The Chestnut King

by N. D. Wilson

  “Must we board, sir?” the sailor asked. “A five-tier galley shaped of living trees? It’s bewitched.”

  “Aye,” the captain said. “And empty of souls and under full cloth to a gusting wind.”

  “Let it sail on, sir, please. Or gun its hull and send it to the bottom.”

  The captain inhaled slowly and then looked at the sailor. The young man’s face was white with genuine fear.

  “The sea has brought her to me,” the captain said. “And she comes with brass guns worth more to me than a dozen petty merchants. Put alongside. Prepare hooks and boarding crew. Alert the oar masters.”

  Orders were shouted above and belowdecks, and the small galley began to turn—backing water with one side of oars while the other stroked on—preparing to come alongside the forest ship that sailed toward them. Sailors scrambled through the rigging, unfurling more sailcloth. Arms clattered beneath them as a boarding party assembled.

  When the two galleys finally moved side by side through the growing waves, another order was given. Oars were drawn, and three-pronged hooks on chains were thrown across the gap, catching in the rail or the rigging. And then the chains were pulled tight, drawing the hulls together, heavy timbers groaning with the friction.

  “Boarders weg!” the captain shouted. A team of armed sailors moved tentatively toward the rail, staring at the leaves and limbs that lined every joint between the bigger galley’s planks. Not one man touched the ship.

  “Boarders weg!” the captain shouted again, but he knew already what must be done. His boarding party did not budge, paralyzed by the flickering aspen leaves.

  Before simple fear could become rebellion and rebellion could become mutiny, the old captain stepped forward. He grabbed ahold of a boarding chain, and as his silent crew watched, he scrambled up the face of the bigger ship, pushed through the quivering branches, and disappeared over the rail.

  Alone on the big galley, the captain tried to take it in. A young forest, nearly up to his waist, covered the decks. The masts had grown silver bark and slender branches up almost to their tips. With gaping reptile mouths, the four scaled brass guns looked like beasts wallowing in a bed of reeds.

  The captain drew a short sword and turned slowly in place, looking for the hatch belowdecks.

  “One man,” Monmouth whispered. “An old man.” He dropped off the ladder and landed softly next to the others. Meroe and James and Frank were all armed with sea-swords, short-bladed and curved. Hyacinth held a slender knife, but Dotty and Isa and Penelope hadn’t wanted anything.

  “Only one?” James asked.

  “One can become many,” Meroe said. “We should have used the guns.”

  “That we shouldn’t have,” said Frank. “Can’t be handing out death with no cause.”

  “They fly the serpent red,” Meroe muttered. “That is cause enough.”

  Above them, footsteps echoed across the deck, and the group pushed back into the leafy shadows.

  The hatch banged open, and for a long moment, no one breathed. Then a pair of boots found the rungs of the ladder, and a man began to descend.

  Halfway down, he paused, ducked his head beneath the deck, and peered around the space. The ship’s timbers creaked. The young forest rustled, and then his eyes caught the glint of steel.

  Meroe leapt forward and gripped the old man’s ankle, pulling his leg free of the ladder. As a blade slashed down, James jerked the man’s other leg loose, and the wiry body crashed to the planks below. Twisting quickly, he somersaulted away, leapt to his feet, and faced the group with blade raised and chest heaving.

  Frank stepped forward and cleared his throat. “Welcome aboard, sir. Wish we could offer you some refreshment, but we’re in a bit of an odd circumstance.”

  The captain’s narrow eyes took them all in—the girls, the women, the men with swords, Meroe with his blood-seeped side.

  “Who bewitched the galley?” he asked suddenly.

  No one moved.

  “Is one of you a witch? A wizard? What curse is on this place?”

  “No curse,” Monmouth said. “Only life. Dead things have begun to live.”

  “I can think of no greater curse.” The man’s voice was flat, revealing nothing. “Who captained the vessel?”

  Meroe stepped forward. “It is newly mine.”

  The old man looked the big man up and down. “I’m afraid,” he said, “that now it is newly mine. At least until I have given it back to the sea.”

  Meroe snarled. “And if I spit you now?”

