Songreaver (12 page)

After a half hour of walking, he arrived back
at Uncle's manor house. He fumbled at the latch to the carriage
house gate with cold-numbed fingers. The wooden door swung open,
letting in the gray light of dawn, and he set to rummaging through
the stacks of opened crates.

Digging through a particularly deep box,
Garrett had to lean over with the rough edge digging into his
midsection. He wormed his arm down under a folded stack of Uncle's
old robes, hoping to find any sort of coat at this point. His
fingers closed upon something soft and warm and heavy, and he
tugged hard.

Bracing himself against the crate's edge,
Garrett pulled with all his strength, and the stacks of old clothes
heaved up like plowed earth. From below, he dragged the sparkling
white shimmerfleece that Uncle had used in the raising of
Caleb.

Garrett felt its unnatural warmth driving the
chill from his fingers. He pulled the heavy fleece from its crate
and held it against his chest. He sank to his knees and pressed his
cheek against the sparkling, curly wool. He felt his body ache with
the memory of summer warmth. He closed his eyes and tried to
remember what the world was like before everything turned cold and
gray.

Bright memories slipped away, almost there,
then lost again. The boy he used to be was gone, somebody else that
once lived in his body before it was burned and broken. Was he
really all that different from Caleb after all?

Garrett's body shook as he wept, silently
into the shimmerfleece.

"Garrett?" a raspy voice spoke from
behind.

Garrett opened his eyes and turned to see
Caleb silhouetted in the carriage house entryway, and, beside him,
a gaunt man in dark robes. He carried a long staff, topped with a
horned skull.

"Uncle?" Garrett whispered.

"Garrett," the old man said, "can you tell me
why all of my books are on the wrong shelves?"

Garrett ran to him and gave him a crushing
hug.

Garrett watched as Uncle Tinjin reached for
his teacup again. The cup clattered against the saucer as he lifted
it from the table in Tinjin's study. The old man's hands were
shaking.

Tinjin sipped from the steaming cup and set
it down again, his eyes never leaving the ancient atlas that lay,
cracked open on the table before him. Tinjin's eyes were sunken
with dark rings of weariness beneath. He looked old now.

Garrett had always thought of Tinjin as an
old man, but it was always a young man's eyes that looked back at
him from his Uncle's face. Now...

"Pellian was a fool and a liar!" Tinjin spat.
He turned his head away from the book, covering his mouth with his
sleeve as another fit of racking coughs took his breath.

Garrett waited until the old man regained his
composure. "Who's Pellian?" he asked.

Uncle Tinjin looked up and smiled. "The man
who mapped the world, a long time ago... and, apparently, not all
that well."

Garrett waited for him to explain.

"Here," Tinjin said, lifting the book and
turning it so Garrett could read the old map. It slipped from his
trembling fingers, and pages fluttered, spreading dry flakes of
crumbling paper across the table.

The map showed an unfamiliar region of the
world. Unnamed mountains and vast expanses of trees filled most of
the map, and, running off the right edge, a great river. Garrett
squinted, trying to read the cramped, handwritten script.

"Nest... Neshat? That's where you found
Cenick isn't it?" Garrett asked.

Tinjin smiled and nodded.

"Where are we?" Garrett asked.

Tinjin pointed a bony finger at the upper
left corner of the map and dragged it off the side. "Far to the
northwest, across these mountains," he said, "That much I know for
myself. I was a fool to take Pellian's word for the rest of
it."

"What do you mean?"

Tinjin dragged his finger along the snaking
course of the great river Neshat to where it disappeared into the
mountains. "Many explorers," he said, "have tried to discover the
headwaters of the river, myself included, at a much younger age.
Too dangerous though. Most of the tribes near the mouth of the
river, as you get closer to Zhad, are friendly enough. They won't
kill you on sight, at least. As you go further into the jungle
though... well, you have to keep your wits about you and trust to
luck, or you'll likely wind up as a trophy for some ghost
hunter."

"Ghost hunter?" Garrett asked.

Tinjin shrugged. "The river is the source of
all life to the river tribes, so, they reason, any outsiders must
be ghosts."

