Raven's Ladder

by Jeffrey Overstreet

“I should go.” Tabor Jan leaned forward as if pulled by an invisible tether. But Lesyl still had hold of his sleeve. “Stuff your questions, songbird!” he grunted. “We’ve lost too many already to that blasted creature. And I don’t think last night’s struggle convinced it to leave. We’ll talk about Cal-raven later.” He jerked his arm away and marched up the corridor.

  His steps slowed, and he paused. “Forgive me,” he called back over his shoulder. “It’s…it’s a terrible day. I’m so tired I can hardly tell left from right.” His eyes met hers. “The king will return. Then…”

  “Then.” She nodded.

  As she took up her burdens again and moved on toward the open air, they seemed heavier than before.

  A plan. Oh, for a plan.

  Like an ache after a recent wound, shame burned at the edges of Tabor Jan’s concentration. He had not intended to hurt Lesyl.

  He stepped into every cave along the corridor, calling out for stragglers.

  He had not seen Brevolo this morning. She had disappeared after the ordeal in the armor cave the night before, refusing comfort. It was her way in everything—self-reliance. She would never seek from him, nor he from her, the kind of sad, consoling whispers Cal-raven shared with Lesyl.

  He could not fathom why those two would complicate their troubles by staying up all night in search of words to describe them. Brevolo was complete and content, even if she snarled about everyone else. He hungered for the rough sparring of their conversation.

  The corridor ahead sloped into steps that ascended into darkness. He ran the full stair. Each chamber he passed was silent and empty until he reached the top. Hushed voices haunted the last cave.

  Inside, a small, silver glowstone illuminated the features of a stout old woman hovering over her frail, bedridden husband and dabbing at the tears dripping off her nose. “Vyrna,” he said, but then swallowed his reprimand.

  Vyrna had come to be known for her quiet compliance and service among Abascar’s elderly. These days she rarely left her crippled husband’s side, passing the hours by braiding intricate patterns into her long silver hair.

  “They said to leave Jak where he lies,” she rasped in a voice that had been frail since the dust and ash of Abascar’s fall. “They said he’d slow everyone down.”

  “Jak will slow everyone down, and many will thank him for it.” As Tabor Jan raised the old man from the stone bed, he was surprised to find him as weightless as a child. “The world’s changing out there, and our maps can tell us only so much. We need our elders.”

  “I’m no use,” Jak protested in a squawk like an angry gander. “I’m a heavy load.”

  As the foul air blasted through the gaps in Jak’s remaining teeth, Tabor Jan turned his head and choked. “We’re a body,” he answered, grabbing hold of a speech he had heard Cal-raven give many times. “Don’t let muscle tell bone its work is done.”

  “Bone?” That brought on a cackle and wheeze. “Zat what I am?”

  “He means you’re tough, Jakky,” said Vyrna like a schoolteacher to a child.

  “Brittle ’n’ rotten. That’s what he means.” Digging his fingers into Tabor Jan’s arm, the old man whispered, “Just put the pillow over worthless Jak’s face. It would take you no trouble at all.”

  Tabor Jan heard a faint crumbling of stone somewhere in the dark. There was no time for discussion. He began carrying Jak to the stairway. “Anyone who’d pass you by has got no gratitude. You’re Abascar’s experience, a memory as deep as a well.”

  “Well’s gone dry, Captain,” Jak sneered. “Can’t even remember breakfast.”

  “Seeds,” muttered Vyrna, hobbling alongside. “Seeds and knuckle-nuts.”

  “If we left you behind”—Tabor Jan felt his grumbling cargo grow heavier as he thudded down the crooked stair—“our strength might carry us a fair distance, and fast. But how would we be any better than beastmen? If we measure everyone’s worth by brains or brawn, well, why not leave all the children behind?”

  Jak scoffed something unintelligible.

  “What begins in love,” said Vyrna, “should end in love as well.”

  “What’s that?” Jak barked.

  “Somethin’ my mum used to say. Babies to oldies. Loved in the womb, loved still until the tomb.”

  “Take a look at your dear Vyrna, Jak.” Tabor Jan leaned against the wall of the stairway, catching his breath. He swung Jak’s head around so the man could stare into his wife’s mole-spotted face. “She’s a treasure. Would you insult her generosity and tell her she’s not worth seeing every morning?”

