The Beast of Noor

by Janet Lee Carey

  Miles squinted across the flames. “How did the Falconer die?”

  Hanna paused. “He grew ill,” she said. “He was very old.”

  “More than a hundred years, some said.” Miles drew his frayed hood back over his head. “I thought he would never die,” he admitted.

  When their small supper was over and the dishes cleaned with snow, Miles stored them back inside the rucksack. His back to Hanna, he pulled his king’s necklace from the pack. He had this bit of treasure with him, at least. He looked down at the jewel in his hand. Even in this dim fire’s glow he saw clearly for the first time what it was. Not a royal necklace with an enormous diamond at the bottom, but a heavy chain with a glass bauble. He turned the bauble over in his hand—cheap, ugly, and worthless.

  Miles felt a heat rising up his back. He thrust out his arm to break the glass against the rock wall, and Hanna cried out, “Oh. Your arm.”

  She came closer. “That hurts,” she said. “It must.”

  Miles stashed the necklace in the pack again. “Aye, a little,” he admitted.

  Hanna fished through the rucksack. He wondered if she would retrieve the worthless necklace again, but she tugged out a small cloth bag instead and pulled a twisted blue root from the pouch.

  Azure root. It must be. He’d seen a drawing of it in Entor’s Herbal, but azures, the most ancient of all the trees, grew in only two places in Noor. He watched her break off a piece and crush it between two stones.

  “How did you come by that?”

  “Gurty gave it to me.”

  “An Ordinary woods woman?”

  “She’s not so ordinary, it seems” Hanna worked the stones against the root until she’d crushed it into a fine blue powder, then she spit into the powder again and again until it was a paste. As she washed the wound with cloth and melted snow, Miles bit a stick to keep from screaming out. Hanna gently applied the paste across the raw flesh. Last she bound the wound.

  Miles shifted his seat and leaned back against the cave wall. The arm throbbed and stung much worse than before, but he knew the healing had begun. To keep his mind off the pain, he said, “Tell me how you came to Attenlore.”

  Hanna put the rest of the root back into the little pouch and stored it in the pack. “What do you want to know?”

  “The full of it. From the time I left you and the Falconer in the deeps.”

  It was a long tale. He listened as the snow fell across the mouth of the cave, white flurries from the black sky like thousands of moth wings fluttering down. And he interrupted only once, when she told him of the unicorn.

  “I didn’t kill her.”

  “I know that.”

  Miles leaned forward. “I tried to stop the Shriker, and we fought, but it was too late.” He frowned to himself “Then after, when her body lay in the field, when I was starving for meat …”

  Hanna sucked in a breath. “You didn’t!”

  “No, I didn’t eat her meat, though I was tempted to.”

  They both sighed at the same time. He was so glad now that he’d fought the urge to feast.

  “The Falconer told Queen Shaleedyn you’d never kill a unicorn,” said Hanna. “But she banished us all the same.”

  His teacher had told the Sylth Queen that? The Falconer had known he wouldn’t kill the unicorn, even in his beast form. That comforted Miles some. Still, the Sylth Queen hadn’t believed the meer, and she’d banished them. “The Sylth Queen can be cruel,” he said.

  Hanna turned away.

  “What is it?” Her face looked so tired in the fire’s glow. “Tell me.”

  “The Falconer sent me to the Enoch Tree.”

  Miles shivered at the mention of the twisted tree. “Ah, it’s a sorry place.”

  “It was Queen Shaleedyn imprisoned Enoch in the tree.”

  “I figured that.”

  “But did you know the why of it?”

  Miles shook his head. Hanna brought her hand up to her chin. She closed her eyes and opened them again, so he could see the fire glossing her eyes with gold. “It was fifty years ago … ,” she began.

  Miles stared at the rocky floor when the tale was done. A long silence followed. He was swept up in his own thoughts so long that when he turned again to Hanna, he saw her eyelids drooping. “I’ll keep guard tonight,” he said. “You sleep awhile.”

