The Heartwood Crown

by Matt Mikalatos

  “They aren’t guarding against the likes of you,” Mud replied. He led Darius up a wide stairway, onto the second floor, and then past a room that appeared to be nothing more than a thousand suits of clothes hanging from hooks or thrown across furniture. “Fop,” Mud said dismissively.

  They entered an interior courtyard, the sunlight dazzling as it lit up the garden, the fountains, the shimmering pond that lay in the center of this mansion. An Elenil sat at a small, round table, his white-blond hair carefully braided into a crown with trailing plaits cascading down his back, his pale ivory clothes covering every inch of him in pleats, folds, cloth flowers, and embroidered patterns of golden birds eating silver fruits. He stood, and his cape dragged on the grass, and when he held up his gloved hand, lace nearly engulfed it. “Ah, the Black Skull himself, unless I miss my mark. I don’t believe we’ve been properly introduced. I am Hanali, son of Vivi.”

  “I know you,” Darius said. “The Elenil slave master who recruits humans to do your dirty work.”

  Hanali tipped his head. “I would not describe my work thus. Nevertheless, it is not wholly inaccurate. Do you think so, Mrs. Raymond?”

  A middle-aged human woman sat at the table sipping a cup of tea. “I describe it nearly identically,” she said.

  “In that case, this is Mrs. Raymond. She houses and cares for the slaves.”

  “You’re insufferable,” she said, but she stood and took Darius’s hand. “I know your name from Madeline. You are welcome here, Darius Walker. Don’t mind Hanali, he’s an acquired taste.”

  Mud spit on the floor, which made Hanali frown. “If anyone can get you in to the archon’s presence, it’s Hanali.”

  “Mud, be a dear, and fetch someone to clean up your spittle. Now. Why would I want to get you an audience with the archon?”

  “So I can kill him.” Darius set his bag down. The sword was calling to him, wanting to kill Hanali, too.

  “Oh, I don’t think I’ll be doing that,” Hanali said. “We went down that road before, and look where it has gotten us. Magic is half failing, unpredictable, going through fits and starts. We’re actually having rainstorms! Did you see what it did to my flowers earlier today? Beat the poor little petals to the ground. I had to get a special dispensation to use the magic necessary to provide sunlight for the courtyard. No, I have a better plan for you.”

  Darius had seen Hanali’s plan for Madeline and was not impressed. He crossed his arms. “And what might that be?”

  “Oh! Lovely bracelets, Darius. I must get some similar ones made for one of the archon’s parties. Wouldn’t that be funny?” No one responded to this, so he looked at Mrs. Raymond. “That would be funny, wouldn’t it, Mary?”

  She twisted her face into a sour look and shook her head. “Stick to the topic at hand, Hanali.”

  “Ah yes. I am not going to help you kill the archon,” Hanali said. “I am going to help you start a war between the Pastisians and the Elenil.”

  “The necromancers?”

  Hanali flashed a devilish grin. “The same.”

  16

  LAMISAP

  I will let the people come into the forest, and perhaps these woods will become what the Sunlit Lands were meant to be: a refuge for those who have been harmed by the injustices of the world.

  FROM “THE GOOD GARDENER,” AN ALUVOREAN STORY

  “So this is Aluvorea,” Jason said. “I don’t like it.”

  He had been shocked to see Madeline. Also shocked by how tired she looked, and how thin. Her skin looked almost grey, and her eyes were sunken. Her cheekbones stuck out too far. He hadn’t seen her for almost two months, but she looked like she had taken six months’ worth of downhill movement with her health. Of course, time on Earth moved differently, so maybe it had been six months? He thought of his parents, and a pang of guilt hit him. He had barely thought about them the past weeks, what with all the training with the Scim and, honestly, the excitement of his relationship with Baileya.

  Shula was here too. She had been happy enough to see them, but they had only talked to Madeline for a few minutes before Shula had interjected and said Madeline needed to rest. Madeline hadn’t objected, so Jason and Baileya had quietly let themselves out of the little room in the hedge. Jason was excited to catch up with David, anyway.

