by Dawn Cook
When he was no longer necessary, he would go.
19
“Bye, Papa,” Alissa whispered. She turned away, the tears brimming, but too much a part of her to fall. With feet slow and heavy, she made her way from the ice-and thorn-covered pile of rock at the base of the Hold’s tower that marked his grave. Bailic had never cleared the rubble of his fallen balcony. Her papa was under it. The snow was thick and would soon obscure that she had been here. Bailic would never know; she would just as soon keep it that way.
She tugged her coat tight about her neck and peered up at the tower, gray in the diffuse light. Icy pinpricks melted into cold drops as the snow fell upon her upturned face. It was hard to tell in late winter, but she thought the tangle of canes was a wild rose. Papa would have liked that, she thought as she turned to find her way back inside.
It was seldom she could slip completely away from Strell, but he had stormed down to his potter’s stead shortly after his morning lesson. Bailic had been especially brutal in his sarcasms, and Strell was undoubtedly working his frustrations out on the clay. He had become markedly more careful with Bailic, and holding his tongue clearly grated on Strell’s independent plainsman upbringing.
Slumped with more than her feeling of sad remembrance, she halfheartedly tugged the Hold’s black, inner set of doors open and slipped inside. Talon landed upon Alissa’s shoulder in a flurry of wings and noise, scolding her. Although it had been more difficult, Alissa managed to avoid her bird as well. “Hush,” she murmured, ignoring the nonstop harangue. Talon gave a final chitter and flew to the rafters as Alissa entered the kitchen, apparently convinced her scolding had done some good. Alissa stomped the snow from her boots and filled her copper teapot. She put it over the fire, too dejected to bother taking off her coat. Slouching on a stool, she traced a slow arc on the floor with her foot, waiting for the water to heat.
It seemed something more than Bailic had been bothering Strell lately. She thought the beginnings of his mood could be traced to the afternoon she had found Lodesh in the stables. Though she had immediately taken Strell to meet him, they found the stables empty. Strell hadn’t been the same since.
And Lodesh was avoiding her. True to his promise, he let her know when he came by leaving an acorn for her to find. She uncovered a new one every third day or so in the oddest of places: tucked in her shoe, behind the rolling pin, jammed in her thimble. The stables were empty whenever she looked, and she hoped she hadn’t said anything to offend the Warden. She loved secrets, and at first, finding a nut was like sharing in a mystery. Now she was tired of the game and wanted to talk to someone.
As she sat in the warm, comforting quiet of the kitchen, Alissa wished she didn’t have to sneak out beyond the garden’s walls to her papa’s grave. Having only a pile of rubble to remember him by was depressing. There was his pack, but that was in the closet under the steps in the great hall. The door was warded shut, and had been since they arrived.
Alissa’s foot went still. Slowly, she straightened. Strell had gotten past the ward by jamming the door behind Bailic, preventing it from locking. Perhaps the door was still open?
A sly, casual glance to the ceiling told her Talon was preening, apparently satisfied Alissa would be doing nothing of interest as there was a pot of water over the fire. Very quietly, Alissa stood and left. Talon, she was sure, wouldn’t approve.
Her pulse quickened as she made her stealthy way to the great hall to stand before the door to the closet under the stairs. She eyed the thin cracks in the wall, a small grin easing over her as she spied a bit of green fabric peeping from between the stones. Apparently Bailic hadn’t bothered to investigate the door after Useless had escaped, either. With a last, furtive glance toward the kitchen, Alissa pried the door open and cautiously peered inside. There, lying in the dust by a stack of torches, was her papa’s pack.
