The Ale Boy's Feast (12 page)

He was leading a charge in a fangbear hunt, a hunter’s chant on his tongue. But Forbidding Wall peaks snagged his attention, gleaming like the serrated jaw of a flay-fish, while Tabor Jan turned and, without hesitation, cast an arrow into the prize. The scar flared so sharply it hurt.

As he sang, he began to see a subtle golden thread that bound these memories into a story—a thread of longing that had led him from mountains to fields to faraway city walls. The cord stretched into mystery, and his restlessness burned strong as ever.

He stared into the canopy of glowstone spikes and sparkling webs, which glistened like a clear night sky.
I want to know where Auralia’s colors come from
.

He was back in Barnashum’s Blackstone Caves, in a chamber where his people had assembled pieces of Auralia’s art. The gallery’s aura enveloped a figure playing soft, sad notes on a string-weave—a song of lament for House Cent Regus. Cal-raven thought of Jordam, of the faint hope that the beastman represented.

In my hatred I almost killed him
.

In the singer’s final verse, the dissonant chords resolved into a hopeful, ascending anthem. She sang of a fallen tree, its branches filling with birds that lifted it up and carried it away. Something might yet rise from the ruins of failing houses. The last note floated into the air like a firefly.

The singer looked up, and he knew her.
Lesyl
. He let go of the music’s golden thread and reached out, instead, for the freckle-faced singer.
Leave Bel Amica, Lesyl. Forget about Partayn. Come with me
.

At once the pulsing light faded. Lesyl smiled softly, and Cal-raven felt a cold knife against his neck. He gasped, falling back against his attacker—Ryllion, with blood on his teeth.

Cal-raven woke beside the pool, water dripping against his neck. He choked on Ryllion’s name.

“Fallen tower of Tammos Raak!” he gasped. “Cal-raven, you fool’s fool, you’ve forgotten!”

Hiding inside a statue before the throne of the Cent Regus chieftain, Cal-raven had listened to a Seer describe a plot against Bel Amica, a trap about to spring. Had it happened? Had Captain Ryllion killed Queen Thesera, Partayn, and Cyndere? Or had the rebellion failed?

“My failure made me forget,” he growled, as if making an excuse to himself. He rose and stepped into the pool, took hold of a glowstone stalactite, and snapped it loose from the ceiling’s webbed hold. Sculpting a hilt and a blade from the long stone spike, he cringed at the bloody images that filled his imagination.

Ryllion’s slaughtered my people or thrown them in prison. Tabor Jan, Say-ressa, Lesyl … I’m not fit to be their king. And what of the Bel Amicans? Emeriene …

Leaving the pool behind, he found the corridor dark. The sun had set.

Through the strange echoes of wind and trickling water, he heard a distant footfall on the lakeside pebbles. As he moved quietly down the steep tunnel toward the sound, his knuckles brushed against a velvet curtain. He paused. He had not noticed this doorway on his ascent. He pushed it aside.

A fading glimmer caught his eye, as if someone carrying a lantern were hurrying away. The space was heavy with the air of decay. As he stepped through into the dark, something rolled and cracked underfoot like dry kindling. His grip tightened around the shining stalactite sword.

“Is someone there?”

A splash like an oar in a lake. There was water, deep water, nearby, perhaps on the other side of this chamber’s wall.

But the sound faded, and the air was still, like a predator waiting for the right time to strike. He felt strangely cold. He felt observed. His throat went dry. Holding out the glowstone sword, he looked down.

Bones were strewn all across the floor. Bones of animals and beastmen. But this was no accidental scattering. The figures below—a wild, violent struggle of twisted bodies—were all turned toward the same subject, their white skulls gaping.

Fighting a wave of revulsion, Cal-raven stepped through the bonefield toward the goal of their skeletal reaching—a pinnacle of black stone. In the sword’s faint light, he could see a shape. He ran his hands along contours too symmetrical to be accidental.

A statue. A young woman
.

Cal-raven climbed onto the carved sweep of the figure’s trailing cloak and worked his way around to stand before her. The cloak and hair were littered with bones, twigs, leaves, and pebbles in wild whorls and patterns.

Cal-raven’s questing hands found a gob of wax—the stub of an old candle—resting on the figure’s outstretched arm. He found crumbs of broken sparkstone beside his feet and molded the fragments together until they were large enough to break against a sharp edge. In a moment the candle was lit, the light swelling to illuminate a small sphere of space.

