Raven's Ladder

by Jeffrey Overstreet

  All around the storyteller, rasping shouts of surprise burst out, filthy cries of alarm, like bushpigs growling all through a swamp. Krawg cast Warney a look of nervous glee, an expression Warney hadn’t seen since the heyday of their thievery. Krawg’s reckless gamble was working.

  The old man continued with heightening zeal. “And so them tricksters threw tantrums and quakes. They roared like lions with tails caught in traps. They barked like dogs who catch sight of the gorrel. They declared themselves their own inventions and refused to follow this dollmaker anywhere.

  “‘I’m taking my children back home,’ said the stranger with a sigh. ‘And I plan to make a thousand more. The parties we’ll have. The feasts we’ll devour. The colors we’ll give to the world.’”

  At that, Warney’s mind lit up, and he smiled, for he knew the source of his friend’s inspiration.

  Meanwhile, the hostess quietly took new drink orders, glad to have her customers so enraptured. More were pressing in through the door, straining to hear the story and whispering questions to catch what they’d missed.

  “One of the six tricksters came forward then, arms folded ’cross his chest, like so. ‘What if I don’t believe that you made us?’ he scoffed. ‘What if these scrap ’n’ stitch children are just illusions? Are two other tricksters in contract with you, hiding in those woven costumes?’

  “‘I’ve said all you need to hear,’ said the stranger.

  “‘If those wretched toys have untamed minds, they’ll leave you,’ sneered the tallest trickster, the one with the curl to his lip. ‘If you’re smart, you’ll crush those sparks. You should control your inventions like we do.’

  “Before he could laugh, that trickster fell back, his very own fireworks exploding in their boxes. The dragons he’d stitched came undone. And while he moaned over the mess, the stranger took his children and disappeared. Victorious.”

  Warney surveyed the revelhouse, gazing into the mirrors to study the listeners’ rapt attention.

  “So that’s it then!” roared the miner who was waiting for his turn at the contest. He stood up and pounded his mug on the table a little too sharply, and it shattered. The hostess cried out and disqualified the man, which brought the last contestant to his feet.

  “You think you’ve heard a tale?” he squeaked, failing to muster the confidence he wanted. “I’ve got a tale of King Helpryn and how he fought an oceandragon and saved our glorious house from—”

  “The stranger here isn’t finished!” came a voice. It was the revelhouse guard who had come in from outside and forgotten his duty. “Look! He’s serving up more!”

  Krawg stood. And as the hush fell, a voice not his own rose up in his throat, bitter and twisted. It reminded Warney of the Krawg he had known in the days before they found Auralia together—an angrier Krawg, a jealous and spiteful Gatherer.

  “The tricksters,” said Krawg, “they pursued the powerful stranger, all jealous with rage. When they found him after years of chase, they were threadbare ’n’ crazy. And when they saw the whole new world he’d made, all wild with color and life and a whole mess o’ children, they wept and they cursed. ‘What can we do to match such invention?’

  “So they made themselves a moon of dust from all their failed attempts throughout the starry vastness. And they crouched down behind it, peering ’n’ plotting how they might assail the stranger’s wondrous world. Behind the moon they molded imitations, all frail ’n’ forgettable, which only made them madder. So they besieged the dollmaker’s inventions and took hold like sucker-worms, throttling every beauty, choking out the pulse of life. They flooded fields he planted. They fouled oceans he spread.

  “But they could never quite capture his children, for he protected them, and they followed him, ever refusing to stray.

  “In time the stranger grew angry at the tricksters. ‘I’ll raise a fence,’ he told them, ‘one you cannot trespass. We’ll play there out of your sight so we do not offend you anymore.’

  “‘Oh,’” said that snarling voice of a Krawg long gone. “‘We will steal your children away,’ the tricksters ranted. ‘We’ll fool them into unstitching themselves. They’ll curse you. There’ll be no more play, only war. Those wills you’ve invented—they’ll abandon your arrogant hands. We’ll overpower them and prove that we are too strong to be mere inventions of yours.’”

