by Shae Ford
Your fault, it hissed at him, speaking in Bloodfang’s strangled, dying voice. Fool … weakling … murderer! Your fault.
His doubt stormed from between the leviathan’s teeth. It ripped across the fragile thread, trying to wrench it from his grasp — trying to send him hurtling into the waiting, gaping jaws of the black beast.
But Kael held on. His mind trembled with the effort. There had to be someway to silence the leviathan, to drown the black beast. It would take something extraordinary. He had to find the power Gwen had spoken of — the power he’d given himself, the strength to do what needed to be done …
And then all at once, it struck him.
Beautiful shores glowed against the horizon. He saw their warmth through the rain, heard their promise whispered in the gales. In that moment, Kael forgot the dangers. A knot formed in the fragile thread above him — the same knot that’d held all the impossible things together. Kael braced his grip against it and pulled himself back onto the ship.
He stared at the familiar faces that watched him from the deck and felt heat begin to surge inside his limbs. There were blots in his story, blood on his hands, holes in his heart. The seas before him were shadowed in uncertainty. But here, he found his purpose … wrought clearly in the eyes of those who remained, of those watched him …
Of those who needed him to sail on.
Here was a reason to face the leviathan, to sail across the jaws of the black beast. Here were the howling winds that would carry him over the darkened waves and to the shores beyond. After all, the things he’d done hadn’t ever really been about him …
He’d done it all for … them.
He’d been pushing them away all this time, trying to focus on the task before him — only daring to think of them in the darkest of moments … all the while failing to realize that when the moment was darkest was precisely when he discovered his strength. They were the reason he forced himself to do what had to be done.
They were the rising sun.
They were the source of his power.
Kael charged with a cry. The leviathan shrank back beneath the waves and the tree rose in its place. This time when his hands slammed into its weathered surface, he thought of Amos.
He thought of all the many years his grandfather had spent defending him against the Tinnarkians, all the many lessons he’d driven through Kael’s thick skull. Then he thought of Amos shivering inside Titus’s castle … thought of shackles hanging off his thin wrists.
And it gave Kael all the reason he needed.
His love and his fury collided — two fires that burned equally bright. They raged behind his teeth; they chewed through the leviathan’s scales. When he slammed into the tree again, something remarkable happened.
It was like a shutter had been opened over his eyes. He could see everything — every strip of bark, every ringed layer of skin. He could see the thousands of hairline cracks that cold, wind, and age had left behind.
Weakness filled the tree like a web. Here were the gaps of white flesh and the chinks in the armor — the places he had to aim. Kael forced his will into the cracks with hundreds of tiny arrows. He held his focus as long as he could, stretching the web to its limit.
The tree groaned, but didn’t quite give way.
Kael slammed into it again. This time he already knew its weaknesses. He knew exactly where to aim. The cracks shrieked under the surge of his power. He watched through his mind’s eye as they bent like the arch of a bow — stretched and creaking in panic. At last, they could hold no longer.
The tree snapped beneath his hands. Kael fell forward and saw the ground rising up. His eyes took in the pattern of the rocky earth and he rolled quickly onto his shoulder, popping to his feet.
A broken half of the tree lay beside him. Its weakness showed clearly through its shattered end, and he couldn’t resist. With a cry, he smashed it beneath his heel.
Gwen tackled him. Her fist thudded into his jaw and he quickly struck back, flinging her to the ground by her shoulders. They grappled with one another, their punches charged by excitement and their bodies numb to pain. Their howls scared the birds from the trees.
Then Kael shoved Gwen hard in the chest.
She slammed against a tree and its trunk cracked loudly. The howls dried in his throat as the top half of the tree split and thudded to the ground. He blinked the warrior edge from his eyes and searched her for wounds.
“Are you all right?”
“Of course I’m all right,” she snapped. She looked strangely flustered as she got to her feet — though Kael supposed he would’ve been flustered too, had his body just been used to knock down a tree.
