The Ale Boy's Feast (54 page)

There, he had staggered down a rugged slope until the strength went out of him. Faint with loss of blood, he lay on the ledge and looked down at his sword, saw his reflection in the blade. His straight red hair. His long brown cloak. His scarred face and ragged patches of beard.

They’ll say that I failed
.

Colliding oceans of clouds engulfed the country that spilled down from the base of these mountains, the echelons of soaring birds before him, and the heavens above. It rolled like waves of foam about his feet. When the seams parted, he glimpsed still more clouds rising in pillars, curling outward.

They came from the light upon the snowy peaks around and behind him. They billowed from a lake that spread as far to the east and west as he could see. And they came from something—some tremendous, silent presence suspended in the air.

In the center of his view, a silver curtain spread, wide as House Abascar’s walls. It spilled from the sky’s realm of cloud like linen from a loom, crashing into the great, shining lake before him. Water sprayed up as mist, rushed at the shore in
surges, foamed up in a wall of froth upon a radiant beach of bright gemstones.

“No one in Abascar, Bel Amica, Jenta, Cent Regus … or even House Auralia should be the guardian or gatekeeper for this.”

Shadows slipped through the clouds above him, the angular outlines of creatures in graceful flight.

Scharr ben Fray would have kept this world to himself. He would have told me only what he thought would keep House Auralia in order
.

“No.”

Cal-raven struggled to his feet, and the wind enveloped him, whipping his brown cloak back over his shoulders. He took the ring of keys in his left hand and cast them from the ledge. They fell so far into the crevasses below that he never heard them strike a stone.

But he did hear, as in his dream, footsteps in pursuit. He gripped his sword hilt firmly and turned.

Old Soro, his kites trailing behind him, was skidding down the rocky incline above him, dragging the sails down with mighty tugs and murmuring to himself as though this were a very busy day.

“You! How did you … Why are you here?”

The old man pointed to the sword. “Do you intend to use that?” Cal-raven quietly sheathed it. “Will you let me carry you?”

Cal-raven turned his back and spread his white-sleeved arms as if to embrace the clouds.

Soro cast something into the bushes, and he heard a sound like sails catching the wind. Half turning, Cal-raven saw Soro’s cape discarded, and the old man seized and lifted him.

The hunch beneath Soro’s cape had unfolded, spreading into wings.

Soro soared into the clouds, his wings guiding them with greater grace than any kite.

“What are you?” Cal-raven shouted. “And why do you use kites if you have … if you have these?”

“Do you think wings can last in a world full of arrows?” he answered. “You think they’d let me do my work?”

They moved through clouds, where landscapes, forests, fields, and cities suggested themselves and then vanished as if drawn in the sky with chalk and erased.

Cal-raven blinked as water beaded on his eyelashes. They tilted into a sweeping dive, the world below greening into a field of softly rippling grasses. Not far away, gemstones glittered on the pebbled shoreline.

As they drifted to a stop and Soro released him, Cal-raven realized that he felt stronger, and the pain from his wound was muffled.
Perhaps I can go back. If only I can find her
.

Then he caught sight of two figures standing on the grass ahead of him, looking down toward the shore. A giant and a girl. The girl held a glass trumpet.

Jordam. And … Auralia
.

Down at the water’s edge lay a body. As he stared, a bundle of tumbling fog moved away, revealing the very creature that had caught him up in its claws on Barnashum’s threshold. Unfolding layer upon layer of wings, the Keeper cupped its tremendous claws, grasping a mysterious blue cloud that trailed long and jagged strings.

“What’s it carrying?”

Old Soro did not answer, but the wind snatched tears from his eyes. Then he spread his wings again, and lifting swiftly, he wheeled away into the clouds. As Soro vanished, the creature rose up on its hind legs, presenting its treasure of translucent blue and barking a sonorous sound like a salute to him.

Using his sword as a crutch, Cal-raven forced himself along through the grass, groaning at the ache in his chest and the burning down his left arm.

He called out Auralia’s name, and she turned. She seized Jordam’s hand tightly, as if she were afraid. Jordam said something to her, putting his other hand against his heart. Then he let her go.

She walked toward Cal-raven. And then she ran.

