Aloren

  Nefer’s cutlass flicked out and gently, almost lovingly, cut a slit across Thew’s neck. He collapsed. Nefer shrugged sadly, and continued gathering potatoes. Squeamish Padlimaird took one look and went to heave in the bushes. I wondered if my hands would ever stop shaking.

  Finally, mercifully, loaded with bedrolls, food bags, Toughy’s tent, and Nefer’s stool, we made towards the river. Waiting for us was a skiff of oak and pitch patches that Nefer had stolen off an eel-trapper earlier that week.

  It would have been difficult for Calragen alone to drag nervous old Redstart onto the boat, but we four Elde convinced her to lie down on a mat of fishing nets surrounded by our baggage. The boat, tied to a stump, sank a couple inches in the cold Swisa. I hopped aboard after Wille. Floy, alighting on my shoulder, reminded me there was no way Mordan would ever find us once we took off downstream in a small boat. I insisted that my being alive and lost was better than my being dead and found. And anyway, my uncle Ederach lived in Ellyned and the river was the quickest route.

  Padlimaird, last to step into the boat, turned at a noise. He banged his shin and bit back a yelp. Emry swept aside the branch of a river birch.

  “Emry, get back to bed,” Wille whispered.

  “Where are you goin?”

  “Taking the boat out fer a little while,” said Padlimaird.

  “With a horse?”

  “She wanted to come, too.”

  “I’m not stupid, Padlimaird Crescentnet. You’re desertin, ain’t you?”

  “Look, Emry,” I said, thinking of poor Thew, “you’d better come with now. Get on. It’s a big enough boat, there’s room for seven.”

  Nefer extended his big hand to help her aboard, but she backed against the birch, a dangerous look on her face.

  “It in’t allowed,” she said. “We’ll get killed. It’s against the rules.”

  I thought of the writing, the journal, the stone and Cook’s bannocks; and my stomach sank like a stone.

  “O’ course we’ll get killed. All of us––if you call out,” said Padlimaird.

  “Hush, Emry,” said Wille, “and when morning comes tell Seacho we’re comin to rescue you later.”

  “And if Gattren comes back,” said Padlimaird, “tell her to jump off a cliff fer me, cause me arms is too tired to stay an’ push her meself.”

  Some days Padlimaird could be surprisingly clever. This wasn’t one of them.

  Emry turned round and yelled, “Chief! Chief! They’re leavin in a big old boat, all six of em!”

  Nefer cursed. There was a shouting and rustling in the trees; and in no time at all the whole camp had woken and run to the riverbank. Fillegal was in the lead, looking mad as a skinned cat. Nefer cut through the mooring rope with his cutlass.

  “What the hell are you doin?” yelled Seacho from the bank.

  “Seacho! Jump in, Seacho!” Wille waved at the shore.

  “Geddown, all o’ ye.” Nefer tripped and shoved everyone to the bottom of the boat. Bowstrings twanged in the trees and arrows flew over the water.

  Redstart’s eyes rolled in terror, and she rose onto her knees. She lifted all her bulk until she was up and skidding in the swill on the bottom. Wait, wait, stay put! We cried to her, and the boat, rushing forward, rocked and threatened to tip.

  The arrows whistled overhead, and the horse’s legs caught in the nets. Nefer tackled her around the barrel. She stumbled onto her knees and fell on her side, right onto his left arm. The boat gave a shudder. Nefer grimaced and looked at the left bank.

  “We’re too far out of range now,” he said. “But they’ll run long the banks, waiting for them falls to come up.” He put his other hand on the horse’s heaving side. The whites of her eyes disappeared into the brown.

  “The gold,” said Padlimaird. “The loot. It’s downriver––let’s take some with us.” He clawed his way to the side of the boat, looking sick.

  “And I’m sure as anythin me arm’s broke,” said Nefer.

  “Let me have a look,” said Calragen. Nefer offered his arm, and Calragen set to prodding it. Nefer yelped. “I’m very sorry,” said Calragen, running a finger along Nefer’s forearm. “Here, I think. I know a bit of doctoring. I’ll set it to the best of my ability, soon as we have time.”