  David had been here in Aluvorea since he’d left the Knight of the Mirror’s tower. He had made a few friends in the woods and had been spending some time getting to know the lay of the forest. He hadn’t heard from Kekoa. Kekoa hadn’t even sent any birds to David, which only reminded Jason that their old friend had sent word to him saying he needed help. Jason had hoped that maybe Kekoa had sent more details to David, but no luck.

  “He can’t send birds,” David said. “Not here.”

  “Too hard to find you with all the trees or something?” So far this place reminded him of any forest in America, just with bigger trees. Like someone had never figured out you could chop them down or something. They were growing out of control, and even a lot of the paths between them were covered with vines or moss or other growing things. He couldn’t help but imagine that there were wolves and other carnivorous beasts out among the trees. His imagination was not his friend, he knew that much.

  David shook his head. “The Aluvoreans don’t allow it. Because the messenger birds take their magic from Aluvorea.”

  “Wait, what?”

  “See those little flitting things in the trees?”

  Jason moved closer. There were hummingbirds buzzing around the higher branches, but looking again, he saw that there were other things—wingless but with the quick, almost blurred motions of the hummingbirds and about the same size—jumping around in the trees. They almost looked like . . . tiny people. “Tell me those aren’t faeries,” Jason said.

  Baileya smiled. “Have you never seen a faerie?”

  “We don’t have those on Earth.” He looked at David. “We don’t have those, right?”

  David shook his head. “Not many, no.”

  “We don’t have many in the Kakri territories either. I’ve only seen them here and in the more heavily wooded sections of the mountains.”

  David held his hand over his head, palm up. “Hold on. Diwdrap, are you there?” He held his hand patiently and motioned for silence with his other hand when Jason started to question him. “Here she is!” He moved his hand gingerly down between them. “Thank you, sister, for coming down to meet my friend. This is Jason, from my homeland, and Baileya of the Kakri.”

  Standing in David’s palm was a woman no larger than Jason’s middle finger. She wore a simple dress that seemed to be made of moss and leaves, with a sword on her belt that looked to have been made from a long, rather savage-looking thistle spine. She had iridescent purple-and-green hair, not unlike the colors of a hummingbird’s feathers, and a pinkish color to her skin. She bowed low to them, one arm across her waist. Baileya returned the gesture, and Jason tried to, but he somehow put his feet in the wrong place, lost his balance, and tripped.

  David and Baileya laughed, and Diwdrap smiled, revealing perfect, tiny white teeth. “She doesn’t have wings,” Jason said once he had managed to get to his feet again.

  Diwdrap held up a finger as if to say “wait just a minute,” then let out a high-pitched chirp. A hummingbird descended from the branches above and hovered by David’s palm. Diwdrap took a running leap and landed on the bird’s back. It zipped up, to the left, and then buzzed at Jason’s head, as if getting a closer look. Diwdrap gave him a nod, the bird hovering at his eye level, then sped away into the trees again.

  “Not a big talker,” Jason said.

  David raised his eyebrows, as if waiting for Jason to figure something out. Jason turned to Baileya, who had the same expectant look on her face. It must be some Sunlit Lands faerie tale or something, because he had no idea what they were wanting him to put together. A quiet little faerie with no wings. Hummingbirds, the only birds he had ever seen in the Sunlit Lands who never talked. A
nd the Aluvoreans didn’t use messenger birds.

  “Nope, I don’t get it,” Jason said.

  David leaned against a tree trunk. “It will come to you.”

  “Seriously, dude. Give me a hint.”

  “Well, do birds talk back home?”

  “Parrots do. Mynah birds. Big Bird does.”

  “In general?”

  “No.”

  David shook his head. “Right. So it’s . . . magic?”

  “Yeah, Elenil magic.” Uh-oh. It was starting to come together. Jason got a pudding cup every morning. But the pudding had to come from somewhere. Some hospital on Earth was losing a cup a day so it could appear to Jason in the Sunlit Lands. When Madeline had been able to breathe, it was because a Scim kid was giving Madeline her breath. So messenger birds . . . “Are you telling me the Elenil stole the voices of those cute little faeries so they could have messenger birds?”

