The Beast of Noor

by Janet Lee Carey

  Tears formed in the corners of her eyes and slid down her cheeks. The pain in her side made it easy to cry, but the tears were for Miles.

  Near the back wall she saw Aetwan resting, eyes closed, on his perch. Flecks of dried blood were spattered across his gray-feathered chest. She pictured him swooping down to take the arrow from her. How had he known she was aiming at the wrong beast? She wiped her damp cheek with the back of her hand. “Where is the Falconer?”

  “Gone,” said Aetwan, eyes still closed.

  His answer startled her. It was hard to get used to the falcon speaking.

  Pressing her hand against her side, she sat up gingerly. How long had she slept? Across the room the curtain was drawn, so she couldn’t tell if it was day or night outside, and if it was night, whether it was the same night Miles had fought the Shriker. She’d have to lift the curtain to see out, and crossing the room would be painful. “When will the Falconer be back?”

  “In time.” Aetwan opened his eyes and let out a steely cry to caution her against any more questions.

  “Sorry,” said Hanna.

  The falcon rustled on his post, his shoulders lifting in something like a shrug. He emitted one more word. “Eat.”

  There was a loaf of bread, a bowl, and a mug on the round table. Walking to the chair would hurt, but she was hungry and thirsty, so she swung her feet over the side of the pallet and gingerly crossed the floor to the simple meal.

  The loaf tore easily in her hands, and the smell of baked bread filled the room. The Falconer had surely gone after Da. Da was an excellent tracker, and the Falconer knew magic. Together they would hunt for Miles and bring him home. The thought gave her strength more than the food, and she drank down the water in the heavy mug like hope itself

  Suddenly the door burst open and Mother came in. “Hanna,” she cried. “My girl! My very own girl!” As Mother flung her basket on the floor, Aetwan screeched and flew outside.

  “Oh, look at what the wolf did!”

  “It wasn’t a wolf,” said Hanna.

  Mother knelt by Hanna’s chair. “Your da will kill him!” she said through tears. “I promise that.” She put her arms around Hanna. The hug hurt, but Hanna didn’t want her to let go.

  STALKING

  One from two and strange combining With the other intertwining

  —SONG OF THE SYLTH QUEEN

  A SEARING PAIN RAN DOWN MILES’S RIGHT FLANK AS HE crept along the passage. He wanted to lie down, change back into himself, but he couldn’t rest, couldn’t risk changing back while Hanna was still in danger. He needed all his animal strength to kill the Shriker before the beast attacked again.

  Water dripped from the roof, chilled his back and plopped in shallow puddles around his paws. He listened for other sounds. The pull of breath into lungs. The scrape of claw on stone. Only his own panting and halting movements met his ears.

  He ran his tongue along the gap in his mouth. One of his fangs was missing. Had he lost it in the battle? The Shriker’s blood was still on his tongue, and the taste sickened him. In the deeps of Shalem Wood he’d seen the beast’s flesh hanging from his side. The smell of his wounds was still fresh. He followed the scent. Thirst for revenge dulled his pain and drove him on. He would tear the beast apart for hurting Hanna! Let the carcass lay unburied so the carrion birds could feast on it!

  The circle of dim light ahead grew larger. It must be from starlight or moonlight filling the deeps. Torn as he was, he would make it down the long passage and kill the enemy. Then he’d shake the weight of this beast form off like foul armor, though he couldn’t shake off the wounds. The shape-shifter brought his wounds with him. This had happened before when … He stopped a moment and shook his heavy head. He couldn’t remember when.

  Miles’s side throbbed with pain as he limped forward.

  Don’t lie down. Don’t give in. Move. Walk. Stalk the beast.

  At last Miles reached the opening. There he paused and sniffed the air. The forest was rich with odors, but there was no sign of the beast. No sign of Hanna or the Falconer, either, but then, this didn’t look like the deeps. There wasn’t any boulder here, and the pine trees were enormous. A thousand-year-old forest, he thought, though he didn’t understand how this could be. Wasn’t he on Mount Shalem?