He had seen her once a long time ago, deep in Abascar’s dungeon, only moments before he rode out through his father’s gates for the last time. But he recognized her even though the sculptor had given this Auralia a posture of anguish and desperation. Caught in midstride, she strained to escape her pursuers, the ghastly swarm of bodies and bones that clutched at her garments.

More candles waited around the ripples and wrinkles of her cloak. Cal-raven lit those too, freeing more details from shadow. The ceiling’s stone had been molded into vicious expressions, and hands clawed at the hair as if reaching for the girl.

You saw a world of death and desperation. It made you lonely
. Cal-raven thought of some of the horrors he had sculpted—monsters that had troubled his mother by their violence, figures that had offended his father by their ugliness.
This was the safest way for Auralia to scream. To wring light from the darkness. To name her fears, know them, and leave them behind. She knew if others saw this, they’d condemn her as a danger
.

He touched her outstretched hand, the figure’s most complete detail—small, fine boned, and pointing forward through the dark. As he squeezed her hand in sympathy, his fingertips found the ridge of a ring on her finger, and he felt a pang of shame.

Something in her hand shifted, like a lever giving way. He looked ahead into the shadows, for he heard the sound of rusty hinges flexing in an adjoining chamber. Slowly he discerned faint light on the outline of a narrow door.

“Full of secrets, aren’t you?” He stepped down and moved toward the hinges’ fading echo. As he did, he glimpsed other faces gazing from the wall. Even there, sculptures waited, watching Auralia. But these figures were not reaching out to her. They were forbidding her to reach her destination. One had a stone mask sculpted like a sneer. Another had a jaw that hung open in derision.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw another statue with lifelike detail. He turned and leaned in closer to study it.

It looked like Ryllion with a dagger drawn.

It was Ryllion.

Cal-raven swung his makeshift sword, but Ryllion seized his wrist with astonishing speed, halting the blow, and drove his dagger’s tip up beneath Cal-raven’s
jawbone. He dropped the stalactite. Ryllion kicked it away, then pushed Cal-raven back between two of the towering figures carved into the wall.

“Are you alone?” he hissed.

“Well,” Cal-raven gasped, “there’s you …” The blade bit into flesh, and he felt warm blood trickle down his neck. “Two men,” he whispered. “By the lake. They’ll come at a run if I shout.”

“It would be a short shout,” said Ryllion. “And your last.”

Cal-raven sucked in two deep breaths, then relaxed, as Scharr ben Fray had taught him to do.
It would be funny, wouldn’t it? Auralia, imprisoned by Abascar, dies in its dungeon. But Cal-raven, new king of Abascar and free, dies in Auralia’s cave
.

“These are my caves now. Take your men away, and never come back.”

“They’re not my men,” said Cal-raven. “They only brought me here.”

“Tell them the caves were empty. Give up the hunt.”

“The hunt?” Cal-raven’s mind raced.

As he gained a measure of calm, he could see his attacker more clearly. Ryllion was bruised, battered, ugly with scars, as if he’d been mauled by a fangbear. Teeth were missing from his distorted mouth, and his eyes, once blood red, were pale, as if he were half-blind. The crimson mask around his eyes from a burn he’d suffered was painted with purple bruises. Scraps of a timeworn bandage clung to his face. Patches of his striped mane had been ripped from his scalp, leaving scabs of dried blood. He held his knife with only three fingers, the others crooked and useless.

Beaten half to death. And hiding. Ryllion’s on the run. The plot failed
. Cal-raven felt a thrill of relief.

“Who are you?” Ryllion demanded.

Thinking fast, Cal-raven replied, “An Abascar survivor. Trying to make it through another day.”

“Do you know who I am?”

“I don’t,” he lied.

Ryllion leaned in close, and his breath caused Cal-raven to recoil. He had been
eating fish from the lake. “I’m a survivor too.” Cal-raven heard something more than anger in that voice. He heard bitterness and despair.

“You’re not from Abascar.” Cal-raven spoke tentatively. “The accent’s wrong.”

“What does it matter where I’m from? World’s been poisoned. We’re all going to die.”

“Bel Amica.” It was a risk, but Cal-raven took it. “I heard rumors of trouble there. Something about the Seers.”

His captor, in a rage, threw him into a scattering of bones. Cal-raven fumbled backward on all fours, gathering his thoughts. If he could press his fingertips through the debris to the stone floor, he might gain an advantage.

