Freeglader: Third Book of Rook

by Paul Stewart

  The slaughterer nodded, and she sensed the pain and loss of brave comrades.

  You saw the slaying of the roost-mother … A shaven-headed youth with a fancy sword … Bravest thing you ever saw … Turned the tide of battle … A hero … Xanth Filatine!

  Cancaresse left the Freeglade lancer gazing at the waterfall and wandered off through the garden once more. The sun had climbed to its highest point in the sky and was beating down warmly, shrinking the shadows in the gardens. The time had come, the waif realized, to hear from Xanth Filatine himself. She crossed the lawn, drew back the gladewillow curtain and beckoned to the youth to join her.

  Xanth emerged from the shadows and stumbled out into the brilliant sunshine, his shoulders hunched and his eyes screwed up against the light. As he drew close, Cancaresse sensed his unhappiness and uncertainty, and the power of his conflicting emotions. There was guilt, remorse, hurt and unhappiness. He was alone – shunned and despised.

  She placed her hand on his shoulder. He turned, and looked at her with his dark, haunted eyes. And as their gaze met, everything changed. It was as though a dam had been breached, and she was suddenly drenched in a torrent of thoughts that poured out over her.

  I served a terrible master for years, loyally carrying out his evil plans. It was wrong, it was wrong; I know it was wrong – but I was so young …

  But no! This is no excuse. This cannot take away the horror of what I did.

  Cancaresse nodded.

  I betrayed them. I betrayed so many. My hands are stained with blood that I can never, ever wash away.

  Cowlquape gave me hope of escape with his stories of the Deepwoods, and yet the only way to get there was as a spy for the Guardians of Night! How many valiant apprentice librarians must have died because of my treachery! And then I was unmasked and fled, like the coward I was, back to the Tower of Night!

  Oh, if only I could have stayed in the Free Glades, where, for the first time in my life, I had encountered enduring friendship – Rook, Magda, Tweezel … But it was impossible … I let them all down. Each and every one of them. How can I ever undo the wrong I have done?

  He paused, a haunted, despairing look in his eyes. Almost at once, the torrent of thoughts, pent up for so long, gushed forth once more.

  I tried! Earth and Sky know, I tried, but to what avail? I was a traitor. A spy. A curse on all who came close to me and trusted me. Yet, I did try, you have to believe me …

  Cancaresse nodded again, slowly.

  Back in the tower, I could see more clearly than ever how wicked the High Guardian of Night truly was. I did everything I could to stop the madness.

  My heart was full of joy when Cowlquape was rescued from the Tower of Night – and how I wished I could go with him … Yet, I knew I could not. I had to stay and do everything I could to lessen the evil my master was doing.

  That was my punishment.

  I did what I could for those who fell into the Guardians' clutches. I tried so hard to rob the cages of their sacrifices – to find excuses in my interrogations to set them free. Yet Leddix, the executioner, would often whisk them away…

  Oh, but how the loss of those I couldn't save sickens me to the very bottom of my heart …

  Cancaresse nodded. She could feel his pain clearly. The youth fell to his knees in the middle of the sunlit lawn and buried his face in his hands. Sobs racked his body and, from all corners of the garden, Freegladers gathered round. The moment of Reckoning had come at last. All eyes fell on the tiny figure of Cancaresse the Silent, Keeper of the Garden of Thoughts.

  Friends, her soft voice sounded in a thousand minds. I have looked deep within many minds, shared deep sorrows and terrible pain …

  She looked round at the faces in front of her; at the librarian knight with the terrible scar, the grieving under-librarian and the care-worn High Academe.

  I have also felt loyalty, bravery and friendship, the waif continued.

  She noticed Rook and the slaughterer nodding, and Felix, the ghost, looking ashamed.

  I have weighed the good and the evil Xanth Filatine has done, and though the scales are more finely balanced than at first I thought … She looked down at Xanth, sorrow plain in her eyes. I'm afraid, Xanth, that …

  The youth stared back at her, his face a stark white in the brilliant sunshine.

  ‘Stop! Wait!’ A voice broke the silence.

  A gasp went round the Garden of Thoughts as a newcomer suddenly burst through the crowd of Freegladers.

  ‘But you were shot down!’ cried one.

  ‘We thought you were dead!’ called another.

