Raven's Ladder

by Jeffrey Overstreet

  “Rumpa!” The mage slapped the vawn’s shoulder with affection. “This is Rumpa,” he said to Tabor Jan. “She’s the ale boy’s vawn. But it seems she lost him somewhere.”

  “The ale boy?”

  “You call him Rescue.”

  “Here’s Scharr ben Fray,” whispered a boy excitedly to the captain. “Will you ask him to tell us a story tonight?”

  “I suspect he’ll have too much on his mind to bother.” Tabor Jan watched as Scharr ben Fray rode Rumpa on a winding progress between clusters of shoddy shieldfern tents. Sure enough, the old man was as immune to the awkward applause of his admirers as he was to the glares of those who distrusted him. His gaze seemed enthralled with scenes invisible to others. He leashed his vawn to a hanger-tree, then entered the glow of their smokeless, crumblewood bonfires without so much as a nod to anyone.

  Despite his gratitude for the help of Cal-raven’s teacher, Tabor Jan became uneasy in his presence. That head held a library of history and experience. But when the mage revealed any lines from those mysterious scrolls, he spoke with calculated restraint.

  As the mage approached their makeshift bench, the boy sprang up. “He wants to talk with you!” It was almost a squeak, as if he did not understand that the old man was flesh and blood, could see and hear him.

  Scharr ben Fray barely acknowledged the youth as he sat down, folding his legs beneath him and staring into—no, through—the flames. Tabor Jan refused to flatter the mage with questions. Instead, he lifted his shieldfern plate, folded it, and poured what remained of his supper into his mouth, then cast the leaf aside.

  Scharr ben Fray answered as if he had been asked. “You’ll have chillseed soon. The rider will be here even before I’ve bid you farewell.”

  Tabor Jan folded his arms, noisily chewing the seeds, berries, and roasted scratchwings. He would not ask how this secretive meddler came by such information about approaching riders. In the hour before the company had stopped for that first laborious endeavor of setting up camp in the trees, Scharr ben Fray had vanished. Just when his wisdom might have been most useful, Tabor Jan thought, he’s off on secret business. And even now he seems uninterested in what’s going on around him. He’s solving puzzles only he can see.

  “Ravens,” said Scharr ben Fray, rocking back and forth slowly. “Gossipmongers, they are. And spies. Eager to impress me in hopes I’ll reward them. Interpreting their noise is a chore. But they give a good report. Cal-raven’s almost to Mawrnash. All according to plan.”

  Mawrnash? The captain choked on a seed. Whose plan was that?

  “Yes,” continued the mage. “I’m southbound for House Jenta, the garden that grew me. The brotherhood may be some help to us.”

  “The brotherhood? Would you ask them for parchment for us to throw at the beastmen?” Standing, Tabor Jan seized a small, stripped sapling he had dragged to the fire and cast it onto the orange glow. “Those sulking scroll-readers have never shown Abascar kindness before.” He spat out a tough shred of scratchwing. “And I thought you’d left that world behind long ago.”

  “Maps, journals—to reach Abascar’s destination, we’ll need reliable guidance. My older brother knows more than he lets on. Best to know the obstacles in our path before we face them. Don’t you agree?”

  As the sapling crackled and blackened in the flames, it writhed in jerking spasms. It reminded Tabor Jan of the time he’d killed a bonestalker in just this fashion. He hadn’t seen one of those headless nighttime predators in years, but then, a bonestalker was hard to see at all. With limbs and body as narrow as sticks, the eyeless, bloodsucking insect wore its bones on the outside—coal black and unbreakable. Its knife-claws skewered prey, and a whiplike tongue drew blood as through a straw. He’d seen a bonestalker climb a man’s leg and kill him, and he swore from that point on that he’d seen the most frightening killer in the Expanse. Now he knew otherwise.

  “The dangers we face out here consume my attention.” He brushed crumbs from his beard. “I cannot bother to worry about unknown obstacles just yet. I want you to tell me how we’re going to fight the menace that drove us from our caves.”

  Scharr ben Fray lowered his voice. “Do you think I came just to say good-bye?” Then he stood and walked to the edge of the fire. He leaned in close, then thrust his hand into the fire, seized the writhing sapling, and cast it to the ground.

