by Shae Ford
“If I had the wildmen, things would be simple,” Kael agreed. When he glanced at Lydia, he saw she’d gone back to staring at the fields. Still, he spoke quietly: “Gwen won’t listen to me. She won’t fight. I can’t do it on my own.”
“Nonsense. You’ve got the Swordmaiden by your side. And I hear she’s always by your side,” Baird added with a wide grin. “More and more often, each and every day —”
“Kyleigh’s gone,” Kael said shortly.
Baird’s grin vanished. “Well, then I suppose you’re on your own.”
“I know that.”
“And you haven’t got the slightest chance against Midlan on your own —”
“I know!” Kael said sharply. “I know I’ve got no chance. I don’t need you barking at me about it.”
“You’re the one who’s barking.” Baird swept a knobby hand to his thin chest. “I’m merely trying to help.”
Kael tugged roughly on his curls, trying to think through the flames that whipped behind his eyes. “If I had a month to wear her down, Gwen might see reason. But I haven’t got a month, this time.” An idea suddenly came to him. “What if you were to … convince her for me?”
“Hmm.” Baird scratched at the scruff on his chin. “An interesting idea. What would you have me say, exactly?”
“I don’t know. Whatever it is you say to whisper people in line.”
Baird gasped as if he’d just found a troll stashed in one of his pockets. “No, young man. Oh dear, oh me — no.” He waved his hands frantically before him. “Do you not remember what I said? The man who holds the whole realm captive upon his tongue must be careful with his gifts. I would never use those powers upon a friend. I would use them only if I had no other choice.”
“Well, we haven’t got another choice,” Kael said evenly. “If Gwen doesn’t listen, she’ll be killed.”
Baird pursed his lips. “Words can be powerful, yes. But they can also be frightfully vague. If I told the Thane to obey everything you commanded, you might in jest send her walking off a cliff!”
Kael wasn’t so sure it would’ve been in jest. But he could see Baird’s point. “What if you told her to only obey the serious things I said?”
“How is she to know whether or not you’re serious? My words move feet, young man. They can’t read minds.”
“Well, then have her obey only one command — whichever one I give her first.”
Baird threw his hands up with such vigor that he nearly tumbled off the balcony. “Which one would you give her? If you said go fight the King, she would march out straight away — barehanded and lost in a trance. Her eyes would be so fixed upon Midlan that she would pay the land no heed. I wager she would drown in the first river that snaked across her path. No, young man,” he said again. “Words are powerful and dangerous things — much better suited to the ears of my enemies.”
Kael was about to argue when Baird slapped his hands against the sides of his head and cried:
“Stop it! For the sake of all that’s still good in the realm, would you kindly stop that racket?”
At first, Kael had no idea what he was talking about. It was only when Lydia stopped drumming her fingers against the table that he noticed there’d been any noise in the first place.
As the silence crept in, he realized it’d been the tapping of her fingers that’d made his blood run hot, made everything seem more desperate. Even after she stopped, his heart beat after it.
“Sorry. I can’t help myself,” she said with a sheepish grin.
Baird frowned at the air above her left shoulder. “Be that as it may, you were assigned to finish my book. Where did we leave off?”
Kael glanced at the pages between Lydia’s arms and saw that Baird’s words had trailed into scribbles back at a warm summer’s day. Instead, an elaborate drawing filled the pages of his story — one in which the beggar-bard was so covered in birds that Kael could hardly make out his bandages.
Lydia reddened at his grin and turned the page over quickly. “I think we ought to end here for the day —”
“But the day’s only just begun,” Baird sputtered. His chin followed the rustling of the papers as she hurried for the balcony doors. “We were about to get to the exciting bit!”
“And in a few months, I’m sure we’ll get there.”
“Blasted girl,” Baird growled when she slammed the door. He felt around for Lydia’s empty chair and plopped into it with an exasperated sigh. “When I asked for a scribe, I expected to get a young person who actually cared for words. I’ve been through fourteen different scribes and not a one’s shown any interest — but I’d take them all back in an instant to have this one gone.
“If it’s not the tapping, then it’s the whistling or the humming.” Baird groaned into his knobby hands. “I swear she’ll be the death of me.”
Even if Baird could’ve seen his smile, Kael doubted if he could have held it in. It seemed the beggar-bard had finally met his match.
“It’s a great relief to speak with someone who understands,” Baird said after a moment. “A Wright knows the power of words better than anyone. He sees them wholly, in their entire form. He understands them so well that a word passing before his eyes shall forever be remembered.”
Kael was caught off-guard by his smile. “What do you mean, I can see their entire form?”
“All those who read are searching — they seek to fill the empty portions of their souls. A warrior feels a word’s power inside his chest. A craftsman sees its beauty reflected behind his eyes. And in a line’s calm repose, a healer finds his courage. But a Wright … well, a Wright can hear all of their meanings. He knows them to their full extent.” Baird smiled. “And so he does not soon forget.”