  “Then your hull is shattered, and your sailing grove finds the bottom.”

  “And if we accept?” Frank asked. “Will you take us aboard your craft and carry us north to Hylfing?”

  “Hylfing?” The old man smiled. His eyes flitted over the living beams around him and then back to Frank. “Are you the one called Mordecai? This is his breed of faerie witchery.”

  Frank shook his head. “I’m his brother.”

  The old man sheathed his sword. “You are here, in the belly of an empire galley, so you must know that Hylfing has been taken. No doubt your eyes were there.”

  “We were there,” Frank said.

  The old man pulled his beard and sighed. “I cannot take you north. I can only put you in at the next port. But you must not show your faces abovedecks. I will not have this witchery cast upon another craft, or my crew addled with fear. If you are seen, then my guns will send you under and I will sail on without a care.”

  “Could we have any food?” Dotty asked. “Water?”

  Footsteps pounded on the deck above them. The captain looked up.

  “Cowards,” he muttered. He stepped toward the ladder, and no one moved to stop him. “I will have food lowered through the hatch. Do not let them glimpse you.”

  Frank watched the old man scramble up into daylight. The hatch banged shut behind him.

  With a yell, Meroe buried his sword into a beam.

  “Better than chains,” Frank said quietly.

  Meroe slumped to the floor and thumped his head against the ladder. And then he laughed. “The gods have no love for me,” he said.

  Hyacinth looked at him. “Your tale has not reached its end.” She smiled. “Nor has ours.”

  Beneath them, the sea beat slowly against the hull. Above them, feet drummed and voices shouted.

  The captain threw his leg back over the ship rail and slid quickly down to the smaller galley. He’d left just enough terrified sailors aboard the green galley to guide it behind his own.

  “Dumarre by morning! Full cloth, lads!” He walked into the bow, and his young signalman hurried after him. Together, they watched the stern of the little merchant heaving along ahead.

  “We’ll strip guns north of the harbor,” the captain said. “Then claim reward on the galley.”

  Bright flags waved.

  Henry tripped and fell panting against a tree. Grabbing at its branches, he just managed to keep himself from tumbling back down the steep slope. His head was swimming, and his body felt light and out of his control. Beo stood beside him, his ribs rising and falling quickly, his thick, foam-covered tongue dangling out the corner of his mouth.

  Henry reached back for his sword but couldn’t even manage to grab it. He pressed his face into the tree trunk, gasping, and shut his eyes. Something hard, the raggant’s horn, thumped into the back of his skull. He didn’t care. Thump away, Rags. Thump, crack, and split. His head was already useless—hot and spinning everywhere but his jaw. An anchor of ice was hooked into his scar, pulling his head down, trying to pin him to the earth, to keep him from moving.

  Where were the fingerlings? Henry groped for his gray trail with his confused mind. Could he feel them? Maybe they were walking. He could rest.

  Pauper son. Sleep. Rest.

  Henry jerked up and opened his eyes, blinking away stinging sweat. She couldn’t be in his head. Not like that. He was awake. It wasn’t her. He’d imagined it. Was that better? Was he starting to imagin
e things? How long had he been running? Too long. At least a week. He couldn’t see Hylfing. He couldn’t see the ocean. He could see rocks and trees and hills, or at least their blurry shapes.

  Beo stopped panting and began to growl. Henry looked down the slope, trying to focus his eyes. Nothing. No fingerlings. No moving shapes. But the trees were close. He couldn’t see far, and his eyes were blinded with sweat, his eyelids sticking with each blink. And then his vision shifted. He could see the wind. Like a great snake, like a river dividing and uniting, climbing the mountains and resting in the valleys, the breeze surrounded everything beneath the sun. The trees, an army of life, shouting their glory and their strength, grabbed at the wind, the sun, the air with uncountable twisting, growing, laughing fingers. And rocks stood in it all, anchors of history, their stories towering and slow, patient and unforgetting. Henry’s head, already weak, throbbed like it had the day he had first seen the dandelion fire. His eyes widened, trying to understand it all, to see through the living storm that was reality. He could see three shapes, struggling through the trees, surrounded with a gray twining fog, avoided by every bright spinning strand around them.

