Raven's Ladder (49 page)

Cal-raven dove off the bridge. He twisted as he fell, reaching out to sink his fingers into the wall of the abyss, digging himself a grip to break his fall. His feet swung over darkness, and he kicked himself a foothold. A wave of heat flushed through the wall. Strongbreed were screaming in voices that cracked stone. The smell of burnt hair and flesh flared in Cal-raven’s nostrils. One fell past him, fire spewing from the eye slit of its helmet.

Then the creature turned and smashed the bridge with its tail, snapping its span like a twig. Cal-raven choked, astonished. The two halves, the guards—all of it fell in a blazing rain of ruin.

And the ale boy was gone.

Everything became still, the sound and trouble swallowed by the pit. The creature clung to the wall, upside down, like a massive bat. Cal-raven held to the wall, paralyzed.

This? This was what had haunted his dreams? This was the power that had answered the ale boy’s call?

From somewhere far below, that unearthly groan rose again. Anguish. Despair.

The creature raised its head and took up a similar cry in answer, a word of such fathomless sadness that Cal-raven fought the urge to crawl into the wall and seal himself inside.

But then, as quickly as it had struck, the creature set its eyes fixedly upon the corridor through which the guards had pushed the prisoners, a passage far too narrow for anything of such girth. And it leapt into that tunnel, slipping through as easily as a snake into its hole. A flick of its golden tail, and it was gone.

Cal-raven clung to the rock and stared down into the dark. Gulping in deep breaths, he tightened his hold, driving energy out to his fingertips. The stone responded. Sculpting ridges, he pulled himself up, rung
by rung, back to the ledge. He collapsed there and stared across the chasm. A jag of stone was all that remained of the bridge. It was the only path he knew that could take him back to the boats.

Jordam opened his burning eyes.

He was upside down again, suspended by a foot, his arms dangling. He could hear the Essence spilling from his head, shoulders, and hands, splashing into a widening pool on the floor of the chieftain’s throne room. Rat-beasts licked their lips, ready to clean up the mess. He was cloaked, toe to head in a cast of the very stew he had refused himself for so long. Essence stung his nostrils, scorched his throat, smoldered in his lungs. The measure he had swallowed burned through his veins.

“Jordam, Mordafey’s last brother.” Mordafey somehow flexed the muscle within that powerful branch that bound Jordam’s foot, drawing him close again. “Jordam tried to poison Mordafey,” he continued, narrating for the Strongbreed that guarded him. “Jordam spit a smelly poison into Mordafey’s face. Mordafey could not run. Mordafey fell again and again. Bel Amican hunter got close with his arrows. Too close.”

Mordafey lay back against the rise of wavering arms that fanned up from the living throne, and he slapped at his bloated belly with his hands. “But Mordafey lives. Eats what he pleases. Maybe today, he eats his brother.”

Jordam held his breath as Mordafey’s jaws opened. He closed his eyes, felt Mordafey lick Essence from his side. His thoughts were like pieces of hot, broken glass, and he struggled to fit them together.

What was I doing? Why was I here?

He knew this feeling—the heightening waves of strength, the desire to destroy. Soon thought would be extinguished. He would surrender to the call of action and the ecstasy of power. At this moment he was the most dangerous beastman in the Expanse.

Mordafey laughed. “Good,” he said. “Jordam is a proper Cent Regus fighter again. Jordam is ready to rediscover what it is like to be powerful. Shall I pull the pin from your back, brother? Free your arms to move?”

Pin?

“Let’s test the last brother. Send you on a hunt. Go and fetch Skell Wra’s Treasure for the new chieftain. Bring her back here on a spear. Wait, no… She might be tough meat to chew. Maybe something softer. Yes. Like that boy.” Mordafey leaned forward, excited. “Jordam, fetch your chieftain that meddling boy. You let him get away from me. Twice. Show us you have learned your lesson, and Mordafey will make you a Cent Regus captain.” He shook Jordam like a toy for a hound. “Yesss. That would be a tasty finish.”

Boy? Ale boy. O-raya’s boy
.