  “What are you doing?” the captain exclaimed.

  “Hush!” Scharr ben Fray knelt over the black, burning branch, his head cocked as if listening. Then he leapt to his feet and cast the wood back onto the fire, where it exploded in sparks. He fixed Tabor Jan with a summoning gaze. “Follow me.”

  They moved out through the perimeter of the watchful archers until they came to a crowded grove of coil trees. Scharr ben Fray cast an anxious gaze back toward the camp, eyes filling with firelight as if his skull were a lantern.

  “That was quite a performance,” Tabor Jan scoffed. “Don’t you think the people are jumpy enough?”

  “I’ve been across the Expanse since winter,” said the mage. “I’ve questioned birds, lurkdashers, even fangbears. Few animals remain in the territories we’ve traveled, Tabor Jan. Those that do are quick and good at hiding. They speak of a predator rising from the ground. I’ve learned that the Cent Regus know a great deal, for they grumble about something that they call feelers. Birds call them Deathweeds.”

  “Deathweeds.”

  “I gather they come from the Core of the Cent Regus lair. The arms of some underground creature that spreads like a weed. The curse has cast its net. And now, at last, it’s drawing in its catch. It seizes any living thing, save for those already corrupt with the Cent Regus curse. And they seem linked to a single mind—a single appetite. For the living.”

  “We know they’re afraid of fire.” Tabor Jan stared into the distant red flare.

  “So far, our only weapon. If I could find myself a firewalker, I’d make him our chief agent in resisting such a monster. I had my eye on one, but he got away.”

  “Why did you pull that small tree from the fire?”

  The mage scratched his grizzled chin. “It smelled funny. And there was a sound…a strange sound.”

  “These Deathweeds… I recognize the stench. I smelled it more than once deep beneath Abascar in the Underkeep.”

  Scharr ben Fray nodded. “I am not surprised. I have long suspected that what shook House Abascar to its foundations was more than an earthquake, more than a fire. I believe that the menace either rose up to break the ground apart or else the fire came first and awakened it, setting those powerful limbs to thrashing. Either way, I think the Deathweeds helped bring Abascar down.”

  Tabor Jan had the sickening sensation of being trapped, as if he could feel those wretched roots troubling the ground beneath him. “Are we any safer out here?”

  “I’m not sure,” sighed the mage, looking up into the darkling boughs. “If Deathweeds can burrow through ground, they might corrupt the trees.”

  “If they can break through Abascar’s foundation and shatter the stone of Barnashum.”

  “Barnashum’s stone is soft. Abascar must go north. The mountains of the Fearblind North are made of tougher stuff. They might keep out the curse. Difficult to know. The sooner the remnant of Abascar crosses the Expanse to find a new foundation, the better.”

  “You want us to go beyond Fraughtenwood? To the Forbidding Wall?” Tabor Jan laughed, incredulous. “Such a journey seems too foolish to risk on a guess.”

  “Cal-raven will return with something better than a guess.” There was that smug, knowing smile that Tabor Jan resented. “His most difficult challenge is this—to get the people past an easier and more alluring possibility. Abascar’s prejudice against the Bel Amicans is failing fast.”

  “Cal-raven has no desire to go to Bel Amica. The Seers have—”

  “You know your old friend better than that. Cal-raven hates the Seers, sure. But his desire to walk through those halls and marketp
laces again is almost unbearable. He wants it so badly he scares himself. That’s why he’s desperate to find something, anything else. He knows that the distractions of Queen Thesera’s house could be Abascar’s undoing.”

  A commotion drew their attention to the north end of the camp. The guards’ shouts were hostile at first but quickly turned to excitement.

  Tabor Jan could not help but cry out in the dark. “Shanyn!”

  “It’s begun,” sighed Scharr ben Fray. “I wish you good ground, safe campsites, and the best of the Cragavar’s summer bounty. Yours is the greatest exodus since Tammos Raak led the children of the curse over the Forbidding Wall into the world we know today. I will leave you to tend to the healer.”

  Tabor Jan welcomed the swordswoman into the firelight even as he heard Rumpa’s stride fade. He let others explain the exodus to Shanyn as they carried the bundle to the beds where Say-ressa and the other wounded lay in fevered sleep.