He’d taken a step towards her when a strange feeling froze him. His limbs felt … odd. When he rocked back on his heel, he swore he could feel every strand of muscle in his calf. They pulled tightly along the bone and tensed as he took a step back.
They curved at his next step. They wanted to twist his heel to a precise angle — and instead of fighting, he let them. He didn’t understand why they’d curved that way until his foot came down on top of a rock … and his heel fit against it perfectly.
This was what Gwen had meant when she said his warrior strength had been protecting him: it’d been there all along, silently watching over him, swelling when he needed it most. Now he could feel it — and if he could feel it, he knew he could control it.
“I don’t think I’ll be tripping over things nearly as often,” he said. He walked around, grinning as he felt his muscles curve and tense. His strength had been hidden in an unexpected place. He didn’t think he would’ve ever found it, had it not been for the thing Gwen had said to him. “Those words … they were some sort of whispercraft, weren’t they?”
“I was getting tired of watching you fail, mutt,” Gwen said as she brushed the splinters from her tunic. “I thought a craftsman’s chant might help move things along.”
“But you’re not a craftsman.”
“No, I’m not. Those were Setheran’s words. He was the last Wright to live among the wildmen, and my father taught him our ways. He told me once that Setheran hated craft — but every once in a while, the craft would come out of him. Sometimes the things he said would take on a life of their own. They’d ring on every tongue that spoke them, and ring on even now. The wildmen already knew the warriors’ strength,” she smirked, “but Setheran’s words forced us to look deeper. He helped us find true power.”
Kael tried to fight his exasperation back. But when he saw the many blisters that wept down his hands, he lost quickly. “Then why didn’t you just tell me how to find it in the first place? Why did you make me fall on my rump so many blasted times?”
She shrugged. “Words do no good unless you’re ready to hear them.”
Chapter 21
The Tail
Kael returned to Tinnark late that afternoon — toting the first mountain deer he’d ever slain across his shoulders.
It hadn’t happened quite the way he’d imagined it would. He never thought it would involve Gwen hurtling into a clump of deer and snapping one of their necks. He never thought the largest one would come charging towards him in a panic, or that his only weapon would be a rock.
But when he’d slung his arm back and felt his muscles coil, holding his strength at the perfect tension, he hadn’t doubted. He knew before the rock struck that he’d won.
“I still can’t believe you got the biggest one,” Gwen said, glaring at him from around the hooves of her doe.
He was a rather large buck. Kael thought a man could’ve sat quite comfortably between his antlers. “If you would’ve waited a moment instead of charging right in, we might’ve been able to figure out how to get more of them at once,” he muttered.
She rolled her eyes. “I would rather eat less than have to wait for anything.”
That was one of the most ridiculous things he’d ever heard. But when he considered the source, it seemed about right.
They left
the deer at the Hall: the craftsmen would keep the meat for dinner, but Gwen said he could have the pelt and antlers if he wanted them. “You ought to use it to dress up the hospital. It looks pretty grim on the inside,” she said, turning to frown up the hill. “In fact, I want you to work on finishing it today.”
Kael was fine with that. After all the time he’d spent yelling at the craftsmen, he could use a day to himself.
When he arrived at the hospital, he saw that Baird had made a fantastic mess of things. Somehow, the beggar-bard had discovered where Kael had stashed his rucksack and had dumped all of his belongings out in a pile. Now he sat cross-legged upon the bed, gripping the dragonscale gauntlets.
Kael had decided to take them off. There were too many dragonsbane weapons around, and the warriors were always attacking him at odd times of the day. So he thought it best just to store them rather than risk having them ruined.
“These are special,” Baird murmured. His bandaged face was turned towards the wall, his mouth open in concentration. He ran his fingers tentatively across the gauntlets’ ridged tops, as if he was stroking a pair of living things. “Special, indeed. Very spec —”
“All right, that’s enough.” Kael snatched the gauntlets from his hands and set them aside. “Why is it that I’m not allowed to go through your things, but you’re allowed to go through mine?”
