The Whirlwind in the Thorn Tree (48 page)

I put my hands in my pockets. “It’s...okay now, I guess. I’ve had a little time to cope.”

“I wasn’t talking to you.”

I blinked in confusion. “What do you mean?”

He put his finger to his lips and shushed me. “I must ask you to lower your voices. I’m listening to the vibrations. This is very important. And by important, I mean breakfast.”

Noreen shrugged and stood up.

“What did you mean, Seymour?” I asked. “Whose loss?”

“Ssshhhh,” said the mad gunslinger, pressing his palms against the stone and flexing his fingers in frustration. I could see shiny pink scars crisscrossing the backs of his hands. Another one cut a shallow divot across the back of his crown where his hairline had receded. Bullet-cuts. Near-misses.

I realized he had no fingernails. At some point, they’d been pried out, and they’d never grown back.

“Let us proceed,” said Walter. “We are at odds with this one.”

A giant ebony door stood open in the dark recesses of the deep portico. Passing through it, I watched the blue sunlight filter in through the portico’s pillars and wash over the door’s glossy carvings. Ancient Ainean pictographs and pictures of rampant creatures shimmered in the gloom.

Our footsteps clattered as we crossed a polished malachite floor. I marveled at the beautiful, sweeping ribbons of green and black writhing under our boots. It was divided by clean, straight fault-lines into a radial design that resembled a wagon-wheel.

Buttresses ascended upward into a dome of black, at least fifty feet overhead. Points of light floated in it like stars in the night. It reminded me of the watcher behind the sky that I’d sensed while the Acolouthis was taking hold on me out in the desert, and I grew uneasy looking at it.

“The stars you see above you are just that—stars,” said Walter. “Holes in the ceiling in the precise positions of the constellations of the night sky. The circular pattern you see under your feet is a depiction of the continent of Ain. The holes send sunlight and moonlight down onto the floor, and the sun-cats on the floor correspond to the stars in the night sky at that particular time of year.”

On the back wall was an actual shield, embossed with the simplified face of Oramoz. A pair of beautiful scrollworked shotguns made a crossbones in the center of the shining steel plate.

Below it, seven thrones stood abreast, all of them empty. They were made of carved ebony with black leather seats, and had tall backs. Each one had an intricate symbol etched into the back and the armrests looked like eagle-heads, but they were otherwise unremarkable. A gunbelt dangled over the back of the middle throne, its holsters empty.

“Somehow I expected something more grandiose from a throne,” I said.

“No one ever accused the nation of Ain of affluence,” said Walter. “We are far-reaching, but next to the Ersecad, we are a kingdom of mendicants.”

“It is not the throne,” said Sawyer, “—but who sits in it.”

Walter quirked an eyebrow. “Wise words.”

“I suppose, then, that it is particularly appropriate that no one is sitting in them,” said someone behind us. A heavy-set old man stood in one of the doorways that led out of this round room. He looked stately in a black cassock and pointed riding boots. He looked fresh, well-fed, and dewy—age and sun had not ravaged his face like so many other Aineans I had seen.

“May it be, Deon South,” he said. He seemed warm-mannered, if a bit harried.

“And yourself, Councilman,” said Walter.

“It is, as usual, an honor. I see you’ve finally made some friends. See? Miracles
do
come true.”

Walter smirked. “I’d like to introduce you to a very special visitor, Councilman. This is Lord Bridger’s other son, Ross. Friends, this is Seymour’s father, Thaddeus Bennett.”

“Councilman of Lands,” said Sawyer, doing the shield-bow thing. “May it be.”

“How polite! May it never end,” said Bennett, mopping at his forehead with a handkerchief. “What brings you to Ostlyn on such short notice? I was under the impression that you were undertaking a search for the assassin Sardis, not this presumably much more agreeable fellow.”

“I was on my way back from seeking Sardis in Finback Fathoms when I found these three floating on a raft in the Aemev. Ahh...I suppose they were on their way here from the Antargata k-Setra when their ship was capsized by the sea-beast.”

