Thornghost (21 page)

W
hen Niklas came to, the air no longer smelled like sour milk. It smelled like roses.

“Are you all right, cub?” Secret's face hovered above him. Her worry poured into him from everywhere, from her eyes, from the softness of her paw on his shoulder, from the medallion around his neck.

“I'm fine. Just . . .” He touched his fingers to his forehead. Someone had bandaged his wound. “Just help me up. Where are we?”

“We're in the Nighthouse. Rafsa shoved us in here and shut the door. There are guards, but they stay outside.” Secret glanced around at the curved walls and the stairs that wound around a wide column in the middle of the tower.

“I don't think the trolls are allowed in here,” Sebastifer said. “The room is too unbroken.”

He was right. It might as well belong to a separate castle altogether. Instead of dirt and rubble, there were china figurines. Instead of bone splinters along the walls, there were books on polished shelves, and a warming fireplace.

Suddenly Nightmares broke the illusion of comfort. Two skullbeaks dropped out of the darkness under the ceiling, wind rushing through their skulls. They gathered their cloth-wings and landed on the floor beside them. Moving their beaks in unison, they pointed toward the stairs.

Niklas looked at Secret. “Won't do to be a coward,” she said softly.

No, it wouldn't. They walked up the stairs together, their heartbeats echoing through the medallions.

The stairs emerged into a round room. Apart from the circle of windows where the beacon's light had once escaped, and the door out to the wraparound balcony, the Rosa Torquata covered every inch of the chamber. A thick stem grew up from a hole in the floor and reached all the way up to the dome, where it spread into hundreds of rose-laden boughs that traced the ceiling and trailed down the mirror-clad sides.

It was very sick. The dark vine crawled everywhere, infesting every branch and twig, turning the roses black, and the scent unctuous. The starlight pulse had been strangled, leaving the Rosa Torquata of the Nighthouse completely dark.

Next to the stem a figure stood waiting, tall and deadly with his long-beaked skull. The ruler of Nightmares, the creator of skullbeaks. The killer of birds.

The Sparrow King.

He gave Niklas the same pinch in the guts as the skeleton birds that stood lined up around the room, following their every movement. Except the skullbeaks watched with hollow eyes. But the Sparrow King saw. The Sparrow King knew. And as his coal-fire gaze settled on Niklas, he had the feeling the Sparrow King hated him.

He didn't quite know how to reply when the king said, “I've been waiting for you, Niklas. Would you care for some fruit? It's from my own orchard.”

He extended an arm toward the sole piece of furniture in the room: a big and nasty cage made from the living rosebush, with long, hungry thorns. Just like the one in Erika's bird castle, though it didn't contain a child. Instead it doubled as a desk, holding books and quills, crystal glasses, flasks and silver boxes, another bottle of the Emerald River starmead, and a bowl of magnificent diamond apples.

Secret gave a long, pained growl. Niklas turned and found her staring at a cowed shape that faced the wall behind the cage, positioned among lanterns and other discarded lighthouse paraphernalia.

Niklas went cold.

Kepler.

The Sparrow King ignored Niklas's silence. “Perhaps later, then. Or have you come to my castle to sample my real riches?” He ran his gloved fingers along a rack of three glass flasks, all filled with dark brown liquid. “A flask of Thorndrip is worth twenty baskets of sapphire plums.”

He picked one from the rack and swirled it so weepy marks formed on the glass. “You know, I had no thought for trade when I invented this. I read about a new device using thorns to drain blood. The professor who designed it could not quite make it work, so I thought I would improve it. But if Rafsa had not suggested we bind the blood with troll runes, I would have failed.” He raised the flask as in a toast to Niklas. “Don't you find it extraordinary that magical power can be distilled from sparrows? The very least important of creatures? It's something to do with the pain, Rafsa tells me. I'm sure a
human
understands the irony.”

“No.” Niklas made his voice as frosty as he could for someone whose heart thundered way too fast. “I think it's evil.”

The Sparrow King said, “Truly? Then I'm sure you'll become more enlightened as you change from child to grown-up.” The black roses followed his path as he walked to his desk, like eyes with a hundred dark lids. “I expect you've come to look at this?” In the middle of the trunk the bark had been peeled back in a ring and secured with runes.

The speakwood.

The wood within pulsed sickly and gray. “Perhaps you've figured out by now that it is the source of my sway over the Rosa.”