  “It’s a sore spot with the Aluvoreans still,” David said. “The hummingbirds refused to become messengers, which is why they can’t talk, and the Aluvoreans won’t allow messenger birds within the forest. The faeries and the hummingbirds consider themselves one tribe now.”

  Jason scratched his head. “Wait. How do you learn their names if they can’t talk?”

  David laughed. “You always ask interesting questions, bro. They point out things that are close to their name. Thistle, Sunlight, Flower, Dewdrop—like that. And they have a sort of sign language. I’m not fluent, but I can understand a good amount now.”

  It hit Jason that he had never once wondered about the messenger birds and how they were able to speak. If he had taken even five minutes to reflect on it, he would have realized that given the way Elenil magic worked, it had to be something like this. He probably would have guessed they used Scim prisoners of war or something, but this made more sense. Given the number of messenger birds, it had to be something on a larger scale. Of course it did. Which, honestly, far from making the forest seem friendlier made Jason more nervous about it.

  “Is this place really safe for people like us? I feel like we might be, um, unwelcome here.”

  David was whittling at a stick with a large knife. “Nah. They know the Elenil are trying to kill you. They like you already. They’re allied with the Elenil but sort of out of necessity. They’re glad to help you if they can. And they’re in the middle of something with Madeline, too.”

  Baileya put her hand on his shoulder. “It will be a difficult place for Bezaed to follow us, or at least to follow without our knowledge.”

  Jason smiled at her. “True. That’s a good thing.” He looked back at David. “How do the faeries keep going, knowing about the Elenil stealing their voices? Why aren’t they at constant war with them?”

  David shrugged. “There’s nothing to be done about it today, so they’re living the best life they can in the meantime. If the chance to change things comes, believe me, they’ll be there.”

  Delightful Glitter Lady was sniffing a large red flower at the edge of the clearing they were in. “Dee, keep away from that,” Jason called. Who knew what the plants around here would do to a kitten-sized rhino?

  The idea of the faeries simply living with the fact that their voices had been stolen didn’t sit right with Jason. “I don’t get it,” he said to David. “Why aren’t they fighting alongside the Scim, then?”

  David glanced up from his whittling. “Okay, bro. You know how I grew up at the Crow Agency? On the rez?”

  “Yeah.” David was Apsáalooke. Crow tribe. He had grown up on the reservation in Montana.

  “There’s the memorial for the Battle of the Little Bighorn on the rez. You know that story?”

  “Custer’s Last Stand, right?”

  Baileya leaned close. She loved stories of all kinds, and even history from Earth interested her. “It was a battle?” she asked.

  David nodded. “We don’t call it Custer’s Last Stand, though. We call it the Battle of the Greasy Grass, or the Battle of the Little Bighorn. It gets complicated, this story, because my people, the Crow, they were on Custer’s side as scouts. But Custer and his men, they come down on this settlement of Lakota, Cheyenne, and Arapaho. They have the element of surprise. They have superior firepower. But they lose the battle. Badly. Badly enough that it becomes famous. A monument is put up celebrating the lives the army lost. There’s even a memorial for the horses that died.”

  Jason knew where this was going. “But not the Native people.”

  David raised his eyebrows. “Not at first, anyway. There’s one now. It has a quote on it that says, ‘In order to heal our grandmother earth we must unify through peace.’ The names of the people who died from different tribes—the names we know, anyway—are there. It’s a sacred place. People still bring prayer cloths to the battlefield and put them up when no one’s looking. The memorial staff don’t even try to take them down anymore, because they know more will show up.”

  “I know this is somehow answering my question about the faeries not fighting alongside the Scim.”

  “Yeah. So in World War II something like 25,000 tribal people fought. Which side do you think they fought on?”

  The Allies. Obviously. “Yeah, but the Elenil are still taking advantage of the faeries. They’re still doing harm to them today.”