He stumbled, fell to his knees in a patch of tiny blue flowers that bloomed at the ends of coiling green stems. He took her hands, which were wet, and he knew that she had been wiping away tears.

He recognized the silverbrown hair, the inquisitive eyes, her small bare feet.

“You have to go back,” she said. “This is the place where the Keepers bear us away.”

“Auralia. You have to come back with me. Please. I’ve searched for you since I saw you in Abascar’s dungeon. I searched for you even before that. Forgive me. You were right in front of me, and I didn’t see you.”

“You only thought you were searching for me,” she said, and she pulled her hands away. “But I’m not what you need. You’re following the colors I revealed to you.”

The creature behind her bent its knees and then lifted skyward, pebbles falling from its feet. Auralia looked over her shoulder, and Cal-raven’s gaze followed hers, up the span of the waterfall’s curtain into the cloud world.

“Someone’s going home,” she said.

Canopies of soft light pulsed in the heavens—like lakes of shimmering glass beneath a veiled, suspended continent.

A flying mountain
.

“Do you see it?” Auralia whispered.

The magnificent Imityri, wings outspread, were drifting in a slow circuit along the ragged edges of that sky-bound country. From the fringe of the hovering mountain, this waterfall poured, and others like it, silver threads of melt from the mountain’s snowy gown—waters infused with all the colors of the world, purged of all corruption by invisible engines of wind.

“I see it,” he said. “I’ve seen it before. Through a glass, from far away. It scarred me. And then again, in a painting. A painting I thought was unfinished. But I was wrong.”

“And now you know,” she said, “that there is no curse beyond the wall, save those we’ve made for ourselves. Take that to your people. Here, curses lose their power in the mystery, and all is reconciled.”

Cal-raven looked past her to the pebbled shore, to the body lying before the creature’s footprints. “Is that … was that Ryllion?”

“I’m not sure,” said Auralia. “I thought so. But when they unstitched him, he seemed to be someone else.” She clutched at her side as if the memory pained her.

Jordam knelt, touching the edge of the creature’s footprint as it slowly pooled with shore water.

“Is Jordam … Will the Keeper come for him too?”

Auralia did not reply.

Jordam stared into the sky toward the mountain, and clouds roiled around him as if undecided. Out of the white heavens, one of the Imityri descended on its great array of wings, and lightning flared from its wing tips. From the fog rolling in from the water, a crowd of shining figures closed in around the beastman, who struggled to rise.

“No,” she whispered. “Please. Jordam’s story has only begun. It’s not time.”

“O-raya?” Jordam roared, eyes widening in surprise. Lurching forward, he fell, and his arms pounded the pebbles as if he were caught by an invisible tide. Then he shouted out a question, but over the falls’ roar, his words were lost.

“We must help him.”

“No, Cal-raven. The Northchildren are kind, and the Keepers can be trusted here.”

“The Keepers.”

“It’s a good name. There are others. Out there, when they’ve been tending to mystery’s design in the dark, they sometimes get tired and confused. Poisoned. Trapped. Impatient with each other. Keeps them from their work. But they remember more than we do. And the closer they come to the mountain, the clearer it all becomes.”

“Their work?”

“Revelation.”

Jordam was still, sprawled upon the shore, and the Northchildren moved in closer, reaching out. Their hands moved over his body busily, as if testing every seam and thread.

“What’s happening?”

“Beyond the Wall’s protection, Northchildren wear gowns to shield them from the Seers’ corruption. Their deaths are behind them, the poisons drawn out.” She sighed. “If mystery commands, they’ll unstitch Jordam and bear him away.” She shuddered and clutched again at her side. “As they did for me once. Someday you’ll know. Sometimes the sky calls.”

“If mystery commands.”

“Yes.”

This Keeper, settling in the waterfall’s crash, spoke in a voice like an orchestra of horns, and the report echoed from the mountainsides. Then it lowered its great head to the shore, resting the bristles of its long gator smile against the pebbles, shells, and whiteshards that appeared to be bones. Its ears twitched and lay back as it slipped armored fingers beneath Jordam’s form and lifted him up.

“They didn’t unstitch him,” Auralia gasped.