The Sparrow King opened a silver box and pulled out a long syringe. With precise, steady movements, he pierced the wax lid of the Thorndrip flask and sucked the contents into the syringe. “Do you know this rune?” He drew a sharp V with the tip of the needle. Niklas knew it.

Obey.

“It is most useful.” A small flick of the Sparrow King's wrist acknowledged Kepler. “Some, like your young ferret friend here, require a simple version carved somewhere on their body, and their will belongs to me.”

Niklas's thoughts raced. Kepler was carved with a troll rune? That was the reason he had betrayed them? Secret went still beside him.

The Sparrow King crossed the floor until he stood right behind Kepler. “Turn around.”

Kepler turned around. He did not look at his friends. Niklas looked at him, but he didn't see any troll runes on the ferret's body.

The Sparrow King snapped his fingers on Kepler's snout. “I don't need to keep him in the cage, because he is already caged.” Kepler's eyes welled up, but he didn't move.

“I could hardly believe it when I saw a human child in the canyon,” the Sparrow King said. “Especially when I
recognized you as the son of a Thornghost. Oh yes, I've seen your dreams. Sebastifer has been most obliging.”

Sebastifer's tail and ears hung heavy. “It's okay,” Niklas said. “You couldn't help it.”

The Sparrow King nodded. His beak drew a sharp V, too. “Neither could young Kepler here. Rafsa didn't want to risk you slipping through her claws again. She left Kepler in the barracks so he could bring you here.” He patted Kepler's chest. Kepler's right hand moved to defend himself, but the left one brought it down as before. Secret snarled, but the Sparrow King's eyes glittered inside their hollows. “I told him to stay. So he stays, like a good boy.”

The Sparrow King's cloak billowed as he returned to the trunk of the Rosa Torquata. “Other and more powerful creatures require a constant reminder to perform their tasks. A refill.” He buried his syringe into the speakwood. As he pushed down the piston, black streaks appeared in the wood to form the
obey
rune.

The dark vine stirred all around the room as the Sparrow King pressed his palm against the rune. “Rosa Torquata. I would like you to listen.”

There was something wrong with that hand, something that nagged Niklas like a buzzing gnat. But he couldn't think straight. His knees felt too watery, his chest too tight.
You must find a way,
Odar had said, and here they were, in the same room as the speakwood, while the poisoning took place. Skullbeaks loomed behind him, ready
to put their beaks through his shoulder if he tried a move. But he couldn't have come all this way just to goggle like a stupid cub. He cleared his throat.

“Whatever your plan is, you have to stop. The dark vine is making the Rosa sick. You're putting everyone, including yourself, in danger.”

“Yes.” The Sparrow King raised his skull eyes toward the windows. The mist had cleared away to reveal a sky of darkness and stars, diamonds crushed and scattered. “Night has come to Broken. What do you think your thieving friends inside the shrub are doing at this moment? Toasting their toes by the fire? Drinking the last of their mead? I noticed you have left the apples hanging this year. Odar must be running out.” His breath sounded wheezy inside the beak. “My guess is that most of them are asleep in their pathetic little shelters, surrounded by deadly thorns.”

“How do you know all this,” Kepler croaked. “You're not one of us. You're a Nightmare.”

The Sparrow King lowered his voice. “Oh, but I am both.”

Niklas knew enough about roles to tell when someone had stopped playing one. This was no longer the king of Nightmares speaking. This was someone else. He stared at the hand, the crystal glass, and the hand again.

Of course.

A beak that large could never drink from a crystal glass.
And there were four fingers on that glove, all of which pointed forward.

“You're no sparrow,” Niklas said. “You're no bird at all!”

The Sparrow King watched Niklas for a moment. Then he hooked his fingers under the beak and began to ease his skull off its joint. The bird mask came off to reveal a pointed weasel face of dark brown and snowy white, with quick eyes and small, sharp teeth.

“Rafsa was right. You are a clever boy.”

By the wall, Kepler gave a strangled cry. They had all seen that face before, in a portrait in the Second Ruby.

It belonged to Kepler's great hero Marcelius.

K
epler stood doubled over, as if his hero had cut him far worse than a troll claw ever could. His mouth worked and worked, but no words came out, so Niklas said them for him. “But you're their hero. They adore you!”

