by Paul Stewart
‘Remind you of anything now?’
Micah frowned. ‘The letter Y?’ he suggested.
Eli switched the wishbone to his left hand and mimed a pulling-back motion behind it with his right.
‘A catapult!’ Micah exclaimed.
‘Maker be praised,’ Eli chuckled, ‘there’s something going on inside that head of yours after all. I swear I was beginning to doubt it.’ He nodded earnestly. ‘But you got there in the end, lad. A catapult.’
He held up the wishbone and Micah appraised it afresh through eager eyes.
‘You got the basic body here,’ Eli was saying. ‘All you need now is some stout leather, some thick twine and a couple of strips of tensible wyrmeskin, and you’ve got yourself a catapult that could down a man at a hundred paces.’ He smiled. ‘Should that need ever arise …’
He handed the wishbone to Micah, who raised it before him, closed one eye and, with clawed fingers and thumb, drew back the imaginary drawstring slowly, then released it.
‘Boof,’ he muttered, and looked at Eli. ‘Think it’ll work?’
‘First things first, Micah, lad,’ Eli told him. ‘You still got to make the thing.’ He turned and nodded towards the store chamber. ‘You’ll find everything you need in that old chest in the corner. When you’ve selected likely materials, you bring them to show me and I’ll get you started.’ He smiled. ‘Bit of luck, it should occupy you for a couple of days at least.’
Micah laughed. Making a catapult sounded a sight more interesting than chores.
He headed for the store chamber, passing through the sleeping chamber and ducking down to avoid grazing his head on the low ceiling. He paused. Thrace was sitting on the edge of her sackmattress, feeding scraps of stewed meat to the manderwyrme that was perched upon her shoulder. A wooden cage hung from a jutting spur of rock above her head, its barred door open.
Eli had explained to both of them how important the manderwyrme was. If the rock vent or the cooking chimney got blocked up and the atmosphere in the den grew toxic, then long before the three of them had even noticed, the sensitive creature would die – allowing them time to make good the situation before they too succumbed. Micah sighed wearily. They couldn’t afford to lose the wyrme, yet it wasn’t the first time that Thrace had removed it from its cage.
The kingirl missed her whitewyrme Aseel, missed him grievously, and it pained Micah to see it. But the whitewyrme had abandoned Thrace when she and Micah had lain together on the lakeshore in those last days of halfwinter. Now, holed up in this den for fullwinter, sheltering from the biting cold and deadly blizzards, this little caged creature was all she had. He knew that.
‘How’s it liking its supper?’ he asked gently.
Thrace peeled off another piece of stringy meat and held it up. The manderwyrme snatched it from her fingers and swallowed it whole.
‘Seems to like it well enough,’ he said, answering his own question. He paused. ‘Which is good …’ He paused again, looking at the uncaged manderwyrme and wondering how to phrase the words of admonishment he knew he should express.
But Thrace guessed anyhow. She spun round and glared at him. ‘I know, I know,’ she said, her eyes dull and sullen. ‘But it’s cruel to keep it caged every minute of the day and night.’
She raised a hand and tickled the manderwyrme beneath its chin. She shook her head slowly, and when she spoke again, her voice was soft and soothing, and little more than a whisper.
‘Nothing should have to put up with that,’ she told the little wyrme. ‘Nothing, and no one …’
Three
Micah’s eyes snapped open. Something had wakened him …
He looked around the sleeping chamber, though he knew it was useless to do so. The lamps in the winter den were out and the blackness was absolute. Tiny white specks, like glittering motes of dust, danced in the air as Micah’s eyes struggled, and failed, to get used to the lack of light.
He listened to the wind. It scoured the mountaintops and cliff-faces outside, wild and unrelenting, and got trapped in the cracks and crevices of the encasing rock, where it howled and yammered like some demented creature. But Micah had grown accustomed to the noise, and it was not what had roused him.
