The Ale Boy's Feast (24 page)

If they find me inside these walls
, he thought,
they’ll kill me. It’s time to learn what I can learn. Break what I’ve built
.

The Seers had favored Cesylle for his ability to design structures and machinery. He had invented the mawrn drills, which helped them draw the crystals from where they were embedded in the earth.

To please him, they had set their arts to work, giving him a tongue as smooth as a hypnotist’s, and with that musical voice, he had comforted Emeriene. Someone had broken her heart. She wanted security, and he promised her a future. When he won her, Cesylle’s reputation improved throughout Bel Amica. Entering a room with this beauty on his arm, he heard his name whispered in the crowd, and he saw heads turn. He liked being recognized.

Even so, he had wondered what his efforts were earning for the Seers. He had overseen construction of so many drills, but only a few were used to mine the white stone at Mawrnash. Most of them were taken away for purposes he’d never wanted to know, though a warning bell rang to tell him that the Seers had dangerous secrets.

Now, after returning to Bel Amica, he had pieced together parts of the puzzle.

Jordam, the beastman that Cyndere was said to have tamed, had helped to rescue some Cent Regus slaves and bring them back to Bel Amica. They came with stories of blood and horror for many others who had died during the escape. But they also spoke of what they had suffered in their enslavement—of hard labor deep beneath the ground, pushing powerful drills to break open passages for the Deathweed.

He had scoffed at the claims, calling them preposterous. What else could he do? To have accepted such allegations would have marked him as an enabler of unimaginable cruelty.

With the spectacles on, he could see the stark, sharp lines of the furniture and the Seers’ tools glinting, as if all was made of steel and the enamel of clean teeth.

One of the hanging bodies seemed old in the hands and rib-jutting chest, but the face was a young man’s. His eyes were open, and Cesylle had the strange sensation that the body was actually looking at him.

Cesylle bent at the waist, trying to pull himself up to wrestle with the shackles.

“It’s no use,” said a voice. “Best if you don’t hurt yourself. It only makes the wait more miserable.”

Cesylle clutched at his thundering heart. “You’re … you’re alive?”

“I would not call it that.” The man’s voice—it was really just a rush of air through a swollen throat—scratched the silence.

“How long? How long have they had you like this?”

“Seventy, eighty years,” the man said. “They’ll keep me alive forever.”

“Why? Why would they do that to you?”

“I asked them to.” Yellow tears leaked from the captive’s eyes and ran down his forehead.

“You volunteered for this?”

“They asked me if I wanted to live or die. My answer amused them. Here I am.”

Cesylle examined the man’s feet, which were shackled in the same metal as his own, but those ankles had grown and swollen around their bonds. “Can we get you down?”

“Only Northchildren can free me now. I see them sometimes.”

“The Seers … they let you hang for eighty years?”

“They turn me around sometimes, to hang from the arms, or they strap me to a table. They’ve tested me so many ways. I’ve tried so hard … to die. But they keep giving me new parts.”

“How do you stay alive?”

“They feed me something that feels good. It fools me into thinking that I still want this. But then it fades. And I’m still here. Alive, I suppose. But for no good purpose.” He began to tremble with some terrible emotion. His hands twitched, and his eyes swiveled to the other bodies as if suddenly remembering the extent of the Seers’ tortures. “Bring,” he breathed, “the whole thing down.”

Cesylle reached up again, but the shackles at his ankles burned his fingertips with cold. He collapsed, swinging and sobbing.

“Fire.” The captive’s body twitched in a spasm as if his bones were trying to let go of one another. “Please. Burn it. Bring the whole thing down.”

Then a sudden motion made Cesylle shriek. One of the hanging bodies dropped as if its ankles had broken. A body crumpled to the floor. This one was
most certainly dead—motionless, spindly, gnarled, one-eyed, and, unlike the others, still clothed.

But then it moved. It stood, flicking a sparkstick to see in the dark. It lunged at Cesylle.