  Jak muttered something about intolerable noises that Vyrna made in her sleep.

  Vyrna lowered her already failing voice and said, “’Twas that scurrilous boy, Vorcin’s son. He’s the one who told me to leave Jak in his bed.”

  “Dignet?” Tabor Jan winced, wishing he hadn’t heard. Now he’d have to live with the knowledge, and he knew that someday he would find young Dignet and act on it.

  At the base of the stairs, he sat down, exhausted, with Jak lying across him like an old hound.

  Vyrna finger-combed her husband’s circle of sparse hair. “It’s all right, Jak. We’ll take you out into the sun. It’ll do you good.”

  Merya’s husband, Corvah, lumbered past, a hulk of a man, cradling his infant. It was still a startling sight—Corvah, whom so many had determined to be dead on account of daily drinking, now up and purposeful and carrying his pink and mewling son.

  “You see?” Tabor Jan turned Jak’s head, as if it were a doll’s on a pivot, so the old man could witness Corvah’s passage. “You see? New Abascar’s strength is in its heart as much as its head and its arms. We’ll show the world what can be made from broken pieces.”

  As Meddles the Weaver came into view shoving a cart full of folded blankets, Tabor Jan thrust out his leg to block his path. “Ballyworms, Cap’n!” the Gatherer shouted. “I coulda smashed your shin to splinters!”

  Tabor Jan brought Jak to the cart, set him down there, and leaned in close to Meddles’s ear, which stuck out from the Gatherer’s wild explosion of hair like a mushroom. “Push carefully. He’s fragile. And when you have time, find the old fool some freshweed to chew. If his breath gets any worse, the leaves of the Cragavar will curl up and fall.”

  Adryen and Stasi, Abascar’s cooks since Yawny’s passing, approached. “What about food?” asked Stasi. “You know how the king loves bramblebug honey.”

  “And I’ve made bundles of bean sticks,” said Adryen.

  “Some we’ll have to find on the way. The Gatherers’ll help. Shame to leave those cavefish drying on the racks, though. Bring what you can carry. And remember—anything you lift now will feel ten times heavier by the time…”

  His voice failed, for there was Brevolo, drawing a sledge through the corridor’s dust. Lying on its wooden bed, pale in the cocoon of a thistleleaf quilt, Say-ressa might have been a statue of white chalk. “Our healer’s not fit to sleep in the open, Captain.” The swordswoman’s face was expressionless. “She’s fallen so far that we could lose her to something as slight as a fly-spider bite or a scratch from a venom thorn.”

  Brevolo had not called him captain in a long time. It was a retreat. “We’ll sift the Gatherers’ wisdom to see what other help we might find in the wild until Cal-raven brings the chillseed.”

  “It’s not just the sickness, Captain. It’s the loss of her husband and daughter. Say-ressa’s been dreaming of Abascar’s fall.”

  “Try singing to her of the Keeper.” Scharr ben Fray had appeared so quietly, Tabor Jan wondered if the mage had walked right through the wall. “She might find comfort.”

  Brevolo’s eyes blazed, and Tabor Jan could read her thoughts. So it’s true. This is the one who made Cal-raven mad. But she kept her mouth shut, too bruised to muster the strength for an argument, and she dragged Say-ressa’s sled away without giving Tabor Jan so much as a glance.

  “What a burden Brevolo must carry,” the mage quietly mused.
“Having lost her sister, she’ll be afraid to let anyone else be close to her for a while. I’m sure you remember that feeling.”

  Tabor Jan did not reply, but he was stunned by Scharr ben Fray’s knowledge of his older brother’s death. It had happened so long ago. Lejor Jan had been prone to illness all through his childhood, and then a winter plague proved too fierce and took him. How dare you trouble me now with such a memory!

  But then he saw Scharr ben Fray raise his hand to address an invisible audience. “I’ll raise an image of Bryndei in stone on the wall of New Abascar, with her torch lifted high as it was when she was taken from us. For she was one of Abascar’s bravest.”

  “What are they?” whispered Tabor Jan. “What monsters are driving us from our home?”

  “The Blackstone Caves have never been your home, Captain. Barnashum belongs to the wild. We’re meant for a far better home than this.”