Marcelius cocked his head. Without the ponderous mask, his movements were fast and nimble. “Is that what they say now? They didn't much care for me before the Breaking. Turned their snouts up at my thoughts and theories, like they turned their snouts up at me. Made me a gardener when I wanted to be a runemaster. Kicked me out as a Greenhood apprentice.” He tossed his sleek neck. “All because I didn't fit into any of their categories. I'm not a Petling like Kepler. I never lived in a warm house full of treats and love. And I'm not a Wilder like your cat there. I never knew a moment of freedom.” He bared his teeth at the bars of thorns under his desk. “I'm best
forgotten, because the truth is too ugly to remember. But I remember every closed door, every click of the tongue, every grunt of pity.”

With unsettling speed, he prepared another shot, sank the needle into the speakwood, and set his hand against the rune. “Rosa Torquata. I would like you to wake the thorns of the Nickwood and kill the Brokeners in their beds.”

“No!” The word burst out of Kepler's mouth. He tore away from the wall. With his right hand he pawed at his chest so hard, it undid some of Too's healing. Red light pulsed in his fresh wounds, coming from under his fur.
Oh, you nasty witch,
Niklas thought. So that's why they hadn't seen the
obey
rune. Rafsa had put it on the inside of Kepler's torn skin, knowing they would do their best to close the gash.

Kepler's fingers came away bloody as his other hand tore them away from his chest. The red light kept pulsing, but Kepler still found the strength to lunge at Marcelius, face screwed up with anger and grief.

The skullbeaks plucked him out of the air like a frisky kitten. Niklas found himself hurtling toward the speakwood, but the skullbeaks got him, too, pinning him to the floor. One of them curled its claw around his arm. The troll rune began to sear and thud under his shirtsleeve. Beside him Secret bucked and snarled, batting her paws at the skeleton birds to get to him. She tore off a bone and sent it clattering across the floor, but it didn't matter. There were too many.

“Enough of that,” Marcelius said, touching his amulet briefly. “I want them reasonably whole.”

The skullbeaks stepped back immediately, and Secret hissed at them as she placed herself between Niklas and the enemy.

“It's okay, Secret,” Niklas called, easing his sleeve away from his burning skin.
Don't give them a reason to kill you,
he thought, willing the feeling to go through the medallion, but he said, “Don't worry.”

Marcelius frowned at Kepler, who lay panting on the tiles. “Not as weak as I assumed, then.” He shrugged. “It doesn't matter. My will is already surging through the Rosa like venom through a snake's tooth.”

The fight had gone out of Kepler. Sebastifer stood quiet and still, arms hanging limp from his frail form. Secret had retreated to the one thing she needed to do: guard Niklas's back.

Niklas thought of the small houses built entirely from the Rosa's gifts, and of the sprawling collection of memories that was the Second Ruby, and the candlelit long table where no one would eat aniseed bread anymore.

The
obey
rune in the speakwood throbbed and throbbed.

“Call it off! The Brokeners are kind people,” he said, trying to sound steady and convincing. “You might think of them as thieves, but all they have done is make a living out of scraps.”

Marcelius stroked his white chin, appearing to consider
Niklas's plea. “The Brokeners ought to blame themselves. I tried telling them about the potential of troll runes. Magic in this world is usually tempered. Balanced. But Erika Summerhill made the troll runes with no safety pin. They could do almost anything as long as the pain was sufficient. But the librarians and scholars laughed at me.”

“That was twenty-five years ago.” Niklas's smile felt stiff and wrong, but he pressed on. “They keep a sculpture of you in the village. Kepler painted a portrait. It's true that they love you.” Niklas nodded at the box of syringes on the desk. “You can save them. Just call it off.”

Marcelius walked over to his desk, ran his fingers over the box. “You're right. I don't much care that the Brokeners laughed at me back then.”

He picked out another syringe, weighing it in his hand. “In fact, I don't care about them at all. When Rafsa broke down the door to the Ruby that night, I found her more reasonable than anyone I had met so far on this side. We figured out we had a common purpose, she and I.” He snapped the box shut with a grin, and there it was again, that hot hatred burning against Niklas's skin. “The canyon gate.”

Niklas felt his smile slip. “I know that's your plan, but I don't understand why. You have a whole kingdom here. Jewels and a castle. Why do you want to open the canyon gate?”

“Don't you know yet?” Marcelius smiled. “Rafsa's reason should be easy to figure out. She was the first troll with
magic, and it was powerful enough to allow her to cross the border. When the gate opened for Erika twenty-five years ago, Rafsa snuck through to Willodale and stayed there until the gate narrowed and the magic grew thin. Ever since, she has wanted nothing more than to claim her homeland for her brood.”

“And your reason?”

“I want her to succeed.”