He pulled up his covers, relaxed back on his sackmattress and laced his fingers behind his head. He stared at the void above where the low ceiling ought to be and wondered whether it was snowing up top. He wondered whether the moon was up, whether it was crescent-shaped or full, or hidden behind banks of clouds – or whether it was even night at all. The lack of light in the winter den made it nighttime for him, Thrace and Eli right now, but what if the sun was shining outside?
Down in the den, the cragclimber imposed the hours of light and dark upon them all with a fastidious rigidity, and the lamps were either lit or snuffed out at his word. It was he who turned the hourglass each time the sand emptied from the top glass to the bottom, and he who kept a tally of the days drifting into weeks, striking marks upon the wall with a stubby piece of charcoal set aside for that purpose.
Like the Maker Himself, Eli gave them night and day, Micah mused – as well as the powerful liquor that blurred the time and made their underground den as tolerable as it could be.
He had to hand it to him, Micah thought; the seasoned cragclimber seemed to have thought of everything. The winter den was well hid from prying eyes, and stocked with provisions to last them through the winter. A trickle of running water emerged from a mossy crack and dribbled into a small rockbowl in an alcove at one end of the main chamber and, thanks to some deep thermal or other, it would never freeze up, no matter how far the temperature dipped outside. They had the means of making fire, and the zigzag arrangement of fissures through the rock not only took the smoke away, but brought it out near a smoking vent a safe distance away up the mountainside, ensuring that no one – neither friend nor foe – might link the two.
Micah closed his eyes. He was feeling drowsy again.
Just then, from somewhere in the darkness of the chamber, there came a sound. Micah froze, instantly wide awake once more.
It was a whispering voice – soft yet insistent, sonorous as far-off thunder, gentle as pattering rain and keening like the wind outside.
‘Thrace?’ he said gently. He reached out to the sackmattress next to his and found it empty. ‘Thrace?’
The kingirl did not reply, yet in seeming response the rainpatter, windsigh whispers grew louder.
Micah propped himself up on his elbows. He cocked his head to one side, trying to determine where the sounds were coming from. One moment they seemed to be coming from his left, the next it seemed like they were right above his head, and as the air fluttered in his face, he raised his hands protectively.
The whispering grew louder, imitating the whoosh and pitterpatter of wind and rain rising up like a gathering storm. Then all at once, out of the darkness, there came a long crooning cry that started like a rumbling growl somewhere deep down at the back of the throat and grew to a hissing sigh.
‘Aah . . . zheeeell …’
Micah sat up straight, his stomach churning. The kingirl was talking in her sleep. Though not talking so that he could understand, but instead in that curious language the whitewyrmes used, and which Aseel had taught her.
‘Aah … zheeeell. Aah … zheeeell.’
The longing in her voice was unmistakable as she called his name. It sounded closer to him now, and Micah plunged his hands into the darkness, trying to find where Thrace was standing.
‘Aah . . . zh—’
The kingirl’s call abruptly cut short. The sound of wind and rain ceased. Micah strained to hear where she was, but all he could hear was the faint yet stealthy sound of someone moving, trying not to make a noise. The next moment, he felt a sharp stabbing pain in his chest.
‘Aaaii!’ he yelped, and fell back.
He felt the presence of someone standing above him, and legs straddled his body as he lay trembling, supine. The pain stabbed at his chest again, and he felt something sharp just above his quickly beating heart. With shaking hands, he reached up and grasped the stout pole that was pressing against his chest and tried to pull it away, but the pressure being exerted down upon it was powerful and unyielding.
‘Thrace … Eli. Eli! Eli!’ he called out to the cragclimber who, to give Micah and Thrace their privacy, had taken to sleeping in the main chamber.
The air abruptly filled with honeycolour light and Micah turned his head to see Eli standing silhouetted at the entrance to the sleeping chamber, a lamp raised in his hand.
‘Don’t wake her,’ he hissed. ‘Whatever you do, Micah, do not wake her up …’
Micah looked up at the kingirl standing over him, her arms braced as she gripped the end of the broomhandle and continued to push down hard. She looked awake already, her top teeth pressed into her lower lip and eyes narrowed with cold calculation.