Cesylle tried to scream again, but a bony hand covered his mouth. He struck at his attacker, but the other hand caught his wrist firmly. “Shush!” said the one-eyed assailant. “You’re safe. I’m just hidin’ here. Been locked inside for days. But look!” He knelt in the spot where Malefyk Xa had stumbled on his way out of the cage. “The monsters made a mistake. They finally made a mistake.”

The old man introduced himself as Warney from Abascar. “The Seers took things from me,” he grumbled, fumbling with the long metal key that Malefyk had dropped. “My eye, for one. And the cap Auralia made for me. Here, don’t move.” He seized Cesylle as if he were a tree and proceeded to climb him.

Cesylle groaned as Warney’s bare feet clawed at his chest, and then he heard a sharp
clak!

Now they were both sprawled on the floor. The light from the sparkstick went out.

“You,” Cesylle gasped. “You were with that storyteller in the Mawrnash revelhouse.”

“That storyteller was Krawg,” said Warney with a boastful grin. “The Midnight Swindler. Now, hush, we don’t have much time. You seen my belongings? The things they stole?” Warney began to feel his way around on the floor. “They should never’ve stolen from me. I’m the One-Eyed Bandit. I can outsteal anybody, ’cept maybe Krawg.”

Cesylle gave Warney one of the two mawrn-glass lenses so he could see. At once Warney crawled to the laboratory table and pulled out a heavy object like an arrowcaster—a wooden crossbeam equipped with a spring-triggered spool of wire—from beneath it.

“That’s a fisher-spring,” said Cesylle in disbelief. “Going fishing?”

Warney smiled, seeming afraid and exhilarated at the same time. “Not even close. I brought that in here for a reason, and I’m glad the Seers never found it.”

“You came in here on your own?” Cesylle scowled. “If that’s your weapon, well, I hate to tell you this, but you’ll never get out of here alive.”

“Are the Seers in that room with the big bright crystal?”

Cesylle nodded.

“Good. Last time they went in there, they were busy for a long time. If we don’t get out now, we won’t get out at all.”

As they fled the chamber, Cesylle choked, too distraught to look back again at that old, suspended prisoner, for it was clear that no one could help him. But as he followed Warney, a whisper followed him. “Bring the whole thing down. Bring the whole thing down.”

They made their way back through the twists and turns until Warney paused, panting, and seized Cesylle’s bandaged arm. As Cesylle whimpered, Warney pointed toward the silver slit of an open doorway.

“That’s the mawrn-crystal room. We can’t go in there.”

“It’s the only place I haven’t looked for my eye,” Warney growled.

The chill was so fierce that they stopped and leaned into each other for a moment. Cesylle had a sudden, almost irresistible itch to flee. In the room beyond, the crystal that Malefyk Xa had shown him had turned to a pillar of cold blue fire, sparkling and hissing. As it did, a strange and dissonant chorus of voices moaned inside the light.

The Seers … they’re in the fire
.

Warney seized Cesylle’s chin and turned it. “Look.”

In the strobing light, he saw again that strange, branching, metal tree—dark and spiked as an iron coatrack—in the middle of the room. And he stood paralyzed as his mind slowly pieced more impossible details together.

Caught on its hooks by the backs of their necks, the Seers’ bodies hung suspended. Their faces were downturned, their eyes white and sightless. Their long arms were limp; the fingers of their mismatched hands were lifeless, like long-dead spiders dangling in dusty webs.

“Are they … dead?”

“No,” said Cesylle. “They’re empty.”

This suspended confounding questions in the room. They listened to the crackle and spark from the adjoining chamber, then glanced back toward the crystal’s silvery spray.

“So that’s the nasty secret,” Warney whispered. “Panner Xa’s hand. I’d seen it before. Seen it chopped right off a drunken miner at Mawrnash.”

“Stolen bodies.” Cesylle’s resistance collapsed. The rumors in the revelhouse had been true. “When pieces wear out, they steal replacements.”

“That’s why they hate sunlight. I heard the tallest one say so. Gotta keep them costumes cold when they’re not bein’ worn. Else they’ll rot.” Warney glanced toward the Seers’ crystal chamber. “Don’t want to know what that shiny rock is for. Nothin’ good, I expect.”

