by Paul Durham
Longchance stared back, dumbfounded.
Iron Wart roared. It sounded like a cave bear being torn apart by a pack of wolves.
“Well, this is unexpected,” Longchance said aloud to himself. He shifted in his chair uneasily. “Boil, come here.”
Constable Boil stumbled over the fallen chairs without taking his eyes off the beast.
“Yes, my Lord?”
“Boil,” Longchance said, “you speak Noblin, don’t you?”
“Well, uh, just a few words.” Boil rubbed his face nervously. “I mean, it’s been many years. I wouldn’t say I’m fluent.”
“What’s he saying?”
“I’m, uh, not familiar with the exact dialect . . . ,” Boil stammered.
“Boil!” Longchance screamed, and grabbed him by the scruff of his collar. “What is the beast saying?”
“Well, he’s demanding that we send down a . . . translator.” Boil swallowed hard. “Someone who speaks Noblin.”
“Well get on with it, then,” Longchance said, giving him a shove.
“But, my Lord—”
“NOW!” Longchance commanded.
Boil limped down the stairs at the front of the stage, taking even more time than his injured foot would require. Everyone on the Green seemed to hold their breath. Leatherleaf took no further interest in Rye. He huddled in a corner of the great cage, panting.
The villagers watched as Boil shuffled up to the protective barrier of soldiers and stopped. Iron Wart extended a clawed finger and waggled it, beckoning him closer. Boil glanced up at Longchance, who was perched on the edge of his chair, ready to make a run for it at any moment. Longchance gestured him forward with two hands as if shooing a child. Malydia sat next to her father, her brow furrowed and her goblet frozen in both hands.
Boil eased past the soldiers and took small steps forward until he stood in the shadow of the monster, averting his eyes. The bent, crooked Constable only served to accentuate the enormous proportions of the Bog Noblin. Rye, like the rest of the villagers, couldn’t look away.
Longchance stood at the table.
“Boil,” Longchance called in a cracked voice. He cleared his throat and tried for something more authoritative. “Tell this beast to be gone or he shall suffer the same fate—”
Iron Wart hissed the sound a schoolmaster would make to shush a small boy, that is, if the schoolmaster was a toothy, drooling menace and wore a necklace of human feet.
Boil translated. “He says shush.”
Iron Wart cocked his head and listened. Grim Green had fallen eerily silent. He looked toward the trees again. The villagers craned their necks to look. There was nothing there—the shadows remained still. Suddenly Iron Wart grabbed Boil by the throat and lifted him to his toothy mouth. Boil’s spindly legs kicked in the air. Iron Wart grumbled, then loosened his grip enough for Boil to speak.
Boil’s words came between gasps. “He says—and forgive me, my Lord, for he insists that I translate this literally—he says, ‘Little princeling, do not think that I’m here to engage you in conversation. I am not. I care not what you have to say. I care only what you will do and expect that you will do it soon.’”
Iron Wart spit forth more terrible sounds. Boil translated them expertly.
“‘You hold in that cage something that belongs to me. As worthless and weak as it may be, you are not permitted to keep it. Only the Clugburrow can make slaves of our own kind.’”
Boil’s face grew red from the strain of hanging in the air by his neck. He struggled on.
“‘You will return the young one to us sooner or later. But we know, from experience, that humans are slow learners. You will come up with many reasons to refuse to do what I demand. We have come far and are weary, but we’ll indulge your stubborn behavior for only so long.’”
Lady Malydia leaned toward her father in alarm.
“Not now,” he spat.
“Father,” she said, tugging his sleeve. “He said ‘we.’”
Longchance shook his arm from her grip with a dismissive wave.
Iron Wart’s upturned nose sniffed the top of Boil’s balding head as if it were a bouquet of wildflowers. A few gray wisps of hair danced atop Boil’s skull. He craned his eyes up, voice cracking as he proceeded.
“‘You have two moons to release the young one we call Leatherleaf. Set him free at the edge of the forest, where we will wait to collect him. If you do not, should you doubt our convictions, we will return to this spot in two nights’ time.’”
Rye was still hiding behind the cage. She studied the shadows herself now. Where in the Shale is Harmless? she wondered. Isn’t this exactly why he came back? To save the village?