  Magda Burlix, her flight-suit torn and grimy, limped towards Xanth and the waif. ‘Forgive me, but I must speak with you,’ she said urgently.

  Cancaresse stepped towards the young librarian knight, her great veined ears fluttering. Tell me what you know, she said.

  The librarian knight knelt before her, and the waif placed her long thin hands on Magda's head.

  He rescued you from the Tower of Night, she said, her soft voice resonating in the heads of everyone present. He risked his life guiding you through the sewers and back to the safety of the librarians even though he knew they hated him and would shun and despise him … He did this with no thought of reward – only that you might live …

  Cancaresse looked up. The moment of Reckoning has come, she said silently, and around the garden, every head nodded.

  She turned to Xanth and raised her arms, the palms of her hands turned upwards. Her robes shimmered in the midday sunlight.

  ‘Welcome, Xanth Filatine,’ she said. ‘Welcome, Freeglader.’

  • CHAPTER SEVENTEEN •

  GLADE-EATER

  ‘Aaagh!' the low-bellied goblin cried out in agony as he fell heavily to the filthy foundry floor. He curled up into a ball, but the blows kept coming.

  ‘Ignorant, clumsy, half-witted oaf!’ the flat-head guard bellowed, punctuating each word with lashes from his heavy whip.

  ‘Forgive me! Forgive me!’ the low-belly whimpered. The whip cracked louder than ever, tearing into the skin at his back and shoulders, drawing blood. ‘Aaaagh!' he howled. ‘Have mercy on this miserable wretch…’

  The guard, a brawny flat-head with zigzag tattoos across half of his face and over both shoulders, sneered unpleasantly – though he did at last stay his arm.

  ‘Mercy?’ he snarled. ‘Another accident like that and I'll finish you off for good. I've got quotas to meet, and I'm not gonna meet them with no-good slackers like you. Y'understand me, huh?’

  The low-belly remained curled up and motionless, too frightened to speak in case he incurred the goblin's violent wrath once more. It wasn't his fault he'd stumbled. It was blisteringly hot in the metal foundry, and he was parched, and weary, and so weak with lack of food he could barely see. His head was swimming, his legs had turned to rubber. And when the moulds were full of the glowing molten metal, they were so unsteady…

  ‘Understand?' the flat-head guard roared.

  ‘Yes, yes, sir, he understands,’ said a second low-belly goblin, scurrying to his brother's side. Taking him by the arm, trying not to touch the raw, open wounds on his back, he helped him to his feet. ‘Sir, it won't happen again, sir. I give you my word.’

  The flat-head spat with contempt. ‘The day I take the word of low-belly scum like you is the day I hang up my hood and whip,’ he sneered. ‘Get that mess cleared up!’ he roared, nodding down at the floor where the spilled molten metal had solidified into a huge, irregular lump. ‘And you lot,’ he added, cracking his whip at a small group of gnokgoblins over by the ore-belts. ‘Give 'em a hand.’

  Warily eyeing the guard's whip, with its three tails, each one tipped with a hooked spike, the gnokgoblins approached. Then, together with the low-bellies, they tugged and heaved the huge lump of metal, grunting loudly as they did so, gradually shifting it over the floor through the smoke-filled foundry.

  All round them, the place throbbed with ceaseless noise as the enslaved w
orkforce toiled in their individual groups, stripped to their waists, their grimy, sweaty bodies gleaming in the furnace-glow. There were hefters and stokers, smelt-lackeys and mould-navvies – each one of them cowed, half-starved and racked with foundry-croup – working at the feverish pace dictated by the slave-driving guards.

  With military precision, logs were turned to heat in the main furnace, ore was turned to iron in the smelting-vats, and the long, heavy moulds – suspended on chains from ceiling-tracks high above – were filled with brightly glowing molten metal and steered towards the cooling-bays. It was raw materials to finished product in less than an hour.

  And what a finished product! Huge, curved scythes which, once expertly hammered, honed and polished, were set aside in long racks, waiting to be taken off in hammel-horn-drawn carts to the assembly-yards.

  Fighting against the intense, choking heat that was driving them back, the group of hapless goblins struggled on towards the smelting vat.

  ‘One – two – three … Heave!' cried one of the gnokgoblins.

