Thornghost (20 page)

Sebastifer brightened at the mention of the Summerhill cat. “That sneaky old scoundrel. He's still around, then?” He stood up tall and looked Niklas in the eyes. “I wish I could help, but there is no way out of this castle for us. The trolls watch all the doors. Like cats, yes.”

Niklas bit his lip. He heard footsteps now. “Then do you know where we could hide until we think of something?”

Sebastifer's ears perked up. “Yes, I do! There is a place not far from here where the trolls never go.”

“Why not?” Secret said, ever suspicious.

Sebastifer's smile looked almost happy. “Because they're too scared.”

T
hey had walked into another trap.

That was Niklas's first and almost overwhelming thought as they stepped into the vault. The entire room was filled with skullbeaks, perched on banisters, soaring under the ceiling or laid out on a worktable in the middle of the room, cloth wings spread out.

Niklas felt Secret coil up, ready to spring.

“Wait!” Sebastifer slunk across the floor, tail tucked in. “They're not dangerous. Not yet. This is where the Sparrow King makes them. This is his workshop.”

There were tongs, bone cutters, scissors, and needles. Rolls of cloth and kegs of fluids. And piles and piles of bones, on the table and in big wicker baskets along the walls.

Some skullbeaks hung suspended from hooks, looking
complete to Niklas's eye, but Sebastifer shook his head. “They don't have Thorndrip in them yet.”

“You mean the black liquid they put in you?”

“The Sparrow King injects it into their beaks and then Rafsa wakes them with her runes. They're not alive, not truly. They're bound to him with a talisman, one he wears around his neck. He sees what they see, they do what he wants.”

Niklas walked over to the table, where the wings of an enormous skullbeak trailed over the edges. It was the biggest one they had seen yet. He dared himself to go closer, closer, until he stared straight into its empty eyes. “They remind me of my mother's mobiles in the bird room.”

“That's because they
are
your mother's mobiles. The Sparrow King got the idea from Erika.” Sebastifer wagged his tail briefly. “She had such a talent for making things, my girl.”

“But how could he know about her designs?” Niklas rubbed his forehead. “Unless . . . you told him?”

“I never meant to.” Sebastifer pushed back some of the matted fur on his arm. “He found out through this.”

His forearm was marked with a triangle with an
R
inside. Niklas didn't recognize it from his mother's notebook. “Rafsa makes her own runes? What does it do?”

“It lets you read my mind. Whether I want you to or not.” Sebastifer coughed, and Niklas gave him another swig of his water bottle. He swallowed gratefully. “We
were linked, Erika and I. At first it was sheer stubbornness. Mine mostly. I refused to leave that canyon, even after the gate had closed. You know us dogs. We don't give up.”

Niklas had never known any dogs, but he nodded anyway. Over by the door, as far away from the skullbeaks as the room would allow, Secret rolled her eyes. She had picked that one up from Castine.

Sebastifer didn't see it. “But later, it was magic.” A cloud of oily brown scudded over his blue irises. “The Sparrow King had Rafsa carve her runes on me so the bond never snapped. It just lasted and lasted, way too much love and sadness, driving us slowly mad with regret.”

He squinted up at the half-finished skullbeaks circling, and when he continued, his voice sounded so tired. “Night after night the bad dreams streamed from my head into hers. Fever dreams, Thorndrip dreams. Of the Breaking and the ruin. Of Rafsa and the Sparrow King. Of Sorrowdeep and the death she had caused.” He hung his head. “I couldn't keep my last moments from tormenting me at night, so they tormented her as well.”

“
You
sent her the nightmares?”

“I didn't want to, but the runes and Thorndrip were so strong. In return, I got glimpses of Summerhill as the dreamer saw it. First Erika, and when she died . . .”

“Me.” Niklas stood very still. So that was where the nightmares came from. All those evenings he had hid
under his covers, trying his best not to invite the dreams, and they didn't come from his head at all.

