A Blight of Blackwings

by Kevin Hearne

  “Okay, good.”

  Except it wasn’t good. There were still strange things out there I couldn’t see coming. Not just through my kenning, but through my fire-blind eyes after listening to Fintan tell a story about a delicious but exceptionally dangerous variety of wild poultry in Hathrir called razor chickens. Apparently, they were larger than turkeys, and the roosters were anxious to mate with just about anything they thought they could fertilize. We were camped in a line for the night and our fire was in the middle of the pack. Fintan was using his kenning so that everyone in the camp could hear his stories, and we heard laughter to the north and south of us until, up to the north where Olet and La Mastik were camped, we heard a roar and a scream.

  Curses flew in the night and everyone leapt up, searching for the danger but seeing nothing in the darkness. Olet called my name.

  “Damn it, Abhi, get up here and stop this thing!”

  Fintan and I ran north until we found her looming in the ruddy glow of her campfire, facing out. She pointed into the darkness as Murr caught up, growling by my side, and Eep landed on my shoulder. “It ate one of your people already, and I don’t think it’s finished.”

  “What did? I can’t see anything.”

  “A gravemaw!”

  “A gravemaw? Where?” I blinked, trying to will my pupils to dilate, but I saw nothing but black out there. I did hear some rather gross slobbery crunching noises.

  La Mastik sighed in exasperation and crouched to her pack, yanking out an enchanted firebowl about the size of her huge palm and tossing it into the dark. She used her kenning to spark it up once its weighted bottom landed on the forest floor, and the glow from that showed me the barest outline of an armor-plated leg.

  “You see it now?”

  “A tiny bit of it. Can you maybe set it on fire?”

  Olet fetched her sword out of its sheath, ignited the blade, and then sent a gout of flame into the darkness. It landed on something, but it didn’t exactly catch. The subject roared in anger at the heat, but it didn’t have hair or skin or much else combustible. That armor plating was resistant to fire as well as impervious to weapons. Still, Olet’s efforts illuminated enough of the creature for me to finally see it.

  I’d heard of gravemaws, of course—they’re legendary eating machines—but the true nightmarish character of them can’t be appreciated until you see a flash of one at night, blood on its knife-like teeth and its long, obscene tongue pulling a booted leg from one corner of its mouth into the cavern of its throat to be finished off and swallowed.

  “Okay, I see it,” I said. “Stop trying to set it on fire, please.”

  “Are you kidding?”

  “No. It’s not going to listen to me if you’re trying to burn it alive.” It was growling, its muscles bunching to spring in our direction as soon as it finished chewing.

  “All right.”

  Using my eyesight to target, I reached out with my kenning to acknowledge it, recognize it, and then speak to it, just as Olet quit shooting fire at its armored hide. The flames burning in the firebowl on the ground she left alone.

  “Hello,” I said to the creature. “Stop for a minute and let’s talk.”

  A defiant roar replied, and I had no idea what it meant, but I could guess.

  “I know. The fire is out now, and it won’t come back. We won’t hurt you as long as you don’t try to hurt any of us. I know you can understand me. Let’s talk.”

  The growl that came was different now, but it was still just noise to my ears.

  “I can’t understand your meaning. But I can ask yes-or-no questions and you can reply.” Once I covered what was to be done, I stepped out into the darkness, but Olet laid a restraining hand on my shoulder, the one without Eep on it.

  “Are you insane? Don’t go any closer.”

  “It’ll be fine. No animals will harm me, just like fire won’t harm you.”

  She removed her hand and I strode forward with a nervous stalk hawk and bloodcat. “These are my friends,” I said. “We’ll be yours as well. Can you step next to that small fire to your left, please, so I can see you better? My night vision isn’t as good as yours. I’ll stay on the other side of it and we can talk.”

  The gravemaw complied, shifting its massive bulk to one side. It was still making slurping and smacking noises, and some kind of violent digestive activity was happening in its guts. It smelled of coppery blood and rot and foul sulfuric gases, and I fought to keep my gorge from rising. Eep and Murr weren’t happy about being so close either, but they stuck with me.

  Once we were only a few paces apart, with only the small firebowl between us, the gravemaw wasn’t so bad—with its mouth closed.

  “It’s an honor to meet you. My name is Abhi. This is Eep and Murr. Do you have a name?”

  “Rrurrgh.”

  “Hi, Rrurrgh! Usually I can tell if someone is male or female, but I can’t with you. Are you male or female?”

  Rrurrgh shook their head no.

  “You’re not either one?”

  No again.

  “Do you participate in the birth of baby gravemaws somehow?”

  Yes.

  I struggled to figure out the puzzle and took a wild guess. “And you do that with males and females as a third, nonbinary gender?”

  Yes.

  I turned to Olet and La Mastik, who were silhouetted by the fire, along with many others who had gathered to gawk. “A third gender, can you believe it? This is even wilder than egg-laying roos! No wonder I couldn’t sense them with my kenning.”

  “No wonder, kid,” Olet said, her voice flat. I got the impression that she didn’t think I was asking very important questions but only trying to be polite to Rrurrgh. I turned back to them and decided not to probe any further into gravemaw reproductive practices. It would be extremely awkward as a yes-or-no exercise anyway.