Pleased but rather depressed, Alissa slipped into the half-light under the stairs and knelt before it. She tugged at the knots holding the pack shut, finally running to the dining room for a knife. There was a slight cramping of her fingers as she cut the knots free, and she jerked her hands away. Her papa had warded it. That was why Bailic hadn’t touched it. Then she shrugged—her papa would never make anything that could hurt her—and she confidently opened the pack to pull out a familiar pair of cream-colored boots. Smiling faintly, she set them aside. It was no wonder she had prized hers so greatly. She hadn’t consciously known it, but before Strell turned her boots that horrid brown with his waterproofing grease on their way to the Hold, they had been identical in color to her papa’s. Next came a thick blanket. She brought it to her nose and breathed deeply. The tears pricked as it smelled of home even now. Taking a slow breath to keep from crying, she set it down and continued.
All told there were a spare set of clothes—eerily identical to the first outfit she had stitched for Strell—a cup and bowl crafted out of stone as was her mortar, a length of rope with several immovable knots, and myriad minor objects. It was all fairly typical, mirroring her own abandoned pack. Near the bottom she found a fold of paper, and after reading the salutation, she tucked it in her pocket with a rush of grief. It was for her mother. As she sat in the dust becoming depressed, Talon found her.
Hissing and flapping like a fear-maddened beast, Talon dove at her from the great hall. Alissa’s eyes widened in shock. “Talon! No!” she shouted, hunching into herself. The bird’s claws reached skin when Alissa snapped out of her astonishment and shoved her out of the closet. Talon sprawled awkwardly on the smooth, polished floor, squawking indignantly as she struggled to regain her wings. Alissa lunged to the door and pulled upon the handle. The sounds of her kestrel’s fury cut off abruptly as the door grated shut.
“Hounds!” Alissa whispered, staring through the new darkness at the unseen door. Her heart was pounding, and she felt queasy. Talon had never done that before! What demon had whispered into her ear?
Fumbling in the black for her papa’s fire kit, she lit one of the torches. The light jumped, responding to a draft she hadn’t noticed before. With a faint stirring of excitement, she peered down a square hole in the floor. This had to be the passage Strell told her about that led to Useless’s cell. Useless had been his typical, closed-mouthed self when she asked him how Strell had freed him. Strell, though, had been free in his account, so much so she sometimes questioned the truth of it. One thing he had mentioned was this stairway. “And pillars engraved with the script I can read,” she whispered, curiosity pulling at her.
The breeze shifting her hair smelled of snow, and she wondered how long it would take to find the stair’s end. It might be useful knowing a third way out of the fortress. The cramped stairway seemed awfully dark and wet, but the thought of something to read was irresistible. Taking a resolute breath, Alissa prudently tucked the knife in her pocket and started down.
The air in the stairwell was cold and damp above her boots, and she shivered, glad she still had on her coat. She began to shiver, and just as she decided to forget the entire thing and return to the upper rooms, the steps ended and a narrow, cramped tunnel began. Holding her torch before her, she followed it until it opened up into a small room, one end blocked by an enormous gate. The bars were set so far apart, it would be easy to slip between them. There was the sound of dripping water, and the smell of outside was thick in the chill air. Alissa went to put her torch into the wall holder, but the last one had been jammed and she couldn’t free it. Resigning herself to holding it, she stepped closer to the gate.
Beyond was an echoing blackness relieved by the hint of huge pillars. Her light stretching over the smooth stone floor didn’t reach far, smothered by the dark. She hesitated, biting her lip as she looked at the metal rods. Slowly she reached out to touch one. There was a flash of unseen power, and she nearly jumped out of her skin. They were warded, she thought dryly, her finger in her mouth.
Grimacing, Alissa eyed the distant glow of sunlight behind the pillars. She could tell they we
re engraved, but she was too far away to see what even the closest said. It irritated her, the not knowing, and she eyed the rods with a wary distrust. Strell said he had passed between them, not just in, but out as well on the western gate. He said they were warded for Useless only.
“Maybe if I don’t actually touch them,” she whispered, and she carefully sent a finger dead center between two. There was a tingle of warning but no pain, and so she stuck more of her arm behind the gate. Wiggling her fingers, she withdrew her hand and sent her foot to try the same. Still only the warning. Her breath hissed out in exasperation as she looked at her torch. It was burning well. There should be plenty of time to see what some of the pillars said and make it back upstairs before it went out—if she could get past the bars.
