The Ale Boy's Feast (23 page)

Among the trees in the hilltop copse, atop a bold eruption of stone, Ryllion crouched like a predatory cat, straining to hear the words exchanged by the beastman and the Bel Amicans in the torchlit circle.

His senses were still sharp from the Seers’ influence, but the more time passed without Pretor Xa’s potions, the more he felt as if his body were a separate animal revolting against him. Spasms shook his limbs, and flares of pain trumpeted in his head.

“Jordam’s told them you’re alive,” he whispered to Cal-raven. And then he cringed to see and hear Emeriene’s overjoyed response. He could not repress a jealous snarl.

“Can you still see Lesyl?” Cal-raven sat behind the same stones. “She’s the one who sang with Partayn.”

“She’s weeping.” Ryllion looked down at the singer with the corn-silk hair. “She holds Partayn’s hand, and she weeps.”

He watched Cal-raven dig at the boulder with his fingers, breaking it apart as if this answer upset him. “Who else is there?” the stonemaster asked.

“Henryk. They’ll have made him captain now.” Ryllion turned and spat on the tree roots. “There’s Bauris.” He closed his mouth.
Poor old fool. It would have been a mercy upon you if you’d died when I threw you into the Tilianpurth well
. “They’ve brought two children.”

“Emeriene’s boys,” said Cal-raven softly.

“Oh.” Ryllion swallowed hard. In his mind Emeriene was Bel Amica’s most radiant flower, but he always ignored the children that Cesylle had given her.
How would things have been different
, he wondered,
if I’d won her?

Cal-raven kept digging into the boulder, with purpose now. “There’s sparkstone in this rock. We should collect what we can. Fire’s our best defense against Deathweed.”

“One thing I don’t understand,” said Ryllion.

“Only one?” asked Cal-raven.

Ryllion laughed at that. Laughed. When had he ever laughed at all? “Cal-raven, how does Jordam know you’re alive?”

“He must have stumbled onto our camp,” said Cal-raven. “If I’d been alone, he would have approached me. But you were there. That confused him. He must have followed us toward Bel Amica. And because we heard the song and discovered this … this procession, he did too. We’ve done him a favor.”

If the beastman heard my confessions to Cal-raven
, thought Ryllion,
then he heard me speak of how I led the attack on Barnashum. And he also heard Cal-raven forgive me
. Ryllion sighed. “What if Jordam tells them that I’m with you?”

“He probably doesn’t know who you are, or he would have said something. What are they saying now?”

“They say the Seers are hiding in their Keep. It’s surrounded.” Ryllion felt dizzy with disbelief.
Does this make me safer?
He laid his head against the stone. His arms trembled, and his heartbeat stumbled in its rhythm. “I am sick,” he hissed. “The Seers’ poisons …”

“I’ll get help for you,” said Cal-raven, “when we get back to Bel Amica.”

“Wait.” Ryllion lifted his chin. “Cyndere says your captain has taken a company north. To follow … your map.”

“My map?” Cal-raven stood up, daring to take a look down at the constellation of torches. “Tabor Jan’s gone north?”

Ryllion tuned his powerful ears to the company below. “They’re off to find … New Abascar.”

“Our plans are changing, Ryllion,” said Cal-raven. “Tonight, you and I, we go north.” He tapped two pebbles together and struck a spark. “To Fraughtenwood. With fire.”

hispers rattled the shutters of Cesylle’s sleep.

“He’s a wretch and a fool, but he’ll do anything we ask.”

For a moment Cesylle thought the voice to be a delusion after a night in the Mawrnash revelhouse. His head pulsed as if it might explode. Had he ordered a mug of Six Hard Slaps?

But then the shutters flew open. He remembered. This was the hard, cold floor of the Seers’ Keep. The voice belonged to Malefyk Xa. “He did kill Ryllion, after all.”

Cesylle willed himself to be still even as he tensed to find that the Seers were speaking of him. His lungs burned from breathing clouds of mawrn.

“Oh, let me sculpt his face and send him out unrecognized.” That hiss came from Tyriban Xa, she who concocted their potions. “Let’s disguise him. Send him after Thesera’s arrogant boy to set fire to his beard. Have him cast Cyndere from her tower. Without rulers, these streets will fill with blood.”