Eli was beside her in a moment. He placed the lamp on the floor and took her by the shoulder, whispering reassuring words as he did so.
Thrace flinched for a moment, and Micah had to stifle his cries as the end of the broomhandle scraped against his ribs. But then, as Eli slowly and surely eased the broom from her grip, the pain subsided and was suddenly gone.
‘That’s it … that’s the way …’ Eli soothed as he steered the kingirl away from Micah’s sackmattress and over to her own. ‘This way, Thrace …’
Micah sat up again and looked across at them, watching their every move as Eli, one hand gripping her arm and the other supporting her back, laid Thrace gently down. Her head rolled to one side and, for a moment, her gaze met Micah’s: fierce, beautiful, but bewildered, and lacking any recognition.
‘She’s still asleep,’ Eli whispered.
Micah nodded uncertainly. He swallowed. Then, as he continued to watch, Thrace’s eyelids seemed to grow heavy and the stern expression melted away. She closed her eyes. Micah swallowed again. He looked up at Eli.
‘Does she really hate me that much?’ he whispered.
Eli stooped down to gather up the makeshift lance and the lamp. ‘She don’t hate you, lad,’ he said.
Micah shrugged. ‘You sure about that?’ he said, looking down at the growing bruise on his chest.
Eli crouched down next to him. He glanced at Thrace, whose breathing was now deep and even, then back at Micah.
‘You gotta understand, lad, that it ain’t easy for Thrace. Deep down inside she’s more troubled than she could ever admit to either you or me – or even herself.’ He shook his head. ‘When she’s asleep, she’s back with him, heeding his words, doing his bidding. Like I told you before, Micah, lad, the ties of kinship cannot be undone …’
‘But … but Aseel’s gone,’ said Micah. ‘He left her. He abandoned her …’
‘And maybe they’ll never see one another again,’ said Eli, nodding. ‘But I tell you this,’ he added, resting a hand on Micah’s, ‘and it’s something you’d do well to remember; Aseel will live on inside that kingirl till the day she takes her last breath, and there ain’t nothing you nor I nor no one else can do about it. It’s something you must simply accept.’ He patted Micah’s arm, then climbed to his feet. ‘You sleep on now till m—’ He paused, and his stubbled features creased into a grin. ‘Till I say it’s morning.’
Micah watched Eli as he climbed to his feet, shifted the lamp from his left hand to his right, and disappeared into the adjacent chamber. He turned his head and looked at Thrace. She was still asleep, her soft lips parted and dark eyelids unmoving. He heard a soft clatter from the main chamber, a breath of air, and Eli’s light was extinguished.
Micah sighed and laid himself back down. He reached up and touched his chest, his fingertips gingerly seeking out the bruise. It was tender, but no real harm had been done. The stabbing pain in his heart was different, though. Micah feared it would never stop hurting.
Four
The winter caller was stooped forward, the white lakewyrmeskin cloak flapping. His breath was rasping and phlegm-clogged and billowed out in plumes of grey mist as he trudged on through the snow. Now and again, a gust of icy wind plucked at the cowled hood to reveal the bone mask beneath, which was frosted white, icicles of frozen drool glinting like stubby tusks around the leering mouth hole.
He crested a ridge and took temporary shelter in the windlee of a hollow. The sky was lightening. He glanced round. Behind him, the deep footprints he had made were already filling with snow and closing up, leaving no trace of his presence.
He reached inside his cloak and pulled out a long flask fashioned from a length of hollowed femur. He drew the cork and, raising the flask, put it to his lips.
He gulped at the sweet rustcolour liquid. It burned like fire and coursed through the winter caller’s body, numbing his senses to pain and banishing weariness, and all emotions. Fear, doubt. Pity. Only the voice of the keld mistress remained in his drugged brain – that, and an acute sensitivity to smell and sound.
She had trained him well, her favoured slave. Purchased young and innocent for a handful of gems, even back then he’d shown signs of determined spirit and prodigious strength, characteristics that careful beatings and doses of bloodhoney tamed as the keld mistress had bent him to her implacable will.