“Dreadful creature,” said Bennett. “I’m glad to see you’ve survived your encounter. —As well as your excursion to the Fathoms: a most discouraging place, to put it mildly.”

Walter nodded. “It’s a wonderful place for getting things one ought not to have, and for being robbed of all one’s spending money. Meanwhile,” he said, “—we’re looking for my father and the King. Have you seen them about?”

“The Chiral is out taking his mid-day repast. You might find him at the barracks. Normand is speaking with an envoy from Cice Jiunad.”

Walter seemed to consider this, then said, “Faced with the choice, I think I’ll remain here and wait for the King. My father may not be entirely coherent when he returns from irrigating his innards.”

“I know you feel the Chiral does not favor you as much as he favors his vices,” said Bennett, “But he mellows in his old age. If you visited more than once a year, you might know this, m’Deon.”

“Maybe,” said Walter. He went back outside without a word and we followed him back to the portico. I had meant to ask Seymour about his strange consolations earlier, but he was gone. We sat halfway down the steps and basked in the sun, listening to the jacarandas cackle softly in the wind. None of us really said anything, we were too tired to really have much to talk about.

Finally, Walter spoke to us. His voice was a clipped mutter. “When we’ve spoken to the King and let him know we’re here, we’ll get a room at a little place I know of down the hill. They have good food.”

After a time, Noreen said, “So what’s going on with you and your father, if you don’t mind me asking?”

Walter seemed to appraise her for a moment, but looked down at the steps. “I’d rather not speak about it, if it’s all the same.”

“I understand,” she said. “But if you get the notion to talk, let me know?”

“You will be the first to have your ear bent, Misera Mears.”

The broad ebony door opened and a man came out, dressed in a gray hooded tabard that came down to his knees. The front of it depicted a large red sword-shaped emblem that made him resemble a Templar, but the gunbelt around his waist marked him as no knight.

“In any case,” he was saying, “the Forgemother is on her way here to speak with you about your issues, serah. You have the assistance of the Ersecad as well, if need be. May it be.”

“Consider me at ease, then. May it never,” said a rumbling voice from beyond the doorway. We stood up as the envoy jogged down the stairs without a word and disappeared through the front gate of the courtyard.

The owner of the brass pipes stepped into the dim blue light of the distant day. The world seemed to hang silent as Normand Kaliburn the King of Ain came out of the Weatherhead to greet us. A prickling chill trickled up my ribs and across my scalp at the sight of such a tall and aged man.

He reminded me of the actor Clancy Brown, but also somehow of Clint Walker as Cheyenne Bodie in
Cheyenne
. The decades had not stooped or bent him in the least—he was at least two meters lean and a few inches above that, standing ramrod-straight, his broad shoulders squared back.

His face was long and careworn with deep crisscrossing lines, like a map made of old leather. His hair was lush and silvery-blonde, tousled in sickle-blade locks. Somehow I’d expected a wizardly beard, like Merlin, or Dumbledore or Gandalf, but instead Normand had cultivated a horseshoe mustache of silver-white that matched his eyebrows.

The lack of a beard took nothing away from his strong, square jaw. He wore a spotless doublet, jeans, and pointed riding boots—all black. A length of cape concealed his left arm, hanging from a chain through the passant of his right shoulder. Normand spoke again, his gravelly voice reverberating in the portico.

“Afternoon, Deon,” he said, clapping Walter on the shoulder. “I’ve been waiting for quite some time for the lot of you. Come in. We’ve got a lot to talk about.”

I couldn’t imagine how Sawyer and Noreen felt, staring open-mouthed at the protagonist of the novels they’d grown up reading. My friends knew almost everything there was to know about this man—or at least what Ed had recorded.

Normand ushered us into the council chambers and we followed him across the room to the line of thrones at the back. They sat on a gently curved dais. A pair of men in dark green longcoats flanked the nearest doorway. The King ordered them through it, but to linger within earshot.