"But, if you can kill somebody, they couldn't
really be a ghost though, right?"

Tinjin frowned. "Garrett, you will discover
as you grow older that many people's most cherished beliefs are
little more than an excuse to hurt others without feeling badly
about it."

Tinjin's finger paused at a narrow point in
the river where the water looped back around, nearly touching
itself again on either side of a narrow peninsula of land. "That's
about as far as I made it before the fever convinced me to turn
back downriver."

"Fever?"

Tinjin nodded. "Fever is the Neshat's curse
on all outsiders. Even the tribal folk are not always immune. I was
fortunate though, it was a blood year."

"Huh?"

"Bleeding fever," Tinjin said, "You weep
blood, have strange visions, sometimes your toenails fall off, but
that might have just been riverfoot in my case. I was lucky. I had
just missed a crawling fever summer. Many of the river folk I
encountered on my way up had been crippled by it the year before.
You never know what fever will be dominant each year.

"Bleeding fever is bad, but it passes quickly
if it doesn't kill you. Still, I was too weak to continue... The
fever had hollowed me of my resolve, and I gave up. I never really
regretted that decision until now... to think what I might have
done if I'd just kept on a little further..."

"What do you mean?" Garrett said.

Tinjin smiled and took another rattling sip
from his cup. He nodded toward the shimmerfleece, folded neatly on
the corner of the table. "That fleece came from farther upriver
than I ever ventured. Some stalwart hunter carried it down from the
mountains at the headwaters of the Neshat where such rams must
live." He pointed at the nameless mountains in the center of the
map.

"You were trying to find the sheep?" Garrett
asked.

Tinjin shook his head. "I was trying to find
what made them shimmer," he said, "Some powerful, natural magic is
at work there... some source, untapped and unknown... at least I
thought it was unknown."

Tinjin laughed and then started coughing
again. At last, he dried his lips and sighed as he leaned back into
his chair.

"I suppose every scholar wants to believe
themselves the first to discover something wonderful," he said, "It
blinds us to the possibility that we might not be the first... that
someone else may have already found it out, and, perhaps, they
don't care to share."

"You found something?" Garrett asked.

Tinjin raised his thin hand and pointed it to
the backpack that lay, slumped in the corner of the room. "In my
bag," he said, "all the way at the bottom... a small, leather
pouch, sealed with lead. Bring it here."

Garrett jumped up from his chair and ran to
Uncle's backpack. He unlaced the stained oilskin flap at the top
and pulled the bag open.

He pulled out a tattered bedroll first,
followed by three canisters of essence, two of them empty, one of
which bore a long, silvery scratch across its metal as though it
had served as a makeshift shield not too long ago. Then, there,
beneath the crumbling crust of some kind of traveller's bread, he
found a black leather pouch and pulled it out.

The pouch felt warm to the touch, as though
he had found it lying next to the hearth, and it weighed more than
its size or even the lead seal at its mouth would account for. He
carried it back to the table and set it down in front of Uncle
Tinjin.

Tinjin smiled and nodded his thanks. He
removed the teacup from its saucer and drained it in a gulp before
setting it aside and placing the pouch onto the empty saucer. He
took the pouch between his bony fingers and twisted it, trying to
break the gray lead seal that held the pouch closed. The lead bent
but did not break, and the old man's face twitched with
consternation.

"Should I get something to break it?" Garrett
offered.

"No need," Tinjin said. Then he pinched the
seal between his fingers and whispered, "
Kaalade
."

The lead shattered like glass and fell
away.

Garrett jumped back. "How did you do that?"
he gasped.

"I
am
a sorcerer, Garrett," Tinjin
sighed, "I know a little magic."

"But you didn't use any essence," Garrett
said.

Tinjin looked at him, smiling wearily, and
shook his head. "Some lessons," he said, "...some lessons I'm not
ready to teach you yet."

"But I thought..." Garrett began to say.

"Garrett," Uncle interrupted him, "I'm trying
to share the most profound discovery of my entire, long life with
you and you alone. Please do me the courtesy of sitting down and
remaining silent while I do so."

