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A Passage to Lochwarren

I
n bed that night, Norman finally buried enough of his resentment to manage to read. He really had just got to the best part. The Undergrowth books started slowly. They always began by describing the lands of Undergrowth in great detail, from the Western Sea and the Fisher Kingdoms of the coast to the Obsidian Desert in the east, from the Fastness of the south to the Forbidden Highlands of the north and everything in between. What was important in this bit was always the last part, which described the setting of this particular book in more detail. A few of the countries and cities, like Caernavon and Brunswick, turned up in multiple volumes, but more often than not each book explored a region barely mentioned in previous books. Norman skipped over the general geography. He knew it by heart and had a wall poster of the map of Undergrowth. The description of Lochwarren itself he read in more detail.

Lochwarren was, for centuries, part of the Kingdom of Stoats, one of the lines descended from the ancient Mustelid dynasties. The stoat kings had their summer palace at Lochwarren. Covered in snow much of the year, Lochwarren was nevertheless glorious in summer, a high cold lake surrounded by tall pines and forbidding mountains. Isolated in the highlands of the northeast, the Kingdom
of Stoats was one of the last countries to preserve the Mustelid traditions. Decades of war with first fox then wolf invaders had reduced the Mustelid Kingdoms to one. With the death of the stoat king, Malcolm Sharp Sword, at the battle of Tista Kirk, the last remaining Mustelid kingdom fell and the dynasty crumbled.

The flower of stoat knighthood marched with Malcolm, and every stoat yeoman who could hold a longbow or short sword too. This was the stoats' last stand. They would fight until the army was shattered, but if they lost, their kingdom would be overrun. The princes, Duncan and Cuilean, were eager to go to war with their father, but he would not be moved. Before King Malcolm had marched out from Lochwarren to meet the wolves at Tista Kirk, he had given his instructions to his sons. If the battle was lost, the king would die on the field of battle. The princes must live so that the Kingdom could rise again. If the news from Tista Kirk was bad, they must flee, taking the singular gifts he had left them. Each prince had been assigned a bodyguard, in stoat language a “sword-friend,” who would protect them in their flight from the highlands. In ten years they must return for the unveiling of the gifts, the crowning of the new king and the reconquest of the highlands.

The news from Tista Kirk was not good. The trumpets told the story. The stoats had fought bravely. Urged on by their indomitable king, they withstood wave upon wave of wolf attacks, their sharp swords flashing out, dealing death to the fanged invaders, but in the end it was too much. The wolves were too big and too many. Outnumbered and out-toothed, the stoats slowly succumbed. Finally, inevitably, the stoat lines broke and the wolves rushed in. King Malcolm saw his standard-bearer fall, one of the long barbed lances of the wolf cavalry piercing his light mail vest. The red and gold pennant of his kingdom fell into the grim mud of Tista Kirk field. No king of Malcolm's blood would stand to see his banner laid low. Shrugging off his own attacker, the King grasped the standard with his shield hand and raised it high.

“To me, my brave stoats, to the glory of our forefathers and the great maker, rally to me!”

He gazed across the field at the horde of wolves that still surged toward them. He could not win this battle. As the last of his warriors rallied to their king and their flag, the King whispered to his trumpeter, and the great, sad anthem of the Mustelid dynasties rang out. In the hills above Tista Kirk a messenger heard the signal. His name was James, sword-friend to Prince Cuilean. He paused only momentarily in silent salute to his king before departing in a flash, with his solemn message, for Lochwarren. As he dashed through the forest, he heard stoat trumpets above the howl of blood-mad wolves behind him on the battlefield. When the last note blew, James knew the King had fallen and the day was done for the stoat army. Then there was only the massed howl of the victors and, later, as night fell, the fearsome sound of their pursuit.

James reached Lochwarren only minutes before the wolf hunting parties, but when the wolf scouts arrived, the castle was empty. The stoats had scattered. The princes parted ways by the shore of the loch. Cuilean and Duncan had never been close friends. They had squabbled their way through childhood, but beneath their rivalry was the close bond that ties all brothers, and twins more especially. They embraced quickly and nodded their goodbyes before leaping to the boats. James, the messenger, sword-friend to Cuilean, guided the small skiff carrying his lord to the west stream pouring out of the loch toward the fertile lands and the League of Five Cities.

