Silent Hall (5 page)

N
arky was
grateful for the inn stay, but he still didn't think he liked this fellow Hunter. He was a tough guy, which reminded Narky of Ketch. Hunter had paid for two rooms: one for the two girls and one for Narky, Criton, and himself. There were two beds in this room, and a straw mattress had been laid out on the floor. Naturally, this ended up being Narky's bed. Now Hunter was downstairs, no doubt buying drinks for Criton and asserting his dominance. Narky despised such people. If only he had some money of his own, he would be able to buy his own room next time, with a proper bed.

And why shouldn't he find some money somewhere? This inn was full of wealthy merchants, the kind that Pa had always admired, who came to Atuna in order to buy stakes in the success of its many cargo ships without ever risking their own lives or even setting their dainty feet on a boat's planks. Atuna was the greatest seaport in the known world, and it attracted these sorts of people. Oh sure, Hunter could shower Criton and the others with his wealth. Narky would find money his own way.

The room next door was locked, but it was a warm night and the windows were all open. The rooms were not far apart, and, by clinging to the shutter of his own window, Narky managed to plant his foot on the next room's windowsill. Then he had only to transfer his hands to the next window's shutter, and he was soon inside. But Narky's heart nearly leapt out of his chest when he realized that the room was occupied.

A mustachioed man was sleeping in the bed, snoring softly. One of those financiers, judging by the fancy clothes piled at the foot of the bed. On a little stand beside him stood a candle burnt almost all the way down, next to a thin chain necklace and a large coin purse. Narky tiptoed over and lifted the necklace, giving himself some time to think about how to remove money from the purse without making too much noise. He definitely had no intention of taking the whole purse, firstly because this merchant might recognize it if he saw it on Narky, and secondly because Hunter and the others knew that he didn't have
that
much money.

The necklace was silver, its centerpiece a rather ornate bird design. Very distinctive. He would have to sell it in some other town, far from here. Narky carefully slipped it into his shoe. The fellow in the bed stirred a little, and rolled over to face away from the candle. Narky breathed. He wondered how much this man had had to drink. He hoped it was enough.

As carefully as he could, taking only one coin at a time, Narky transferred some of the man's considerable wealth into his own empty pocket. When he thought he had taken enough to strain credulity, he climbed back out the window and returned to his room. That had gone remarkably well, he thought.

The next day, Hunter led them to Atuna's temple square, where travelers from all over the known world could buy wine, goats, doves and even the occasional bull for sacrifice on one of four public altars. Little shrines to various Gods dotted the square, dwarfed by the grand buildings and tall spires of the established local churches. Travelers yammered to each other in all different languages, their foreign tongues mixing in with the bleating of goats and the cooing of birds. The Atunaean workers who cleaned the altars in between patrons chatted with the visitors of the larger temples, swinging their buckets idly. The city's patron God, Atun, had the greatest church here, but other popular choices such as Elkinar the life God and Atel the Traveler God also came well represented.

Narky was grateful enough to have escaped Tarphae and justice that he followed the pretty girl's lead and bought a dove to sacrifice to Atel. The girl thanked the Traveler God in beautifully chosen formal words, which Narky tried unsuccessfully to repeat. When that was done, she sacrificed a second dove to Atun, with a prayer for His hospitality, and then a third, tearfully, to Elkinar, who was apparently a God of death as well as life. Go figure. The ragged girl called Bandu just stared at the proceedings, and Narky didn't blame her. The rituals didn't make much sense to him either, and he hadn't spent his whole life in a ditch.

The pretty girl was very forceful. She had bought a pair of shears and a razor upon their arrival in Atuna, and had forced Bandu to sit while she sheared off all her tangled hair and burned it. She burned Bandu's clothes too, after dressing her in the drowned nursemaid's spare garments. When the bundle of clothes and hair was aflame, the number of agonized bugs that hopped about in the fire was truly astounding. Not that the radical change in appearance did Bandu much good. Without her hair and in clothes meant for someone twice her weight, she managed to look a good deal more pathetic than she had to begin with.

She approached him now, standing uncomfortably close. “Do you know about hits?”

Narky wondered if pretending not to hear her would make her go away. He doubted it. “I don't know what you're talking about,” he said.