  “Rrurrgh, I think all of my friends are wondering if you’re still hungry. Are you full now?”

  Rrurrgh nodded and then belched, the stench of which made both Murr and me flinch and gag.

  “That’s good,” I managed. “Really good. Everyone can relax now. But we’d appreciate it if you didn’t hunt anyone in our party after this. Will you promise not to eat any more of us, please?”

  Rrurrgh nodded again, and I turned to see if Olet caught that, and she did.

  “So that’s it?” the giant asked. “No more gravemaw trouble after this?”

  “No more. That doesn’t mean I can’t be surprised by something else, but at least you won’t have to worry about them.”

  “One less thing,” she said, and walked around to the other side of the campfire, putting it between her and us. I got the feeling that I’d failed somehow, but I didn’t know how I could have done any better when gravemaws were something so different from what anyone ever thought.

  “Say, Rrurrgh,” I said, “are you mated with a male and female now, in a kind of family?”

  Yes.

  “Are they nearby?”

  Yes. I confirmed that by reaching out with my kenning and locating two other gravemaws within a league. Looking that far didn’t hurt, since I was looking for only one type of creature. That was valuable information right there: Wherever you found one gravemaw, there were likely two others somewhat nearby.

  Rrurrgh’s belly made some disgusting noises, and a new question popped into my head.

  “Do you completely digest all the bones?”

  No.

  That made me stop and blink for a bit. “So what do you do—spit them out later?”

  Yes.

  “Wow. You’re like a three-gendered, armor-plated owl. Do you sleep all day?”

  No.

  “That’s cool. You probably want to sleep now that you’ve eaten. I
s that right?”

  Yes.

  “Okay, I’ll let you go do that, then. But if you feel like it, when you wake up, would you mind finding us tomorrow? I’d like to see you in the daylight if that’s okay.” I wanted to make a good sketch for my journal. The world needed to know more about gravemaws.

  Rrurrgh nodded one more time and made another growling noise, then lumbered off into the black. I blinked, staring into the space they had occupied, the enormity of what I had done finally registering.

  “I just had a conversation with a gravemaw, and they were kind of nice.”

  “Murr,” my bloodcat friend said, before audibly gagging again.

  I gazed down at the firebowl that La Mastik had tossed and sparked up, still burning even though there was no visible fuel in it.

  “Hey…La Mastik?”

  “Yes?”

  “This thing you lavaborn do with firebowls and lanterns and stuff to keep them burning with almost no fuel. You call that enchantment, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Can you teach me how that’s done?”

  “No, I’m just a sparker. I can’t enchant anything. But Olet can.”

  “Cool. Olet, can you teach me how to enchant something so it will repel animals?”

  “No. I can only enchant metals and glass to burn for a long time.”

  “But the process of enchantment. You can teach me that, right?”

  She shrugged. “Maybe. I don’t know.”

  “It’s worth a try, don’t you think? If I can enchant a wooden stake, for example, to repel animals, then cities wouldn’t need to build walls anymore. I wouldn’t need to be physically present to protect an area. We could plant enchanted stakes along this road we’re making and keep it safe for travelers. I could protect farms from pest species. It would change everything.”

  Silence fell around the fire. Olet was staring at me, her eyes wide, and everyone else was staring at her.

  “You’re right, kid,” she said. “It’s definitely worth a try. Get over here.”

  The idea of enchanted stakes was attractive to those who had lived near the Gravewood in the past or were thinking of moving back to one of the river cities, but many, I think, shrugged—or perhaps it was only me. Most of Brynlön was relatively safe from predators. There were bog lynxes in the marshes that occasionally attacked hunters when they thought the hunters were taking swamp ducks they’d been saving for dinner, but otherwise the dangerous animals (like sunchucks) tended to avoid humans if at all possible.

  Humans, alas, were sometimes unavoidable. As were duties. I needed to make an attempt at coaxing information from Fintan without arousing suspicion or fracturing the relationship we had. Sarena had told me curiosity was natural. Spending time asking about other, inconsequential things would make the important questions seem casual, if I could pull off the light tone. I wondered if I had spent enough time asking Fintan about inconsequential things. And then I realized it didn’t matter. I had to do it whether I’d prepared sufficiently or not.

  We met at a dockside fishblade restaurant where they brought in fish every morning and served it raw, often with rice and some sprig of this vegetable or that. They had wooden benches outside the kitchen wagon and a bar set up serving a few brews, and all of it was under some umbrellas and netting to keep the seagulls out. The menu was different every day; it depended on what the boat brought in. The beers rotated every so often, but it was a simple place. You got fresh fish, rice, and beer. We ordered some and I threw myself into the dreaded task.

  “I really enjoyed the story of Daryck du Löngren yesterday,” I said. “Can you satisfy my curiosity about something?”

  “Maybe,” Fintan said, nodding. He took a sip of the Fornish ale he’d ordered and smacked his lips. “That’s good.”

  “We heard Gondel’s story about this traitor Vjeko—”

  “Which your pelenaut fed to me.”