  We reached the digging site, and Wille punted us ashore with the pole. The boys dug up a few purses, and then hopped back in and we pushed off again.

  Day came and the river bottom darkened and dropped beneath us. The banks climbed, pushing the fir trees high above the water, and a white-yellow canyon closed out the sky ahead. Thunder hung faint in the air, and Nefer had us pull up the boat at a chalky bank. “We’ve got to portage from ’ere, mates.”

  “We could’ve gone a little farrer, Nev,” said Padlimaird. “We can’t even see them falls yet––”

  “See that canyon there?” said Nefer. “Soon’s ye set prow in it, the current’ll take ye along so fast you won’t stop till you has to.”

  Wille helped to prop the prow upon Nefer’s good shoulder. Then Calragen and Wille took the stern between them, and I took up the packs: one in back, one in front, and one in my arms. And Padlimaird gave Redstart the sorrel, still stumbling on her sea-legs, a push after Wille’s back, which had set off downhill with the boat.

  The waterfall crashed from a great height into a deep pool that smelled of boiled cabbage.

  Calragen went to the edge and peered into the water. “I know these falls,” he said. “They call this place Oldeyda Lun. Carpet Pool.” He laughed. “We can all take baths.”

  “Baths?” said Padlimaird in disgust.

  I put down the packs and walked up to the pool. The stones in the water were eerily beautiful: vein blue and hawkseye yellow, and the spray wet my face. I scooped up some water in my hands, let it run through my fingers. “This water’s warm,” I said. “What’s wrong with the earth?”

  “It’s supposed to be warm,” said Calragen. “It comes from the Leden Pass.” I gave him a blank look. “My fellows and I passed that way, and it’s perilous, full of boiling rivers, deep, scalding pools that extend to the bottom of the earth, red stones and––”

  “That’s where Enol dropped the starlight he’d got from a lake,” said Wille, dipping his feet into the pool. “He dropped it into a volcano to freeze it up. The djain in the volcano let the sun come up fer the first time in thousands of years to unfreeze it, but the sun heated the starlight so hot it blasted the volcano to smithereens an’ made the Pass to let the humans through to––”

  “Where it becomes a bunch of silly tales,” said Calragen.

  “Lorila and the Green Basin. Then the humans got so bad.”

  “Oh?” said Calragen.

  “Some of em. And we’re gonna run em off when we gets to Ellyned, ain’t we, Nefer?”

  Nefer looked up. “I hate to cheat ye out of a bath, sir, but we gotta go.”

  “Does the rest of them know this water’s warm?” said Padlimaird to Nefer.

  “I didn’t know it.”

  “We could jus pretend like we was in a wreck.” Padlimaird rubbed his arms and winced. “Like we fell off those falls. Y’don’t think they’d bother a bunch of drownded deserters?”

  ***

  The overturned fishing boat echoed like a cavern, and we kept silent as death, clinging to the nets Nefer had tacked to the bottom for holding our food. The tent canvas swirled around our legs, and the poles straggled behind, clunking below the surface in a drumbeat of ill news.

  Voices carried from the shore: “I’m not getting wet and froze fer a shoddy tent, nor a boat, neither.”

  “Idiots got what was comin to em…”

  The voices faded, replaced by the roar of the falls. “Idiots?” said Wille. “Maybe the rest of you, but as I was the one modestly whisperin me idea into Padlimaird’s ear––”

  Padlimaird knocked him in and the two boys wrestled in the water. They heard me laughing and Wille pulled me in for a dunking. I fought back, pounding on their he
ads, sneezing and coughing up the nasty-tasting stuff, and Nefer had to separate us.

  We waited a few minutes more, then slipped behind the falls and wrapped ourselves against the cold to check up on Redstart.

  Thirteen

  The river carried our skiff southeast, and we crossed paths with spring.

  This did little to cheer me––I’d left my Marione seeds behind. The earth had pledged to nourish and protect the seeds, but I forgot this and lolled about the boat with angst screwed into my face until one day Wille said that I was apt to bite off my bottom lip. Padlimaird eyed me from where he dangled a bit of sausage over the side to tempt the small green trout.

