by Shae Ford
By the time he came out of his trance, he was sweating — but it was a good sweat, the sort of damp that used to cover his brow after dragging the first line in a field. He still had plenty left to give.
“Come here, Baird.” Kael grabbed the beggar-bard before he could cause any more trouble and plucked the mop and bucket from his hands. Then he placed them against the sealed logs.
His brows arced high over his bandages. “Something odd has happened here. What magic is this? What strange trickery?”
“It isn’t magic, you lunatic. It’s whispercraft.”
“Whispercraft …?” Baird gasped. “It was Kael the Wright, wasn’t it? He was here! Lead me to him straight away!”
Kael sighed. “All right, come with me.”
The wildmen gathered around him eagerly when he called. It had been several days since he’d shown them Harbinger, and the memories of their circle plagued him like an itch. He wanted badly to go there again, to feel the awakening he’d felt before.
Excitement coursed through the craftsmen’s hands as they joined. It raced all around the circle and came back to Kael in jolts. He was vaguely aware of the warriors who gathered behind him, watching in interest. But their presence slipped far into the distance as Kael drifted away.
He knew what to expect, this time — the sensation of his body being one place while his mind was in another no longer felt strange. His thoughts flared to life in the circle’s middle … but they didn’t glow for long.
The craftsmen were confused. They didn’t understand how one material could become another. Their doubt put knots between them. Kael felt his grip slipping as the circle bunched, dragging his mind kicking and screaming back inside his body.
When he could hold it no longer, their connection broke. “You have to trust me,” he growled when the world came back.
“It isn’t possible,” one of them said. “Wood can be burned, carved or chipped. Its shape can be changed, but it can’t become clay.”
The others mumbled in agreement, and Kael knew what he had to do. “Get together again. Move!” he snapped when they hesitated.
He’d learned from watching Gwen that about the only way to get the wildmen’s attention was to shout at them — as if the loudness of his voice was a measure of how serious he was. And he must’ve sounded very serious, indeed: the craftsmen joined hands immediately.
This time when he went to the middle of the circle, Kael showed them proof. He drew up his memories of the day he’d spent healing them in the hospital. They watched the insides of his head as he cleaned and sealed every gash, how he snapped bones together and smoothed away their scars. They could see how his hands worked while his mind held memories of clay. Many of them saw their own wounds healed.
And they could doubt no longer.
When he showed them what he’d done to the wood, they accepted it. A new corner of their minds opened up — revealing a power they never knew they’d had. The possibilities rose like floodwaters and spilled over the banks. They were ready to work, eager to put their skills to the test. So Kael released them.
The craftsmen went immediately to the walls. Their hands ran up and down, dragging the edges of the logs together, smoothing them until they became one solid mass of wood. Their lips moved all the while they worked, alive with excited words that Kael couldn’t hear.
When they had one full section of wall done, the craftsmen stepped away. Griffith slapped a hand against it. “Fate’s fingers — we aren’t going to have to worry about the frost anymore,” he said with a grin.
They didn’t even have to cut notches into the next log: the warriors lifted it into place, and the craftsmen sealed it together. Then the wildmen howled and beat their chests, dancing around like they’d won a great victory.
Kael knew they could go on like that for hours if he didn’t stop them quickly. “All right, all right — back to work! We’ve got a lot to do.”
And with no small amount of grumbling, they drifted away.
Kael was so busy glaring at them that it took him a moment to realize that Baird hadn’t left the circle. He held his knobby hands out in front of him, his mouth a black hole beneath his rags.
Kael touched his shoulder lightly. “Do you think that’ll work better than paste?”
A little gasp escaped Baird’s throat before he burst: “I — I could see again! For a moment, I could see them! Wonderful colors, alive in the caress of shadow and light … I’d forgotten what a gift the eyes can be. But Kael the Wright has reminded me.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “Who is this man who can bring color to the dark? Who bids flesh to mend and molds the trees to his will?”
“I’m not sure. But he probably isn’t nearly as great as you think he is,” Kael said roughly. “Now come on — we’ve got crafting to do.”
He tried to go back to his work, but found himself watching Baird out of the corner of his eye, instead. The beggar-bard traced his way around the walls — there wasn’t a crack his knobby fingers couldn’t find.
And all the while he worked, his mouth stayed fixed in an open grin.
*******
“Follow me, young man. I know the way!”
Baird had latched onto Kael’s tunic when they’d finished their work. He’d prattled along behind him the whole way to dinner. But the moment they stepped inside the Hall, the beggar-bard took the lead.