  “Where do we belong, then?”

  Scharr ben Fray fixed him with fierce attention, dark eyes gleaming beneath the cowl. “That, Captain, is the secret your king is chasing.”

  “Is there an answer?”

  “We know, somehow, that we are out of place. I’ve made it my life’s work to understand why that is so. And I’m close, Captain. Closer than ever to the answer.”

  6

  DRAWN BY VISION, DRIVEN BY FEAR

  Exhausted by its tantrums, the storm that had pursued Cal-raven’s company for a night, a day, and another night finally subsided. The sun came up smug and bold, casting golden rays. The continent of cloud broke apart, its remnants melting away like dollops of butter across a hot pan.

  In the boughs of a full-grown cloudgrasper, a giant in this patch of the Cragavar forest, the king lay in his hammock. His mind was inclined to see in metaphors, for he was fresh from dreams, spectacles inspired by the campfire story Krawg had shared the night before.

  Krawg was fond of stories about magicians and enchantments. His art improved with every telling. In this particular story, a stranger paid a gang of pickpocket brothers to rob a magician who ruled the Expanse. After the robbery’s success, the robbers fought one another, arguing over some foolishness such as the true and proper name of the one who had hired them. They forgot that they were brothers, calling each other “bushpig” and “snake in the weeds.” In the commotion the treasure they had stolen was smashed, and they raised jagged shards to attack one another. Lanterns fell sideways in the melee that ensued, and their hideaway caught fire.

  Walls burned away, revealing the magician, torch in hand. As the brothers called out for his help, he smiled, and his face changed. Lo, the man they had robbed was the man who had hired them, tricking them into exposing their wicked nature. Their crimes were undeniable now, and they would pay a terrible price. Laughing, the magician turned and walked away while the fiery house collapsed upon the thieves.

  The story had clearly shaken its teller, past crimes paining his conscience.

  But in Cal-raven’s dream, the scroll had unfurled to reveal a different ending. The Keeper had burned the house down on the thieves and then, with a sweeping thrust of its mighty wing, scattered the story’s characters and sent them off in flares like shooting stars.

  Cal-raven felt the dream slip away. But one element remained as clear as these sideways rays of daytime. It’s not just a dream anymore. The Keeper is real.

  The hammock swayed slightly among leafy fans. Birdsong spread. He pushed off the rainskin and hung it from a tree branch to dry in the sun.

  I know the truth at last. And it’s just what I always claimed. I call for the Keeper’s help, and it hears me. I must have won its favor somehow, searching for its tracks or sculpting its likeness.

  Birdsong was not the only music rising from the Cragavar. The breeze spilled rainwater from the leafy boughs, from one broad green hand down to be caught by another, surrounding Cal-raven with a pitter-patter symphony. Far below, he heard the happy concert of humming vawns. Mouthless, the reptiles sang in short, dissonant hoots and snorts with no discernible pattern or rhythm. Between the notes they noisily sucked mud through their nostrils, chewed the worms and grubs with the teeth that lined their throats, then sneezed out the leftover soil.

  As if joining in with the vawns, Snyde was singing an old Abascar folk tune, “Up the River Throanscall.”

  Cal-raven closed his eyes and fought against thoughts of the coming confrontation, the ugly business he must carry out along the way to Mawrnash. Breathing deeply, he tried to remember childhood lessons in how to be still.

  We have far to go. I cannot afford any delays.

  His worries were as aggressive as weeds. He could not forget his last sight of Say-ressa in bandages, her fists clenched as she battled against death’s ruthless agents.

  A strange gravity from the east tugged at his attention. Were he to give in to those beckoning phantoms, he would be drawn back across familiar ground to the desolation of his father’s house. He lifted a shield against that temptation. No hope could be found in those ruins.

  He turned westward, drawn by another sort of gravity. Bel Amica. The beastman who had warned him, saving Abascar’s remnant from a siege, had said that only Cyndere, the heiress of House Bel Amica, could be trusted to help House Abascar. Cyndere would welcome them with shelter, sustenance, and a future. It would take only a few days’ ride to enter an opulent house.