  “—Right. But you now have these two different narratives—several, really—about events in the north. And that’s where the last Bone Giant army is. Maybe there was some contact with Vjeko. So…might you know anything about that?”

  Fintan laughed through his nose, breathy exhalations more than chuckles, but the smirk on his face was plain. “Asking for spoilers again? Can’t just enjoy?”

  “Well…no. Not if you know something that can help us.”

  “I know things.” He waggled his eyebrows. “Many things. But nothing that can help you now.” His playful grin melted as he saw me frown. “Dervan, I solemnly swear: If I knew anything that could help your country at this moment, I would share it. But simply spilling what I know, out of order, does not help anyone process it. The world has changed tremendously, and we are all trying to forge new trails since the old ones have been obliterated. To do that wisely—with empathy and love for our fellow human beings—we need to see these tumultuous events through more than a single pair of eyes. We need to hear voices that aren’t our own and let them all speak. And we need to see and hear them together, in order. By the time the Raelech, Fornish, and Kaurian reinforcements get here and decisions need to be made, I promise you’ll be fully informed and ready to proceed.”

  “All right. Fine. But why do you get to decide what’s in our best interest? Why don’t we get to decide?”

  The bard’s expression blanked and he leaned away from me. “Because I am a storyteller, not your military intelligence resource. I don’t like it when my government treats me like one. Even less so when other governments treat me that way. Couriers provide intelligence with perfect recall. Bards tell stories with perfect recall. They are entirely different disciplines, watched over by entirely different goddesses.”

  “Yet the story you’re telling is informed by a couple of couriers, isn’t it? Numa and Tuala, at least?”

  “It is. And the tale I will tell today happens to be Tuala’s. But I’m telling it at the right time to the right audience. To tell tales out of season would be a betrayal of the poet goddess, and I will not do that.”

  “Okay, I understand. You have my apologies for trespassing, and my thanks for explaining.”

  There may have been a way to push for more, but I don’t think it could have been done gracefully. If I pressed him any more, there would be damage done, and I wasn’t willing to do it.

  But I was struck by a wave of sadness and ducked my head, pretending to search for a new quill in my bag. So often we feel unequal to the tasks that life sets before us and it is a struggle to even begin them, much less complete them, because we cannot see a way forward. All we see are obstacles—an insurmountable summit towering above us, rather than the easy step we can take to get a tiny bit closer. Perspectives can and do change, but only if we move ourselves. We must change our stance and witness the obstacles change in their turn and so learn with every step how we will overcome. At that moment I needed to remind myself that soon I would be in a different place and time, when and where I didn’t have to be such a miserable spy.

  We wrote down the previous day’s tales and enjoyed our fish and beer. Then we walked to the wall and Fintan shared a Raelech soldier’s song.

  Farewell my family and my many friends;

  All good times must have their ends

  And I am packed and leaving today.

  All that I am and will become is because of

  Your undying and unwavering love;

  I cherish it more than I can say.

  When I return I’ll greet you with a smile

  But until then there’ll be a long lonesome while;

  I will think of you often on my way.

  “There will be only one tale today, for it is a long one. It’s the tale of what happened when a Raelech army went to liberate the Brynt city of Möllerud, but it is more than that. It is a tale of unrequited love, ete
rnal longing, and regret. We return to Master Courier Tuala and Master Juggernaut Tarrech now.”

  On the road to Mell, Tarrech occasionally joked and laughed with me. We reminisced about our days together in the Colaiste, when we had stolen offal from the tanning shed and put it in the bunk of a bully who’d been mean to some younger kids. And then the fight with that bully a couple of days later when he saw us laughing about it: We kicked the snot out of him and told him he could fight kids like us, kids his own size, whenever he wanted to blow off steam. But beating up little kids was shitty, so we thought he should sleep in the shitty bunk he’d made for himself.

  He didn’t give anyone any trouble after that and somewhat ironically went on to become a master tanner.

  “I’m glad we found him and made it right between us,” Tarrech said over our campfire. We’d decided to sleep outdoors that night to honor the Huntress Raena.

  “Me too.”

  We’d become masters some weeks before the bully had, and we visited him in Killae shortly after the ceremony where he got the master’s amethyst set in his Jereh band.

  “What do you two want?” he said, scowling at us. His eyes flicked to our Jereh bands and he snorted. “You became a courier and a juggernaut? There’s no justice.”

  “I respectfully disagree,” Tarrech said. “Back in the Colaiste, we were justice for the kids you were bullying. But now look at you. A master tanner! Well on your way to being a valued and respected citizen. We’d like to congratulate you, first of all—”

  “Yes, congratulations!” I interrupted.

  “—but also ask if you’d allow us to give you a gift.”

  He eyed us suspiciously. “Thanks,” he said, though he didn’t sound particularly grateful. “What kind of gift did you have in mind?”

  “We’d like to help you start your business. Where were you planning on setting up your trade?”

  “A little river village below Jeremech?” He said it like a question, as if we were testing him. But we weren’t. “There’s a master there who’s agreed to sell to me when I’m ready.”