The Keeper raised its head, raised its forelegs, spread its tremendous wings, and was carried quietly from the ground as if by invisible strings. It hovered a moment, turning slowly as if to take in the view for sheer pleasure. When it saw Auralia, a burst of fire escaped its nostrils and then—there was no mistaking it—it purred a long and rolling song of delight. Driving back its wings, it shot up through the air, sleek and swift, carrying Jordam away, back over the Forbidding Wall.

“What curse?” Cal-raven found himself saying. The lake shone like fire, and exotic birds drifted on its surface like a fleet of ships. Enormous fish leapt from its depths in perfect arcs like dancers. And the lights blazing at the base of the mountain were fierce, burning mist from the lake.

“The lake does not flood its banks, but look at all the waterfalls.”

“It drains into many rivers. Underground. To go out across the world.” Auralia’s breathing came short and quick as if she were forcing herself to bear some secret wound.

“No one who stands here goes back alive, do they?” Cal-raven whispered as Auralia gripped his arm.

“Some do,” she said. “But they’re changed. And likely to be tolerated as fools.”

Cal-raven looked at Ryllion’s shell.

“Don’t be afraid. It’s only the outermost, which grows from the thread of mystery within. That thread is ever more important than just the mind or heart, which are so easily poisoned. But the heart, the mind, the senses—any beauty they feel and remember is given to that innermost thread, which the Northchildren withdraw and the Keepers bear away for restoration.”

“How do you know all of this?”

“I’m remembering. Here. In the mist.”

“Auralia.” He was dizzy, his strength bleeding out. “You’re not leaving me. Not a second time.”

She looked up. “The first time I went out, I refused the Northchildren’s gown of protection. I wanted to do more than witness. I wanted to search for my brother, to remind him how to play. So I set aside my memories and put on the shell of a child. Children can play without the older folks thinking them mad. To play there, with deep memories of the mountain’s colors, I thought I might recover some of those colors from the Seers’ corruption and tease them to light in the dark. Maybe my brother would notice. And what better place to reveal the colors than a house that has lost them?” Auralia tried to laugh, but it became a choke. As Cal-raven kept her from falling, she whispered, “But when you cross over, you give up your memories. And I guess I never found him. Maybe the colors will.”

“So why did you come back again?”

She smiled. “It was nothing quite so selfless, I’m afraid.”

He held her, felt her warmth against him. “You were born this time for me. And we’ve found each other. We have everything we need, Auralia. To build your house.”

“It’s not for us to decide.”

He looked back. Billowing clouds flung themselves against the harsh stone of the northern mountainsides. “Will it play out like this forever?”

“The old song says that when the story is told, all broken threads will be reconciled. The runaways will see what they have wrought—that a hand cannot be a body, and if it tries, it dies. They will remember the joys of good work, of making
things with mystery. The Northchildren will go out through time, out through the worlds. We sit in circles and tell stories of all we behold. And so we exalt the mystery. For this was ever the end of all work—to witness, remember, and illuminate.” Salt glistened on her cheeks.

A sudden clamor of birds drew their attention to a small, struggling form far away on the shore.

Cal-raven staggered toward the edge of the blazing lake’s frothy tide. Auralia stayed behind, and with fear in her voice, she shouted, “Oh please! Oh no!”

A boy, his clothes in rags, flesh burnt to crimson and cracked in intricate lines, was trying to crawl away from the lake and back toward the mountains.

Cal-raven shouted in dismay. He raised his sword and, in a blaze of searing stonemastery, drove its blade deep into one of the boulders on the shore. The sword stood, hilt gleaming in the mountain’s light, anchored in the stone and irremovable.

But Auralia ran past him and got to the ale boy first. Setting down the trumpet, she caught him up in an embrace, seeking to calm him, urging him to stop his striving.

But the boy, his eyes wide and unseeing, fought her. “Let me go,” he said in a voice as forceful as a fallen soldier’s. “Get away, Northchild. There’s more to do. It’s not right yet. I can make it better. It’s what I’m for.”

“Shhh,” she said quietly. “I am not a Northchild. Not yet. Dear boy, the more you strive, the more broken threads you’ll find. It is beyond our capacity to reconcile them all.”

Clouds cast cool blankets over them that dissolved in swirls of vapor.