  Hanna didn’t argue, but took her blanket from the pack, curled up, and was out in an instant. Miles kept the fire going as the night hours passed. Outside the snowstorm became a full blizzard. The heavy snow would fill their footprints, and he was glad for that, but the blizzard held other dangers. If there were Shriker tracks outside, they would be covered as well. There would be no way to tell if the beast was tracking them. Snowstorms changed the look of everything. When morning came, he wasn’t sure he would be able to find his way out of the shadow realm.

  ESCAPE PLAN

  If Enoch had come forward and turned the book in … but he tried to cover his tracks. The boy burned it.

  —THE FALCONER

  IN THE CLOSE CAVE MILES POCKETED THE TINDERBOX AND listened past the keening wind for other sounds. The rattling of dead leaves, the gurgle of a brook beneath the snow, and very far away the call of a great horned owl. He heard them all and knew it was more than a missing tooth he’d brought back from the Shriker’s form. The quality of sound he gathered from the woods outside and the layers of it down to the soft clicking of snow-burdened branches told him he still had the beast’s acute sense of hearing.

  He felt for the little patch of fur on his neck from his first shape-shift. It was still there. If these two remained, he might still have the increased vision from his falcon’s form too. In the dark of night and in this blizzard he couldn’t tell if this was so.

  Hanna slept on peacefully. But he was too unsettled to let himself sleep. Miles rubbed his dry eyes and gave in to his thoughts. Enoch’s stolen spell had been said on the night of the dark moon. He’d failed to break the Shriker’s curse and ended up releasing the monster on the world.

  Miles’s throat tightened. He’d planned to go to Othlore himself and find a power spell. But he wasn’t Enoch. He would never have gone so far as to steal a spell. The fire popped and sent up a flurry of sparks. One fell against the back of his hand, and he felt the sting of it before pressing it out. Taking the spell from the Falconer’s book wasn’t as bad as Enoch’s crime, was it? He hadn’t stolen the whole book. He hadn’t burned The Way Between Worlds.

  “A stolen spell is never rightly wielded.” Shree’s words. Miles had miscast the spell on Breal’s Moon night. And the pearl path had faded even as he walked along. But he’d put only himself in danger that night. He wasn’t like Enoch. He wasn’t the one who’d brought the Shriker back.

  The muscles down his arms tightened. All was done now and could not be reversed. He and Hanna were lost in Uthor with but three arrows and a knife—useless weapons against the monster.

  We’re not trapped here, he told himself. We’ll find our way out. But his heart told him otherwise. He felt how small his hands were, how powerless his human jaw. And if there was a spell to kill the beast, he’d never learned it. “Now you are cursed, and the thirst for revenge will drive you all your days until your thirst is quenched!” How could such a curse be broken? And if a way was found, would the breaking of it kill the beast?

  Laying another stick on the fire, Miles blew it to a golden flame, the color of the Falconer’s eyes, then sat back, deep in thought. Teacher. What would you do now?

  The storm eased, and they met only light snowfall at dawn when they left the cave. The deep woods looked endless and impenetrable in the shadow vale, but Miles walked firmly on, his bow at the ready and his arrows within easy reach. He watched the woods on either side for trolls and listened for the telltale hiss of skullen snakes, which often slumbered in the trees. His sharp hearing made him keenly aware of the loud crunching noises he and Hanna made on the snow.

  They passed an outcropping of gorse
bushes, which gave over to aspen trees and pine. Miles stopped and slid his finger along his knife handle, listening for the telling sound of cracking twigs, which would betray the presence of his enemy.

  Snowflakes gathered in the creases of Hanna’s hood. She swung her hands as she proceeded along the trail. Her fingers were blue with cold. Still, she seemed refreshed from her night’s sleep and hiked along at a steady pace. He remembered the pleasant look on her face when she awoke. She’d been so happy to see him that he couldn’t bear to tell her his plan.

  “Which way?” she asked.

  “Straight ahead.”

  She stopped and turned round. “Are you sure?”

  “Aye.” He stared into her round face, though he wanted to look away.

  “All right, then,” she sighed.

  “And pick up the pace even more, if you can,” he said.