“Because you allow it!” Baird cackled.
Kael hadn’t allowed it — not in the least bit. He was about to say as much when he saw that Baird had a new object clutched in his knobby fingers: the Atlas of the Adventurer.
He plucked it smartly from his grasp. “That isn’t yours.”
Baird’s lips bent in a piteous downwards arc. “But … but … I like it. The words speak to me with the voice of an old friend.”
“You can’t even see the words.”
“I can feel them! Let me show you.” He waved about him frantically, trying to find the Atlas.
Kael was curious. He put the book in Baird’s hand but held tightly to his wrist. “This is very dear to me, understand? It’s my greatest treasure.”
The beggar-bard was surprisingly gentle as he opened the Atlas to a random page. His fingers pressed against the arcs of each letter. They were written starkly, in a firm and simple hand. Even though they’d faded a bit, Kael could see the shallow indents the quill had left behind. He supposed that was what Baird was feeling for.
His lips moved silently as he traced the letters. “Oh dear me, I’ve landed directly in the middle of Scarn, haven’t I?”
That was exactly where he’d wound up. “You can really feel them?”
But Baird didn’t reply. “Let’s find the beginning,” he muttered as he flipped the pages back. “It’s only from there that we can do your story any justice. Yes, yes — we must start at the start …”
Kael had every intention of finishing the hospital’s roof. But instead, he found himself wrapped up in Baird’s readings. One story after another wove its way through his ears, given new life by the beggar-bard’s voice.
Not all of the heroes had great strength. Perhaps it was because he was worried about his fight with Griffith that he paid special attention to those who’d had to outwit their enemies rather than cross swords.
It wasn’t that he thought he couldn’t beat him — it was that he didn’t want to. Throwing a rock through a deer’s chest was one thing, but the idea of having to hit Griffith put a sour taste in his mouth. There must be someway he could win without having to hurt him …
“I’m going to keep this with my treasures,” Baird said, hugging the Atlas close to his chest. “It should be in the company of other great things. Don’t worry, young man — I’ll keep it safe.” He shuffled off, then, feeling along the walls until he disappeared into the office.
Kael sighed heavily when he looked up through the unfinished roof and saw it was nearly sunset. He stuffed his things away, dragging his feet a bit. He picked the dragonscale gauntlets up and turned them over in his hands.
They had a complicated texture: light, yet impossibly hard — spiny and smooth at the same time. The scales fit comfortably, breathed well. And yet, they could shatter swords. He bet even Griffith would have a difficult time …
Mercy’s sake — that was it.
“Baird, come on!” Kael hollered back at the office. “Let’s get to dinner before I start thinking sensibly again.”
“It takes very little effort to think sensibly, young man. The real challenge is in thinking well,” Baird chirped in reply.
Somehow, Kael managed to get the beggar-bard wrangled and on his way to dinner. His mind was so filled with thoughts that he didn’t even remember pushing through the heavy front doors.
The Hall was fuller than it’d been the night before. Kael noticed that the craftsmen had added several new tables to the inside edge of the rectangle. The people who filled them weren’t dressed in the furs and paint of the wildmen, but wore the same rough-spun clothes the Tinnarkians had worn.
“Folk from downmountain.”
Kael jumped. He hadn’t even realized Gwen had come up behind him.
She wore a cap made of a fox’s hide. Its feet dangled at her ears and its tail draped down her neck. The bright red pelt matched her wild locks perfectly. “They fled the mountains to escape Earl Titus. Now trouble in the Valley has chased them back up. They’re mostly children — little more than empty bellies to feed, in my opinion.”
After a moment, her frown softened. “I’ve put them to work gathering firewood. They aren’t exactly safe making camp with us, but it’s better than most fates. What can we do?” She nodded to a table that was packed full of redheaded children, and sighed. “The mountains would swallow them up if we left them on their own. Your heart would have to be colder than a wynn’s underbelly to turn them away.”
