The Shepherd of Weeds (32 page)

hild,” came Lofft’s voice.

Ivy was having problems seeing properly, the closer she flew to the gaping hole in her father’s spire high above the city of Rocamadour. The small purple-black spots in her vision were now streaks of pent-up lightning, ravaging her vision with their flashes and voids. Her heart beat with a tinny echo in her ears, and she felt both drawn and repelled by the awful entrance. She was plagued by the last image of Rowan, falling helplessly to the earth.

“We must soon part,” the albatross announced.

Ivy nodded. She was staring desperately at the swiftly approaching diamond window—no light to guide her within.

Would Axle be there? she wondered. Or would she have to fulfill the Good King’s command on her own? The small
stones felt their heaviest now, dragging her weight to one side, and she prayed Gudgeon’s stitching would hold.

“I will pull up as best I can,” Lofft advised. “You must be ready, for there is no perch for me.”

“All right, Lofft.” Ivy’s mouth felt as dry as dust. “And thank you.”

They made a first, unsatisfactory pass, and Ivy’s nervousness grew. The window tapered off at a cruel angle at the diamond’s lower lip, and there was very little room for error.

The second pass was no better, and Lofft’s calming tones did little to bolster her courage.

But on the third approach, she steadied her nerves, and, timing it just right, Ivy pushed off the seabird, leaping with all of her might into the ashen air. Something, though, had caused her to miscalculate—and she realized only too late that the heavy stones in her pocket had upset her delicate balance. Her body hit the smooth black wall with a smack—the crook of her arm just managing to grasp the open window.

There she dangled.

Until two things happened.

First, a sharp, warning cry from Lofft filled all the air, reverberating through the city’s twisting paths and recessed doors, and then a small knot of frantic black feathers was suddenly beside her.

And second, her hand—already tired from supporting her weight—felt something truly awful. Little leathery fingers prying at her own, pinching, stabbing with sharp nails, poking at her.

Ivy’s strength began to fail.

vy’s nails scraped against the ledge, grasping at any groove, any chink, but her nails were too weak and began to give way. The small hands of the ink monkeys assisted in her predicament—prying up her fingers and wrenching them in their sockets—anything to dislodge the girl. Her feet scrabbled for a foothold—but there was nothing. The spire was as smooth as glass.

And then, there he was at her ear, gently urging her, the knot of black feathers. Her beloved crow, Shoo. He had answered Lofft’s cry and had come to her rescue.

Shoo was there to bolster her courage.

But it was scourge bracken that invited her inside.

All at once, she felt a surge of strength, an inscrutable potency in her limbs, and her hand found the edge of the
window where there was a slight lip before the void. Flashes of deep purple lightning glazed her eyes, and she felt herself suddenly fearless. Her body performed with great ease when asked to pull itself up, through the window, and when she arrived, she took great pleasure in kicking several of the oily monkeys that awaited her. Their limp bodies broke upon the etched stone.

Her eyes adjusted to the terrible chamber instantly, but everything was tinged with inky purple. She sought out Axle’s cage—and found it directly above her. But a deeply unhandsome, thick-spittled voice arose from the darkest corner of the room, and in its wake the ink monkeys fell upon each other for shelter.

“Where have you been, my child? I’ve been
so
worried.”

She looked for movement in Axle’s cage—there was none—and she debated rushing to open it, but stopped short at the hungry glare of the monkeys.

“I had a little problem getting by the welcoming committee, Father,” Ivy explained.

“Hmm. I’ll be sure and punish them. Severely.”

Vidal Verjouce stood from behind the stone desk. A clatter of scorpions fell from his cloak, skittering around confusedly on the tabletop. He was a ravaged specter of poison and deceit.

“You’re looking well, Father,” Ivy said. “You must tell me your secret.”

She peeked again at Axle. She could barely see the trestleman,
his body was so depleted and her eyesight was so infected with dizzying flashes and pops. The cage appeared to be filled with giant, menacing shadows—ghostlike—which hovered over him in a vaporous halo. The scourge bracken within her was awakening, demanding and insistent.

Axle
. She willed a thought at the trestleman.
Courage!

She reached for her pocket, sharply pulling on a knotted thread Gudgeon had left dangling. The protective stitching fell away. She inched a step forward toward the blind Director.

“My secret?” Verjouce now turned his horrid face to her, his blank sockets and ink-splattered skin an apparition of the grave. He produced a demoralizing smile. “Why tell you, when I can
show
you?”