  Krawg now seemed somber. He massaged his hands as if they ached. Warney knew, somehow, just what he was thinking. All those hard lessons of life as a thief were burning in his memory, scorching the path of his story.

  “The maker sighed and said, ‘The more you unstitch what I’ve made, the more you’ll fray and fumble and fail. But there is a golden thread that runs through everything. Should you ever lure my new family into forgetfulness, that golden thread within them will burn with secrets of the weave they were meant for. If even one of my prodigal children traces that thread and follows it through all your snares and illusions, he’ll find his way home. When he does, I’ll give him the power to bring everyone else back with him. Slaves and crooks, kings and queens and heirs to thrones, thieves and killers, youngsters and old folks. He’ll bring ’em back by way of the innermost strand, a thread that can’t be broken. And so I’ll draw all threads back into my weave.”

  In the quiet that followed, somebody murmured, “Bet that didn’t make those tricksters too happy.”

  “No,” said Krawg. “This only stoked their wrath. ‘If you’re wrong, we get to keep those that leave you,’ said the tallest. ‘And you may not do more to bring them back across your fence.’”

  The story seemed to have taken control, and Krawg could not stop himself.

  “So the maker took his children behind a great curtain. And the tricksters set about their wicked arts in full view of that shelter.”

  A commotion erupted in the revelhouse doorway. Crowds pressed inside to make room for another. But Krawg seemed not to notice, and so the story went into its final chapter.

  “Just when the tricksters were weakening, worn-out in their attempt to lure out the children, one young boy—that first raggedy boy that the stranger had sewn—he spun himself out to the edges of things, curious about the tricksters’ displays. He stumbled in his steps for a moment, the wrinkle gone deep in his brow, and gazed at the world beyond the dollmaker’s fence.

  “He was troubled to see what the tricksters were doing out there in the moonlight. It bothered him how nothing they did made any music, only trouble ’n’ noise. But the more he looked, the more he got dazzled by the power in their show. He wondered what it would feel like to step out into that silvery light and smash something with a hammer of his own. Surely he could try it and nobody would know.

  “Caught there on the boundary, the boy was questioned by his smiling maker. He made an excuse and said the moonlight had drawn him there. ‘But the moon,’ the maker told him, ‘it does not truly shine. It only casts back light that it has stolen from the sun.’

  “The raggedy boy was ashamed of his error and even more upset by his lie. How could he have thought of breaking away? But he knew that others had witnessed his distraction, had sensed his rebellious desire. When he returned to his place in the play, word spread that he was forgiven. And he resented that mark in his history. He thought less of himself and feared that his master thought less of him for failing. He did not want to bear that pang of shame alone. So he called for a game of Seek and Go Hiding. And while his master covered his eyes and counted to fourteen, the boy lured all the younger children to the boundary. And the maker, letting them go, wept behind the hands that covered his face for the counting.

  “Seeing their advantage, the tricksters thundered like storms. They burned gardens into deserts. They swept lakes into the sky and brought the water down in storms to flood. They lunged at the children and—”

  A sound like a snake’s hiss pierced the quiet all around Krawg. And then a voice slashed through the revelhouse.

  “That one.”

&
nbsp; The blade of that voice severed the taut lines of attention connecting every listener to Krawg’s story so that each one slumped like an unstrung puppet.

  Krawg stood with his hands raised as if trying to catch some mysterious falling light. Then he fell against the table, breathless, sweat streaming down his brow.

  The figure who had shouted was hunched in the doorway, for she was too tall to stand upright in the frame. Cloaked in what looked like a red tent, she clasped one grey hand to her beard. That chalky flesh was somehow immune to the tint of golden light.

  At first the revelers thought the knifelike nail of the pointing finger was aimed at the trembling storyteller. “How many?” Her words cut their ears. She stalked forward in unsteady strides that suggested she walked in her own personal earthquake.

  But she passed Krawg and loomed over a man sitting at a table against the wall. The man, snoring spittle onto the table, had both hands thrust out before him, clutching half-empty mugs among a dozen other empties.

  The hostess slowly stood up, clearing her throat. “I told him, Good Seer. I told him if he drank another, he’d suffer the punishment. He knows the rules.”

