Raven's Ladder (52 page)

Margi scanned the circle again as voices drew her attention. She saw a Seer striding through the shallow water around the boat, examining it. The Seer looked sharply to their left, and Margi discovered there was something else in the ring not far from the vessel. A cage—a wide cage with a low ceiling, penning in a large pack of beastmen.

“My moment,” said Wynn. “This is it.”

Luci began to whimper, and Margi grabbed her arm.
Shhhh. If they hear us, the Seer will turn the beastmen loose
.

They’re here
, came Madi’s excited thoughts from somewhere else.
They’re gathering to watch. Can you see them? Wynn’s going to do something brave
.

“What’s Wynn going to do?” Luci whispered, and Margi turned to silence her. But then they both noticed that Wynn was gone.

Where’d he go?

I don’t know. Maybe he got scared. We should go. No, Madi wants us to stay
.

The ring of driftwood was broken in one place where a great stone gate, hanging on slack chains, rested shut. Water trickled down its edges.
It’s keeping out the tidewater. I want to get out of here. Wait. I want to see what Madi sees
.

Margi looked up at the high, dark walls of the cavern. A stone promontory jutted out like the prow of a ship. At the platform on the promontory’s point, a tall white crystal sparkled like a monument. Beside it stood a barrel with a spout.

“What,” wheezed one of the beastmen, surprising Margi with his Common speech. He was bearlike in the breadth of his shoulders, with a face like one of the brutal apes from Fraughtenwood. “What if Cent Regus get hurt?
Gurr
. What if Cent Regus—
gurr
—run away?”

Pretor Xa stalked about the leaning vessel as if inspecting it, his long white robes dragging in the shallows. Then he pointed up at the crystal and addressed the beastmen. “You see that?” he hissed. “That is why you won’t run away. It’s a piece of the moon itself. A sliver from the eye that watches the world.”

The beastmen collectively raised their wild eyes to view the source of the cavern’s snow-white luminescence.

“What these stones see, we see. We’re spreading them across the Expanse so we can see it all, everything that we shall eventually possess. If you run away, we’ll watch you wherever you go.” Pretor Xa clapped his long-fingered hands together, and white dust clouded into the air.

Where’s Wynn?

I don’t see him. Where’s Madi? I’m here
.

Where?

You can’t see me? Strange. I can see you. I can see everything now. Make yourself seen, Madi!

It’s not for me to do. Your eyes need repairing. You’ll see. Someday
.

The Seer stalked right up to the cage, and now the girls could see that he was even taller than the beastmen—a giant, gripping the bars and staring down at them with a cold, skullish grin and wide, wild eyes. “So follow my instructions. Take the queen’s pathetic ship. Remove her from her throne, destroy her bothersome offspring. And then we shall see a beastman wear Bel Amica’s crown. And you will be exalted as his faithful followers, free to run and hunt and have what you wish.”

One of the beastmen turned and translated these words to the horde. The grumbling mob bristled, gathering closer to the bars. Margi suddenly understood.

“He’s going to turn them loose?” Luci whimpered. “We should go back.” Margi punched her in the arm.

“Many, many times our moon has risen and fallen,” the Seer intoned, and he climbed onto the tilting deck of the ship, unlatched a hatch, and opened it. “But the time has come.”

Luci’s mouth popped open again, and Margi slapped her hand across it.

“No more, then.” The beastman rattled the bars again. “No more sleep. No more poison.”

The Seer pointed up to the wooden cask and smiled. “The time has come to wake.”

He walked to the cage. “You remember what it felt like, don’t you?” He
grinned. “You remember that glorious night when you gathered in the depths of Abascar’s ruins? When you watched as Ryllion ran a sword through Deuneroi’s back?” He raised his hand to the lock that bound the cage door shut. “You delivered Bel Amica from its future king. You spilled his blood in the dark. And today, in full view of the people of Bel Amica, you will slaughter the rest of—”

He stopped. The key fell from his hand. He staggered a bit to the side, then lurched away from the beastmen.

Luci shrieked, but the Seer did not respond. He stood there, teetering, his trembling hands rising—one to grasp the feathered shaft of the enormous arrow that had penetrated his right temple, the other to grasp the sharp barb that had come out the other side.

Margi lifted her eyes to see Tabor Jan standing in one of those high windows. But Tabor Jan was not holding the bow.

Cyndere stood beside him, the bow raised. She was far away, but Margi could see her shaking, and then her voice rang out.

“Deuneroi!”

The Seer crashed down on all fours, his dark cape enveloping him like the wings of an injured bat. He crawled forward through the water, raised himself onto his knees, reached for the ends of the arrow again, and with a vicious hiss snapped the barb off one end and then pulled the arrow out of the other side of his skull.

Much to Margi’s disgust and amazement, not a drop of blood spilled out.

“You’re finished, Pretor Xa!” roared Tabor Jan. “The queen has not gone to her ship. And she will reckon with you and Ryllion for everything—every-thing—you have done!”

The Seer had his back to Tabor Jan and Cyndere. He must have looked like a dying dog crawling away from them. But Margi was in front of him, staring at him through the driftwood. And she could hear him laughing.

“Fools,” he hissed, “you have no idea.” Then he turned and shrieked, “Your arrows cannot stop us. And you don’t have enough for all the beastmen.” He reached the cage, snatched the key, and unlocked it.

The beastmen burst out, howling with bloodthirst. They splashed
through the water and climbed onto the boat’s canted deck. They roared at Tabor Jan and Cyndere and lashed at the air with their claws.

But then the cask on the platform began to rock. It moved closer to the edge of the stone.

Wynn!

Yes, now you see
, came Madi’s gleeful thought.
Isn’t he brave? His moment has come
.