The winter caller recorked the flask and tucked it away in an inside pocket beneath the folds of the white cloak. He set off again. As the sky continued to brighten overhead, the blizzard eased some, and far in front of him the winter caller caught sight of a smoking mountain peak. He grunted, pleased that he was still on course.
The short day was already coming to an end by the time the winter caller reached the high pinnacles. The smoke emerged, not from one opening but from a whole series of crusted fumaroles that studded the summit, and rose like yellowstain sheets. Here, where heat from the molten rock beneath melted the snow before it could settle, the mountaintop was bare wet rock and strewn with gravel that crunched underfoot.
A family of jackwyrmes, crouched together for warmth in their rock nest, eyed the trespasser’s approach warily.
The hulking figure paused again, shook the snow from the hood and shoulders of his cloak and scanned the horizon. Then he drew the rag from his pocket and sniffed it deeply, then at the air, then the rag again …
Near. His quarry was near, he was sure it was.
He turned and wandered about the rock, seemingly aimlessly, head bowed and eyes darting. He kicked at loose stones, sending them tumbling down the narrow openings, listening to their clattered descent and sniffing at the smoke that twisted up out of the heatshimmer.
The jackwyrmes jabbered and squealed at the intrusion. There were eight of them in all. Two were fully grown, the size of turkeycocks, their garish markings stark against the dark rock, while their half dozen flightless young, though almost as large, had not yet sloughed their juvenile grey skin. The adults puffed out yellow chests and flapped red and blue wings, shrieking menacingly, crests raised, neckruffs quivering and fringed tails switching from side to side. Their drab young opened wide their jaws and hissed their displeasure.
The winter caller seemed not to notice them, or if he did, he paid them no mind as he continued to trudge to and fro, plunging his head into the wreaths of gaseous smoke and breathing deep.
The smoke was pungent. It reeked of sulphur. Rotten eggs and hot metal. All apart from one …
Sagebrush, he identified as he sniffed at the grey smoke. Longpine. Spit-hickory. It was, the winter caller knew, the kindling and wood favoured by kith for their fires, and he salivated with anticipation. He breathed in again, his tongue smacking against the back of his teeth, and detected wyrmeoil and pitchsmoke …
Unable to tolerate the stranger in their midst an instant longer the adult jackwyrmes to
ok to the air with furious screeching and a flash of primary colours. Jaws agape and fangs bared, they swooped down at the wyrmeclad individual that threatened their young.
Heeding their clamour, the winter caller looked up. He braced himself, reached out and slapped the closer of the two jackwyrmes so hard he knocked it out of the sky and down to the ground, then crushed its head with a heavy boot. Its mate screeched and veered off, but not fast enough. With a throaty grunt, and surprising agility, the winter caller thrust out a hand and grabbed the creature by one red and blue wing. He swung it around his head, once, twice, then dashed it against the rock.
The juveniles’ hissing rose to a loud screech. They shuffled about, flapping their wings frantically, uselessly, and spilled out from the rocks that ringed their nest. They clustered together, like some ungainly six-headed mutation, their long jaws snapping and cracking as a dark shadow fell across them.
Eyes narrowing behind the bone mask as strident wyrmescreech filled his head, the winter caller seized one of the young jackwyrmes and, like wringing out a dishcloth, wrung its neck. There was a cracking of vertebrae, the wyrme went limp and was tossed aside, and he reached out for a second creature, then a third, until all of the jackwyrmes had been dispatched and lay at his feet.
He knelt down next to the hole with the sagebrush and spit-hickory smoke and thrust a gloved hand inside. It was like a chimney. The rocksides were smooth and crevice-free, and became narrower the deeper down he reached. He felt how the chimney-like opening bent off to one side, and made a mental note of the angle and direction it took. Then, pulling himself up, he reached for the carcass of the male jackwyrme and thrust it into the hole till it wedged tight. He jammed the female in on top of its mate.
He sat back on his haunches and observed his handiwork. The hole had all but disappeared, but smoke was still dribbling out from the gaps between the dead wyrmes’ leathery bodies.