The girl looked frustrated with his lack of understanding. “When you hit with sharp things, and it gets red and bad.”

“That's called bleeding.”

More frustration. “No! No, not bleeding. After. When it gets red
after
, and hot.”

Narky scratched his arm. “Like an infection?”

“In fiction?”

“Yeah, an infection. When the skin changes color all around the cut, you mean, even after the cut's not bleeding anymore. They're very dangerous.”

Bandu looked excited. “Dangerous, yes! In fiction. Do you know how to make in fiction go away?”

“Well, you can cauterize it before it gets infected. Burn the wound shut. It usually works, I think.”

Bandu nodded and took him by the hand. “Show me. Show me to help Four-foot.”

Oh Gods, what did I just agree to do?
Narky wanted to shake loose, but the girl wouldn't let go of his hand. He could probably yank it away from her if he really tried, but he honestly didn't know how she'd react if he did. The girl lived with a wolf; who knew what would happen if he angered her? He let her drag him most of the way out of town before he even thought to stop for supplies, and then it took some convincing to get her to wait while he bought a tinderbox and a knife, and a skin of strong spirits. He didn't know if the wolf would drink spirits, but it seemed worth a try to him. If he was going to go poking a wild animal with a piece of heated metal, that animal had better be slobbering drunk.

They cleared the city wall and crunched their way into a small dry wood, Narky getting progressively angrier at himself. Bandu couldn't be more than fourteen years old, yet here she was, bullying him. A coward's son indeed.

With a growl, Bandu's wolf slunk toward them out of the trees.

“You know,” Narky said. “I think you should do this, not me.”

Bandu glared at him. “You help,” she commanded.

Narky withered. “All right,” he said. “I'll help. But you do the burning. You have this, this,
relationship
with the wolf, and I don't. Burning out a wound
hurts.
If
I
do it, the damn thing's gonna bite me.”

“You don't talk that way,” Bandu said darkly. “Four-foot is not damn thing, Four-foot is my friend. I don't call your friend damn thing.”

“I don't have a friend,” Narky said. “Anyway, since Four-foot is your friend and not mine, I think you should do the burning.”

Thankfully, Bandu accepted his logic. She whispered in the wolf's ear and it lay on its right side, staring at Narky as if daring him to comment on its wound. The wound was long and shallow, stretching down from the wolf's shoulder toward its belly. The fisherman had slashed at it wildly as it turned toward him, and whether his blows or its teeth had made their marks first, neither had been well aimed for a kill. Yet the length of the wound would make the burning a good deal harder, which made Narky doubly glad that he had convinced Bandu to cauterize it herself. It was hard to see, through the clotted blood and fur, whether an infection had taken hold, but Narky helped Bandu to build a small fire, and he gave her the skin of spirits so that she could clean the wound while he heated the knife.

Narky often wondered, afterward, how they had ever managed to hold the wolf still while its flesh burned, or how Bandu had been able to talk it down from biting them. She was like a girl out of one of the fairy stories that Narky used to bring home from town, those that terrified his father so. They were full of witches and monsters, cruel elves and cannibals, and everybody in them seemed to meet a bad end. Narky even asked Bandu if she was using some kind of magic on the wolf, but she didn't seem to understand the question.

Bandu refused to leave her wolf when they were done, so Narky walked back to the inn alone. Why had she asked him for help? he wondered. Why not any of the others?

When he arrived, he found the common room so crammed with people that he had to shove his way through to find the other islanders. People gave him stares and shushed him – someone was giving a speech.

It only took a second for Narky to recognize the voice: it was the fisherman who had brought them to Atuna, and he wasn't giving a speech, he was telling a story.

“They'd fallen out of their chairs, poor lads. Dead and drowned on dry land. My brother's eldest boy had seaweed coming out of his mouth! If you'll pardon me, boy, I thought at first maybe the lord of the house had killed them himself. My nephews were the only people in the house, so I went out.

“The city was just as empty as the docks, until I found them all in the square outside Karassa's temple. The whole city was there, dead just the same as my lads. Lungs filled with seawater, and wet all over. The bulls for sacrifice were dead too, just the same way. But the king wasn't there. I don't know if Mayar spared him, but he wasn't with the other dead ones where he should have been.