  Groaning with effort, they all clasped the huge lump of metal and pushed it up, up, over the lip of the potbellied vat, and down into the molten metal within. It landed with a splash, a hiss and a puff of acrid smoke, before rolling over and melting like butter in a fire. The poor low-belly who had spilt the molten metal in the first place slumped to the ground.

  ‘Get up,’ the other urged him, glancing anxiously round to see whether the flat-head goblin guard was paying them any attention.

  ‘Can't, Heeb,’ came the reply, little more than a grunt.

  ‘But you must,’ his brother insisted. ‘Before he accuses you of slacking again.’ He shook his head grimly. ‘I can't lose you, too, Rumpel. Not after the others … Rudder, and Reel. You're all I've got left. You must get up…’

  ‘Pfweeeep!’

  A shrill steam-whistle blasted loudly, cutting through the thick, noisy air of the foundry and signalling the end of the shift. The rhythmic hammering and teeth-jarring screech of the sharpening-rasps abruptly ceased, as the goblins downed tools and shuffled away, leaving their posts empty for the next shift. Soon, only the roar of the furnace remained.

  ‘Thank Earth and Sky,’ Heeb murmured. ‘Come, Rumpel,’ he said, taking his brother by the arm a second time. ‘Let's get out of here.’

  Rumpel struggled to his feet and, without a word, let himself be led from the foundry, stumbling clumsily like a hobbled hammelhorn. His head was down, his ears were ringing, his back felt as though it was on fire.

  Outside – as the line of exhausted goblins brushed past those arriving for work – the sky was the colour of congealed gruel and a soft, cold drizzle was falling. At first, it soothed the vicious, blood-encrusted weals in the low-belly's flesh. It wasn't long though before what had started as cooling, after the blistering heat of the foundry, became bitterly cold as Rumpel's feverish body was chilled to the marrow.

  ‘C… c… c… can't t… t… take it no m… m… more,’ he stammered, his teeth chattering and body shaking. And as the caked smoke in his lungs began to loosen, so his frail, bony body was racked once more with the hacking cough that tormented every one of the Foundry Glades slave-workers.

  Heeb looked round at his brother. The pair of them were making their way across the glade to the hovel that had become home to them and seventy others. He noted the deathly pallor to his skin, the dark charcoal-grey rings beneath his eyes, and the rheumy, unblinking stare – as if his gaze were already fixed on the world beyond the unceasing cruelty of this one. It was an expression he had seen before – in the faces of his other brothers, Reel and Rudder, shortly before they had died.

  ‘Hang on in there, little brother,’ Heeb said softly. ‘I'll get those wounds dressed, we'll have something to eat, and you can rest up.’ He smiled weakly. ‘It's going to be fine, you'll see,’ he added, only wishing that his words were as easy to believe as they were to say.

  Ahead of them now, bathed in the fine, grey rain, were the slave-huts. Their own – a rundown, ramshackle hovel – was situated slap-bang in the middle of the row. The ground had been churned up, and they had to drag themselves on those last few strides through thick, claggy mud that clung to their tattered boots. There at last, Heeb helped Rumpel up the three wooden steps, lifted the latch and pushed the door open.

  A blast of stale, fetid air struck them in the face, a mixture of rotting straw, running sores and unwashed bodies. The two of them stumbled inside.

  ‘Shut that door!’ someone bellowed, before his voice gave way to a thick, chesty cough, which was soon joined by several others, until the whole hut was echoing with loud, febrile coughing.

  ‘Shut up! Shut up!’ a voice kept shouting from the far end. ‘Shut that infernal row!’

  Heeb steered his brother down the central aisle of the hut towards the place where they slept – two wooden pallets covered with rank, mildewed straw. Forgetting for a moment the cuts and weals on his back, Rumpel fell down onto the makeshift bed – only to cry out and roll over the next moment.

  ‘Shut up!’ the voice came back with renewed vigour. ‘I'm trying to sleep here!’

  ‘Shut up yourself,’ someone else shouted back, and a heavy clod of earth was lobbed at the complainer. ‘If you can't sleep, then you haven't been working hard enough!’

  With everyone on different shifts, there were always some trying to sleep while others were coming and going; eating, drinking, muttering to themselves … dying.

  Heeb knelt down beside his brother, pulled a small pot from his trouser pocket and unscrewed the lid. The sweet, juicy smell of hyleberry salve wafted up – though the pot was almost empty. Licking the grime from his finger as best he could, Heeb scraped out the dregs of the salve from the corners of the pot, top and bottom.