  Your brothers come for you.

  “Go, Beo.” Henry turned and looked up the rocky slope, through the roaring life of trees and the mumbling of stone. He wished that he could learn every detail, smell every leaf, slap every boulder, that he could catch more of the thundering waterfall in the small bucket that was his body.

  He clambered up onto a rock and savored the feel of the wind on his skin. His legs were moving, carrying him higher, pumping and pushing. And his vision faded. The pack straps were rubbing his shoulders raw, and the raggant was groaning in his ear. He was Henry, tired and hungry, chasing his uncle’s dog up a mountain with death on his heels and a cold hole in his face. But he was a weed, a lion. His legs had fed on the strength of trees, and his heart pumped fire.

  Nimiane sat in the emperor’s throne, her head resting against its back. Her eyes were shut, and one hand scratched the cat on her lap. She could feel the boy. She could taste him, almost as well as when he had first reached into her tomb and left some of his blood on her hand, and she had taken the shirt off his back. This was the smell of that shirt, the strength of that blood. But it was something else, too. His blood had always been strong, but now it was hot and quick. He had changed in many ways since that first meeting in the doorway between worlds. His taste was better now. And the blood-tie between them was growing stronger every time he tried to face her. How long until she could shape words on his tongue and see out of his eyes? Days. Hours. Perhaps tonight. Where he was running, she did not know. Neither did she care. Her fingers would catch him. Coradin would not fail her again.

  “Majesty, the emperor’s throne …” The chamberlain’s voice trailed away. Nimiane did not open her eyes, but the cat raised its head.

  “His magnificence has asked me to preside,” she said quietly. “Do not approach your queen again.”

  Half of the emperor’s nobles stood uneasily in the hall. The other half, the stronger half, had fled the city, been killed in the streets, or burned in their beds. A smoky haze still hung over the city. Her witch-dogs had done well. But they had not brought her Phedon, the emperor’s proud son. He had not escaped the city. He would be found. The wolves had been given his scent.

  Nimiane slowly filled her lungs and savored the tinge of smoke and the smell of nervous, fearful nobles, spattered with their gaudy perfumes. She would keep a few of them in the end, those men and women in the crowd who were already dressed in black and stood nearer to the front—those who were willing for darkness, blood, and conquest to be the latest in court fashion.

  The witch smiled. It had been long since she had been surrounded with courtiers in a living city. Tomorrow she would tint her gown with scarlet. How many of these bleating sheep would imitate the wolf?

  A man pushed out of the crowd and approached the throne. She did not open her eyes, did not lift her head or stop her fingers from their slow combing of the cat’s fur. The man was tall, taller from where the cat looked up at him. His face was pale with fear, his jaw chewing methodically on an empty mouth.

  He had once been strong, broad-shouldered, and simple. Not one of the court preeners, he wore no high collar, no tall boots or jewels. He was staring into her face, not the cat’s, waiting for her to open her eyes, to look at him. She waited for it, knowing what would come. Let him strike at a sleeping woman. After a moment, while the silent crowd watched, he drew a knife from his belt and lunged toward the witch-queen.

  The crowd gasped, at first in shock and then in horror.

  The lowly aristocrat, not much better than a farmer, froze with his hands raised. His legs buckled, and he dropped to the floor like a limp rag. His knife clattered across the stones.

  The witch pulled every drop of him to herself, every crackle and spark of his life, his strength, his final courage. Only his soul escaped her as his body faded to ash within his clothes, like a young bird in the witch’s hand, like a country beneath her feet. The crowded hall was silent. Wind from the open window shuffled the ash across the floor beneath the cat’s watching eyes. Wind. The wind had been good. The galley would reach Dumarre beneath tomorrow’s sun. She inhaled slowly. The boy’s mother would be savored, a punishment for father and son.

  Mordecai would come to her soon. His pride would bring him. The son was within her grasp even now—struggling in the brush.

  Tonight, she would attend to the emperor.

  Henry slipped between two rocks and fell to his back, sliding down a bank into cool shade. The raggant bleated and squirmed beneath him. Beo licked his face.