  Panner Xa slowly searched the crowd until her wide eyes, two shining moons, fixed upon a bald and shirtless brute in a black cloth mask. “The rules!” she shrieked.

  The brute stood up as if he’d been shouted an order, unsheathed a gleaming blade, marched straight to the table, and in one clean strike severed the drinker’s left hand. As the guilty drunkard lurched to his feet in surprise, the brute snatched up the hand left on the table. Warney had time to notice the bright runes tattooed on the knuckles before the hand was cast, dripping, across the room and out an open window.

  The Seer’s eyes followed that hand, and her crooked lips smacked dryly together.

  The drunkard blinked at the blood pump of his newly opened wrist as puddles of beer reddened and spilled off the table’s edges. He coughed three unintelligible announcements, then fell straight into the arms of the brute, who dragged him outside, snatching a torch from its stand on the way through the door. A searing howl, a sizzling sound, and then sobs. The brute returned and planted the torch back in its stand as if this were just part of his routine.

  The Seer, seething, scoured the room with her gaze. “That story,” she quietly laughed. Then she lurched across the room as if one leg were longer than the other. Her elaborate headdress, a mane of red seaweed tendrils, whispered and rushed as she moved to the storytellers’ table. Her large, pale hand shot forward like the muzzle of a slayhound to clasp Krawg’s throat. “Who taught you?”

  “Taught?” he rasped, flailing. “Me?”

  Warney stood up. He could not help it. Something within drew him forward to his friend’s defense. But when the Seer cast him a wild glance, those strange, bold eyes swiveled loosely in their sockets to pin him to his place.

  “Never again,” she instructed him. “Never again.”

  Krawg’s feet dangled just above the ground, his face purpling. Spittle foamed at the edges of his mouth.

  The Seer dropped him and lurched toward the hostess. “Arrived?” she demanded.

  “Tonight, Good Seer.”

  “How many?”

  “Four. Deserters from the hiding Abascars. Trying to be merchants.”

  “Four.” She turned and looked at Jes-hawk in the far corner. “Steeds?” she barked.

  “Five,” came a voice from somewhere in the crowd. “Five.” She stamped her foot, and a sound like a swarm of bees filled the room.

  Warney shrank against the wall as the revelhouse air filled with dust. It rose from the tabletops, the floor, and the bar. The Mawrn wafted from nostrils and mouths. It skittered out from under tables. Revelers twitched and itched as it crawled from their sleeves. The Seer turned to the window, seeming to direct the dust in streams and ribbons into the night like a legion of ghosts on a hunt.

  And Warney knew their prey.

  “Red moon,” mused the Seer. “Red moon.” She moved to the window and stared out at the crater as if she could read every grain of dust in this darkness. Again the hiss: “Tresssspasser.” She sniffed the air deeply, and then she left the revelhouse, noisy and crooked as a wagon with a broken wheel.

  A harsh grip clasped Warney’s arm, and he shouted.

  It was Jes-hawk, leaning in close to his ear. “Take Krawg to the bunk-house.”

  They moved to the table where Krawg lay shriveled as if years had flowed from his veins. Jes-hawk knelt, muttering, “Blast of a story, old man. I’ll never forget it.” Then he slipped an arrow from a sheath inside his boot and gave it to Warney. “Plant this in the window of your room, as the king instructed. I’m going out there to look for him.”

  12

  WHAT CAL-RAVEN SAW THROUGH THE GLASS

  As Ruffleskreigh the cleverjay watched the man-fool climb, she thought about redfish.

  Silver-scaled. Juicy-eyed. With tails that trail like ribbons in the current. Feasts of pink meat that taste best when wriggling. But a redfish swims deeply, far from a cleverjay’s claws. Haughty hunters like flashdivers snatch them as easily as jays pluck berries from briars. Cleverjays hate them for that.

  But if Ruffleskreigh could fulfill the task assigned her, her master would reward her with a redfish feast.

  Wait for the ravens to bring you a man called Cal-raven. Lead him up to the roots of the tree. Help him solve the puzzle just the way I have shown you.