  “I never seen you cry, Aloren. Why don’t you never cry?”

  “You’re dumb,” I said.

  “Let’s hook her and sink her.” Padlimaird beat the water with his tent hook. “See if the fishes like sourpuss more than sausage.”

  I stood up to jump on him, but Nefer let the handle of his oar swing into the small of my back. I tumbled over. My elbows drummed on the bottom of the boat, and Redstart whickered. “In’t fair!” I said.

  Padlimaird laughed. Nefer took the other oar from Calragen and placed it into Padlimaird’s hand.

  “Mr. Calragen’s a-gettin fatigued, bless his heart, and it’s been a fair time since I rowed two oars wid one arm.” His bad arm was set with an ash stick, supported in a sling made from a piece of his shirt.

  “The current’s pushing us,” said Padlimaird. “Why d’we have to row?”

  “Cause it’ll give us some peace. Now hop to it, young Paddy.” And Nefer launched into a Rielde river shanty to drown out Padlimaird’s voice:

  “Taut as a sail when the west wind rends his skyways,

  Spreads the oldest path through the golden breath of sunrays.

  How merrily she winds,

  And with the clip of sailors’ lines

  Shunts me forward, chained and flying by my arms.

  Tide has crept in from the sands,

  Cooled my feet and shackled my hands,

  Wrapped the ocean’s salve around the inland’s harms.

  O! My heart, she longs for open skies

  O’er the pitching and the list,

  And my oars drive me on, ever forward drawn

  By a force I can’t resist.

  If resist I can, due east I’ll sail,

  For to curb their longsome stride

  I must mend the rip in the ocean’s lip

  Or be taken by the tide.

  Caught like a leaf in the noldra’s wild fountain,

  Rolls my ragged soul, unbeset by soaring mountain,

  High hillock, wall or stone.

  Hear her wearily bemoan

  The river’s chattel with his ankle in the wet

  By his will and nothing more.

  Lash the tiller t’ward the shore

  Or my heart will burst her bent and bony net.

  For my heart, she longs for countless stars

  O’er the squalling and the mist,

  And my pole spurs me on, ever forward drawn

  By a call I can’t resist.

  If resist I can, due north I’ll sail

  For to quell its crippled run

  I must beg the snow to strike still the flow

  Ere I’m lost behind the sun.”

  ***

  “Dwindling, you say?” said Wille, after Nefer and Calragen gave us the news they’d heard in a village pub.

  Wille, Paddy and I had been left behind to scrounge up what food we could, and we hurried to get underway before the townsfolk found their larders lacking.

  “Aye,” said Nefer, “dwindlin.”

  “How, I ask you”––Wille pointed a parsnip at Nefer––“in this stallion’s jack of a hope-forsaken world is the Cheldony’s depth supposed to dwindle?” He crunched off the end and chewed angrily.

  “I told ye somethin was wrong,” I called between my knees to Floy.

  “It’s just a river,” said Padlimaird. “Rivers tend to dwindle once in a while.”

  “In’t just a river. The Cheldony’s the reason our trees grow taller than a mountain. The reason our saebels don’t eat us, and we all got sparkle in our eyes and wings on our heels. The Cheldony’s the reason our eyes color and our faces freckle, the reason we’re joyful like humans ain’t––”

  “Wille,” said Nefer between his long strokes, “explain how me unfortunate Virnrayan eyes color just as much as your’n.”

  “I’m joyful,” said Calragen. “What makes you think I can’t be joyful?”

  “Raggy has a grin like a watermelon compared to Aloren,” said Paddy. “No offense meant.” He slid away from me and ripped his breeches on a nail.

  We caught sight of the Benara Sea before the city appeared. All at once the hills peeled away and the horizon became frighteningly flat, and the clouds grew smaller and smaller until they rolled off the edge of the earth.

  My eyes smarted with the salt air. I remembered yellow roses and dark-haired Mother, streets white with lime and Temmaic before he became Tem. The river widened, and slowly, rolling by in little bits at first, the port city of Ellyned rose to greet us in the morning with her mossy limestone towers and roofs of blue slate; and Padlimaird threw up after drinking the estuary water.

