The Beast of Noor

by Janet Lee Carey

  More lonely hours passed. She spied what looked like caves—dark, open places in the rocky ravine—and headed for them, A beast would seek them out for shelter from the cold, and she might find some sign of Miles there. The far-off mountain peak, which had been a kind of beacon to her the past few hours, was going dark. Twilight already. Tonight and tomorrow, that was all the time she had left to find Miles before it was too late. If he stayed in the beast form through tomorrow’s full moon …

  Hanna didn’t finish the thought, which rose up in her mind like a great, dark wave. With all her might she held the wave in place. The full of it would not crash down. She would press it back and back.

  Halfway along the slope she stopped and knelt. Tracks. Sharp claws had dug black pits in the snow above four deep impressions left by giant padded paws. Her ears rang with sudden fear. The Shriker’s prints. Or were they her brother’s? She’d been right to head toward the caves. Light and joy peeked out behind the fear. She touched the muddy snow. “Miles?” There was no way to find out other than to go. She stood again, braced herself, and followed the beast tracks. Be Miles, she thought, be Miles, with every step, her damp boots leaving small impressions beside the great paws.

  Hanna tracked by starlight, and by the moon as it coursed overhead. The valley had felt closed off to the world in the daylight hours, but the shadow realm opened itself to the night, and what light there was fell clear from the heavens.

  Searching through the woods, she thought on the tale Granda Sheen used to tell of the serpent Wratheren, who swallowed the moon, and of Breal of Kelleneur, who battled the serpent in the sky. It was a myth from a long-ago time, but it warmed her some to think of Breal, a common man who overcame a giant serpent to rescue the moon.

  She remembered how she used to feel when Granda told Breal’s tale: how she’d imagined herself doing battle with the serpent to bring light back into the world. But her life had been simple back then, and her longings had been safe beside her mother’s hearth. Words from the tale filled her ears, as if her granda walked and talked beside her. After a full year of chasing the sea serpent Breal gave up the quest and turned his ship homeward, for Wratheren had grown great wings and taken to the sky. And what ship can grow wings? Thus Breal’s hope was gone, the hero all but broken, when the wind woman Isparel blew his vessel skyward toward the final battle.

  Hanna paused, the branches about her creaking like so many old doors. She hadn’t thought of that part of the tale for a long while. Breal gave up. Breal, the greatest of all heroes, turned back until the wind spirit Isparel came to blow his ship into the sky.

  She looked up through the branches and let Granda’s words settle into her the way they always did; let them fill her ears, her mind, her heart. If Breal lost hope and still continued on, then she could do the same.

  STOLEN

  Open as you have before, Let the traveler through the door. From this opening begin, The only way out Is in.

  —AN OPENING SPELL, FROM THE WAY BETWEEN WORLDS

  NEAR THE VALLEY FLOOR THE TRACKS CAME CLOSER together. The beast had slowed down to a walk, but how long ago had he been this way? Was it a day? Two? Bushes grew in a leafless tangle, and tree roots reached across a patch of ground like bony-fingered hands. Hanna walked around them, passing by a tumble of boulders.

  “A girl! A girl!” screeched a voice from a high branch above, Hanna looked up and was surprised to see two giant kravel birds in the moonlight, both black-feathered females with orange plumage on their heads. The sturdy birch branch sagged under their weight.

  “Welcome to Uthor!” screeched the bird on the left.

  “Turn back!” warned the other.

  “She can’t, Mok,” said the first, hopping along the branch. “Once you come in, you never get out!”

  “Hakaw! Hakaw!” they both laughed. The kravels flew upward, then dived down. Hanna screamed and set off at a run. The first bird skimmed past and pecked at her head, while the other tried to pull the rucksack off her back.

  “Stop it!” Hanna cried, flailing her arms to ward them off as she ran.

  “Stop it!” mocked the kravels.

  “Knock her down for me, Tapp!” ordered Mok.

  “Knock her down! Knock her down!” screeched Tapp.

  Hanna sped up. “Leave me be!” she screamed. “I have nothing you want!”