Marcelius approached them slowly, each step thudding on the tiles. “That is why I decided to become the Sparrow King. I want Rafsa and her brood to destroy every farm and field of Willodale, to torch and kill and ruin as they yearn for, as you
created
them to yearn for. But most of all I want the cages burned.”

Cages?
The sparrow cages flashed through Niklas's head, but that made no sense at all.

Marcelius licked his teeth. “Did you know that the grass that grows around an apple tree tastes like fruit? No? It doesn't, actually, but that was how I imagined it from my pen. I longed to sniff at the sweet roots and hunt for field mice in the night. To swim in the cool, green river and feel the water slip off my fur when I returned with fish.” He shrugged. “Or perhaps I just thought that I did. The line between the animal I once was and the creature I became is blurred. But one thing I know was real. The cage.”

He pulled up before them, stretching his long neck until he loomed tall. Right now he seemed more terrifying
to Niklas than the skull mask ever had. “The pens where they kept us must burn. Old Molyk can go on top of the pyre, and if your murderer of a mother were not already dead, I would gladly add her to the flames.”

Niklas's ribs felt too tight. Old Molyk. The pens. His mother saying,
We're not hurting him. We're saving him.

Marcelius wasn't a weasel at all. He was a mink.

As if he could follow the thoughts in Niklas's head, he lifted his skullbeak amulet. Within the spiky jewel glass encasing, there was a small, worn center of wood. One of Castine's medallions. Marcelius opened it. There was a boy inside, a boy with dark hair that stuck up in the front. Peder Molyk.

Marcelius was the mink cub who drowned.

With a yelp, Sebastifer sagged to his knees. Secret caught him.

Marcelius shook his head. “Poor, stupid dog. All those years and you never guessed who was behind the mask. I did have Rafsa carve a
hide
rune on me so you wouldn't catch it when I read your dreams, but still you should have known. Have you told the others what happened that night, Sebastifer? How the children all crawled out of the black waters, but not you and I?”

Sebastifer swallowed hard. “They loved us, Marcelius. We wouldn't be here otherwise.”

Marcelius clicked the medallion shut in the casing. “If Peder had truly missed me, he would have sat by
Sorrowdeep and mourned me as much as Erika mourned you. The Rosa Torquata could have picked him to be Jewelgard's Twistrose. He knew about the troll runes, he knew about the hunt. But of course it chose her. My murderer. The Thornghost.”

He pushed the needle into the last flask of Thorndrip.

“I've waited twenty-five years to have my revenge. And now the Rosa no longer has the strength to resist my commands. You see, I worked on it for the longest time. Injected it with Thorndrip. Helped the dark vine grow. The Rosa resisted and resisted.” He tapped the syringe. “Then, last spring, the solution occurred to me. Instead of just the injections, I could feed the blood directly to the Rosa. No boiling, no nonsense. No sparrows. I caught some bigger fowl to use for my purpose. Strictly speaking, they were two rodents, a fox, and an otter.”

Kepler moaned.

“The missing Brokeners.” Secret growled. “You killed them.”

“Indeed I did. And that is when the magic happened. That is when the crack in the mountain truly began to widen. A few days ago, it was wide enough for Rafsa to awaken her brood, a plan you managed to bumble your way into ruining. But I'm glad you did. This is better.”

He gave the speakwood a third and final shot, and said, “Rosa Torquata. I would like you to open the cage.”

A shudder went through the rose tree. Black veins shot
out from the speakwood, spreading along the branches, and the flowers opened wide. The thorns creaked open, too, and now Niklas saw that the cage had no bottom. It was just a black hole in the floor. Like a gullet. “A dog who should be long dead, a ferret who gave everything for his beliefs, a lynx who awakened before her time, and a boy who fancied himself a Twistrose. If that diet doesn't finally break her, I don't know what will.” He touched his amulet, making it glint red under his fingers. The skullbeaks crowded in behind them, herding them toward the opening. Secret tried to fend them off, but got a beak in her shoulder in response.

“Tonight the canyon gate will not just open. It will shatter like a dam, and the Nightmares will flood all of Willodale and wash away the filth.”

Niklas wanted to shout, but his throat wouldn't let him. “You've had your revenge on my mother, many times over,” he whispered. “And Peder Molyk already burnt down the pens. He keeps sheep now.”

Marcelius waited a while before he spoke. “Then they can burn down his house instead and the entire farm with it.” His skull mask gleamed blue as he pulled it back on. It slipped into place with a sucking sound. The Sparrow King's voice sounded hollow once more as he touched his amulet and said, “Throw them in the cage.”