Lips pursed, she took a wary step back. Her finger was singed, but not badly. It didn’t even hurt anymore. She flexed it, eyeing it in the dim light. Strell had passed through the gate, so she should be able to as well. Nodding sharply, Alissa boldly stepped between the bars. A strong wash of caution coursed through her, shocking in its intensity. She shivered, but once through, she looked about the gigantic cavern with a growing feeling of awe.
Her eyes rose to the distant ceiling, decorated with myriad muted colors and soft shapes. The pillars, though, were far more interesting. Holding her torch high, she squinted to read the first. A smile lifted the corners of her mouth as she realized they were books, stretching to the heavens. Before her satisfied eyes were the comforting whispers of stories and adventures she had heard all her life. She almost turned around to get Strell. But the light beckoned, and Alissa headed for it, reading snippets of well-known and new stories as she went. The pillars, rising like some strangely symmetricalforest, were both eerie and comfortable. She halted in wonder as the last slipped behind her. It was as if she could see the entire world.
It wasn’t snowing on this side of the mountain, and the clear skies revealed the distant horizon. It was nearly flat. She had never seen such a thing before, and it looked wrong. In great undulating waves, the land flowed away, the hills between her and the unseen sea dwarfed by the one she now stared in wonder from. The ocean was lost in the gray, but she could sense it was there, just out of sight. Then Alissa looked down, and gulping, took three steps back. It took all her courage to cautiously peek over the edge again. There were clouds between her and the ground. Her knees went weak, and her hand went to her stomach. The floor at the opening was ragged, showing where the hinges holding the gate against the mountain had once been. The thought that Strell had actually climbed out onto the surrounding rock made her ill. Unnerved, she turned to the sound of moving water, her eyes slowly adjusting back to the torch-lit darkness.
The icy plinking led her to a tremendous cistern behind a retaining wall thicker than she was wide. Steady drops plunked into it, shifting the surface to look like rhythmic echoes of sound. Her gaze rose to the source of the water, and her mouth opened in astonishment. Hanging high above the pool was a fantastic array of worked stone in the shape of a cone. There was the faint whistle of wind through its honeycombed channels, and with a feeling of wonder, she realized the structure had been designed to capture water from the very air itself!
Amazed at the skill necessary to craft such a thing, she dipped her hand and took a taste of its result. The water was warm, and she shivered. The surface disturbed by her fingers rippled gently against the circular walls, looking more like mist than liquid in the soft dusk. Drying her hand nervously upon her coat, she gazed at the ceiling, squinting to make out the swirls of color.
She set her torch down to lever herself up onto the retaining wall to get a closer look at the ceiling, but hesitated as her torchlight fell upon the cistern’s wall and the thin tracings of words chiseled there. Immediately she crouched to read them, having to pull her torch so close, the smoke stung her eyes. Her brow rose as she realized it wasn’t a story or tale, but names! Her unease forgotten, Alissa circled the pool, holding her torch before her.
“Dom-Crawen,” she whispered. “Redal-Stan.” She continued with a growing excitement, recognizing the names Useless had scratched in the snow and made her memorize her last lesson. “Sloegar,” she mused, wondering why they were abruptly singular, not hyphenated. The names spiraled around the cistern in overlapping rows. Alissa followed, her finger tracing lightly down through the ages. Almost to the end, she paused. “Keribdis,” she breathed, taking a chill as she recognized another. The male names were hyphenated, the female names were not.
Immediately she went to the masculine rows to find Useless’s name. “Talo-Toecan,” she said, smiling. There was a good handful after his, but it was the last that caught her attention. “Connen-Neute,” she said, frowning. Useless had told her he had gone feral, and there was a shallow circle etched around his name that most lacked. Alissa frowned, thinking it must be a designation of some sort.