Iron Wart stuck out the tip of his black tongue and touched Boil’s ear. It reminded Rye of a giant snail exploring a rock. Boil shuddered and closed his eyes. Iron Wart seemed to catch himself mid-taste, as if sampling a forbidden treat. He coiled his tongue back into his mouth and narrowed his eyes into cold slivers.
Boil forced himself to continue his translation after Iron Wart refocused and uttered more terrible words.
“‘First,’” he said, “‘we level the walls. Second, we sack the village. Then, we take the Keep’”—Boil gulped hard as he spoke—“‘and your feet.’”
Iron Wart fingered his necklace as Boil translated the last of his words, showing Longchance the chain of decomposed human feet strung around his neck.
“That’s quite enough,” Longchance yelled, although his voice was far from commanding. “As loathsome as you may be, you are but one beast—”
Iron Wart raised a clawed hand and for the first time gurgled in heavily accented, but understandable, human language.
“These are your lips,” Iron Wart said, waving dismissively at the soldiers. “Where are your teeth?”
“What?” said the Earl, bewildered.
“I’ll show you mine . . . ,” Iron Wart taunted.
“Wait a minute, what?” Boil asked, wide-eyed.
And with that, Iron Wart bit off Constable Boil’s arm from the elbow down, and dropped the rest of him onto Grim Green.
The crowd on Grim Green broke into hysteria. Fleeing and screaming, the villagers knocked one another to the ground in their desperation to escape as the Earl’s archers launched a barrage of arrows at Iron Wart. Most of the projectiles landed among the scattering mob with unfortunate results.
Those who fled west for the woods were stopped in their tracks by a second Bog Noblin as fearsome as Iron Wart. The brute had knotted horns like a ram and a coarse orange beard so long that it was tied around his waist like a sash. It appeared from behind a wall of dense brush and gleefully grabbed armfuls of villagers unfortunate enough to be leading the pack.
Those who fled east for the village were surprised by a third Bog Noblin that scrambled from a canal on its webbed hands and feet, steam rising off its damp, hairless skin in the cool night air.
On the stage, Longchance grabbed Malydia and shouted for all the soldiers to gather and escort them back to the Keep. Once again, it seemed clear that the townspeople would have to fend for themselves.
From behind Leatherleaf’s cage, Rye spotted Folly. She frantically waved for Folly to run. Folly just stood in place, peering through the panicked crowd. Rye realized that Folly was looking for her. Rye pulled off her hood and loosened her cloak. She tore the mask from her face. Pushing all fear of Leatherleaf aside, she jumped and climbed up the rungs of the cage so that she was high off the ground. She dangled from the side and waved her free arm.
“Folly!” she yelled. “Over here!”
Folly turned her head and spotted Rye. She waved back.
“Run, Folly!” Rye yelled. “I’m fine. Meet me at our spot.”
At precisely that moment, Iron Wart, who was surveying the mess with great delight, caught sight of Rye too. More particularly, he seemed to focus on the cage. He moved toward them now with haste, and Rye feared that Iron Wart had decided to take Leatherleaf without further delay.
Rye looked up. The sky’s twilight glow went dark behind a rapidly moving storm cloud. The black cloud descended in a funnel and the noise grew louder still. It wasn’t drums. It was the beating of thousands of wings. Blackbirds. Rooks. More than Rye had ever seen. If you believed the old wives’ tales, this must be at least fifty years of bad luck. They hurtled low across Grim Green en masse. Leatherleaf hurried to a corner of the cage and wrapped his arms around his head, crying out in his terrible beast-baby wail.
Iron Wart crouched low to the ground, his fearsome face contorted in alarm. The cloud of birds seemed to consume him before rising. The flocks broke ranks only to regroup and dive again. Iron Wart roared and thrashed as they circled him like a cyclone.
“Two moons,” he growled at Longchance again in garbled language, shielding his eyes from the storm of gray beaks and claws.
He pulled a staked torch from the ground and hurled it at the stage before heading off for the tree line at an urgent pace. The spilled alcohol caught fire and the stage burst into flames.