Jordam stared into his brother’s eyes. They were the only piece of this frightful puzzle he recognized. “A tasty finish?” he asked. He noted the large curved blade that lay across Mordafey’s lap. “Jordam will give Mordafey a tasty finish.”

The pin that had pierced his back and paralyzed him—Mordafey thought it was still there. But as the tentacles had retrieved Jordam from the cauldron of Essence, the lip of the bowl had caught the edge of the pin, pulling it free.

So as Mordafey laughed, Jordam let that burgeoning strength fill his arms. Then, with swift and precise claws, he reached out to the thick threads that crisscrossed Mordafey’s chest, slashed the stitches loose so that the newly sewn seam burst open. Mordafey sucked in a gasp of surprise, and Jordam plunged his hands inside. Before Mordafey could close his jaws, his mouth was dripping with all that Jordam had drawn from his open chest.

The tentacle holding Jordam by the feet recoiled and thrashed. But Jordam had caught Mordafey’s blade, and he swung it around to cleave the end of that powerful limb. He flew across the throne room in a fountain of the limb’s hot blood. After landing on his back, he rolled and leapt up, snarling and quaking with strength.

Mordafey’s eyes bulged. His hands clawed uselessly at the throne, and then he lurched forward, straining those thick black cords connected to his back. His jaw clacked open and shut. “Essence,” Mordafey choked. “Sssstrength.” Then the throne swallowed what was left of Mordafey, whipping at the air with its arms and beating upon the stone dais until it cracked.

Jordam turned to face the two altered guards who came after him. Their
Strongbreed screams would paralyze a weaker creature. But Jordam left them staring at the ceiling with no arms to raise.

Fleeing the throne room, he howled in the rush of bloodthirst and strength. He was free. Free from the threat of Mordafey forever.

Stop
, cried a voice inside him.
Stop, Jordam. You are forgetting things
.

He charged on.

Ahead in the corridor, a mass of Strongbreed advanced, spears at the ready. He welcomed them, a whirlwind with a silver sword. He sent the blade through the eye slit of a helmet, caught the broach of the falling guard’s cape, drew it around himself, and dove at the others.

Stop
. That voice was pleading with him now.
You said never again
.

This was done to me
, he answered back.
Maybe I can use the strength to set us all free
.

Standing proud as a conqueror, he surveyed the bloody scene. No Strong-breed remained able to pursue him. Only one lived, and he crawled along the ground as if he were swimming. Jordam stalked him, raised Mordafey’s blade, and finished him.

His laughter stopped when he saw an arm emerge from beneath a fallen guard. Jordam raised his blade again, then stopped. This hand was small and hairless, slender and fair.

He dropped his knife. He reached down and drew two of the bodies aside.

Jaralaine lay contorted beneath them, one of the Strongbreed’s spears jutting up from where it had pierced her in the fall. Her eyes were wide in surprise, and her hand pinched at the air. Jordam took her hand and crashed down to his knees, shaking.

“Help me, Jordam,” she whispered. “I’m freezing.”

“rrWater,” Jordam whimpered. “Good water. Where?”

I gave my flask to the ale boy
.

“Bring me my son.”

He put his arms beneath her, lifted her, and walked swiftly up the corridor to the crossroads. He paused there, releasing a howl of anguish and confusion.

Strongbreed came in answer—bold figures of black and red—from one corridor, then another, then another.

Jordam held the queen close to him, baring his teeth. He had left the blade in the corridor.

But then, from another passage, came an altogether different noise.

Jordam had time to see the creature’s head burst through the corridor and into the crossroads. He had time to see the dark glass spheres of its eyes wild with lights, to feel its hot breath. His memory sent him a fierce, irresistible warning.

Run
.

Strongbreed soldiers turned and fired their arrows into the creature’s open maw.

Those jaws smashed shut, arrows sticking out between its teeth like toothpicks. It cocked its head, eying the Strongbreed thoughtfully, and Jordam sensed a deep, bewildered sadness in that expression. Then the jaws came open, and the creature inhaled. Somewhere in that narrow passage, as its body expanded with breath to fill the space, dark cracks slashed through the earth.