  ***

  Nefer moored the boat at the third wharf from the breakwater. All around us were trawlers, schooners and gigantic merchant vessels loading and docking with chaos enough to send all our heads spinning when we jumped onto the wood and shook out our legs.

  Right away Nefer began extolling our faithful vessel with enough earnestness that it was soon sold to a young fisherman for one hundred silver celms. This allowed us to pay the mooring fee of sixty silvers. The fee was so high, we were told, because the Daldera shipping line owned three wharves and closely minded the other two’s business.

  “Fancy the name sounding so human.” Wille glanced at a ship with three masts and Daldera painted across the side in strange letters.

  “It is.” The dockhand took a swig from a bottle. “Belongs to Herist. The big whoreson snake owns the whole fleet. Mind you call him Commander to his face, though.”

  Calragen booked a passage aboard a little clipper bound for Evenalehn, and we spent a last awkward night with him in a quayside boardinghouse.

  We went down to the docks the next morning to see him off. The air smelled of tar and pine, and fog curled out of the streets in shreds, melting away in the sunlight. Calragen had asked us the night before if we would like to come with him, to live in Evenalehn. Nefer and the boys declined, thinking of their loot and what they might make of it here. I couldn’t answer.

  Redstart boarded early with the other passengers’ horses. Before joining her, Calragen said to me, “Pity about that broach. It was so close.”

  “Got your sketch, still, mate?” said Nefer, who had heard the tale from us. “I might have made you another, if t’weren’t fer me arm. If ye’ve drawn up all the correct measurements…” He laughed, peering at his left arm in its sling.

  “I fear you’ll have to find a better healer,” said Calragen. “I’ve probably set it badly.”

  “Or chop it off and stick Dravadha’s arm inter the socket,” said Padlimaird. “Ye can’t make a replica of somethin like that unless you bargain hard with a demon.”

  “Don’t talk about demons.” Calragen pulled a ragged bit of parchment from his cloak. “See what you can make of it.” He put it into Nefer’s hand. “The girl can help, if you manage to get that far.” He looked at me and frowned.

  “I asked Marna about you once. She said you were a fidgety twit who didn’t know a spindle from a needle. Said the boys would’ve chased you off, weren’t for her.” He shook his head. “I can’t imagine the boys chasing you anywhere now.”

  “Lally’d be chasing them,” said Padlimaird, and Wille pulled his ear.

  “You’d have been one of them boys, Padlimaird.”

  I pretended to see somet
hing interesting on the horizon. Calragen spoke to the back of my head:

  “Nevertheless, I think you ought to come with me. There’s plenty of room––we can just nip back to the booking tables––”

  “Only those without burdens can scale walls.” It was silly; a proverb our old groundskeeper, Hal, used to say. “But you promise,” I said. “Promise you’ll bring back help. After all, you just about lost yer head in a country you claimed was untroubled. Promise!”

  “I promise.” He gave our faces a last look. Then he turned his back to us, the hunched back of an old man, and for the second time he was gone.

  The boys stood looking after him. But I remembered something from long before, and walked from the wharf before the clipper had left the harbor.

  ***

  No one came after me, and Floy flitted nervously around my head while I wove through crates and stinking heaps of fish. My saddlebag had acquired a character all its own of chapped and cracked leather, and I felt very fond of it as I dug for the letter Tem had written two years ago. I found it, and crept into the shadows under a low eve to read:

  Uncle,

  This letter’s messenger may look different by the time she reaches you, but you should find this description somewhat alike: A girl of ten or eleven with straight, dark hair, a round face with a sharp chin, blue eyes, an upturned nose, and (by now) a scar on her left forearm where she has cut herself on something. And lots of freckles. She is your niece.

  The facts are these: Her brothers are under enchantment, and she has agreed to undo it––a task involving the mending of spirits over a period of five years. She needs your protection until the five years are spent. Please refrain from asking questions. She will not be able to answer them. She must remain in complete anonymity for her safety, and should be kept from the sight of all but the immediate household. Also, if she must venture out, don’t try to stop her.

  I sighed, wishing Tem or Mordan were here. Then I walked into the sunlight and boldly asked a number of strangers for Ederach’s address.