Cesylle parted his eyelids the merest slit, but he wasn’t wearing the mawrn-glass lenses. He was blind in this dark.

“Trouble insssside. Good.” That clipped accent, might it be Panner Xa, back from Mawrnash? Her voice had changed. She sounded younger, smaller.

A mosquito’s whine stung the air, and a strange energy prickled Cesylle’s skin. He opened an eye again and observed a luminous blue ghost drifting through the dark. The glow revealed the outlines of five Seers standing in a half circle around him.

He had never seen them all assembled—the towering, broad-shouldered Malefyk Xa, a secretive manipulator who was always moving about the Expanse; Panner Xa, the Mawrnash overseer; Tyriban Xa, potion-maker and poisoner; Palaskyn Xa, the counselor, a seducer of gullible masses; Skaribek Xa, the Moon Prophet, who made any event an occasion to speak of history and prophesy fearful tidings.

But Pretor Xa, the strategist, the Seer who had mentored Ryllion and coaxed Cesylle with promises and plots, was missing. Rumors claimed that Cyndere had killed the Seer when the conspiracy had been exposed, but he found that hard to believe.

The Seers wavered like puppets on unsteady strings, standing apart from one another without even the respect of a glance. This was a collaboration driven by necessity rather than respect.
Like Ryllion and me
, Cesylle thought.

“Bel Amica is a lesser concern now,” said Skaribek Xa, his voice tremulous, arms outstretched. “Abascar survivors are losing their fear of the Curse and moving toward the Forbidding Wall. We must make them afraid again.”

“If Cal-raven’s stragglers reach Inius Throan,” sang Palaskyn Xa in her low, seductive tone, “they may expose all we’ve sought to—”

Malefyk Xa struck the last word from her mouth, and her jaw came unhinged, sagging crookedly until she reached up and snapped it back into place.

“You whine like a dog that’s been beaten,” Malefyk sneered. “What was the purpose of our truce? That we might strive together and force the tyrant to surrender, to give us his secrets and spells, that he might have no advantage. We’ve hurt him. We’ve ripped open the seams of his beloved inventions. I mean to torment him further.”

“Surrender,” panted Panner Xa. “The spells.”

Lynna!
Cesylle remembered now. The pretty barmaid in Mawrnash he had tried to charm—here she was, looking several days’ dead. At this point his mind refused
to put the pieces together in fear of what would appear. Mawrnash drunks had raved madly about seeing Panner Xa cut off pieces of her own body and replace them with scraps torn from corpses. Such claims had only made him laugh.

But I am looking at Lynna’s face
, he thought.
It sags upon her skull, and the eyes loll loosely in their sockets. One of her hands has been severed at the wrist. And the voice … that is Panner Xa, or I never heard her speak a word
.

“Abascar won’t expose anything,” said Tyriban Xa. “They can’t enter Inius Throan. The Aerial guards the keys, the arrogant fools.”

“When Raak’s clan scattered from Inius Throan, we scared them into staying far away for a reason.” Malefyk Xa’s voice grew quieter. “Now Abascar’s back on the threshold. But while you fret as if they’ve beaten us at this game, I’ve moved some pieces on the game board. If they succeed in reaching Inius Throan, they’ll find the trap I’ve set for them, and they’ll die full of arrows.”

The blue phantom seemed to shudder, sparks flaring in its aura.

“Still worried about Ryllion?” Malefyk snarled at it. “You’re worthless.” He prodded Cesylle with his boot. “I enjoyed watching this one throw Ryllion to his death.”

The ghost jerked and twisted, its edges bristling with bolts of tiny lightning.

Malefyk hissed. “Don’t speak to me of unfinished plans. I captured the Imityri. Thirteen of the most powerful creatures in the Expanse. Each one worth a thousand Ryllions. And what happened? You lost control of Bel Amica and summoned me. While I was gone, a stonemaster released my prizes. Who have we forgotten? What wandering mage slipped through our fingers?”

“No one this side of the wall is strong enough,” sneered Skaribek.