Jordam turned and ran up the only open corridor, toward daylight.

The creature laughed out a flood of flames that rushed up the corridor, crashing over Jordam like a wave and sending him scorched and seared onto the open ground of the Cent Regus wasteland. Kneeling, he held the broken queen before him, his roar drowned out by the sound of the creature’s conflagration.

Jordam would never forget the ruin of Cal-raven’s soot-smeared face or the desolation in his cries as the Abascar king emerged through the gate. Along the way the king had slung one of the Strongbreed bows over his shoulder and lifted one of their heavy blades. But he cast these things aside when he saw his mother in the open, as the silver sun sank into grey, dusty morning.

Jordam would hear those cries in his sleep for a long time to come. He would never forget how small and feeble both the woman and her son seemed
as Cal-raven lifted her and carried her into the empty prongbull stable beside the main gate.

“rrShe needs the water,” Jordam told the Abascar king. “O-raya’s boy has it.”

“The ale boy is dead!” Cal-raven had shouted.

That brought Jordam to his feet. He looked through the open door of the stable to that dark, smoking, open throat, the entrance to the Longhouse.

Cal-raven’s talk had then devolved into curses until his mother’s hand came up from the dry, dead weeds of the floor to touch his face.

“Can you see?” Cal-raven weakly asked. “Do you hear my voice?”

Jaralaine nodded, staring blankly past her son’s shoulder into a shaft of yellow morning light that drifted down through the broken beams of the stable roof.

“The one who did this to her,” Cal-raven growled to Jordam. “Tell me you killed him.”

Jordam paused, cringing. “rrTore out chieftain’s heart.” The lie gave him no relief from the truth’s punishing burn.

“What will we do?” Cal-raven leaned forward, pressing his forehead against his mother’s breast.

“Your people,” Jordam reminded him. “Go back and try to save them. Come, Abascar king.”

“You go,” Cal-raven shouted. “If the Keeper cares at all, it will do as I asked and save my people. But it let the ale boy fall, Jordam. And my mother…”

As shame for his lie pierced him, Jordam took backward steps through the door of the stable. But as he did, his ears twitched and turned to gather news from the sky to the south. “Brascles.”

At any moment the birds would be here. Following, beastmen on the ground would converge from all directions, knowing that the source of the Essence was unguarded, that they could drink from the chieftain’s reservoir. In the fight that would ensue, one would triumph. One would find himself seized by the throne’s strong arms, embraced and empowered by a direct channel to the Essence. A new chieftain. The Core would fill with beastmen.

And Jordam was certain they would soon find the boats moving north across the wasteland, if they hadn’t already.

“rrGet her out of here,” he muttered. “Cent Regus come. Too many. Get back to the boats.”

“We can’t go back,” Cal-raven barked bitterly. “The Keeper has broken the bridge.”

Jordam grunted in surprise, then turned toward the gate, seething with distress.

Jaralaine reached up suddenly and clasped Cal-raven’s face. “Cal-marcus?”

“No,” Cal-raven wept. “I’m not Cal-marcus. But he loved you, Mother. He loved you so fiercely, like stars that shine in the summer night.” Jordam looked up into the morning sky.
Like stars
.

“He never gave up searching for you,” he said. “Had he known you were here, he would have torn apart the Cent Regus Core in his fury. Don’t leave me now. Please.”

Jordam had never felt so powerless. He had caused this broken scene, and he could not repair it. He clenched his teeth and looked off into the distance. “I go to the boats,” he announced. “Come after me. Find the river. Follow.” He pointed north and then west. Then he came and took Cal-raven’s shoulder in a powerful grip—so strong that Cal-raven cried out. “rrGet away fast. The Cent Regus come.”

Jordam dragged the heavy wooden door of the prongbull stable closed behind him, sealing them inside in hope of hiding them from the approaching beastmen. Then he turned and walked down into the throat of the Long-house, summoning all that he knew of the labyrinth in his mind, seeking a way down to the boats, wondering what he would find there, wondering if anything was left for him to save.