  “Oh! Listen to that!” cried Mok. “She has nothing!”

  “Nothing at all! Nothing at all!” screeched Tapp, ramming into Hanna’s back so hard and fast that Hanna tumbled over.

  “Oh, I’m good. I’m good!” boasted Tapp. She landed on the snow before Hanna and preened the feathers on her left wing. “Take the pack, Mok!” she screeched.

  Hanna kicked and shouted, but in no time Mok had flown down and stripped the pack from her back. The birds flew off, Mok’s large, dark wings flapping heavily under the weight of her bounty.

  “Stop!” screamed Hanna. “Give that back! It’s mine!”

  “Give it back!” mocked Tapp.

  “It’s mine!” screeched Mok.

  Hanna darted left, then right, then left again as the kravels wove in and out between the treetops. I’ll lose my way, she thought. And I won’t find the Shriker prints again. She stopped a moment and leaned over, breathing hard. She knew she should turn back, but she took another breath and plunged through the underbrush.

  She had some bread in her pocket, so she wouldn’t have bothered to go after the pack with its cook pot and drinking cup. But the Falconer’s gift was in the rucksack. He’d wrapped it well, trusting her to bring it to Miles. For that, and that alone, she ran.

  Hanna tried to watch where she was going, to know the trees, bushes, the snowy rocks, so she could find her way back to the tracks. But she could not keep her eyes on the woods and follow the kravels’ flight at the same time. Break low branches, she told herself. Make a trail back. She thrust out her arm as she ran, snapping small juniper branches here and there as best she could while bounding through the snow.

  Far in the distance the kravels circled in a slow spiral over a giant fir tree, as if waiting for her. She sped toward the tree. Just then Mok dropped the rucksack. It tumbled down and disappeared into the high branches, Hanna raced up a narrow path to the broad trunk.

  “I have nothing you want!” mocked Tapp again. “Nothing at all!”

  “Go get it if you want it!” called Mok.

  “Hakaw! Hakaw!” they laughed as they flew off.

  Hanna put her hands on the rough brown trunk, tipped her head, and looked up. The pack was up there somewhere but far too high to see in the dark. The lowest branch on the fir was more than a ladder’s length away. The elm beside it was not close enough for her to jump tree to tree. Aetwan could fetch it for her if he were here. The thought made her feel even more alone. The sprites could fetch it, a sylth or bird, anything with wings. A giant could reach down his long arm and bring it up again.

  “A girl! A girl!” the kravels had called, and that was all she was. She held the trunk, her arms reaching but a fourth of the way around. She gripped the coarse bark hard until the tart fir smell filled her nose. Gone. The Falconer’s tinderbox, her blanket, Gurty’s wise root, and worse than that, Miles’s gift. It was then the wave inside her nearly broke.

  Hanna awoke stiff and sore in the hollow of a pine tree. Outside the wind whistled, stirring up little flurries of snow. The last day to find Miles. She would have to leave the pack where it was. There was no way to fetch it. Today she’d find the tracks again. “They will lead me to Miles,” she whispered to reassure herself.

  Sitting up inside the tree, her cloak wrapped tightly round her, she leaned back against the mossy wood and chewed the breadcrust from her pocket. The dream she’d had just before awaking came back to her then.

  She’d seen the Falconer leaning over his table. The old man had his back to her and he was scribbling with his quill pen. “You’re here!” called Hanna. She tried to run to him, wanting to lean her he
ad against his chest. To smell the winterleaf and forest there in his old shirt, and to feel his large hand on her back. Her feet flew, her legs churned, but she couldn’t get any closer. She was running in the air. “Turn around,” she had called. “Look at me.” But the meer hadn’t turned. He’d kept on writing.

  Inside her tree Hanna hugged her knees to her chest and shivered. “What was it you were writing?” she whispered. More of the dream came back. The meer had laid aside his quill, climbed up in the air, and gone into the roots that hung from his ceiling. Hanna tried to follow, but she couldn’t float upward into the air as he had. And she found herself standing with her hands braced on the back of the bent-willow chair. She peered at the table and read the words he’d left upon the parchment.