“I will find him. Whoever he is. And I’ll enjoy tearing out his stitches. Otherwise, we need only wait. I’ve abandoned the Curse, so he’s starving. As he fails, the Deathweed will uproot itself into countless destroyers. And the viscorclaws will strip the Expanse to its bones. A few will escape the trouble, and it will all begin again. The scattering, the gathering into clans, the battles for power and authority, the deceptions.” Malefyk staggered suddenly, clutching at his chest and wheezing as if he might collapse.

“We’re tired,” said Tyriban. “We need strength. Put down these costumes, and come to the mawrn stone.”

“First …”—Malefyk’s cold hand lifted Cesylle and carried him away—“I’m throwing this one out to the Bel Amicans.”

Cesylle flailed in Malefyk’s cold, strangling grasp as the Seer left the blue glow behind. He kicked and struck, but the Seer did not release him.

The Keep’s outer wall opened, a tear in an invisible seam. A fog-thick, moon-silver street appeared beyond.

An arrow pierced the Seer’s sleeve. Cesylle squeaked, realizing that he was about to be cast into view of the archers.

Malefyk Xa paused, then stepped back inside. The open seam sealed again. “You want to live, don’t you?”

Cesylle’s “Yes!” emerged as a gasp.

“Very well.” The Seer cast him down, then dragged him by his heel along the smooth, cold floor.

Cesylle sucked in air, uncertain whether the bursts of color were lights in his head or flares of Malefyk Xa’s temper. The Seer’s stride was uneven, and at times he leaned as if losing his balance, his shoulder brushing the wall.

They’re weakening
, Cesylle thought.
They’re making mistakes
.

As the Seer turned a corner, Cesylle’s elbow struck something in the path. His hand came down on the mawrn-glass spectacles, and he quickly pressed them against his eyes. He took in the scene cast in dark, metallic outlines.

Malefyk moved between stacks of metal cages, some cluttered with bones of what they’d once confined, others troubled by restless spasms of scales, flesh, and fur. Pumps forced a noxious concoction through tubes into whatever cowered within, while other substances drained into coiling stems, extracted into bottles—sera that were clear, amber, and blood red. Unfamiliar creatures lunged at their cage bars as the Seer passed.

Arriving at the largest cage, Malefyk fumbled with a ring of strange keys to unlock it. Then he walked directly to a suspended ring of wood. Carcasses hung from the ring like hunting trophies, large and motionless, strung in a circle above a
wooden table cluttered with metal instruments, bottles, and bowls of dark soups.

Malefyk raised Cesylle up by his feet and locked them into ice-cold shackles so that he hung down with arms reaching to the floor. “You can wait here.” Malefyk staggered, panting for breath. “I’ll come back in a while and give you something to make you more comfortable. As you get used to your new … your new neighbors.”

These were not animal carcasses. They were men distorted by strange surgeries and mutations. They swung from their feet, arms dangling as if in hopes of grasping the ground. Their mouths gaped, faces frozen in ecstasy or anguish. Some had limbs deformed. Others were bloated as if dragged from a lake after drowning. Still others were emaciated, like gigantic geese picked down to their bones.

Test subjects
, he thought.
Victims of the Seers’ investigations
. He and Ryllion had known that the Seers tested their sera on beastmen, but these were not Cent Regus creatures. He recognized one of the bodies. Bahrage. The Seers had preserved his childlike body, even as they hastened the development of his mind, making him a half-mad, hypnotic manipulator until his charade collapsed and he vanished. The Seers had clearly lost patience with Bahrage, just as they had abandoned Ryllion.
Just as they are abandoning me
.

As Malefyk lurched out of the laboratory, he stumbled, fell, and then staggered again to his feet. He seemed desperate for some kind of medicine as he careened down the corridor, the cage door clanging shut behind him.

Cesylle coughed and spat, convulsing. Hatred took hold and shook him. He had felt hurt, scared, betrayed. But this power filling his frame—this was rage.

He did not understand what he had heard. Costumes? Watchtower? Who was “the tyrant”? Why had they referred to the Curse as “him”? And what were the “viscorclaws”?

But he did understand that he had wasted every moment of service to them, both here and in Mawrnash. They had never intended to help him as they’d claimed. They had never cared about Bel Amica. They were playing an elaborate game.