“Well, I didn't stay long after that. I didn't even go looking for the money the lord still owed me, I just ran for the docks. It felt haunted, like there might be ghosts about. I was coughing all the way home like I'd caught the plague too, I was scared to death. But it stopped when I got home, thank Atun.

“It's an island of the dead now, Tarphae. I wouldn't go back for all the world.”

Narky had only just made his way through the crowd to the others, but now Hunter stormed past him toward the door, shoving people out of his way. Criton broke down in tears, and the pretty girl too.

“How do you know they're all gone?” Narky asked the fisherman. “How do you know it's not just the capital?”

The fisherman stared at him. “You think the Gods would put a plague on Karsanye and leave the rest of the island alone? Fish heads. There weren't no other people picking around that city, looking for survivors.
Everyone
was dead.”

Narky nodded solemnly and turned away from his sobbing companions. He was not
really
glad – not really. He was sorry that all those people had died. It was obviously devastating news. But all he could think about was that he was the luckiest damn murderer the world had ever known.

I
t felt
as if the world had ended. The only person who had ever loved him was gone. Criton had always thought he would come back one day to rescue Ma from her husband. They would live in a cave like the dragons were supposed to do, and if anyone came to bother them, Criton would chase them away. Now that would never happen.

Hunter did not reappear until the evening, and when he did, he paid for another night's stay for them all and then went straight to bed. He was grieving in his own way, perhaps, but neither he nor the others could possibly feel the pain Criton did. Narky hardly reacted at all. It would have made Criton angry, if he had been able to think of anything but his poor mother.

The next morning was dreadful. All of Atuna seemed intent on talking to them about what had happened, crowding into the inn's taproom to argue about which God had punished Tarphae and why. Some claimed that Karassa was being punished by Her father Mayar for some reason. They said that the king had only survived by treacherously rededicating his sacrifice to the angry Sea God. Others insisted that it was Karassa who was punishing Her people for not obeying their king. Each story seemed somehow darker and truer than the last, as human minds struggled to conceive of an answer terrible enough to justify the calamity that had befallen the island. And behind each story was the same assertion, spoken with the same brittle confidence: such a thing could never happen here. Atun would protect His city.

“I'm leaving today,” Narky told Criton over a late lunch. “It's not safe here. Plagues jump from person to person – what if that fisherman brought it back with him? It could be in Atuna already, looking for us.”

Criton gulped. Could the plague really be seeking them out?

“Where will you go?” he asked.

“I don't know. Away from here.”

Criton looked down at his food. It was his second lunch. Eating was better than thinking, and besides, he never seemed to stop being hungry these days. Ma would have said he was hungry because he was growing, but he was already taller than most everyone in Atuna. How much taller could he possibly grow?

A man at the next table raised his voice, angrily repeating his own disgusting theory of Tarphae's demise. Narky was right. It was time to go.

“Phaedra is on a pilgrimage for the Traveler God,” Criton told him. “We could go with her.”

Narky shrugged. “There's safety in numbers, I guess. When's she leaving?”

“I'll ask her. Have you seen Bandu?”

“Yes,” Narky answered reluctantly. “She's out in the woods, looking after her wolf. She wouldn't leave it after we burned its wound.”

“You burned out her wolf's wound?” Criton asked incredulously. “Together?” He was surprised that Bandu would ask Narky, of all people.

Narky lifted his hands in acknowledgment of the absurdity. “Don't ask me why she chose me. It's not like I'd done it before.”

Criton nodded. As little as he and Narky understood her, Bandu probably understood them even less. She seemed to have the same grasp of language that Criton had possessed at the age of three or four. How long had she lived alone in the woods, with only that wolf to talk to? It struck him how hard it must be for her now, out among society.

“See if she'll come with us,” Criton said. “Phaedra's pilgrimage was going to be to an abbey of Atellan friars. They could be good healers.”

“All right,” Narky said with resignation. “You talk to Phaedra, I'll talk to Bandu.”

Criton watched him leave, unable to focus his thoughts. What would he say to Phaedra? Ever since he had met her, she had filled him with – well, something. He had certainly never felt anything like it when he was living with his mother. He loved the shape of her face, loved the way her hair had been woven into hundreds of tight braids and piled elegantly on her head in such fascinating patterns. Her voice was clear and sweet, and she seemed to know something about everything. All this made it hard to imagine what he would say to her.