  Tabor Jan placed a hand on the healer’s burning forehead while Shanyn folded the chillseed pods in a cloth, pounded them to powder with a stone, then cast the powder into a bowl of hot water and stirred up a cloud of steam. Tabor Jan held Say-ressa’s head while Shanyn spooned the tea into the sleeping woman’s mouth. And they waited, a crowd of golden faces shining in the dark all around them.

  Not far away gentle notes of music drifted along like sparks from the fire, and Lesyl’s voice rose in a quiet, hopeful song. “Help is coming. But the night is dark and long. Help is coming. Until then, kindle me a song.”

  7

  CAMP FIRE IN THE CRAGAVAR

  On the third day of their journey, four vawns followed Jes-hawk as he rode in a sulking slump. Cal-raven smiled sadly, understanding the archer’s disappointment all too well. Now both of them had hearts divided.

  The company slowed only to skirt the edge of a vast, overgrown berry patch, the vines interwoven into an impenetrable wall. They picked berry-rolls—thick, juicy husks that curled into scrolls as they grew; when unrolled, they exposed rich beds of crimson berries, shiny as fish eggs. Soon Warney’s grin was as red as the stains down his tunic.

  I’m not the only one who has missed the forest, Cal-raven thought.

  During their run through sparse stands of haircloak trees, a long-ear was startled from its dig in the lee of a fallen tree. The stag-sized rabbit bolted, and Jes-hawk was off in hot pursuit. It was an hour before the exhausted archer returned, more discouraged than before, and the way he chewed a gob of root-gum, he might as well have been cursing.

  Dusk began climbing the grass and the tree trunks. Cal-raven had anticipated a swifter voyage. Even now the red moon would be peering over the Forbidding Wall, glowering down on the Expanse like the eye of the overlord from whom Tammos Raak had fled. He could sense the company’s weariness, and Say-ressa would tell him that he was not a good judge of his own need for a pause. At his order Jes-hawk drew them aside into a canopied chamber of violet trees.

  A light rain returned; sharp hissing notes sang from the fire. Breezes teased the flames, and Cal-raven knew that these winds moved on the momentum gained while rushing across Deep Lake.

  Snyde looked as if he’d been belly-kicked by a vawn. He had not spoken more than a few suspicious questions on their journey.

  “The ride seems to have bruised you,” Cal-raven laughed. “Shall I ask the Gatherers to weave you a pillowed saddle?”

  Snyde froze in that hunched position, as if caught in some treachery. Then as he straightened, his scowl melted upward into a smile broad and toothy. “You misunderstand the nature of my discomfort. I’m unworthy to travel in such…prestigious company. You should have brought a rider who would have been more able to defend you in a fight.”

  “Are you expecting a fight, Ambassador?”

  Snyde began digging dirt from beneath his nails with the corner of a folded leaf. “I only hope my king will return to Barnashum unscratched.”

  “Oh, I think I’m as vulnerable to scratches in Barnashum as I am out here.”

  “What are you insinuating?” Snyde snapped.

  “Insinuating? Why, Ambassador, I was only referring to the quake that buried our healer. You haven’t forgotten the quake, have you?”

  Snyde’s face was hot and red as the moon. He sank slowly back down to the grass. “Why did you bring me here? I’m old. These lungs do not contend well with breezes so heavy with blossoms. I’m an ambassador of the arts. I should be indoors revising the verses of the royal—”

  “There will be new choruses sung in New Abascar,” Cal-raven said. “The people will compose them.”

  The ambassador looked as if he’d been struck in the forehead with a fry-pan. “Composed by…Housefolk? By Gatherers? In House Abascar the king and his ambassadors provide the people with their songs. If the songs do not follow the patterns and themes established by our ancestors, we won’t have music. We’ll have a nursery’s squall.”

  “I’m not interested in dogs who howl on command, Snyde. Our house is full of dreamers who have heard new melodies, new verses. New Abascar will be a kingdom that manifests all the colors its people have to offer, united by that golden strand that’s been sewn through king, cook, chemist, and carver.”

  “What”—Snyde blinked—“strand?”

  “The Keeper who haunts our dreams. I’ve begun composing lines for a chorus that describes its dimensions, the number of its wings, the way its hands can snatch a person up as easily as an owl grasps a mouse.”