The spooked draft horses tethered to Leatherleaf’s cage lurched and began galloping away in terror.
The cage jolted so sharply that Rye lost her grip and fell backward, hitting the ground with her full weight. The impact knocked the wind from her lungs, but she threw her arms over her head as the cage wheels rumbled past her ears. The cage skittered off behind the horses, up the rocky path to Longchance Keep, the only safe place the animals knew. Leatherleaf let out another bone-chilling wail as he, the horses, and the cage disappeared.
Rye opened her eyes. She lay in the clearing of matted grass where the cage had sat. By a stroke of luck, each of its four heavy wheels had missed her. Through the smoke and storm of wings she could see soldiers leading Longchance and Lady Malydia off the burning stage, hurrying them to the steps on the side nearest Rye. As they did, Malydia looked down, directly at her.
Rye fumbled through the grass, searching for her mask without success. Without her hood and with her cloak hanging off her shoulders, her choker blazed blue like a beacon.
Rye watched helplessly as Malydia grabbed her father’s arm and pointed. Longchance paused and blinked his eyes. He gestured and two soldiers jumped from the stage and ran toward Rye.
At the tree line by the western woods, Folly and her brothers gathered. They were joined by Quinn, who hadn’t needed to run back to the village after all. They all sat in a circle, examining something in the grass. It was the pieces of Rye’s mask Folly had found on the Green, now carefully reassembled into a broken face.
Grim Green was burning. Tents were collapsed. The stage was in cinders. After terrorizing the villagers, the three adult Bog Noblins had disappeared into the night as suddenly as they’d arrived. The big, black rooks covered the field now, picking through the broken farmers’ carts and smoldering food stands with opportunistic beaks.
The friends waited, and waited some more, their hearts growing heavy. They waited for as long as they possibly could. But Rye never returned to meet them.
19
The Keep
The dining table was as long as the O’Chanters’ entire cottage. Rye sat at one end, staring at the food on her plate. It all looked delectable—the cheeses and grapes, the cinnamon twists and raisins—but Rye had no appetite. A fire crackled in the fireplace of the Great Hall. Thin slivers of light peeked through each of the hall’s windows.
Malydia Longchance sat at the opposite end of the table, plucking crumbs from the bread in her hand and placing them in her mouth. She never took her mismatched brown and blue eyes off Rye. There were at least two dozen chairs between them, all of them empty. A nanny came in and out of the Great Hall silently, clearing plates and refilling their glasses. An uncomfortable-looking guard stood by the door, staring blankly at the ceiling while shifting his weight from foot to foot.
“Do you always eat alone?” Rye asked in a loud voice. She’d already learned that she needed to shout in order to be heard at the other end of the table.
“Father never eats with me,” Malydia said. “He’s very busy.”
Rye looked at the enormous oil painting of Earl Longchance hanging over the fireplace. The artist had taken certain liberties, as the Longchance in the portrait had a delicate nose and much more luxurious hair. Dwarfed next to it, in a frame no larger than a book, was a portrait of a regal, silver-bearded man in a crown.
“Is that a relative of yours?” Rye asked, pointing to the smaller picture.
“You know very little of the world, do you?” Malydia said, smoothing a strand of hair that had escaped her tight black bun. “That, of course, is the King.”
Rye knew that the Shale was, in fact, an island—an expansive island full of forests, fields, and mountains so vast that those who lived in certain towns might go their whole lives without ever seeing the ocean. But it was nonetheless part of a larger Kingdom. The House of Longchance and a few other noble families had divvied up control of the Shale long ago but, at least in theory, they were subject to the rule of some faraway King who lived O’There. Rye had heard of O’There, but didn’t know anyone who’d ever been. It was on the other side of the sea.
“Where is your father now?” Rye asked.
“I suspect he is meditating in his chamber,” Malydia said, with a roll of her eyes. “Most of his important decisions require a lot of wine and sleep. The villagers are calling for him to let that hideous Bog Noblin free.”
“So why doesn’t he?” Rye said. “Have you made it your pet? It would seem to suit you.”
Malydia scowled back at Rye. “Clearly you know even less about leadership than my father. If he bends to the demands of the Bog Noblins now, they will only come back with greater demands next time.”