He found her upstairs, going through her luggage. She was sitting on the floor of the room she shared with Bandu, surrounded by piles of clothing, various beauty items such as hairpins, combs and tiny vials of perfume, and a number of mysterious cylindrical tubes. The shears were in her hand, and she was hacking at her beautiful hair.

“What are you doing?” he asked in dismay.

Phaedra looked at him through puffy wet eyes. “You've never seen someone in mourning before? I need to shave my head, and that means these braids have to go.”

Criton blinked. Yes, mourning. How had he not thought of that? His mind wasn't functioning the way it ought to.

“Well, don't just stand there,” Phaedra sobbed. “Help me.” She dropped the shears.

Criton picked them up. “What were you doing in here? Before you started cutting your hair, I mean?”

“Going through all my things and seeing which ones I still need.”

“To travel?” Criton asked.

“I don't need much to travel,” she said curtly, wiping tears away with her hand, “but the plan was to come home after my pilgrimage, wasn't it? My parents wanted me to marry well. Well, now the island is cursed, and having a rich father is meaningless. All I have now is what I brought with me in these trunks. I have to sell what I don't need, and start from the beginning.”

Criton snipped. One by one, her braids fell to the floor. “What will you do?”

“My mother was a weaver. I'll buy a loom. If she could work for her living, so can I.”

Criton did not know what to say. Phaedra had lost everything – in some ways, a good deal more than Criton had – and she was already planning a completely different life for herself. Her mental fortitude was outright intimidating.

When he had finished with the shears, he handed them back to her and she started on his hair. He picked up one of the metal cylinders and turned it over in his hands.

“What are these things?” he asked.

“Scroll cases,” Phaedra told him. “They're very expensive, but I'm not sure I can part with them. Those scrolls are important to me. They're writings on the nature of Gods. That one you're holding is Katinaras.”

Curly locks fell around him. “Are you familiar with Katinaras?” she asked.

“No,” Criton admitted. “I don't know much about religion, except that my mother's people were killed by a priest of Magor.”

“Really?” Phaedra stopped what she was doing and moved to look straight at him, her eyes wide. “Were they all – like you?”

She lowered her eyes. Had she been about to say “monsters?”

“Yes,” he said.

She went back to cutting. “What happened to them?”

“They lived in Ardis, and a priest of Magor killed them. That's all I know.”

Phaedra nodded. “I've read about Magor; I'm not surprised His priests are warlike. He's supposed to be the Sea God's brother, Karassa's uncle. The God of the Wild. His followers believe in the virtue of strength above all else, and they don't consider killing to be a sin. In their teachings, no one has any inherent rights, they just have whatever respect they can gain from others through their strength of arms or magical power or what have you. They say that the women of Ardis –” she paused, embarrassed.

“Yes? What about them?”

She finished with the shears and sat down. There was something enchanting about the way she looked down at her lap. “Well,” she said, fiddling with the shears in her hand. “They say that the women of Ardis lie with more than one man in a night, and let the seed do battle in their wombs. Later, whichever man the child resembles is honored at their spring festival. A great man is supposed to be able to have his children carry him from his home to the temple of Magor without his feet ever touching the ground.”

“Huh,” Criton said. They were both silent for a time.

In the stories Ma had told him, the hero usually met a beautiful woman and swept her off her feet. Was that really what men did? He imagined lifting Phaedra off the floor and, and – he couldn't do that, could he? Was it as simple as that? He had no experience at all, and something told him that any mistake would be catastrophic.

Phaedra broke the silence first. “I've read a lot about the Gods. Katinaras is my favorite. He disputes the notion of Godly kinship, which is interesting, but his finger-in-the-mesh analogy is pure genius. I can explain it to you some time.”

Criton said nothing. He was still wondering about Ma's stories.

Phaedra handed him a razor and a bowl of water. “I'm ready. Were you here to talk to me about something else?”