  “Such particularity,” Jes-hawk observed, still gnawing on the root-gum. “Dreams of the Keeper give us many different pictures. Aren’t you asking for trouble by requiring people to favor your definition?”

  “Ah, but that’s just it. Most have only dreams. What if I told you the Keeper’s been observed?”

  “When did you see it, my lord?” Jes-hawk asked. Not “Have you seen it?” or “Did you catch a glimpse?” but a direct challenge. Lowering his voice as if he were speaking with a friend in private, he added, “You’ve never made such a claim before.”

  All eyes were fixed on the king.

  Cal-raven smiled, the secret roiling within, steam in a kettle. Then he slapped Krawg’s shoulder to disrupt the challenge. “Krawg, another story!

  What’ll it be?”

  “Nobody paints pictures of Tammos Raak’s escape better than Krawg,” suggested Warney.

  Cal-raven clapped his hands. “Incredible. The very tale I had in mind.” And it was, for the culmination of the story occurred in the very place they quested for, even though none of them yet knew their aim.

  “Which version shall it be?” Krawg asked. “The death of Tammos Raak? The blessing of the ladder? The rescue by sky chariot?”

  And so it was Krawg who told another tale.

  Krawg’s storytelling had first impressed Warney in the early days of their thievery. Krawg had filled long hours with tales to calm the nerves of his anxious co-conspirator while they lay in wait for a door unguarded, a wagon unobserved, a treasure momentarily forgotten.

  Warney had learned so much from Krawg in those days. He had learned from the master burglar’s powers of observation—the same piercing gaze that made Krawg a master thief had spotted the infant Auralia in the riverbank reeds.

  Krawg was also good at losing himself. His thievery had trained him in concealment, a skill enhanced by his resemblance to a tangle of gnarled, knobby branches. He could wriggle his twig-thin frame into any nook or cranny and wait, with patience and fierce attention, until the golden moment when he could emerge and snatch what did not belong to him. Running with the long, loping stride of a fieldbounder, he’d take some predetermined avenue of escape—a trapdoor, a ladder, a hideout with myriad corridors, or a dark barn with loose floorboards that could be quickly lifted to expose another hideaway and replaced over his head.

  That urgent need for a hiding place was what had brought the two outcasts together. Krawg had been running to avoid arrest. Warney had run to escape his sisters. Seven siste
rs, in fact. All grown, they had never left home or the parents who babied them, and they shared their mother’s loathing for Warney.

  What was it exactly that had made his mother treat him as a curse? Warney shuddered to think of the accusations. To comfort himself, he affirmed that it was crazy for a parent to hold a grudge for some damage done in childbirth.

  “I labored to flush him out into the open,” his mother had shrieked at his sisters. “But he was a burglar from the hour he was born, for he held on to my insides with some ferocious grip, refusing to let go, though I watered and bled. The baby catcher had to pry Warney’s wicked little fingers free. That’s why he’s got such long fingers today. On the way out he’d stolen something else. Something precious I’ll never get back.”

  What had he stolen from his mother? In his darkest moods he determined he’d taken her heart. For how else could he explain her merciless nature? Whatever the case, his sisters branded him “the Bandit.” As he grew, any object’s disappearance was blamed squarely on him. His sisters took to stealing anything that belonged to him—his pillow, his leaf-roll, his shoe straps, his dinner.

  He’d schooled himself in stealth so he could recapture his belongings from his thieving sisters. He’d mapped out a network of hideouts in case he had to make an escape like that famous Midnight Swindler—the uncaptured crook called Krawg.

  Warney knew Krawg by reputation. And, in fact, by admiration. For how could he not be impressed by a thief who always escaped without hurting anybody, without any evidence to point to him? Krawg had become a secret hero, a pilferer who perplexed the smartest guards.

  Once, Warney dashed into a decrepit stable, gripping his favorite feathered hat, which he had just repossessed from his sisters. Stumbling through old piles of dung, he dove to the floor and, lifting an overturned food trough, concealed himself, fitting it over him as neatly as a coffin.

  He panted into quiet, endured the stench that saturated his temporary cell, and drifted into a fantasy in which he was the Midnight Swindler himself.