  Thick, wet ferns brushed up against his legs as he circled the giant trees. Peering through pale moonlight, he listened to the branches creaking in the wind. He must have come out the wrong end of the passage.

  He would retrace his steps. Even now the Shriker might be after Hanna. The Falconer, with all his magic, might not have the power to kill the beast. He would go. He would fight.

  Miles turned to reenter the passage, and let out a frightened yelp.

  The passage was gone.

  TWO MAPS

  The Otherworld is as far away as your doubts and as close as your own heart. Do you believe in it, child?

  —GRANDA SHEEN

  OVER THE NEXT FIVE DAYS THE SEARCH PARTY SCOURED Shalem Wood behind packs of sniffing dogs. Hanna came as soon as she was well enough, though the pain in her side slowed her down. Most of the village folk stayed clear of the search. The boy had Sheen blood, after all. But a few outsiders, like the Avwon family, left their fishing boats to climb up mountain. And Mic’s da abandoned his fields to join in, the memory of his son’s broken arm still fresh enough to drive him to the hills. The farmer looked for Miles, too, but Hanna knew it was the wolf Mic’s da was set on finding.

  They broke off in small teams, some with Da, some with Brother Adolpho, and others with Gurty. Hanna was on the search with Gurty, for Mother and Da put great stock in Gurty’s tracking skills. Ten years back she’d found the weaver’s son, Pyter, when he’d been lost eight days in the woods. Gurty brought him down mountain alive, though torn and hungry, when everyone had long since counted him for dead.

  When night came, the search parties walked with torches lit, seeking Miles over the green hillocks, shouting his name along Senowey River. Still there was no sign.

  After another long day without turning up so much as a footprint, Hanna left Gurty at her cottage and wended her way back down the trail toward home.

  The forest was dusk blue, and robins rustled in the cedars. In the place where the path split Hanna took the less used trail. Her legs and feet were sore, and her bandaged side still ached. But her mind was full of questions only the Falconer could answer. He’d been there the night of Miles’s disappearance, and she hadn’t yet found a way to speak with him alone.

  A single knock made the ivy-covered door swing open. “Ah, you’ve come,” said the Falconer. He stood aside for her to enter, a threaded needle hanging from his shirt. It surprised her that she’d caught him mending, but she was less surprised that he’d been expecting her If the old man was a seer, he might have hidden powers he could wield to find her brother.

  Aetwan was perched in the corner. He cocked his head and shot her a piercing look as the Falconer latched the door.

  “You’ve taken on some danger to travel Shalem Wood alone,” said the Falconer.

  “It’s not yet dark,” she said, “and I was in company with Gurty until just now.”

  “Well, warm yourself, then.” The Falconer motioned to a bent-willow chair by the fire. “It won’t be long before nightfall.”

  As he poured her a cup of steaming thool, she eyed the row of leather-bound books on the high shelf, keeping her back to Aetwan, whose fierce look unsettled her. The mug was brimful, and the first sweet sip helped to loosen her tongue. “I never thanked you for the healing herbs you gave me the night …” The words gave out on her. She didn’t want just then to go on about what happened in the deeps, only to thank him.

  “It’s a leafer’s job to heal the sick,” he said modestly.

  Hanna watched him cross the room, his stocking feet soundless on the floor. Her chest rose against the weight of worry. She hadn’t come to thank him, but for her brother’s sake. And the urgency of that pressed hard agains
t her, even as the night was falling in the woods outside. “It’s been so long since Miles disappeared,” she said.

  “Aye, six days gone, and it’s very hard on us all.” The willow chair creaked as the Falconer sat down. He pulled out his tinderbox, struck the stone, and lit his pipe. The smell of smoke mingled with the scent of thool. He was waiting for the rest of what she’d come to say.

  She took a breath and put down her mug. “I’ve seen you going off alone with Aetwan each day. Why haven’t you stayed with Da and the rest of us?”

  The Falconer crossed his legs, the hole in his sock revealing his rough, old heel. Was it his sock he’d been planning to mend?