“It’s my moment too.” Margi, moving on an impulse she could not understand, shoved a piece of driftwood aside and clambered through it, then fell down onto the pool’s sandy shore. The Seer did not hear her, did not turn, for his attention was focused on his assailants. She waded into the water, then reached down through the shallows and pressed her hands against the rocky floor of the cave.

A resonant pulse rippled through the cavern.

The Seer staggered and fell forward again as the ground moved beneath him.

Margi stood up and scrambled backward.
He won’t get away now. Look out, Margi!

She turned and saw the great barrel of oil topple from its perch. It hurtled down through the air and struck the edge of the ship and exploded.

As its contents spilled across the boat, a powerful wave of perfume struck the girls as hard as any rush of water. Margi looked up to see Wynn standing where the barrel had been. And then she ran for the driftwood barrier and clambered over it as her consciousness collapsed.

“Cover your face!” Tabor Jan shouted, throwing himself backward from the balcony and casting his arms across his face. Cyndere dove with him.

They heard the sound of the barrel of slumberseed oil strike the boat. There was a cacophony of splashing for a few short moments. Then, silence.

The pungent aroma seeped through their sleeves as they fought to stay awake. But the power of the oil was too much. Cyndere, leaning against Tabor Jan, looked anxiously into his eyes, and then she was asleep.

He settled her against the wall. Then he crawled to the edge and looked down to see Wynn lying on the edge of the promontory beside the crystal, fast asleep, just inches from a fall that would have killed him. He saw the Seer in the water, tugging as if his hands and feet were stuck to the floor beneath the shallows. Sprawled and scattered all around him were the motionless bodies of the slumbering beastmen.

Everything began to blur.

And then there were others with him on the balcony. Was that Partayn?

He looked down again to see a figure walking onto the promontory—a woman in an extravagant gown with a gleaming circle on her head. She was pressing her sleeve to her face and striding forward as if moving up a steep incline. She shouted a shrill question to Pretor Xa. The Seer screamed back up at her in a fury.

Then the woman put her hand upon the wheel and began to turn it.

The heavy stone gate that held back the waters of the Rushtide Inlet began to rise.

The tide burst in.

A wall of water came sweeping into the Punchbowl, filling it up almost to the edge of the promontory. The boat rose, righting itself, swaying, spinning, and smashing itself against that jutting arm of stone.

Water crashed against the sides of the cave. It fractured driftwood. It churned and roiled in such a way that Tabor Jan finally understood why it was called a Punchbowl.

But all this was quickly forgotten, for he was asleep. Asleep at last.

I
f Jordam doesn’t come back, then my people got away
.

Cal-raven paused, holding his arms across his face as a stinging gust of dustcloud struck him.
I must not rest until I find the river. They may be waiting for me
.

The only features in this blasted landscape were the sinking, collapsing Cent Regus structures, less than empty, devoid of symmetry, besieged by some strange and colorless mold.

Cal-raven stumbled among them feeling as if he had died beside his mother in the prongbull’s stable. The midday sun was hot, but the light was drained of health or hue. Each step he took scared ghosts of ash from some slow, invisible burning into anxious southward flight. How could he be sure of a direction north and west? The world around him was disintegrating; he saw nothing he might have recognized.

If I hadn’t insisted on hastening the rescue… If I hadn’t left Bel Amica…

He walked down a deserted avenue, finding momentary relief in the shelter of the decrepit walls. As he skirted the edge of a deep break in the ground, he looked down to where dust swirled over scattered bones that did not resemble anything human or animal. Looking up, he saw a weather-beaten rope swinging between two long, sagging structures. Strung from that rope were half skeletons of creatures ruined and displayed for all to see.

If there never was a Keeper, there will never be any kind of reckoning. And all my belief that my father might be waiting for me, all the hope in my mother’s dying gaze, is folly
.

He coughed, and the sound echoed. He needed water, and he had no sense of where to find it.

A gorrel crept out from under an abandoned wagon. It blinked at him, and then bolted off, leaving a grey stripe of cloud to mark its path.

If there is no Keeper, those tracks I sought and found were not leading me anywhere. My discoveries were mere luck and nothing more. I was not being led. I was not meant to find anything. It was just an animal
.

He put his hands into his pockets and found that the wind had filled them with dust that could not be molded.

If there is no Keeper, even Scharr ben Fray is deceived
.

What would he say if he saw his people again? How could he tell them that he had watched the creature he had claimed was leading them die?

The ale boy was caught up in the same madness, thinking that it led him to save so many lives. But did I not see the creature snapping the bridge like a twig and the boy falling, on fire, into the abyss?

He stopped and regarded a block of stone that upheld great, sculpted feet. Once a statue had stood there, perhaps a monument to Cent Regus himself, that famous son of Tammos Raak who had rebelled against his father and chased him to his death. But the creatures that his descendants had become had broken it off at the ankles, and who knows what had become of it?

He ducked behind the block at the sound of an approaching steed. A wheezing vawn came charging down the avenue bearing a figure wrapped in white rags.

The Seer. Malefyk Xa
.

The reptile did not even pause, its rider leaning forward on some urgent mission.

If there is no Keeper, then what power in this world can stop the Seers?
Cal-raven closed his eyes, remembering his proud claims in that dark Bel Amican sanctuary where the name Auralia had been twisted into something troubling and wrong.
What a fool
.

It came to him suddenly—Auralia’s colors. They had gone with his mother, to wherever that creature had left her body.

If there is no Keeper, Auralia was either a liar or greatly deceived. And yet…

He stood up and staggered back onto the avenue. “Could I have killed the Keeper?” he asked. “By failing to help it escape, did I destroy the creature in everyone’s dreams?”