“Don’t ask me to explain it, but I think they’re getting stronger. Mawrn … it’s like Essence to beastmen.”

“If we go in there, can they see us? I mean, without their costumes?”

“The crystal shows them what any mawrn can see. Anywhere. They’re probably scanning the whole Expanse. We should get out while they’re distracted. And fast.”

“Only one way out,” muttered Warney. He pointed to the jittery light.

“That’s how you got in? Through the moon window? No wonder you’re famous.” Cesylle backed away from the bright door. “We’ll never make it.”

“You wanna stay here forever like that poor old upside-down fellow? Look, they can’t touch us when they’re out of their bodies, right?”

Cesylle thought of the blue ghost that had hovered in Pretor Xa’s empty place. “I don’t think so. But they won’t be out of them for long.”

Warney reached into his pocket and pulled out another sparkstick. Then his eye went wide as a shrillow’s egg. “Oh,” he said, amazed by whatever thought was congealing in his head.

The Seers’ deathly costumes burned quickly.

And as they crumbled into ash and ember, a cloud of black smoke filled the room.

Warney and Cesylle watched, cowering just outside the entrance to the Seers’
crystal chamber. And it was all they could do to stay still as the blaze of the crystal’s fire in the next room faded, and six streams of shining, shapeless mist came writhing into the antechamber.

The phantoms circled the smoldering iron tower, seeking some way into the burning bodies. Warney thought he could feel the vibrations of their voiceless screams, and he shuddered.

One of the burning costumes lurched out from the cluster. As it did, its blackening feet gave way, and it fell to its knees, which exploded, and then the whole body toppled and smashed against the floor.

From its shattering hand, a small orb came rolling across the floor, stopping right at Warney’s toe.

“Imagine that,” he said, snatching the sphere from the floor and rubbing it against his cloak. He shoved the eye back into its socket, then he seized Cesylle and dragged him toward the crystal chamber.

In spite of the inferno behind him, Cesylle felt a sudden thrill. He and Warney had dealt the Seers a serious blow and discovered their weakness at the same time. A strange giddiness filled him. These manipulators were not so invincible after all. He heard himself laugh out loud, a cackle of half-mad zeal. But his delight faded when he looked up and saw the fanged window closing around a star-shaped patch of moonlit sky.

“No problem,” said Warney, fixing Cesylle with a crazed look, his glass eye staring upward. “I’m the One-Eyed Bandit.” And with that, he raised the fisher-spring and fired it at the skylight.

The forked spear flew through the closing mouth and caught.

Warney flicked the recoil trigger and locked an arm around Cesylle’s waist.

“Wait,” said Cesylle. He broke free and dove to the crystal. He seized the marrowwood box that rested on the small golden pillar beneath the floating mawrn stone and then hurried back to take hold of Warney’s leg as the old man ascended on the retracting line.

They clambered out between the closing teeth just as the fog-shrouded rooftop sealed and the fisher-spring mechanism splintered, cut in half.

Together they slid down the Keep’s sloped, glassy roof as if it were ice melting beneath them and skidded to the edge, grateful for the mist that concealed them from archers in the surrounding towers. The Keep shuddered beneath them.

A bright light lit up the sky, and they looked back up the incline.

Five blue ghosts rose from the rooftop into the sky, pulsing strangely, gracefully, like jellyfish ascending through dark water. The translucent umbrellas of crystal dust made sounds like dissonant bells, glassy ribbons trailing and stroking the air.

In Cesylle’s mind the chant continued.

Bring the whole thing down. Bring the whole thing down
.

Sensing that the other Seers were gone, Pretor Xa dragged his frail ghost up from the floor and drifted back through the corridors of the Keep.

He felt something like an ache, something like cold—there were no words for what he felt, save those related to a body. How he hated bodies.

They reminded him of his own, cast off so many ages ago. He had not chosen that form, and thus he despised it. Some great mystery had forced him into being a part of a larger design. But Pretor Xa did not want to be part of anything. He wanted to consume and own all. To be sovereign. And yet he could make nothing except by rearranging, reassembling what that mystery provided.