Sebastifer nodded. “Sometimes your uncle, sometimes your grandmother. But you were closer.”

All the guilt in the world showed in the slant of his brows. “I am so sorry. For everything.”

Niklas couldn't meet his eyes. His mother spent the rest of her life dreaming of the most horrible thing that had happened to her, over and over. No wonder her mind broke. Suddenly he felt a warm pulse against his chest. The medallion. He grabbed it and turned around.

Secret's fur bristled, and her stare was molten gold. She was holding her medallion, too. “It's not your fault,” she said. “They did that to you. To
all
of you. They should pay for it.”

“Is that the reason the nightmare Erika pointed up the trail?” Niklas had thought it was a message from his mother, but it maybe was Sebastifer's dream, Sebastifer pleading for someone to rescue him from his prison cell.

Sebastifer held his arm out to Niklas. “I know you must wonder why she didn't come. It's here if you want to look.”

The
read
rune.

Niklas hesitated. The rune looked sorer than the others, as if it had been activated often. “Won't it hurt?”

“Go on,” Sebastifer said. “I think you should see for yourself.”

Niklas put his hand on Sebastifer's arm. It felt hot, and hotter still when the rune lit up red under his fingers. He
looked up, about to snatch his fingers away. Sebastifer was gone, his eyes hidden by Thorndrip. Then the cold tug took Niklas, too. He heard Secret snarl, but she was so far away, which was no wonder, because Niklas no longer found himself in the skullbeak shop.

• • •

H
e was at Sorrowdeep, where the twelve-year-old Erika stood on the beach by the finger rock. In the palm of her hand, she held a golden key. It had rose petals for a head, and thorns for teeth, and the word
Twistrose
engraved on the stem.

On the far side of Sorrowdeep, light glowed in the avalanche crack. A distant voice swept over the lake. Could be barks, could be echoes. It was hard to tell.

Erika stepped into the water. The bottom sloped hard. Shivering all over, she tried to see her feet, but they were lost in the mud. A current came out of the deep to brush against her skin. Somehow it seemed angry. Intent, as if it wanted to pull her down.

She closed her eyes. This strange and wonderful key had appeared on her windowsill, waiting for her to use it. Now she thought she heard Sebastifer, calling for her. All she had to do was get in the water and swim. If she could just see his face . . .

Instead she saw the cage on the bottom, door rusted shut, filled with white bones.

She opened her eyes. Her tears made rings in the lake, and she thought she might burst from shame. But she couldn't do it. She couldn't swim across Sorrowdeep.

She stepped out of the water and went home.

• • •

E
rika's tears had showed up unbidden on Niklas's face. He wiped them with the back of his hand. “What was that inside the cage?”

“A mink cub from the Molyk farm,” Sebastifer said, so calm now, and so sad. “It got sick when it was a newborn, but Peder had nursed it back to health, despite his father's rule of never getting attached. Now he couldn't bear for it to get the buzzer.”

“They were saving him,” Niklas said. His mother's words in the dream made sense. It all made sense now.

“They were going to release him in the Summerchild cave. It might not have worked anyway, but Erika didn't know that. She just wanted to help. But the boat sank, and so did the cage.”

“The mink drowned.”

“He did.” Sebastifer sighed. “That cage carried all her guilt and sadness, for me, for that cub. You should have seen her that summer, Niklas. All those nightmares. Her head became a cage, too.”

Niklas breathed out. “I guess I understand why it's in the dreams now. It had nothing to do with those cages
from the ship after all.” Which meant the whole trip to Lostbook was based on a wrong guess. Kepler's capture was for nothing.

Sebastifer's ears shot up. “There are cages that come from ships?”

“For the Sparrow King's trade,” Niklas said. “We snuck down to the docks to see a shipment come in, but we never found out what the cages contained.”

Sebastifer's eyes glazed over for a moment, as if he was struggling to recall something. He wagged his tail slowly, then faster and faster. “I remember now! The trade!” He hobbled toward the door, tail still whipping. “We have to get there before the trolls sniff us out!”