  ‘Lie still,’ he said, and proceeded to smear the pale green ointment around the worst of his brother's wounds. Rumpel flinched, and moaned softly when the pain got too much. ‘You've got to hold on a little bit longer,’ Heeb told him, as he massaged the salve into the skin. ‘We're almost done now. It's almost over…’

  ‘Al … almost o … o … over,’ Rumpel repeated, every syllable a terrible struggle.

  ‘That's right,’ said Heeb encouragingly. ‘The catapult cages have been completed. And the step-wheels and lance-launchers. And the boiler-chimneys. And the long-scythes will soon be ready as well.’ He tried to sound cheerful. ‘Won't be long now before we're finished…’

  ‘F … fi … finished …’ grunted Rumpel.

  ‘Glade-eater? Pah!’ said Heeb. ‘Goblin-crippler, more like!’ He shuddered as he replaced the lid on the small pot. ‘You stay there, bro',’ he said gently. ‘I'll get us something to eat.’

  He climbed wearily to his feet, grabbed his and Rumpel's mug and bowl, and shuffled off towards the gruel-pot at the end of the slave-hut, which bubbled slowly under the watchful eye of a web-foot trustee. Heeb groaned. The fact that his brother was in a worse state than himself did nothing to lessen his own exhaustion. His cheeks were hollow, his eyes were sunken and his ribs stuck out like bits of kindling. Like his brother and the other low-belly goblins, he had little need for the belly-sling that hung loosely at his front – for just like them and all the others in the slave-hut, he was slowly being worked to death.

  The gruel was grey and slimy and smelled of drains, and as it was ladled into his and his brother's bowls, Heeb couldn't help heaving. He filled the mugs with dirty water from the barrel and returned to the sleeping pallet.

  ‘Here we are,’ he said, placing everything down and pulling out a spoon from his back pocket. ‘Do you want me to feed you?’

  Rumpel made no reply. Heeb wasn't even sure he'd heard him. Lying on his side, he was simply staring ahead, his breathing rasping and irregular.

  Heeb swallowed anxiously. ‘Don't die on me,’ he whispered softly. ‘Not now. I couldn't bear it.’ Tears welled up in his eyes. ‘I told you, Rumpel, it's almost over. They've almost finished. Trust me
, it's not long to go now. Not long…’

  Lummel Grope dropped his scythe, stood up straight and stretched. ‘Earth and Sky, but this is backbreaking work, Lob,’ he said, and he reached inside his belly-sling to scratch the great, round, hairy stomach it supported.

  ‘You can say that again,’ said Lob. He pulled his straw bonnet from his head and mopped his brow on his sleeve. ‘And thirsty work, to boot,’ he added.

  Lummel picked up the half-empty flagon by his side, pulled the stopper out with his teeth, and took a long swig of woodapple cider. ‘Here,’ he said, handing it over to his brother.

  Lob wiped the top with the palm of his hand and did the same. ‘Aaah!' he sighed. ‘That sure hits the spot.’

  The two brothers were in the middle of a blue-barley field. Half of the crop had already been scythed down and gathered up into neat, pointed stooks. The other half was still waiting to be cut and bundled. It was over-ripe, with the heavy ears of barley showing the first signs of spoil-bloom, and no matter how hard the two low-bellied brothers worked, both of them knew it could never be fast enough.

  ‘If only it weren't just the two of us,’ Lummel grumbled.

  ‘I know,’ said Lob, nodding sadly. ‘When I think back to last year …’ He shook his head miserably. ‘I just hope and pray the others are all right.’

  Lummel took the flagon back, and tipped another mouthful of cider down his throat.

  ‘Rumpel, Rudder, Heeb, Reel …’ Lob's eyes welled with tears at the thought of their absent brothers. ‘Dragged off to those accursed Foundry Glades like that…’ He swung his arm round in a broad circle that included the farm-holdings owned by their neighbours, their fields as full of uncut blue-barley as their own. ‘The Topes, the Lopes, the Hempels … Half of them already gone, and the other half waiting to be rounded up and carted off with the rest…’

  ‘And we'll be next, you mark my word,’ said Lummel. ‘Any time now those flat-heads'll be back. And this time, it'll be to send us off to war.’