Duncan and his fighting companion took the east stream, toward the swamps and tangled waterways of Rivernest. The prince's sword-friend, Falk, piloted the boat while Duncan kept watch. It was just sinking in now that his father was dead, and half of him hoped that they would come across a wolf sortie party, so that he could make good use of the broad cutlass at his side to exact some revenge.

On the west stream, Cuilean kept a light rapier strapped to his belt, a quiver of arrows and a longbow over one shoulder. Between his feet at the bottom of the boat lay the small chest that contained his father's gift. Sadness consumed him as he peered at it and
remembered his father. He had no idea what the chest contained. Duncan had an identical one. The keys lay beneath a concealing stone in the King's Chapel near Lochwarren castle. In ten years they would know, no sooner. In ten years they would return to Lochwarren for the unveiling of the gifts and the crowning of the new King.

 

Norman had read this far the night before. It had been a good place to stop. The next chapter picked up again ten years later, when Duncan and Cuilean began their journeys of return to their kingdom. Cuilean had spent ten years in the Five Cities. He had finished school in Oviedo and taken a degree at the university at Santander. For the last four years he had worked as a clerk for the Duke of Logorno. City life suited the exiled prince—he appreciated the great architecture, the libraries and the civilized conversation. But he never forgot where he was from. The people of the great cities were mostly hares and moles. The stoat prince never felt completely at home among them. Sometimes, during the festivals and the great celebrations, he would think of his homeland and his own people. Such thoughts put him in no mood to celebrate, and he retreated to his lodgings to practise fencing with James. Nor did he neglect the bow. Every year since he'd taken employment with the Duke of Logorno, Cuilean had competed for the Archers' Palio, an archery tournament held yearly in the city. He had won it three out of four times, competing under the colours of the Duke of Logorno, three silver towers on a cornflower blue field.

It was under the same colours that Cuilean left Logorno, taking the road toward the mountains, but after the last toll gate of the city's demesne, he rolled up the fine blue cloak of his hosts and drew out the cloak of his own house. James patted the young prince on the shoulders solemnly as he donned it. James too kept in his luggage a cloak that he had waited ten years to wear again. Those ten years had made their mark on the man who had heard the last trumpets of Tista Kirk. He did not move with the same spring in his step, and his fur had grown grey around his eyes and
beneath his whiskers. Still, his confident smile was all Cuilean wanted to see before they returned to the road, and he strode onward with the gold-trimmed red mantle of the stoat kings upon his shoulders.

The other Prince of Stoats did not spend his ten years of exile in the cities learning law and competing in tournaments. Duncan had taken the advice of his companion, Falk, and had joined Falk's cousins in the crew of Rufus Singewhiskers, the weasel captain of the river raiders. For ten years Duncan learned the ways of the river pirates, harassing the treasure convoys that brought gold and diamonds from the edge of the Obsidian Desert to the merchant camps of the delta. Duncan had studied his craft well, and for three years had commanded his own ship and crew.

The
Hastewind
had been more than a ship to Duncan these past years. It had been his home and his academy. It was where he had become a man and learned that he could shape his destiny. At the helm of the
Hastewind,
Duncan had become as respected and feared as Rufus Singewhiskers himself. It was a sad day when he and Falk walked ashore and took leave of the river raiders. Rufus Singewhiskers bid his trusty lieutenant adieu: “Goodbye, my friend, and may the Maker protect you in your travels. Remember, you always have a friend in Rufus Singewhiskers.”

Like the rest of the river raiders, Duncan did not consider himself an outlaw. The riverboats were crewed with stoats, weasels, ermines and other exiles from the ancient Mustelid lands. When they boarded a merchant ship, they announced themselves as representatives of the Mustelid Empire and demanded their taxes. They attacked only when forced to, if the merchant crew resisted or came looking for a fight, but that did not mean that the river raiders shirked battle.

The merchant ships carried treasure from the mines of the Obsidian Desert. Those were Canidae mines now. Prairie wolves and coyotes were rulers there and reaped the profits, but the mines were worked by slaves—weasels and stoats brought down from the mountains, grasshopper mice and kangaroo rats enslaved in their
own ancestral lands. More than a few of the crewmen among the river raiders were escapees from the mines, and none of them missed a chance to exact their revenge.