“Get where?” Niklas hurried after him.

“The ballroom!” The old dog looked over his shoulder. “Our chance to escape!”

N
iklas and Secret had woven their way deep into the cellars of the castle, but Sebastifer led them always up, on stairs and secret ladders. Every now and then, he stopped to listen. Sometimes Niklas heard the eerie whooshing drifting down the tunnel. Other times the floor trembled, and the sound of fire and steam rolled down to meet them, along with the cloying smell that Secret hated so much. “Not that way.” Sebastifer doubled back to herd them along. “There's no way out from the Thorndrip factory.”

They snuck past storage rooms full of grains, empty glass containers, and a strange kind of medical equipment made of metal circles, hollow spikes, and linked pots and tubes. “Thorndrippers,” Sebastifer said. “For the factory.” Niklas allowed himself a shudder. He had a feeling he didn't want to know what went on there.

Several times Sebastifer led them to a clever hiding place right before a group of trolls barged past.

“He certainly knows his way around,” Niklas whispered as he and Secret pressed against the wall behind a rotten tapestry while Sebastifer checked to see if the coast was clear.

“Especially for someone who has been locked up in a cell,” Secret murmured. “And have you noticed his eyes are cloudy again?”

When they came out from behind the tapestry, they found Sebastifer watching them. “I'm not lying,” he said. “I have been locked up. But when Rafsa reads me, I get a glimpse of her mind, too. Never the Sparrow King, but her thoughts roll through in a thick haze of hate. I'm leading you by her memories.”

The whooshing grew louder now, and at the end of a wide corridor, Sebastifer stopped and lifted his paw. “The cages.”

They stepped into a big hall. Niklas could see how this might once have been a ballroom. The ceiling that soared high above them was painted with animals and delicate roses, and light filtered in through a huge stained-glass window in sparkling blues and reds. But it was no longer a room for dancing. Instead it held the crates from the glass ship.

They lined every wall, all the way from the floor to the ceiling. At last they learned what the Sparrow King
needed for his secret trade. The cages teemed with tens of thousands of fluttering brown wings, beady black eyes, and little yellow beaks straining for food and freedom.

Sparrows.

Niklas had wondered why the Sparrow King had chosen his name. Here the reason towered above them, cage after cage, row after row. “What does he want with them?”

“They don't come out of this castle alive.” Sebastifer whined softly. “They go into the factory and then they go into the barrels. The Sparrow King turns them into Thorndrip.”

“Thorndrip is made from sparrows?” Niklas pushed away the thought of Sebastifer's tubes.

The old dog nodded. “I've read Rafsa's thoughts on this. More and more ships come, more and more sparrows die.” He pointed toward the next room, visible through a tall, vaulted archway. It held hundreds of black barrels, stacked almost as high as the cages. Most were sealed and ready to be transported down to the docks but there was also a pile of discarded barrels and chipped lids. “We won't be able to close them properly,” Sebastifer said. “But trolls are sloppy. I think they won't notice.”

“You mean for us to hide in them!” Niklas smiled.

“There will be guards at the docks, too, but we stand a much better chance than inside the castle walls.”

They loaded their escape barrels onto the waiting wagons. Secret poured into hers, somehow fitting comfortably even though she was the biggest of them. Niklas
helped Sebastifer clamber into his, then scurried into the last one, clutching his lid. “Ready?”

Sebastifer nodded. “See you on the other side.”

Niklas hunched down, pulling the lid into place.

In the sweet-smelling darkness he listened. Somewhere in the hallways, he heard shrill shouts. The trolls must have their scent.

But he also heard the sparrows, calling, chirping, flapping in their cages.

Waiting to go to the factory.

He stood back up. The lid slid off. He tried to catch it, but it clattered to the floor. Secret peeked out at him. “What's wrong?”