  David just stared at him, as if he should be able to put the pieces together. Again. When Jason looked back at him helplessly, David said, “Buddy, you got to learn more about this stuff. Just . . . when you get home, do an Internet search on water rights, and missing indigenous women, and the American Indian boarding schools. Man, I already told you about my grandpa, didn’t I? This isn’t ancient history—there’s stuff still happening. The Scim have been enemies of the Aluvoreans for a long time. They’ve invaded and clear-cut the forest in places. There’s never been a peace treaty. The Aluvoreans aren’t going to jump in and fight for the Scim any more than the Lakota were going to jump in and fight for the Germans in World War II.”

  David stood and showed Jason the carving he had done. It was a horse. Not intricate but definitely a horse. “Things aren’t so simple, Jason. You have to pay attention, look for the complexities. There’s still animosity between the Cheyenne and the Crow, especially with some of the older folks. There’s still conflict between our tribes and the US government. But hey. We’ve got a memorial now, right? And it’s better than the one for Custer’s horses.” He pushed the horse into Jason’s hand.

  A faerie flew up on a hummingbird, a different faerie than last time. He chirped twice, and David said, “What is it, Thastle?”

  The tiny man on the hummingbird’s back made several signs. David crossed his arms, then looked into the branches overhead. “Okay. Let’s ask Diwdrap if she’ll go.” He turned to Jason and Baileya. “I sent Thastle to find Darius, but he said they’ve disappeared. Probably being careful no one sees them along the way. I’m going to ask Diwdrap to try to find him—she’s one of our best trackers.”

  Diwdrap appeared beside David and made a few high-pitched chirps.

  “Are they talking in bird language?”

  “I don’t know, bro, I don’t speak bird. But I’m going to take Diwdrap to Madeline, see if she wants to send a personal message and if she has any idea how to find Darius.”

  “Okay,” Jason said. “See you in a minute.”

  David walked off, three hummingbirds flying around him. Jason turned the horse over in his hand, then passed it to Baileya.

  She didn’t look away from him, though. “You are troubled.”

  “I just . . . if things are that complicated, if there are so many sides and different agendas and everything, how do we even know who the good guys are? And if we don’t know that, if the lines aren’t clear, then how do we keep ourselves safe?”

  Baileya smiled. “I know you, Wu Song. You are not worried about protecting yourself. You are worried about your friend. About Madeline.”

  “I know I can’t save her. But she’s my friend, Bai
. I have to watch out for her.”

  “I promised you I would protect her,” Baileya said. “You know I am a person who keeps my word.”

  “Of course,” Jason said.

  “But it may be that to protect her might put you at risk, Wu Song. This is something we must discuss.”

  Baileya’s golden brow was furrowed in concern, and her silver eyes were filled with worry.

  “What’s to discuss?” Jason said. “She’s my friend. She’s friends with both of us. Why wouldn’t we risk everything for her?”

  Baileya took his hand. “Wu Song. It is . . . different now. Do you see the sickness on her?”

  “Sure. I mean, she doesn’t look great. But she was sick before. She was sick last time we were here.”

  “You have always been one to embrace truth, Wu Song. I must say this to you, though it will be difficult. Your friend—our friend—Madeline has gone too far down the path toward death. She will not be walking back the other way, Wu Song. To protect her now is only to delay, not forestall.”

  “Then we delay it,” he said, pulling his hand away. “Baileya, if it’s a day or a week or two hours, we protect Madeline until the end. Agreed?”

  Baileya stared out into the tangle of trees. “If the choice came to her or you, Wu Song, would it not be wiser to save you, who may have many years of life ahead?”

  “Ha! I could get hit by a bus tomorrow!”

  She raised an eyebrow. “A bus?”

  He kept forgetting she had never been outside the Sunlit Lands. “Okay, not a bus, and probably not tomorrow. I could get hit by a runaway goat cart.” Baileya’s eyes sparkled with amusement. “Okay, fine, I could get hit by a falling tree. I’m just saying that yes, I’m healthy, but I could still die before her.”

  Baileya put her arm around Jason, and he felt her warm affection fill him completely. “Your love for your friend does you credit, Wu Song. I will do my best to protect her and you.”

  “And if the time comes, Baileya, you take care of her.”