Kael agreed.
The children stared openly at the wildmen. One of the craftsmen grinned at them through her paint and sat down at their table. Cautious smiles spread across the children’s windburn faces as she told them a story. Soon they’d clamped hands over their mouths, trying desperately to hide their giggles.
Kael couldn’t help but smile as he watched. Laughter was as rare as warmth in the mountains.
Gwen marched for her table, and Kael let Baird tote him to a dish he liked the smell of — venison drowned in rich brown gravy. “Ah, the skies are closed once more,” Baird said, inhaling deeply as they sat. “How quickly the craftsmen work.”
Kael glanced up and saw that the Hall’s roof had indeed been restored. The pine beams were hung back in place and new shingles hid them from the stars. “You don’t happen to know how the roof got blown off, do you?”
“I told you — Kael the Wright summoned the earth to aid him in battle.” Baird’s fingers clamped down tightly upon his arm. “I heard the roar of thunder and a great storm wind threw me against the wall. Then heat — oh, such terrible heat! It was all around me, scraping, swirling. I hid my face from its rage and did not stir until the fires had passed.”
At first, Kael had ignored the beggar-bard’s tale. But now he was beginning to wonder. The roof had obviously been blown off by something. He sifted through Baird’s rant, trying to piece it all together: thunder, storm winds, fire …
Quite suddenly, Kael figured it out.
He was doing a fairly good job of keeping his grin at bay when Kyleigh burst through the doors — and he quickly lost the fight.
Her armor was gone. She wore a rough-looking fur tunic and absolutely no boots to speak of. Her bare arms swung out beside her and the pads of her feet slapped against the floor as she marched across the Hall.
“Evening, gentlemen,” she said as she sat beside them. There was a purplish ring around one of her eyes — and it made the green blaze all the more furiously.
Baird dipped his head in greeting. “Good evening, young lady.”
Kael glared at her black eye. “All right — who do I need to throttle?”
>
“Nobody. Honestly, I’m fine.”
She wasn’t fine. And he was fairly certain he knew exactly who’d punched her. He’d had every intention of strangling Gwen with the bushy tail of her cap when Kyleigh grabbed him by the front of the tunic.
“I deserved it, all right?” she said, pulling him back into his seat.
“How could you have possibly —?”
“I lost my temper. I behaved badly, and if Gwen hadn’t punched me … well, things could’ve gotten out of hand.” She touched her bruise gingerly with the tips of her fingers. “It’s my own fault, really. Now Gwen’s taken my armor away and forced me to wear this.” She pulled down roughly on the hem of her skirt — a skirt, Kael couldn’t help but notice, that showed far more of her legs than usual.
Baird’s knobby hands slapped against his face. “Hmm, there’s a strange warmth beneath your skin. Almost … feverish. You haven’t come down with a fever, have you?”
“I’m fine. I haven’t got a fever,” Kael snapped. He spent the next several moments staring pointedly at the far wall, taking long drinks of icy water.
Fortunately, Kyleigh was too busy swearing at her skirt to notice.
“What did you do to get into trouble, exactly?” Kael said.
Her mouth snapped shut and a strange pink blossomed across her cheeks. “Leave it.”
“No. I don’t want to leave it.” He was almost positive that Kyleigh was being punished for blowing the roof off the Hall. He wanted to hear her admit it — but most importantly, he wanted to know why. “What did you —?”
A lash of icy water cut him short. It blurred his vision and splashed up his nose. Griffith grinned from beside him. “Are you ready for me to slap the skin off you again?”
He was.
Kael walked out into the middle of the Hall. While Gwen made her speech about the caddoc, he focused. He imagined that dragonscales popped up along his skin. Black, interlocking discs covered his knuckles, his palms, and wrapped around his fingers. He flexed his hands and waited, watching as Griffith took his place.