  In another mile they entered a small clearing near the place where he’d slain the gullmuth. He looked down, comparing his sister’s small tracks with his own as he stepped beside them. He should warn her soon. The pit he sought was somewhere nearby, though he wasn’t sure where. Perhaps just off the trail where the trees parted.

  A sudden, loud crack followed by a scream stopped him dead in his tracks. Miles looked up just in time to see Hanna break through a layer of branches and slide down into the pit.

  “Hanna!” Miles raced forward.

  She flung out her hands, trying desperately to grab on to something, but she was swallowed up before he could reach her.

  THE GULLMUTH PIT

  There in the deeps the Darro’s ghost bounds surrounded Rory.

  —THE LEGEND OF THE SHRIKER

  “GRAB MY HAND,” SHOUTED MILES AS HE WENT BELLY down and slid up to the edge of the pit. He reached down the side, but Hanna was too far below. He peered into the dark and saw her clinging to a thin root.

  “Hold on,” he called.

  “I can’t. My hand is slipping!”

  “You mustn’t let go, Hanna! The pit’s too deep!” If this was the gullmuth pit he’d heard Perth boasting of, there would be long, sharp spikes at the bottom. She had to hold on. He couldn’t let her fall.

  “I’ll find a way to reach you,” he promised.

  He leaped up and ran to the trees. He needed a long branch, but they were all too high up to reach, and there wasn’t time to shinny up a trunk. Why hadn’t he warned her of the pit? He didn’t think it would be so well covered with branches and snow. Oh, she mustn’t fall! “Hold on,” he cried again. There must be a branch on the ground he could use. He raced through the snow—found none.

  “Hurry,” moaned Hanna.

  Miles tore off his bow and pressed down on the wood. His fingers were stiff, but he managed to unhook the bowstring. Tying it round his ankle and securing the other end of the string to the base of a sapling, he knelt again and dipped the wooden bow down into the pit. Reach for it!” he called.

  “It’s too far up!”

  Miles stripped the pack from his back and dumped it out on the snow. The necklace lay atop the food pouch. It was long, and if he unhooked it … He tore open the latch, crawled to the edge again, lay on his belly, and lowered the king’s chain down. Hurry! Don’t let her fall!

  “Can you see the chain?”

  “Aye.”

  “Grab it, then, and hold on tight. I’ll pull you up.”

  “It will pull you down if I do.”

  “Trust me and do as I say, Hanna. Now!”

  In the half dark Hanna swung out her left hand and missed the chain, nearly losing her right-hand grip on the root.

  “Lower it down farther.” She tried a second time, and on the third she gripped it and held on. Miles strained hard against the weight as he tried to pull her up. He felt himself being dragged downward. His left leg stretched out, held fast by the taut bowstring. His sweaty hand slipped on the chain. Hold tighter! Pull harder! The bowstring cut into his ankle, sending a sting of pain up his leg. Let it cut him. As long as he could save her from those spikes. His muscles strained with her weight. Gritting his teeth, he redoubled his efforts and pulled back with all his might.

  At last Hanna was near enough to the top to reach him. She clasped his wrist. He took her hand.

  “Miles!”

  “It’s all right,” he said. “Just hold on to me.”

  Up a little more and she was out. She crawled from the edge. The chain slipped from his stiff fingers. Before he could grab it, the king’s chain tumbled to the bottom, hitting the spikes with a clank.

  They sat together a few feet away from the pit, their breath puffing out in quick little clouds. He leaned back on his hands, his limbs quaking. That was close. Too close. He blamed himself for her fall. If he had lost her …

  Miles untied the bloody bowstring about his ankle.

  “It was clever of you to come up with that,” said Hanna. “I would never have thought to—”

  “Stop it,” said Miles. “Why do you always talk yourself down?”

  “I was just admiring how—”

  “I know what you were saying, but you’re wrong. I’m no better than you!”

  “You shouldn’t shout.”

  “I can shout if I want to!” He stood on unsteady legs, untied the end at the base of the sapling, and tried to restring his bow. Hard to do with shaking hands. Hanna was right about the noise. It was dangerous to shout here in Uthor with so many creatures on the prowl. But he didn’t care right then. He really didn’t.