“Oh, uh, yes.” What was he here for again? “Narky and I were talking about leaving Atuna, and I remembered you were telling me about this place – the Crossroads – and I thought, um, do you want to go there? Narky thinks the plague might follow us here. If you're still planning on finishing your pilgrimage…”

Phaedra nodded, and he drew the blade away from her scalp. “I am. My career as a weaver can wait a couple of weeks, and I think traveling will clear my head. Narky could be right about the plague, too.”

She sighed. “I don't know where Hunter is right now, but if we're all going together, we should make him come with us. He was supposed to meet his father here. He'll just waste away in this city unless someone pulls him out of it.”

They would all go together. The thought raised Criton's spirits.

“I'll find Hunter,” he said, standing up. “The rest of my hair can wait.”

It took quite some time to find him. The lord's son was in none of the expected places. Criton finally found him harborside, standing near the customs house and staring silently out to sea as the ships came and went. He had shaved his head since Criton last saw him, but his appearance was otherwise the same. He was dressed for war still, with his meticulously polished armor glinting in the late afternoon sun. With his shield on his back and his hand resting on his sword hilt, he looked almost as if he was anticipating an invasion.

“Hunter?” Criton began, tentatively.

“Yes.” Hunter didn't even turn his head.

“What are you doing out here?”

“Thinking.”

Criton took a deep breath. “About your father meeting you here?” he ventured.

Finally, Hunter's eyes met his. “About my life. If everyone's really gone, then I have nothing. I wanted to be Tarphae's champion one day. I thought I would stand before an army, challenging the enemy's best warriors, and I would slay them for the glory of my people. Now I have no nation to fight for. The king I would have championed stands alone on an island of the dead. I can't even go back, because the plague might be waiting for me there. My life is pointless.”

Criton had no idea what to say in response, so he awkwardly changed the subject instead. “Isn't it hot for you in all that armor?”

Hunter's mouth twitched in what could have become a smile, but didn't. “It used to be, when my father first gave it to me. Now I'm used to it.”

“Oh.” There was nothing for it but to charge ahead, blind. “The rest of us are going to leave Atuna,” Criton said. “Do you want to come?”

Hunter looked back at the sea and paused in thought. “You're the only countrymen I have left to fight for,” he said finally.

“I don't think there'll be any fighting,” Criton told him. “We're going to an abbey.”

They set out late the next morning, traveling southwest along a well-worn dirt road. Phaedra sold much of her luggage before they left, and now traveled with a pack slung over her shoulders. Even so, she was a very fast walker. Criton had never walked so far before, and he soon began envying the others for their shoes. Bandu didn't have any either, but her feet were hard and callused, and she didn't limp when the pebbles dug into them. He considered letting his feet revert to the scaly claws he had been born with, but then everyone would see. It was bad enough that Phaedra knew – he was lucky she hadn't denounced him.

Four-foot limped along beside, occasionally baring his teeth at Narky. Apparently, Narky was not yet forgiven for teaching Bandu how to burn a wound.

“A wolf shouldn't travel on the roads,” Narky told Bandu. “What if we run into some other travelers? Remember what happened on the boat?”

A short argument ensued, and they were all quietly relieved when Bandu agreed to take Four-foot and follow some distance behind them, staying off the road.

“You walk, we hunt,” she said darkly, and when Phaedra asked if she would get lost without them, replied, “Four-foot can smell you.”

Whatever he had hoped, traveling only made his thoughts darker. This was what Ma had wanted for him: a life outside her house, going wherever he must to find the dragon kin that he longed for. In Ma's stories, the hero usually had a long and arduous journey on the way to fulfill his final goal. Criton's journey was only just beginning, but he felt it couldn't get much worse than it already was. His mother was dead – wasn't that arduous enough?

He walked in a haze, even as the scenery should have fascinated him. The birds, the trees, the sounds and smells of the country – all were unfamiliar to him. He felt he ought to learn about these places, even though he didn't terribly care. Ma would have expected it.

They entered a forest whose scent was pleasant, if a little overpowering, and he decided to ask his companions about the trees. Thus he learned from Hunter that they were called guardian trees, and that the finest warships were made of their wood; he learned from Narky that they poisoned the ground for fruit trees and tukka trees, which were harvested for gum; and Phaedra told him a story about a soldier long ago who had transformed himself into a tree so that he could forever guard his love. His head filled with new information, Criton refrained from asking any more questions.