Ryllion sheathed his dagger, picked up a tree-branch spear he had fashioned, and thrust it at Cal-raven’s face. “Seers are liars.” His voice was like ice breaking. “You haven’t heard? They betray anyone. Even those who gave up everything for their promises. Tried to kill me.” He spat out curses.

“We agree then,” said Cal-raven. “The Seers planned a slaughter for Abascar’s people, even as we struggled to survive.”

“Look what they did to me!” Ryllion turned the spear upright and spread his arms. “I was their servant. They promised me a throne. And they made me half a monster.”

“But you’re free now,” said Cal-raven. “Free of a lie. And you’re not alone. I hate the Seers as much as you do.”

Ryllion stood still before the candle-ringed statue of Auralia. Panting like a frustrated hunting dog unsure which path his prey has taken, he narrowed his eyes and said, “Get up.”

For a heartbeat Cal-raven considered melting the floor to bring down his assailant. But Ryllion still held that spear, and Cal-raven knew, in his weariness, that he might not have the strength.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” said Cal-raven. “We can talk.”

“Don’t presume to instruct me.” Ryllion’s eyes flared, but his legs were shaking, and his arm wavered. He was weakening.

“I would never instruct you,” he said, making an appeal to the soldier’s pride. “You’re the most powerful soldier in the Expanse. Yes, I recognize you now, Captain. The Seers may have cast you aside, but they’ve underestimated you. You’ll surprise them someday.”

Ryllion grinned. “I’ll surprise everyone.”

Cal-raven stood, holding his hands open before him. “Let’s surprise them together.” He advanced slowly, unsure where this courage was coming from. The scar in his left eye burned bright as a star. “No man in the Expanse is in a better place to help you strike back at them than me.”

Ryllion raised the spear again.

“Test me. Let me prove it.”

“Who are you?”

“I have Partayn’s ear. Cyndere trusts me. They know the Seers are deceivers. I can win your pardon.” Every word was a step on a razor-thin wire. “I’ll tell them that you’re with me and that you’re ready to pay every debt. You’ll become Bel Amica’s champion again. They’ll listen to me.”

Ryllion nodded slowly. Then he pushed the tip of the spear between Cal-raven’s ribs. “You’re clever, King of Abascar, but you’re wrong. Cyndere might play along to bring me within reach. Then she’ll feed me to the Deathweed.” He laughed, and every bark struck Cal-raven like a slap. “She’ll kill me and enjoy it.”

“Cyndere forgives beastmen, Ryllion. Imagine what—”

“I murdered Deuneroi!” Ryllion drew back the spear and raised it over his head, then snapped it in two and cast it aside. Cal-raven was stunned. “I … I didn’t know.”

“Neither did Cyndere for a while. But she knows now. The hunters are out. What kingdom would ever give me better than prison?”

“Mine.” Cal-raven stood very still, astonished at his own answer. “New Abascar will be a safe place for you, Ryllion, if you’ll leave your old ways behind.”

Ryllion glared at him.

“You’re sleeping beside Auralia’s pool, Ryllion. You’ve heard her story. You’ve seen her colors. I know where they come from. I’m taking my people there. We need
all the help we can get. We’ll set up a refuge, safe from the beastmen, safe from Seers, safe from Deathweed.”

“I can’t risk it.”

“It’s your only chance to have a new life, Ryllion. If I had my Ring of Trust, I’d offer you that.” He glanced toward the candlelit statue. “Abascar’s a house of failures and crooks who want a second chance. I’ll see them all safely to a strong foundation or die trying. I know what it’s like to fail, Ryllion. To raise a house is to fail much and succeed on occasion. But that is how the best things are built.”

The despondent Bel Amican’s attention shifted. He looked toward the dim adjoining chamber, and Cal-raven could see light reflected in his eyes. Cal-raven turned and walked into the brightening room.

The room was small with a broad wall spread before him like a canvas. Through the ceiling window that the statue’s trigger had opened, the sky was pink with clouds. Light spilled over him like honey.

Approaching the far wall, he discerned a painted scene, and a sculpted man stretched out his arms between him and the painting.

Cal-raven stopped. His scar flared faintly, but it was not just in his left eye anymore. He touched his temples and blinked. The image flickered in both his eyes now. And it was brightening as the sunrise brightened. Even stranger, when he tilted his head, it remained in place, shining.