Something about what he’d said made Kael feel uneasy. “I don’t think —”
“Ah, and speaking of words …” Baird began digging through his robes with gusto. Out came a handful of seed, bits of string, and something that looked suspiciously like a wadded-up handkerchief. Finally, he slapped a sealed envelope upon the table and declared: “I want you to keep this for me, young man. I don’t trust it, here. There are too many wandering eyes about, too many curious young gazes. They don’t understand the danger … but you do.”
He certainly did.
Kael’s stomach bunched into a knot as he stared down at the familiar, twisting seal of Midlan. The dragon’s tiny eye seemed locked upon him — daring him to turn the envelope onto its front. But if he did, and if he read the words scrawled across it, the whispercraft would overtake him. It would steal his legs and march him straight for Midlan.
His fate would be the same as all of the other whisperers at the end of the War.
“I’m not keeping that for you.”
“Just stick it inside your pocket —”
“I’m not sticking it anywhere.”
“— and you’ll forget it soon enough.”
“No, Baird,” Kael said sharply. “It’s too dangerous. Just burn it and be done.”
He sputtered indignantly. “But it’s one of my treasures!”
“It’s evil, is what it is,” Kael growled.
The beggar-bard’s face hung so piteously that he couldn’t bring himself to tear it to pieces … at least not in front of Baird.
“Fine. I’ll take it,” he muttered, stuffing the envelope into the pocket of his breeches.
Baird’s wide grin returned. “Thank you, young man! Look after it well.”
He had no intention of looking after it. The moment he was out of range of Baird’s ears, he’d toss it in the hearth. But at that moment, there were far more pressing matters at hand. Kael turned to watch the spells flashing in the distance …
And he did forget.
CHAPTER 15
Midlan’s Army
Kael tried to spend the rest of the day working out some sort of plan to convince the wildmen to fight, but it was difficult. Baird’s voice rang inside his head every few moments: words are powerful a
nd dangerous things … all those who read are searching — they seek to fill the empty portions of their souls.
It was annoying, at first. It seemed as if every time he took a step in the right direction, those words pulled him back. They grated against his ears with such obnoxious force that it drove him to grind his teeth. But though he tried to shove them aside, he couldn’t.
And it wasn’t long before he began to listen.
There had to be a reason his mind kept coming back to what Baird had said. There was a message inside the words he was missing, a loose thread he had to follow. Kael found the thought’s end and gave it a sharp tug. He traced its path through a tangle of muddle pictures until he finally stopped at Griffith.
It was a memory of the day the wildmen arrived at the Earl’s old castle — the day he’d passed his favorite book onto Griffith. He remembered how his had been lost between the pages of the Atlas of the Adventurer, how he’d hardly seemed able to put it down. Now Kael realized that Griffith had read so intently because he’d been searching for something — searching for the answer to the question in his heart:
How will I know which paths to take? How will I know what’s best for my people?
Those were the questions he’d asked in the moment before Kael handed him the Atlas. Those were the worries that plagued him, the answer he searched for. But the stories Griffith had read seemed to calm him. It made Kael wonder if perhaps Baird had been wrong.
Perhaps there was a wildman in Thanehold who heeded the power of words.
It was a risk, but he knew he didn’t have time to beat the wildmen into listening. Convincing Griffith might be his only chance — and he thought he might’ve known just how to do it.
Kael spent the rest of the day hunched over a blank sheet of parchment, trying to bring it to life. He didn’t have Baird’s voice, or Setheran’s powerful tone. No, all he could do was tell the truth.
As he wrote, he drew each line in desperation. He fed his worry into every page. He told the story of a village that’d been unprepared — defenseless against an army of wolves that’d torn it apart with iron teeth. Everything he felt ran from the tip of his quill. The words he used were pounded out in anger, sharpened by despair.
His eyes burned by the time he’d finished — whether from exhaustion or fury, he wasn’t sure. But he knew that if even one line struck the worry in Griffith’s eyes, the wildmen would be prepared.
Once he’d finished, Kael sealed his story up and passed it on to one of the warriors to be delivered. He didn’t want Griffith to see him. The story would speak for itself.
After a day had dragged by and Kael heard nothing, he began to fear that he’d made a mistake. He spent his time with Baird and Lydia, letting their ceaseless spats distract him from his worries — fighting against all the little fibers of his soul that screamed for him to do something. In the short breaths between their arguments, he watched the spell-lights in the distance.
They grew brighter by the hour. Soon he could hear the far-off rumble of the hills of snow giving way. Their white flesh blasted upwards in a tower’s spire beneath every spell, snow that had sat undisturbed for so long that it’d hardened into a near-impenetrable vein of ice. He hoped it would hold for a few days longer.
But at the rate things were going, he doubted it.
That night, he woke to wild chirping and the panicked flapping of wings. Kael hadn’t been eager to go back to the chambers he’d shared with Kyleigh. Instead, he’d fallen into a fitful sleep on Baird’s floor. Now every bird in the chamber tore from their nests and threw themselves against the balcony doors. Their feet scratched against the wood and they swirled about the room in a frantic spiral.
Baird tumbled out of bed and chased them around — tromping on Kael’s hand and knocking over furniture as he went. “No, little things! The winds are too strong. You’ll be torn apart if you venture out — oof!”