His was the last on the masculine list, and she pondered it for a time before sitting down to put it at eye level. It didn’t seem right that the last Master named upon the wall would be recorded as feral. Being contrary, she used the knife to scratch the name, “Useless,” after it.
Pleased at the result, she awkwardly went to stand upon the wall. Holding her torch high, she craned her neck to stare at the ceiling. The additional height seemed to make the difference, and she could see now that it was decorated with pictures of rakus. One had brown eyes instead of the usual gold, and she pondered the incongruity as she circled the pool from atop the thick wall. Her feet made a small scuffing hiss against the pillars and floor. On impulse, she looked up, breathing a soft, “Hello-o-o-o.” She smiled as her echo whispered back. Taking a deeper breath, she called again, louder. She set the torch down and clapped once to try and gauge the echo’s interval. Her papa had once taken her to a cliff, showing her how, if she paced it right, it would sound as if the mountains were singing with her. Smiling at the memory, she started to sing, her voice bouncing wildly among the pillars and ceiling. She chose a tavern song, easy to sing and not required to adhere to any particular tone to sound good. It was known by farmers and plainsmen alike, thought they each had their own versions. Regardless if it was sung in the plains or foothills, it always revolved around an addle-brained man out to make his fortune and his continuous predicaments.
“Taykell was a good lad,
He had a hat and horse.
He also had six brothers,
The youngest one of course.
His father said, ‘Alas, my boy.
I’ve nothing more to give ye.’
His name forsook, the path he took,
To go to find the blue sea.”
Alissa’s eyebrows rose and she turned to the darkness, hearing in the echo of her voice, the deep tone of another singer.
“Taykell sought a treasure,
To give his name some worth.
The one that he’d been born with,
Now stood with a huge dearth.
Told of one that he might find,
He searched the total land.
Was found, but lost, to pay the cost,
To forge a copper band.”
Someone else is down here? she thought. And it sounded like Strell!
20
Lodesh pushed aside the thin, lacy curtain on the window with a single finger. “Good,” he breathed upon seeing the morning snow swirling down in a muffling, gray stillness. He had been hoping to get to the Hold today, and the snow would help cover his tracks. Deciding to eat later, he quickly packed a small sack of whatever was handy. He dropped an acorn to leave for Alissa into his pocket, and after a hurried check on the fire to assure himself his guardian’s dwelling wouldn’t go up in smoke in his absence, he left, warding the door from long habit.
Looking to the center of the field, he whistled. The sharp sound died quickly in the sifting snow. Lodesh grimaced, turned, and stomped towards the western edge of the city. He didn’t like it when he forgot he was alone. He’d have to make the
journey on foot. His horse was long gone, and the wild herd had abandoned the field when the first stone for his cursed wall was laid. They hadn’t been seen since.
He walked west through his empty city, stoically ignoring the black windows and barren shop fronts, unable to prevent the names and faces that once went with them from swimming up from his thoughts. He should have stopped the wall’s construction right then, he thought dismally. But he had been young and inexperienced, relying heavily upon the whispered counsel of frightened men and women. Wishing that his foresight could have been as clear then as it was now, Lodesh passed through the broken west gate and continued through the hushed woods until the tower materialized, appearing as if by magic from the swirling snow.
The small prints of Alissa’s boots decorated the steps, and he smiled, feeling the stiffness of his half-frozen cheeks. Apparently he wasn’t the only one using the snow to their advantage today. A quick mental sweep of the great hall, kitchen, and the Keepers’ dining room told him the first floor was empty. Satisfied, he knocked the snow from his boots and slipped inside.
The stillness that gripped the Hold was absolute. A hot, metallic scent hung like a pall in the air, and he wondered what Bailic was up to. There was a sudden rush of wings. Alissa’s bird landed on his wrist, having dropped from one of the balconies overlooking the great hall. “Hush,” he soothed the agitated bird, hoping she wouldn’t pierce his coat with her talons. He wasn’t surprised to see her. The bird had an uncanny knack for finding him, serving as a silent witness as he made his hurried checks upon Alissa.