  With her back in the hollow of the tree, she whispered now what she’d read inside the dream: “For Miles in Attenlore.”

  He wanted her to go back for the rucksack, I’ll go, she thought, I’ll fetch it quickly, then I’ll look for fresh tracks. The sweetness of having seen the old man again brought lightness to her chest. Hanna crawled outside to the dim morning and crossed the path till she found the fir.

  It was well she’d thought to scrape a marking on it, or she wouldn’t have been able to pick the tree out from the many others. She peered through the branches. There. Her dangling pack was dusted with snow. But it was too far up. She might shoot it down. Stepping back, she drew out an arrow, pulled the bowstring taut, aimed, and shot. The arrow flew through the branches nowhere near the pack. Again she tried, and again. One arrow fell back to the snow, two more landed in the tree. I’ll waste all my arrows this way, she thought as she began to pace. If only I had a ladder.

  Hanna looked about the trail and off to the sides. After a lot of searching she found a fallen sapling and pulled it slowly along. It was heavy, and she fell with the weight of it twice before leaning it up against the fir trunk and climbing on.

  Gathering all her strength, she pulled herself up the sapling until she reached the lowest fir branch. Bracing her foot against the trunk, she reached up higher still. “For Miles in Attenlore,” she whispered under her breath as she pulled herself upward.

  DARKWOOD TROLL

  And he named his children after his enemies.

  —THE BOOK OF EOWEY

  THE NIGHT’S SNOWFALL HAD FILLED THE TRACKS HANNA had found the day before, and she spent all afternoon trudging through the dim valley seeking more. No time to build a cook fire, she chewed a few dried mushrooms for strength as she walked, glad to have the pack with its gear and food snug against her back again.

  Tonight was the first full moon since Miles had formed himself into the Shriker. She had to tell him to change back before it was too late. Find him. Find him. The words echoed through her mind with every footfall as her boots crunched through the snow.

  Late in the day she came at last upon a new set of tracks. Heart racing, she squatted down. The paw prints were as round and broad as the well bucket; the weight of the passing beast had set each one deep in the snow. She followed them beneath the whispering boughs, moving with haste as the shadows all around her darkened.

  Near the valley floor she came to a sudden stop by a straggly juniper bush. The tracks ahead were even, but there were red splashes on the snow nearby. Blood, Drawing closer, she went down on one knee. New impressions here, coming out of the undergrowth to join the beast tracks. They were shaped like human feet, a little larger than her own. Blood pooled in the heel of one of the tracks. Her throat tightened, “Miles,” she whispered.

  She rose again, straining to peer through the thick evergreens. He must be close now! She quickened her pace through the deepening snow. The prints, both beast and human, turned sharply to the right.

  She’d just changed direction to follow them around the bend when a troll leaped out in front of her,

  Hanna froze stifling a scream. The troll was small, his head no higher than her chin, and his thick body was covered head to toe with mossy green hair that was parted by a long, warty nose.

  My bow, she thought, but her hand moved faster than her head, for in a flash she’d plucked Aetwan’s troll glass from her pocket.

  As soon as he saw the triangular mirror, the troll jumped back and fell to his knees. “Please don’t hurt me,” he cried in a gravelly voice.

  Hanna kept her aim, a small white bead of light falling across the troll’s bowed head. “Stand up now,” she said.

  The troll came to his feet and peered at her through matted hair, though he made sure to keep his gaze above the glass. His eyes were marble black, and he smelled like wet leaf mold.

  “Tell me who you are,” said Hanna.

  “Cully of Uthor’s lower dell.”

  Hanna flinched at the familiar name, thinking for a moment that someone had hexed Cully from Brim and turned him into a troll. But this troll was old, not a boy at all, so only their names were the same. Still, it troubled her.

  Cully pointed to the troll glass. “Put it down,” he said, trembling.

  She peered at his red-stained fingernails, which curved to points like cat claws. “The blood on the snow,” she said. “Is it yours?”