When Duncan left the
Hastewind
behind, a dozen stoat comrades accompanied him. Like Duncan, they had in mind a greater revenge than harassing a few boats and thieving some wolf profit. In Duncan they saw the chance of their kingdom's rebirth. Unlike Cuilean, Duncan did not march in the red cloak of the Stoat Kingdom. He travelled with a larger party and knew that this alone called attention to them. He did not want to announce to the wolves that the Prince of Stoats was returning—not yet, at least.

 

As Norman read on, he was drawn further and further into this new instalment of the Undergrowth saga. It was familiar territory, but strange and new enough for him to want to know more. He huddled under the covers and brought the book as close to his face as he could. If he were there with the heroes themselves, he couldn't have felt more involved. The excitement rumbled in his stomach and he picked nervously at a page farther into the book, ripping tiny triangles of paper from it as he read and putting them in his mouth. Without knowing it, he was actually devouring the book.

Norman was prone to little quirks like this. At school, kids told him that he made noises while he was reading or studying, mumbling barely intelligible words or making little squawks. Norman didn't believe them, or mostly didn't believe them. They exaggerated, but maybe he did spaz out a little bit when he was nervous or absorbed. His mom often reprimanded him for sucking on the collars of his shirts while he read or played on the computer, and the damp patch of T-shirt was pretty conclusive proof. He wasn't gnawing on his collar this night. He was eating a page from his book, methodically ripping it apart bit by bit and chewing the tiny balls of paper between his slightly crooked teeth while he read. When Norman put the book down that night, he had no idea what he'd done.

 

The Voyage of the Brothers

N
orman didn't even bother getting out of bed the next morning. The rest of the family was sleeping in as usual. Maybe if he stayed in bed long enough, someone would make pancakes. Rubbing the sleep out of his eyes, he sat up in bed and found his place in
The Brothers of Lochwarren.
Norman already had a favourite brother. Pirating didn't seem like the best training to be a king. It might have made Duncan a good fighter, but he seemed rough and uneducated. Norman hoped that old King Malcolm had chosen Cuilean to succeed him. Duncan would make a good general, perhaps, but Cuilean was smart and educated. He had worked with the Duke of Logorno—he knew what it meant to govern. Surely he would make the better king. Norman was no novice reader, though. He was well aware that authors liked to set you up and turn things around against your expectations. He'd read enough Undergrowth books to know that things were not always as they appeared. Who, for example, would expect ferrets, stoats and rats to be heroes while voles and shrews were villains?

The gifts were a crucial clue. There was a reason that the author hadn't described them yet. It built suspense. One gift was a gift fit for a king. Whatever it was, it would make it clear to both brothers which one had been chosen. Norman wondered what
Duncan would do when he opened his chest and found the consolation prize. The pirate-prince seemed so sure that he was destined to be King. He had been planning his return and the battle to take the highlands for years. From what Norman had read so far, he didn't think that the river warrior would take disappointment too well. Duncan had a short temper and a quick sword. As for Cuilean, for all his practice with the rapier, he had never fought a real battle. Norman doubted he could best his brother if it came to that. But perhaps it never would. The brothers had other things to think about.

The journey back to Lochwarren was no easy one. The terrain on either side was treacherous, the lands unruly and bandit-ridden. The wolves too had heard rumours of a stoat revolt. Old King Malcolm's sons had not been among the corpses at Tista Kirk ten years before. In the decade since, their reappearance and return had become the stuff of stoat legend and fervent hopes. Lately, whispers of the Princes' return had become all too common among the stoat rabble. Spies were sent out by the wolves, and all the roads were watched. Stoats were still numerous in the highlands, but without a leader they could do nothing against their wolf overlords. The wolves aimed to make sure that the Princes never returned to challenge them.

The Princes were no fools. They had no intention of taking the old King's Road to the highlands. They travelled on long-forgotten paths and secret byways, keeping out of sight and under cover of night. Duncan's road was the most difficult. His plan was a bold one: he aimed to strike the wolves in their old territory. They would never expect this. The new rulers of the highlands believed that any revolt would start at Lochwarren, that the stoats would regroup at their ancestral home and march out to meet them as they had ten years earlier, but Duncan had learned a few things among the river raiders. His plan was to strike the mine at Scalded Rock. In the foothills at the edge of the Obsidian Desert, Scalded Rock was the richest mine in the Wolflands. Hundreds of stoats laboured there in slavery. Duncan
planned to take the mine by surprise, seizing the diamonds and releasing the labourers. The diamonds would finance his war and the labourers were all loyal stoat men who would bolster his fighting numbers, but it was the victory that counted. Stoats would hear of it and take heart. When he arrived in Lochwarren, the people would be ready to follow him.