“I don’t know who you
are,”
he said slowly, measuredly, his warm smile directed at Sawyer and Noreen. “But I have the distinct feeling that you know very much who
I
am.”

Noreen was the first to speak. “Yeah. —Yes, yessir. We do.”

The old man chuckled. It was like stones scraping together. “I know—I know
you
know. Eddie told me all about his books about my life and adventures growing up. He told me about all the boys and girls that read them back in his world—in your world. Back on Earth. I never knew what to think of it, but he was very proud that he could do that.”

“We were there from the beginning, sir,” said Sawyer. “We were always at your side. Cheering you on when you fell, crying when you cried, bleeding when you bled. From that day Tem Lucas attacked Oriensligne—”

“—To the day you stowed away on the
Warrior Tide
and sailed to the Antargata k-Setra,” cut in Noreen. “Through the fights and beatings in the Fathoms. To the day you were almost killed by the No-Men on the frontier, and saved by the separatist rebel Lord Harwell.”

“We were all there with you, all of us, every step of the way, believing in you. All the way through the war, up to the Battle of Ostlyn,” said Sawyer. “But that was the last book Mr. Brigham was working on—he never published it. We weren’t there for that.”

Noreen almost—it seemed as if she wanted to reach out and touch the old man, whether for his comfort or her own, I wasn’t sure. I saw her hand twitch.

So did Normand, it seemed, and he took the initiative instead, taking her hand in his weathered own and covering it with his other one. When I looked up at his face, I realized that there were tears standing in the rims of his pale blue eyes.

“I’m sorry we weren’t there at the end, sir,” she said.

He blinked, and smiled. His mustache quivered and he said, his eyes intense, “Don’t you worry about that, young lady. You got me just far enough.”

They held the moment long enough for the sentiment to ebb, and Normand looked away. He appeared to suddenly notice the Council thrones behind him and he stepped aside, resting one hand on the armrest of the center chair.

“Why don’t you have a seat?” he asked, his voice hoarse with emotion. “You three look like you’ve come a very long way.”

“Really?” asked Sawyer.

“Us?”

I couldn’t help but smile. They were like kids in a candy store. Sawyer stood aside and let Noreen sit on the throne. She seemed uncomfortable and nervous, as if it were an ejector seat primed to launch her through the ceiling.

“Relax, my dear,” said Normand. “Now—you know who
I
am. I would be most honored to learn the names of the long-unmet companions of my life.”

“My name is Noreen Elizabeth Mears and I was born and raised in Florida. I’ve been reading Ed Brigham’s novels ever since I was a little girl. My mother wasn’t...wasn’t a very nice person, and my father might as well have not been there, as much as he was gone on business. She had a lot of things she’d rather do than deal with me, and she’d never really wanted me to begin with.”

She sighed. “So I spent a lot of time in my room with the door locked from the inside. I lost myself in
The Fiddle and the Fire
and I’ve been hooked ever since. You got me through a lot of hard and lonely times, Mr. Kaliburn.”

She looked down at her hands.

“It is most pleasing to see that I could be there for you as well,” he said, and paused to let it resonate. “Please, call me Normand. Mr. Kaliburn was my father. It is also good to see that you appear to be none the worse for wear. To all appearances you have grown to become quite the young lady. I’m very sorry that I couldn’t do more for you than sit on a page between a pair of covers.”

“Thank you,” she said.

“And you?” he asked, his eyes settling on Sawyer.

Sawyer gave up his name, and then related the insight he’d given me at the funeral the first night we’d met, about how he’d been deprived of a father, and how a certain teacher had given him the first book in the series. In retrospect, now I understood why she went out of her way to be so kind to an obviously troubled little boy.

“I grew up on the poor side of town, in south Georgia,” he said. “I’m sure you don’t know what video games are, but I didn’t get to have all the newest ones like the other kids, so I was raised on books. After my dad died, we didn’t have much money for things like that.”