He tripped over his night robe and would’ve crashed straight into the wall, had Kael not grabbed him around the arm. “They aren’t going anywhere. You’re likely to break something if you keep running about. Stay here,” Kael said firmly as he began making his way towards the window. “I’ll see what’s happened.”
By the time he’d fought his way through the cloud of birds, the rumbling had stopped. Kael stared into the darkness for what seemed like an eternity before he saw the hundreds of orange lights.
They were torches — each carried by a soldier of Midlan. He watched, breathless, as the torches moved toward the end of the Cleft. For one heart-stopping moment, he feared they might’ve burst through. But they stopped just before they reached the end.
Spells lit up the night and the rumbling continued as the mages went back to hacking away at the last remaining stretch of ice.
“What is it, young man? What do you see?”
“They’ve just collapsed a huge bit of the pass,” Kael said, piecing it together. “They’re nearly out.”
“Good. All of this blasting is starting to give me a headache. The sooner they get through, the sooner you can silence them.”
Kael’s mouth went dry even as his palms began to sweat. He didn’t think he’d be able to silence anybody — not without the wildmen’s help. His knees locked together and his legs shook as he spun for the door. He’d been foolish to think words would do anything. He’d wasted too much time. If he left now, perhaps he’d be able to beat some sense into Gwen before it was too late.
He was reaching for the door when the knob turned. He leapt back when Griffith stepped in.
There was a suit of armor wrapped in one of his arms. Kael’s letter hung from his hand — so read that tiny holes had been worn into its creases. But Kael hardly noticed any of that. From the moment he stepped inside, Kael’s eyes locked upon the boy’s face.
Black paint adorned his features once more.
“She’s going to fight,” he breathed.
Griffith’s head tilted to the side. “She’s prepared to fight, if need be.”
“Oh, there’ll be a fight,” Baird called. In spite of having been told to stay put, he somehow managed to shuffle his way over to latch himself onto Kael’s arm. “Promise me something, young man — promise me that you’ll deal swiftly with his mages. They’re a crafty lot. If you leave them to sit and think, they’ll fester into a rot. They chew the legs out from under you before you even realize what’s happened.”
“I don’t think I’ll have any say in it,” Kael said, turning back to Griffith. “I doubt Gwen’s going to let me out of here.”
“She won’t,” Griffith said with a nod. “The craftsmen are useless in the wind, so she’s only using the warriors — and she says she doesn’t need your help for that. In fact, you’re not to come within a mile of them, understood? You’re to stay right here. Gwen’ll skin me if I let you out.” The armor fell from his grip and struck the ground with a clang. The helmet rolled to a stop at Kael’s feet. “So it’s best if she doesn’t see you.”
*******
Dawn came quietly. A red sky swelled behind the mountains and bled upon the white at their feet. Creatures rose from the snow as they marched — beasts with hundreds of limbs and countless tiny claws. They tore through the wildmen’s ranks, howling as the wind brought them to life.
Kael watched the creatures’ dance through the slits in his iron helmet. Their flesh collided with his body and the sound was like a roomful of glass shattering against his skull: it filled his ears with a near-constant hiss that stifled everything else.
The wind had beaten the drifts for days. Now they filled the Valley in high, uneven waves. Sometimes the snow hardly came to Kael’s ankles, but other times he sank to his knees.
There wasn’t much space between the castle and the Cleft. When Kael chanced a look behind him, he could see the black patterns on the faces of the guards who watched them from the ramparts. The head that barely rose above them was Griffith’s. If the Cleft’s mouth was even a half-mile from Thanehold, it would be
a near thing.
Gwen marched straight to the last remaining wall of ice. Its crags were swollen and blue. Spells crashed behind it. The colors that swelled and burst inside its flesh made it look as if the evening sky was trying to fight its way out.
A particularly loud blast made the wall groan. It shed a few monstrous scales of ice — some twice the size of a man. But Gwen never flinched.
One of her fists was clenched around the strap of a rounded shield and from the other hung a double-headed steel axe. The way the wind blasted across her wild crop of hair made it look as if flames spouted from her head. She turned as another enormous chunk of ice shattered upon the ground to her left — revealing the sharp edge scowl.
Kael stood just a few rows behind her. Gwen’s gaze cut over the top of his head to the wind-blasted fields behind him, and he stood perfectly still. Her eyes tightened upon something in the distance. Her bluish-black lips twisted in a grimace. Only when she turned back to the wall did he chance a look behind him.
As far as he could see, the fields were empty. He didn’t know what she’d been looking for — and he didn’t have time to wonder.
The warriors on his either side kept glancing in his direction. He could feel the pressure of their eyes as they scraped across him, roving from deep within their helmets. But he looked pointedly ahead.
He remembered what Geist had said about how strange it was that Kael was able to see through disguises that’d fool so many. He wasn’t sure if the talent was his alone, or if it was something all whisperers shared — but he wasn’t willing to test it. Kael convinced himself that any little movement might give him away, and he stood perfectly still.
A sudden calm drew his eyes to the center of the wall. The spells ceased, the air fell silent. For a long moment, all Kael could hear was the ice as it hissed across his armor and his own heavy breaths.