The surprise attack on Scalded Rock required Duncan to lead his party over the Glace Mountains. The paths over the peaks were treacherous and steep. Many had not been travelled for decades, and no one knew if the narrow passes at the summits remained clear. At the foot of one of these high passes, Duncan's party pulled up before a pile of rock and debris, an avalanche. Duncan stood staring at it for minutes, his hands upon his hips and his eye-whiskers knitted in fury, as if he meant to frighten the rocks into moving. Behind him some of his men were beginning to mutter about turning back when Duncan shouted, “Bring me ropes.”

Silenced by their captain's command, his crew scrambled to do his bidding. Duncan had spent the last years climbing slippery masts. No mere wall of rocks would deter him. While his men fetched ropes, Duncan reappraised the cliff. His sharp eyes darted over the cliff, tracing imaginary paths for many silent minutes, but when he had found his course, he did not hesitate.

With a rope clamped firmly between his teeth, the muscular stoat began his ascent in a confident leap to a handhold above his head. From there he moved assuredly up the rock wall along a path no other stoat could see. He seemed to float along the rock face as he scampered up the near-vertical cliff. It looked effortless, but every man below felt a knot in his stomach at the thought of having to follow him.

Duncan, however, had no intention of forcing his men to scale the cliff as he did. He had brought the rope for this purpose. He would haul the first man up himself. It would only get easier after that. This was the strength and bravery that Duncan was renowned for. This was why men followed him. This was why he would be a great king.

Half the men were up the cliff when they started hauling the baggage, the armour and the bundles of swords that they had left at the foot of the cliff to make the climb easier. They hauled Duncan's battered chest up first, the one he had kept close to him for ten years, the one that held his father's gift. He could have prised it open long ago, and many times he had been tempted to, but he had kept the promise to his father. While he watched the chest being heaved up the cliff face, Duncan imagined, for the thousandth time, that day at Lochwarren when the gift would be revealed. What legendary sword, what storied weapon of his ancestors would declare his right to lead?

Suddenly there was a jerk in the rope as the chest caught on something. The men below shouted up in alarm as they saw what was happening. The knot was slipping. What ship rat has not learned his knots? thought Duncan angrily for a moment. Before he could hurl any insult or instruction, the knot gave way completely and the chest broke free. He watched it plummet unhindered to the jagged rocks below. He was already on his way down again when he heard the crash. He knew the chest had burst. He must get to it quickly. He must know if the gift was damaged.

Norman turned the page quickly. His stomach was rumbling and he could hear the rattle of cups and the slamming of cupboard doors downstairs, but he could not stop here. The chest had burst open. Duncan's gift was revealed. This was much sooner than he expected. The whole story would change here.

He hunkered down lower in the bed, turned the page and brought the book to his face again. But something was wrong. Something was missing—a whole page, in fact. The book was defective. The previous page had ended mid-sentence, but the next page began a new chapter. The action had moved to Cuilean and James.

Had he not looked a little closer at the spot where the missing page should be, Norman would have called out to his father right away to share his outrage and order an emergency trip to the bookstore. But there had been a page there once. A jagged edge
remained, close to the binding. It looked as if the page had been ripped or bitten. Maybe the bookstore had mice. Maybe there was a vandal. Norman peered at the torn page and wondered—was he dumb enough to have done this himself? He put the thought out of his mind. Perhaps he could just keep reading. He'd know soon enough what had happened on the missing page, wouldn't he?

Norman began the new chapter, following Cuilean half-heartedly down the merchant road out of the realm of the Five Cities, but his head wasn't in it. He couldn't help thinking that he had lost the story. He wasn't reading the book the author had intended. There was something he was supposed know that he didn't. Without this clue, what else would he miss? Norman managed to stick with Cuilean for a few more pages, to the edge of the stoat lands, but his heart wasn't in it either now. He couldn't go on without knowing. He laid the book face down on the floor beside his bed and slouched down to breakfast.