“So the Earl will sit by and see the village burn?” Rye said.
Malydia tapped a finger on her chin. “If necessary.”
“And what about this Keep?” Rye said.
“I don’t expect it will come to that,” Malydia said.
“Those Bog Noblins seemed pretty convincing last night.”
“That’s why we have you,” Malydia said with an exaggerated smile. She put her chin in her hands and leaned forward on her elbows. “We didn’t bring you here for your table manners and fascinating thoughts on world affairs. It seems, for whatever reason, that the outlaw Gray the Grim has some kind of strange affinity for you.”
“I don’t know who you’re talking about,” Rye said, remembering how her mother had responded to a similar question.
“Is that so?” Malydia said, taking her napkin from her lap. Rye thought she saw Malydia look quickly at Rye’s neck. “Something tells me that nothing will happen to me or this Keep so long as you remain in it.”
Rye didn’t say anything more. That certainly explained why, after some initial pushing and shoving by the soldiers last night, she had been treated reasonably well. They had provided her with a luxurious room and comfortable bed to sleep in, not that she’d slept a wink all night. She had been given the freedom to walk the halls, albeit shadowed by a guard at all times.
“Come,” Malydia said. “You make a dreadful guest, but a Lady Longchance is nothing if not hospitable. I’ll show you the rest of the Keep.”
Rye narrowed a suspicious eye.
Malydia’s nanny rushed over and pulled out Malydia’s chair for her. Malydia didn’t acknowledge her. The nanny then ran to Rye’s chair and pulled it out for her, too.
“Thank you,” Rye said.
The nanny just nodded and turned her eyes to the floor. She was probably younger than Rye’s mother, but had a face that bore the pocks and scars of harsh treatment. She seemed uncomfortable being spoken to.
The corridors of Longchance Keep were long and dark despite being lined with torches. The idea of living in a castle occupied only by an army of soldiers and silent servants struck Rye as lonely. Malydia enthusi
astically pointed out things of interest—to her anyway—as they went, almost as if she’d been rehearsing this for years. Rye sensed that Malydia didn’t get many visitors. The nanny and the guard trailed several paces behind. On the walls, in garishly ornate frames, were paintings so primitive that it seemed to Rye that only the troublesome monkey at the Dead Fish Inn could have made them. Lottie’s works were masterpieces by comparison.
Rye stumbled over a jagged stone in the floor but caught herself before she fell. She knocked over a tartan tapestry covering a gaping crack in the wall. It depicted a rather unpleasant scene: a frightened man in chains stood knee-deep in what looked like a bog, surrounded by a ring of hooded figures with candles. She quickly hung it back up—crooked.
“Who did all these paintings?” she asked.
“Father did,” Malydia said. “These are some of his better works.”
Rye raised an eyebrow.
“He’s been taking lessons from a master painter,” Malydia said, and couldn’t stifle a smirk.
Rye smiled too. They both looked at each other, then broke into a little giggle.
Malydia composed herself and her smile quickly disappeared.
She stopped at a set of heavy double doors. They were engraved with the crest of the House of Longchance, the sharp teeth of the slithery eel creature fanning out in all their menacing glory.
“This is where I have my lessons,” she said.
Rye carefully ran her finger along the door’s dark surface.
“What is this thing anyway?” Rye asked, poking her finger between its jaws. “A sea worm?”
“It’s a hagfish,” Malydia said, as if that should be readily apparent to anyone. “They secrete slime to escape their enemies and eat the corpses of rotting fish. They’re quite resourceful.”
“Yes,” Rye said drily. “They sound like noble creatures.”
“You may go in,” Malydia said.
Rye hesitated.
“It won’t bite,” Malydia said, a mischievous glitter in her eye. She pushed the door open and stepped aside.
Rye entered carefully. Beyond the door was a library, its carrels covered with pens, inkwells, paper, and parchment. She couldn’t conceal her wonder as she took in the walls. She had never seen so many books. They lined the shelves from floor to ceiling and filled her nose with a scent that was part mildew, part magic. She strolled slowly around the library and stared up at the patchwork cavern of multicolored bindings.