  “There’s no reason for you to be angry with me,” said Hanna.

  “I’m not angry with you! Can’t you get that through your head?”

  “Why are you shouting, then?”

  “I’m not shouting! I’m yelling!”

  Hanna’s face broke into a smile. “Well, all right, then,” she said.

  They both let out a laugh, and he sat back down on the snow beside her “The truth is,” he said hesitantly, “I knew about the pit.”

  Hanna’s chin shot out. “You what?”

  “It’s the gullmuth pit,” he said quickly. “Reyn and Perth dug it together to trap and kill the monster.”

  “Who?”

  “Two renegade sylths who captured me,” he said. “It’s a long story, but if you want to know—”

  Hanna leaped up. “I could have died!” She turned and started up the trail.

  “Wait,” called Miles. “Don’t leave. I didn’t mean for you to fall in. I promise that.”

  Hanna turned about, sniffed, and wiped her nose.

  He cleared his throat. “I didn’t think the pit would be on the trail. Only off to the side somewhere. Nor did I think it would be so well hidden, but with all the snow-fall … they left the pit unfinished and only half covered, or so I understood. Someone else must have come along and—”

  “Why didn’t you warn me?” She stepped closer and sat again.

  He felt her hot breath on his face. She would hate him for what he had to tell her. He looked down and pressed his stiff fingers against his bloody ankle. Still he felt her gaze.

  She dug a small stone from the snow and chucked it at a nearby bush. “If you knew we might be passing the pit as we made our way out of the valley—”

  “I wasn’t planning on leaving Uthor.”

  “What?” Hanna leaped up a second time.

  “Sit down, Hanna.”

  “I won’t. Not until you tell me what this is about.”

  “You know what it’s about,” said Miles. “I won’t leave here until the Shriker’s dead. I promised myself I wouldn’t.”

  “And what about me? I don’t want to stay in Uthor any longer. I want to go home.”

  He looked up at her flushed face, expecting tears. But he was met with a fierce look.

  “If I don’t kill him once and for all, he’ll go on hunting creatures in Attenlore. He’ll come to our world to devour people. He’ll come after you again.”

  “I don’t care!”

  “Don’t you? What if
you knew for certain that he would kill again? What if he were to come after Tymm?”

  Hanna took in a surprised breath, as if the Shriker truly had turned on their little brother. “Would he?” she whispered.

  Miles set his jaw. “He might—if I don’t stop him.”

  Hanna slowly sat back down. “I don’t want to have to face this.”

  “Neither do I, but for some reason it’s mine to do.”

  “Not yours alone. The Falconer said it was our story from the beginning. Yours and mine.” She looked down at her hands. “He told me it was ours to finish.”

  Miles felt a sudden warmth across his face, like the old man had just breathed on him. “He trusted us to do it, Hanna. We shouldn’t let him down.” He crept to the edge of the pit and looked over. Enough morning light now to see the long, sharp spikes at the bottom. He shuddered and hugged himself.

  “This would kill the Shriker sure,” he said, his back still to Hanna. “It’s well covered with branches and leaves. And with the snow on top it’s twice hidden.”

  Hands on hips, he turned. “I have to lure the beast here somehow.”

  A stirring breeze sent a flurry of snow between them. Hanna gave a single nod. “I will be the bait,” she said.

  “No,” he insisted. “I’ll not let you risk your life again. You’re to hide away while I take care of him.”

  Hanna brushed the snow from her muddy cape. “You need me.”

  “I don’t. Really, Hanna.”

  “You do. I’m the one he’s wanted all along, Miles. And … ,” she added in a low voice, “I know how to call him.”

  He stepped forward. “How?”

  She looked up, her eyes blue and green—pale sky, fertile earth—a readiness in both. “Trust me,” she said. And she wouldn’t say more than that.

  They worked together to pull down two evergreen branches to cover the hole made by Hanna’s fall. Then they gathered snow from a nearby hillock and scattered it as best they could across the top. Miles stood back to admire the work. The pit was completely hidden once again. Surrounded by thick lines of trees, it took up the entire walking path, so the monster would be sure to fall in.