  “Tell me, Hanna. What attacked you that night?” The question startled her. It did not touch on what she’d asked, and she worked to calm her heart as he waited for her answer.

  “It was …” She swallowed the next word down, and it made a burning in her throat. She would say it to him. He couldn’t help her if she didn’t. It was time to say the name, “lt was … the Shriker.”

  “Not a wolf, then, as your mother and da believe?”

  “Not a wolf! Never a wolf!”

  “So your parents search for one thing, and I another. Do you see?”

  She tugged a lock of hair and watched him blow a smoke ring up to the dirt ceiling. It disappeared behind the herb bundles dangling from the twisted roots.

  “Let me come with you.”

  “I may when you are stronger.”

  “I’m strong!” The words came hard and fast, and she blushed at the pronouncement.

  But the Falconer surprised her with a smile, “You may just help me in the search,” he said, “I could do with another pair of eyes. But there are some things you’ll need to know.” He stood and put his hands out to the fire.

  Hanna heard Aetwan flap his wings once and twice. “Trouble,” he said.

  “I know my own mind, Aetwan,” said the Falconer, his back still to Hanna and the falcon. He was so tall that his head nearly reached the roots entwined in the ceiling. In his brown shirt and wool breeches he could have been an ordinary old man like her own granda, but even so poorly dressed there was a kingliness about him. The thick hair that flowed down his back looked like a silver stream in the firelight. She felt a reverence for him now that she no longer feared him.

  The Falconer turned and held his palms out to her as he had done to the hearth. Aetwan flapped his wings and let out a shrill cry. In the center of the Falconer’s left palm was a mark. A blue lit circle with an ancient Othic symbol inside. The symbol looked at once like a letter and like a winged bird, tipped and soaring within the blue circle.

  The Falconer did not speak. Nor did Hanna, but she knew the blue palm sign meant he was a meer, and she felt the thrill of seeing it.

  All her thoughts about the Falconer, the strangeness and the wonder of him, fell into place then. The firelight danced behind him, sending a golden glow about his head and shoulders. As his palms cooled, the mark slowly faded. She was suddenly uncertain what to do. Should she bow or … She got down on one knee before the meer.

  “There’s no need for that, Hanna.” He lifted her to her chair again and said, “I’m just a man like any other.”

  She settled back against the bent willow as he went on.

  “You asked me where I search. You know now by the palm sign what I am.” He shook his head. “Your brother knows I am a meer, as does Brother Adolpho, and your granda knew. But few folk on Enness know it, though I’ve lived here fifty-odd years. Meers are under the High King’s authority now, but some still talk of the days before the great plague when we were outlaws, and many still fear us for our magic.” He sat beside Hanna. “I thought it better when I came here to your isle to appear as a leafer and musician. The townsfolk welcome a leafer whenever there’s sickness about.

  “But as to where I’m wandering each day with Aetwan …” The Falconer looked at the door as if he could see the cascading hills beyond it, though it was closed tight. “I search for the passage to Oth,” he said. “There are some places still in Noor where the way between worlds opens. Mount Shalem is such a place. It’s why I came here.”

  “But where is Oth? Granda used to say it was all around us, but most are blind to it.”

  “The man was right about that.”

  Hanna frowned, uncertain.

  “Think on it this way,” he said, sweeping out his arm. “There are two worlds, as close as close. One we can see, and one invisible. Yet both are here.”

  Hanna thought on Granda’s tale. “Does the Shriker live in Oth, then?”

  “Aye, in its shadow part. The legend tells of how the Darro cursed the dog and made the beast. But few know about what happened after. Didn’t you ever ask your granda where the Shriker hid out for more than two hundred years before he was seen again in Shalem Wood?”

  Hanna shook her head. No, she hadn’t asked that; she’d never pressed Granda to tell her more about the Shriker. She regretted that now.

  “Well,” said the Falconer, “the Darro knew the Shriker couldn’t be a part of his ghost pack, nor was the creature rightly of this world, being magical and a shape-shifter, so he took him to a place in Oth called Attenlore. Attenlore’s a grand place, full of bright magic. But even then there was a shadow realm. Uthor Vale, it was called. It was the place where the sylth kings and queens of old sent those they’d banished. Uthor was a small, dark vale in those days. But it’s grown broader and darker since the Darro left the Shriker there.”