  Memories of his last visit to those foggy, busy avenues taunted him. All that his people needed, all that he could not give them, could be found within Bel Amica. He’d come close to the queen, mapped much of her palace labyrinth, and learned just how intoxicating that house by the sea could be. He had wandered in mirror-lined marketplaces, watched triumphal ships return from faraway islands, seen the fishing nets burgeoning. If his half-starved, exhausted people ever tasted those riches, all that had survived Abascar’s collapse would be ruined. He mouthed one of Scharr ben Fray’s lessons: “The greatest threat to what is best is something persuasively good.”

  There was only one direction open to him now—the path into vision, the way to New Abascar.

  An arrow slammed into the underside of a thick bough nearby. Dangling from its shaft was a sling, and glittering seeds were spilling down into the campsite.

  Cal-raven laughed. “Chillseed!”

  “The Gatherers found it, my lord!” came Jes-hawk’s happy cry. “And in less than two days! Let’s go home!”

  The company was jubilant with relief, and the king proclaimed Krawg and Warney as “Abascar’s Masters of Herbs.”

  But the joy dissolved as Cal-raven handed the sling of chillseed to Shanyn and announced that now they could begin the second stage of their mission.

  Shanyn flinched. “You can’t mean it. You brought me because it’s dangerous out here. I beg you—”

  “And I’ve begged myself to find a better solution. I covet your company. But the mind must rule the heart in these matters, and you can get back to Say-ressa faster than any of us.”

  “Must I go alone?”

  “Send Gatherers,” mumbled Bowlder.

  “Starvation and illness are as dangerous as beastmen and bandits,” Cal-raven growled. “Krawg and Warney can find food and healing herbs. Further, they look like ordinary travelers. Where we’re going, we mustn’t attract attention. Shanyn looks like nothing less than a king’s defender.” He shrugged. “Really, must you be so impressive?”

  He did not get the laugh he wanted.

  “I can be ugly if I have to be.” Shanyn exchanged a furtive, troubled glance with Jes-hawk, a fleeting connection that told Cal-raven more than he had guessed about them.

  “Shanyn will take the chillseed,” he said with finality. “We’ll go on, following signs Scharr ben Fray left for me. He says they’ll lead to an answer for Abascar. If Red Moon Season passes before we get there, the vision will fade.”

  “Vision?” Snyde groaned.

  “If my teacher is right,” said the king, “then we’ll return with a sto
ry more exciting than anything shared at this campfire. It may be that the people of Abascar will rise up and march out from Barnashum with new hope and a new purpose.” His speech inspired a worrying silence. Cal-raven cleared his throat. “Shanyn, I am grateful. Ride fast for Barnashum, and I suspect you’ll arrive before midnight.”

  The bristling plains were restless. Seedpods crackled. Springnippers sprang. And the golden waves of brush seemed to undulate, a trick of the light as a gauzy haze muddied the sun’s glow.

  Quarreling and distressed, the people made their way down Barnashum’s cliffs and out into the maze. Archers and soldiers formed a protective perimeter around them as they entered the dark sea of thorn-barbed branches through which a host of beastmen had charged only a few months past. Who could say what prowled there now?

  Flies moved in clouds across the paths. A flock of peskies appeared, darting through the tapestry of boughs and twittering giddily as if the exodus were the most exciting thing they’d seen all summer. But when a brascle crossed the sky, the peskies vanished, and the people of Abascar wished that they, too, could take cover. When brascles soar, beastmen prowl—so went the children’s verse.

  Tabor Jan scanned the parade for the mage, eager to learn what he could about this new threat growing in the ground. But Scharr ben Fray had not appeared since their encounter in the corridor.

  The sun had only begun to descend when Tabor Jan moved to the front of the line and entered the Cragavar. As he did, he heard the archers behind him hiss a warning.

  A vawn skulked beneath the trees. The creature was not trying to hide; her head wagged low, her long reptilian tail swishing the ground behind her. She shifted from one heavy hind foot to the other, her pathetic little forelegs stuck in their perpetual crumb-begging pose. She seemed anxious and uncertain.

  Scharr ben Fray emerged from the crowd. He uttered a call that sounded like a vawn’s own shrill salute. The creature raised its head high, trumpeted a three-toned reply, and knocked saplings aside as it tromped eagerly through the underbrush.