"Sorry, sir," Garrett said, sitting down in
his chair again.

Uncle Tinjin upended the leather pouch over
the empty saucer, and a shimmering cascade of sunlight poured
out.

Garrett gasped.

Uncle tapped the base of the pouch, knocking
the last grains of what appeared to be a glowing, opalescent sand
out onto the small mound. Garrett looked at his face, and saw again
the youthful gleam of discovery in Uncle Tinjin's eyes.

"What is it?" Garrett asked.

"
Ter'akane
," Uncle said, "or, in the
language of the vampires,
lake stone
."

"You got it from the vampires?"

Tinjin chuckled. "I
stole
it from the
vampires," he said, "I was able to grab a handful while Mrs. Veranu
distracted them. If they'd seen me do it... well, we wouldn't be
talking now."

"What does it do?"

Tinjin's eyes sparkled. "Amazing things,
Garrett!"

"Wait... is Mrs. Veranu all right?" Garrett
asked.

"Oh, yes," Tinjin said, "I think we were able
to sort that problem out, at least for the next hundred years or
so. It's the best I could do for them."

"They don't have to go back to the vampire
city or anything?"

"The city is called Thrinaar," Uncle said,
"but, no, they can stay in Wythr now, on certain conditions."

"Conditions?" Garrett asked.

Uncle nodded. "Marla's tutor will be arriving
from Thrinaar soon. The Veranus are under the protection of an old
friend of mine on the Council. She has...
adopted
Marla, so
to speak."

"What does Marla need a tutor for?" Garrett
laughed, "She already knows everything."

Uncle Tinjin frowned. "No one knows
everything
Garrett, and Marla knows very little indeed about
the workings of Thrinaar. Her father wanted it that way."

"Then why does she need to know it now?"

Tinjin sighed. "Because she will need this
knowledge to survive," he said, "Marla's father was... a good man,
but he wasn't always a vampire. In the end, I think he was still
what he was before they changed him... a doomed idealist. Marla
cannot afford to follow his path, not if she wishes to survive the
trials that lie before her."

Tinjin turned his face away, coughing
violently for a long moment before regaining his composure. His
voice rasped when he spoke again. "I swore to her father that I
would protect her, but Marla was born a vampire, and she must know
their ways... if only that she may know what she is rejecting, and
what the consequences will be should she turn from them."

Garrett fell silent.

"And, once again, you have completely
sidetracked me from the revelation of this, my greatest discovery!"
Tinjin said with a wave of his hand.

"Sorry, Uncle," Garrett said.

Tinjin smiled. "Where was I?"

"Magic sand?"

"
Lake stone
," Tinjin corrected
him.

"Lake stone," Garrett said.

"And why is it important that this powder is
referred to as
lake stone
?" Uncle Tinjin asked.

"It... comes from a lake?" Garrett said.

"Exactly!" Uncle cried, grinning
fiercely.

Garrett gave him a blank look.

Tinjin slammed the tip of his finger down in
the center of the map on the table, making the saucer and empty cup
clatter. "Here!" he said, "In these mountains, somewhere, at the
headwaters of the great river Neshat, lies a lake... a lake where
great shaggy mountain goats come to drink, taking in, with every
swallow, trace amounts of the magical dust you see here before you.
Eventually, year after year, the very essence of this magic builds
up within them until it shines thick upon their coats."

"How do you know that?" Garrett asked.

Tinjin sat back and shrugged. "Its just a
theory, really."

Garrett smiled. He opened his mouth to ask
another question then suddenly froze, staring at the shimmering,
daylight glow of the sand piled on Uncle's saucer. "Um, I think
I've seen this before," he said.

"What?" Uncle said. Looking slightly ill.

****

"I've never been in this section of the Old
City before," Uncle said, running his hand over the smooth stone of
the ancient elvish tunnel, "You say Warren brought you here?"

"Yeah," Garrett said, "we kinda have to go
around up here though, because of the spiders." He stared into the
shadows cast by his witchfire torch, trying to remember which
tunnel mouth lead to the house of Annalien the ghost.

"Spiders?"