  Hanna swished the thool in her mug, the brown and cream clouding together. “Was it the Shriker made Uthor grow larger?”

  “He may have,” said the Falconer, “or it may be the more creatures the sylth sovereigns banished over the years, the larger the realm became. I’ve never been sure which.”

  Hanna’s gaze fell into the darkness of her cup as she saw once again the black hole that had opened suddenly on the night the Shriker attacked. In her mind’s eye she envisioned two beasts rolling into it, the passage closing like a giant’s mouth.

  “The passage to Oth is in the deeps!” she said suddenly.

  “Aye, well, on that night it was there,” The Falconer stepped into the alcove and returned with The Way Between Worlds. “The way from one world to another is seen most often at the full moon,” he said. “But it’s not always in the same place. The passage moves about.”

  Putting the tome on the table, he sat down and opened the section near the end of the book, a place of many maps. Hanna spied a map of Noor, like the great world map Old Sim had once shown her. Though his was a sailor’s map, and he’d marked all the seaports he’d sailed to as a young man. On the opposite page was a rice paper map that had the words “Oth Map” at the top. But she didn’t have time to view that before the Falconer turned past it to a page that read “Noor Map: Enness Isle.”

  Hanna filled her eyes with all the familiar village names skirting the shoreline. There was Brim, Gladsonne, Oshenwold, and the harbor of Abbaseth, on the far side of the island, near the high cliffs of Jory. Her own island on the page was strange and familiar at the same time, for she’d never seen it drawn out. Mount Shalem rose in the very middle of the island. On the southwestern side of the mountain was Grenore Valley. Deep and wide, it was, and no one lived there. A wild place the mapmaker had painted all red and gold with autumn trees and dry spell grass.

  Hanna touched the peak of Mount Shalem and traced the familiar green of Shalem Wood, encircling it from the high cliff to rolling hills to sea. Then, lifting her hand again, she touched Senowey Falls and traced Senowey River, beginning at the waterfall, all the way down to Brim Harbor, where it flowed into the bay.

  “Now,” said the Falconer, laying the rice paper map from the opposite page over the top. The landscape on the rice paper map mirrored Enness, and the mountain bore the same name, but other places were oddly named. The transparent page read “Oth Map: Attenlore Isle.”

  “Attenlore,” whispered Hanna. Again
she put her finger on the mountain’s peak and traced it down the far side to the dark valley between two steep ravines. Grenore Valley in her world was Uthor Vale on this map, and it was all shadowed in, as if drawn with charcoal.

  The Falconer nodded at the place she was touching. “If Miles is tracking the Shriker, the beast will lead him through Attenlore to Uthor Vale.”

  Hanna lifted her finger and found a bit of dark chalk on it. It must have been a very old map to come off on her skin so. She blushed and slipped her hand in her pocket to wipe the color off before the Falconer noticed.

  The meer went on. “Uthor is the Shriker’s home, after all. So he will go back. He’s not one to bear the world of light for long.”

  “But if Miles is there, then why have you let us all search for him day on day in Shalem Wood?”

  The Falconer gently closed the book and placed his hand atop the leather. “Miles may return at any time. And if he does, it will be somewhere on this mountain.”

  “He may be close by, then,” said Hanna. “He may be hurt and we can’t reach him!” She stood up suddenly. “If you knew about this passage, you could have stopped it up years ago. Then Miles wouldn’t have been lost!” She’d shouted at him, but suddenly she didn’t care. She pulled her torn nail hard until it stung.

  “I was sent to guard the passage, Hanna. Not to close it.”

  He looked into the fire, and his eyes were bright with it. “In our world and the other, where there’s light there’s shadow.”

  “But if you could keep the Shriker from our world?”

  “Would you want the sylth folk to be shut away from our world forever because of him? Would you have me tear the deyas from the hearts of all the trees in Shalem Wood and keep all magic from the world?”