  “I was going to bring the kill back to him,” he said. “All of it.” He licked his lips as if recalling the taste of rabbit or fox or whatever it was he’d eaten, then pointed to the troll glass again. “Did the Hound King give you that?”

  “The Hound King,” whispered Hanna. Not in answer to the troll, but in surprise at the strangeness of the words.

  Cully seemed to take it the wrong way. “Oh, I’ll bring my share back to him tonight. Tell him. Tell him. I’m the best hunter in the vale!”

  Hanna took this in. If Cully thought her to be a spy for the Hound King, whoever that was, she wouldn’t tell him otherwise.

  He took a step toward the trees.

  “Stop,” ordered Hanna.

  “Don’t shine it in my eyes!” pleaded Cully. He pressed his bloodstained hands together. “Don’t turn me into stone with your glass!”

  Turn him to stone? Who’d said anything about that? Then she remembered Aetwan’s words, “Trolls can’t look at their own likeness.” She gripped the charm tighter in her fingers. Cully’s fear gave her a sense of power she’d never felt before. “I’m looking for someone,” she said. “I think you will help me.”

  The troll sighed. “What sort of someone?” He plucked a beetle out of his hair and popped it in his mouth, “I’m not telling on my own folk. But if you want to know about that marsh rat Tinzel—”

  “A boy,” said Hanna.

  Cully swallowed the beetle and gave her a narrow look.

  “He may have followed the Shriker into the valley,” Hanna added.

  As soon as Hanna said “Shriker,” Cully fell to his knees, bowed his bushy head, and said, “He killed the mighty gullmuth. Long live the Hound King!”

  The shock of his words hit her hard. Hanna tensed as the image of the beast king, a crowned Shriker, formed in her mind. She worked to hold the troll glass steady.

  A small bead of sweat ran down her forehead. She wiped it off with the back of her hand. Cully used the split second of her undoing to dart back into the woods and race through the trees.

  “Wait,” screamed Hanna, bounding through the snow. “Stop!”

  She flew through the woods behind the troll until her breath came hard and her throat stung. At a crossing Hanna stopped, looking left and right. No sign of Cully. She searched the snow. No tracks. She’d lost him. He was no help, she thought, to calm herself. He wouldn’t have led me to Miles. But another thought echoed back through her mind: He might have told her something.

  Tired and needing rest, she took none. Instead she retraced her steps and picked up her old trail. At the path’s edge she knelt down by the broad paw prints.

  The beast was king here. What did that mean for Miles? The question made her chest ache.

  It was near midnight when Hanna reached a frozen stream. There in the dee
ps of the valley she broke the ice and filled her cup. Find him. Find him, she’d thought with every hurried step all afternoon and into the night. But she’d failed, and now the moon had risen round and lantern bright over Uthor Vale. Exhausted and heartsick, she drank. As the cold, clear water crossed the back of her tongue, she peered over the rim of her cup and saw two eyes, burning red as coals, watching her from the bushes.

  THE KING’S REALM

  The serpent Wrathern swam the sky, Hungering for the moon.

  —THE EPIC OF BREAL

  WITH HIS EYES FIXED ON HANNA, THE BEAST STEPPED around the juniper bush. She screamed and dropped her cup. It clattered on the creek stones as she dived for the cedar tree behind her and scrambled up the trunk. He could hear her panting breath. See her fear in the way she clung to the cedar branch. Moonlight fell across the boughs and lit her tangled hair. She was muddy, and her cloak was torn.

  Hanna gripped the bowstring across her chest, but the arrows had fallen to the snow beside her pack when she fled. She was alone and unarmed in Uthor Vale.

  “You should leave here,” he growled. “It isn’t safe.”

  Hanna recoiled at the sound of his gruff words, but she recovered. “Miles?” she said in a trembling voice. “It’s … it’s you. I came so far to find you.”

  Miles did not reply at first. The troll army was nearly ready. There was no room for Hanna just now. A girl that needed protecting would only get in the way of his plan.

  “Your coming here only makes it harder for me. Did you think I wouldn’t be able to kill the Shriker on my own?”