  The ground was soft. Henry squinted at the air above him. It shimmered like a heat mirage but was too close, beginning just a few feet from him and climbing high, blurring the blue sky and fast-passing clouds together in a rippling sludge. Henry sat up.

  Beo was exhausted, too. His back sagged. His head drooped, panting. Foam had dried around his mouth. When he barked, his voice was hoarse.

  Henry crawled to him and threw an arm around his neck. The muscles in his legs quivered, spasming. Beo dropped to the ground. “Good dog,” Henry said. “We’re here, aren’t we? You brought me.” He looked up, blinking at the shimmer. “What do we do now?”

  The dog forced himself slowly to his feet and walked forward. Henry shut his eyes and crawled after him. The air cooled around him. The sun’s heat was gone from the back of his neck. He tried to relax his eyes, to let them see the real, and then he opened them.

  He was kneeling on dark earth beneath the canopy of an enormous chestnut. The faeries had hidden it the same way they hid themselves, but the magic was much stronger, much bigger, and … ancient. Henry felt a pressure building in his ears while the shimmering faded from his eyes. He couldn’t tell if the tree was actually three trees with trunks grafted together well aboveground, or if it had been one, split and reunited. Regardless, the trunk was tripled, leaving arched entrances to a dark, hollow center.

  Bracing himself, Henry staggered up to vertical and walked forward to the trunks. The enormous leaves above him moved slowly, like fans, and the branches were heavy with the spiny green casements of ripening chestnuts. The dangling maces grew in clumps of three, and each urchin-like shell looked big enough to hold a baseball.

  Henry reached the trunk and slapped it. “Hey!” he yelled. “I’m here to see Nudd! I have a message for the Chestnut King!” Nothing happened, so he stepped into the darkness between the trunks. It was like standing under a water tower—a water tower older than most civilizations. Beo flopped onto the ground outside. “Hello?” Henry shouted. “Hello?”

  His father had told him to wait and then to light a fire. He wasn’t sure that he could wait. He wasn’t sure that he could light a fire. He couldn’t just do things like that. Not always.

  With his foot, Henry scraped together a pile of dry leaves. Then he knelt beside them, shut his eyes, and looked down
at his right palm. The dandelion fire was slow, spinning alone in darkness, but larger and brighter than it had been after his dream-walking. He needed some of the tree’s strength.

  “Little brother,” a voice said. And Beo began to bark.

  Anger lined with fear rushed through Henry, and he opened his eyes. His hand flamed from gold to white. The leaves crackled. Dandelions swarmed up the inside of the trunks and met above Henry’s head. He slid out of the trunks and jumped to his feet. Coradin, helmed and collared and holding his sword, stood beneath the sprawling limbs, his silver helmet green from the canopy above them both, the eyeholes pure emptiness. Beo, hackles up, crouched with his belly low to the ground. The other two fingerlings stepped beneath the tree beside Coradin. Their breathing was soft and slow. They weren’t even winded.

  Henry wobbled on his feet, and the raggant bellowed in his ear. Reaching back, he managed to draw his own sword. Gripping the handle with both hands, he turned sideways and faced the fingerlings like a batter. Leaves crackled behind him. The cool, damp air carried smoke into his nostrils. A three-mace cluster of chestnuts dropped to the soft ground.

  It was time to die.

  “This far?” Coradin laughed, moving forward. “This race through mountains to set a flame beneath a tree?”

  Henry nodded, blinking. Beo growled.

  “It is time for you to come,” Coradin said, pointing his sword tip at Henry. “Your head and right hand must travel to our mother. The rest may stay behind.”

  Henry savored one last breath, blowing it out slowly. Then, with his sword still held high, he walked toward the fingerlings.

  Above him, the tree shivered. It shook, and chestnut clusters drummed to the ground. Shouting thundered from the trunk, and the sheltered chestnut world was full of faeries—big faeries with red angry faces and green maces in their hands. Henry lowered his sword, laughing as the flood rolled around him. The fingerlings stood back to back, but the wave of faeren broke them apart, and they were swept out beyond the boughs.