted thorn driven through the bridge of his nose. “We sing of you! We sing your name!”

Kara backed away and the man followed her for a time, though he made no attempt to close the distance between them. Eventually he veered off the road and entered a ramshackle building coated with a thick, tarry substance. Rows of animal pelts covered the roof. From within, Kara could hear the chants and moans of an entire congregation.