“I can't do it.” He climbed back out of the barrel as if it held scalding water. “I can't leave them to be squeezed into juice or whatever happens to them down there. It's not right.” After a deep breath, he added, “I'm going to let the sparrows out.”

Secret opened her mouth, but he cut her off. “I have to. I know it's not our mission, but I can't leave them.”

“I know you can't,” said Secret calmly. “But this is a closed room. The sparrows will have nowhere to go.”

“We'll figure it out! Maybe if we're quick, we'll make it before the trolls find us. Will you help?”

“Stupid cub.” Secret jumped down from the wagon. “You always ask such silly questions.”

Sebastifer stood up from his barrel, too. The inky tears
showed on his face again, but his dog-grin was wide and happy. “You really are her son.”

Together they returned to the pens.

They dragged two of the heavy cages in front of the door, and then they began their work. Sebastifer listened for the trolls. Secret took care of the cages she could reach from the floor, while Niklas climbed the stacks. He pushed open the latches, working as fast as he ever had.

If he had any hope that the trolls wouldn't hear what they were doing, they were quickly dashed.

One by one the doors burst open, releasing a cloud of sparrows, squeaking the loudest they knew how at the joy of stretching their wings. Soon they formed a vast, billowing flock that filled the great hall with feathers and trills.

Secret turned her ears down and out, to shield herself from the cacophony. “Now what,” she called to Niklas.

Niklas churned on the inside, too. With the lambs, he had been trying to make trouble. But setting the sparrows free felt different. Like it truly mattered that these birds should have blue skies under their wings. It felt like something a hero might do. It felt right. His breath rushed too fast as he pointed to the giant leaded glass window. “We break them out.”

They began a frantic search for something that would be light enough for Niklas to carry up the wall, but heavy enough to smash through the thick panes. Secret had
just found a hooked metal rod, probably for lifting crates, when the noise died.

They turned around to find that the birds had all settled down, on cage doors, on ledges and sills, watching in utter silence.

Lost feathers drifted to the floor, and Niklas's heart fell with them.

And then the pounding began, like rolling thunder. The trolls were at the door.

Secret whimpered, tucking her tail in.

Sebastifer leaned against the wall, black spots drifting across his eyeballs, tail hanging limp. His brows were lifted in the middle. “She is here.”

He closed his eyes as the double door scraped open, pushing the cages out of the way like they weighed nothing. A rasping voice cut the air.

“The boy-enemy! Come once again to Rafsa's den.”

Rafsa crossed the stone floor with her long claws extended, clicking and rattling in her heavy bone armor. A good twenty troll guards piled in after her, green eyes lit and hungry, brandishing sabers and spears.

At the sight of Sebastifer, the troll witch tilted her head, and Niklas thought the hatred on her scarred face grew even hotter for a moment. “I see you've found our prisoner. You think that matters? You think freeing him will help you?” She spat on the floor. “We don't need him and
his dreams anymore. The plan is too big for him now. It's too big for you.”

She walked past Sebastifer, until she hulked over Niklas in all her smelly, scarred glory. “I would love to play a game with you, for what you did with the stew. Ruined our big night. Killed all my broodlings. Almost killed me, too. Clever boy.”

She let out her purple tongue and licked her four-pointed star tattoo. “But Rafsa can't be killed, oh no. She can't burn, she can't die from bane. No matter what you do, Rafsa comes back to catch you.”

She snatched at his arm. Her long fingers grazed the troll rune, which began to sear and itch beneath his shirt sleeve.

Niklas wrenched his arm away, backing up against the cages. Secret was right beside him. “No chance of escaping this,” he whispered as the trolls circled around to cover both exits.

“None,” Secret agreed.

They tried anyway, ducking to the side and racing for the nearest stack to try and pull themselves up. But Rafsa lashed at Niklas with her claw, and a sheet of red fell in front of his eyes.

“Sleep now, boy,” she said as he crumpled to the floor. “The king wants you in his tower.”

Darkness followed.