  The mage had bargained with the ravens as well, but they were simple minded and settled for a promise of wrigglers. For that, the greedy flock had flown in all directions, shouting “Cal-raven” to every traveler they saw, hoping to win some tasty prizes for themselves. She had laughed at the sight. She had known to push for a richer prize. And the mage always made good on his promises.

  She coasted across the crater, feathers sifting the breeze, and alighted on a bough just ahead of the man-fool. He was surprised to see her, with her tall, glowing crestfeathers—so much more impressive than the ravens who were now almost invisible around him.

  Light glistened on the climber’s neck and shoulders, and his breath was labored. Weaklings, these wingless creatures. Ground-bound and easily discouraged. And this one was more foolish than most, ascending to a worthless perch that offered nothing tasty, nothing shiny. He still had far to climb.

  She laughed. The man shouted harshly at her.

  Beneath the starcrown’s layers of moss, something scuttled noisily, and the man turned in a fright. Only a dustrat, she thought. But he fears the beastmen. And should.

  Hopping easily from branch to branch, Ruffleskreigh coughed the man’s name again. “Hurry,” she hissed, proud of her eloquence. “I want my prize.”

  She liked her master, liked the way he spoke to her. The old mage knew more words than any of her cleverjay kin—words written in the cage of her ribs since she first cracked the wall of her eggshell, words written between the rapid beats of her fum-fum-fumming heart.

  When the climber was halfway to the top, the bird stretched her wings and moved ahead. She could not leave. Not until he reached the enormous nest among the tree’s splayed roots. Not until he found the pieces of the puzzle and assembled them just as the mage had.

  She strained to curl her tongue just so and croaked his name: “Cal-raven.” Then, “Higher. Higher.”

  He scowled at her, and she laughed in disdain, for he was already failing, already rejecting her counsel and heading off in the wrong direction. She would have to fly at him and drive him back to the path the mage had marked.

  At that moment she noticed that Cal-raven was not the only man climbing this fallen tree. Startled, she shot straight up into the starlight and hovered there, clucking curses at whoever dared to delay her redfish feast.

  Crafting the cleverjay’s likeness from the potato-sized stone in his hand, Cal-raven narrowed his eyes, trying to sustain his faith in this garrulous guide.

  At intervals in the bird’s incessant chatter,
it brought its tail feathers forward, making a horn around its body, and called Cal-raven’s name in the voice of Scharr ben Fray—an uncanny impression. Then it snapped those feathers back, bobbed its yellow-capped head, and tapped its prickly feet. It seemed to think it knew other words as well. He caught something that sounded like “fish,” “tasty,” and “prize.” The ravens were quiet, probably intimidated by the brash newcomer.

  Shaping the bird’s trumpet, his fingers remembered the contours all too well. A cleverjay had been one of the first figures he’d crafted as a child. Maybe he’d take it back to Barnashum and give it to Wynn—a peace offering to keep the boy from growing a grudge.

  The bird lifted and flew back over his head, calling him to retrace his steps.

  Uncertain, he followed, and he winced when he found that he had left the tree’s trunk and wandered off along a broad bough. As the effect of Soro’s well water diminished and the vivid details of night faded back into darkness, hunger and exhaustion took hold. “I hope you’ve left me something to eat there, teacher. Otherwise, I’m going to roast your bird.”

  The bird drew him along, climbing the tree’s rugged backbone, past its outspread arms, moving back through time from its youngest heights to its ancient roots, which were spread like the tendrils of some threatening sea creature on the crater’s rim. With each step he felt more likely to fall back down to the dustbowl floor, to the fallen starcrown’s ash-buried head, into the clutches of Panner Xa.

  He slumped against a near-vertical column, a bough as big as a Cragavar marrowwood tree, branching up from the starcrown’s center. He clung to its mossy skirt and glanced back over his shoulder. I won’t make it to the top by moon-rise. I’ll have to camp in the tree. And wait for tomorrow.

  A rustle from a branch above cast a faint skiff of dust across his head. He looked up to curse the bird.

  Lantern light revealed two large, leathery feet on the lowest branch of that treelike bough. The man holding the lantern seemed a part of the tree.