A crown of shadowy violets encircled Ivy’s head, appearing from nowhere. As she felt their delicate petals in surprise, fireflies convened around her suddenly. They hovered about her crown, bobbing, weaving, echoing the shape with flickering pulses of purple light—as they had when she was first poisoned by Snaith, her dark power made visible.

The monkeys had recovered from their fright and were surging upon her, pinching her black-and-blue. They prodded her with their pointed horn buds and pulled at her hems. One tiny arm snaked its way up her apron—grasping at the heavy secret pocket. A horrible fascination grew within her as she gazed upon them. Each monkey was separate and distinct from the rest, a haphazard collection of defects. Horns
emerged from unreliable places. No spiked tail was alike; their eyes shifted about their greasy faces.

“Plants are returning to their true natures, assuming their mantles of power—with scourge bracken in its rightful place at the top. Apotheopaths are mere children playing with dried, suspect plants—lifeless, unpotent ones,” Verjouce said.

As Vidal Verjouce spoke, a procession of dark monkeys formed a jagged row, parading toward her in a display of pomp. Scorpions surged at her across the dull stone. Ivy felt her crown grow, the fireflies pulsing to the spectacle unfolding before her. A chilling mingling of ink monkeys and fireflies began.

“Your gift—your enviable gift of dominion over the plant world. Kingmaker has chosen you; it senses your power. It wants you, Ivy. Together, there is nothing we cannot attain.”

As Vidal Verjouce droned his dreams of domination, the ink monkeys and fireflies continued their peculiar display.

“It was destined,” Verjouce continued. “You cannot refuse me.”

Before her, the monkeys were sprouting ridiculously small insect wings that glowed with a purple vengeance. Their distended bellies took on a lamplike display, illuminating the room in flashes and beats. Creeping vines from a pair of funerary urns strained in her direction, taut as rope, reaching, grabbing at her.

But while Ivy was captivated with this grotesque display, a
small contingent of monkeys had gathered in a dark corner. Something was trapped there.

“Ivy—” Axle’s hoarse whisper carried across the room.

The monkeys had captured the crow, chittering and squealing at their new toy.

he chamber in the sky held many secrets within its walls, and Axlerod D. Roux was privy to most of them. It was here that the fires that destroyed the vast and magical Library of the Good King were devised. And it was here that the Director chose to abandon his sense of sight—to put out his own eyes—and devote himself more fully to that of taste.

Had Axle examined the stones now in Ivy’s possession, he most certainly would have identified them correctly, not as a fruit pit or stone, as Ivy had concluded, but as what they actually were: the remnants of Verjouce’s self-mutilation. Axle would have known the depths of the burden the Good King had passed on to Ivy. Axle would have recognized the stones—not as stones—but as the Director’s sightless eyes. But Axle was unavailable for comment.

The King’s stones—once Verjouce’s eyes—were in Ivy’s hands now, small and withered, gruesome and heavy. They were also a distraction, a nameless one, for the man who had forsaken them.

As Ivy removed them from their secret pocket, the Director froze—his head cocked, as if listening to the sound of distant drums.

“Ivy …,”
Axle warned again with the last ounce of his strength. This time the appalling commingling of the monkeys and Ivy’s fireflies ended abruptly, the dreadful spell broken. In its wake, Ivy was left with a deep void, a stab of anger as scourge bracken still called to her, muted, muffled—as if from beneath the grave.

Blinking, Ivy looked around—and with horror, she saw Shoo.

He was being roughly held down by one ink monkey while another attempted to pluck the feathers from his tail. The crow’s eyes were wide, and his beak was open and panting, calling out to her silently. More monkeys piled upon him, jeering and taunting, reaching their leathery hands in for a turn.

Shoo desperately needed her—but this was her one chance. Her father was lost in a moment of confusion, as he sensed some
presence
—something long ago forgotten.

Ivy bounded across the room in a wave of purple trails and pounced upon the stone table to face her father. Her hands
ached from the heavy stones; she could no longer feel her heart pounding in her chest. The haunted, ink-stained face of Vidal Verjouce loomed before her, the face of her ruined father.

With horror, she saw oily scorpions were nesting in the Director’s hair. They arched their deadly stingers at her, a crackling electric charge flowing between them. But her fireflies tightened into a savage crown upon her head, and jagged purple tendrils of power coursed from them, scattering the scorpions—their legs clicking awfully against the table as they fled.

“You overestimate me, Father,” she whispered into the Director’s ear as she shoved his heavy eyes into the scarred sockets. “I never learned how to share.”