He marched boldly into the mass of wildmen, swinging one arm about him and dragging Kael along with the other. They bounced and bumped their way though the crowd until they finally arrived at a table dressed with a wild boar.
“I smelled him the moment we entered. The muck and spiny bristles have given way to the sweet flesh beneath. He was well-fed and fleet — the perfect blend of lean and grease. Hmm,” Baird slapped his hands together excitedly as they sat, “yes, he’ll do nicely!”
For once, Kael agreed.
He wanted nothing more than to tear into his dinner, but the wildmen had a strange ritual: none of them would start eating until after Gwen had entered. So Kael was forced to wait.
“You’re in for it now, whisperer,” Kyleigh said as she sat beside him.
She gave him a look that made his stomach stop mid-grumble and flip onto its side. “Why am I in for it?”
Before she could answer, the door slammed open and Gwen marched in. Half a bear pelt hung off her back like a cape, the massive front claws wound in a clasp at her neck.
It seemed just about every evening Gwen had a new animal to add to her collection. She’d stalked around in wolf, bear, badger, fox, and nearly every other sort of beast. But strangely enough, the one creature she’d never reduced to boots was a lion — which must’ve been good news for Silas.
Kael was rather surprised when the halfcat had first appeared to him — so surprised that he’d jumped and nearly broken a finger in the trap he’d been trying to set. But Silas had been far from remorseful.
“I’ll tell you the same thing I told the dragoness — the wildmen believe I’m nothing more than a common beast, and I want it to stay that way,” he’d growled. “If you cross me, Marked One, I will devour you from the outside in … beginning with your fingers.”
Kael had no intention of crossing him. After Silas had kept them from being cornered by the hounds, he supposed shutting his mouth was the least he could do. Though he didn’t have a clue as to why the halfcat was so intent on keeping his human shape a secret.
He supposed it must’ve had something to do with Gwen: Silas followed her around like a shadow. At dinner, he curled beside her boots. Tonight, his powerful legs had to move quickly to keep up with Gwen’s storming pace.
“What have you done to my craftsmen?” she barked when she reached Kael’s table.
Oh, that was what she was upset about. Well, that wasn’t his fault. “I told them to pace themselves, but they wouldn’t listen,” Kael said.
A trick he’d thought would make the building go by faster had actually ground it to a halt. The c
raftsmen had insisted on trying their newfound powers out on absolutely everything: they’d flattened branches into shingles, twisted solid pieces of wood into furniture, and bent the doorways into arches — simply because they’d always wondered what it would be like to have a door with no corners on top.
The warriors didn’t help matters, either. They goaded their fellow wildmen into doing all sorts of ridiculous things. Kael had to yell at three separate craftsmen who were braiding rocks together instead of working. Then while he was trying to concentrate on fixing the roof, one of them had snuck up behind him and sealed his boot to the shingles.
Kael’s next step had jerked him backwards, and he lost his footing. He wound up being trapped upside down, half-hanging from the roof, until Griffith finally wrenched him free.
The wildmen might’ve been colossal pains most of the day, but Kael had gotten the last laugh. As he looked around the Hall, he realized several of the craftsmen were absent from dinner. The few that remained were either passed out in the middle of their plates or very near to it. They stared through puffy eyes and clamped hands to their ears, wincing at every small sound.
“I warned them. I told them they’d get headaches if they kept on like that,” Kael insisted.
But Gwen’s neck only burned redder. She grabbed Kael by the roots of his hair. “My village had better not sit in ruins all summer while you fool about. Keep them on task, or you’ll answer to me.” She twisted his curls roughly before shoving his head away.
Silas drifted along behind her as she marched for the back of the Hall — stopping to hiss at Kyleigh as he passed.
Kael felt as if he’d just been beaten over nothing. “So while she’s off running through the woods all day, I get to be the one in charge of keeping her people on task. Shouldn’t that be the Thane’s job?”
“It should be,” Kyleigh said, leaning around him to make a face at Silas.
Kael didn’t exactly feel like she was paying attention.
“You did good today,” Griffith said as he slid in across from them. “Honestly — two houses a day is a good pace for the craftsmen.”
“Well, we could’ve had the whole village done by now if they’d stop digging rounded windows into everything,” Kael muttered, rubbing the sore spot Gwen had left on his scalp.
The tables in the Hall formed something like a rectangle with a large, empty space in the middle. Gwen’s table sat at the back near the fire pit. The wall behind it was covered in the snarling heads of beasts. Her chair was adorned with designs that made it look as if it housed a dragon — with its high back carved into an image of the dragon’s head and the arms chiseled to look like a set of massive claws.
Though it was certainly a menacing beast, at second glance Kael wasn’t certain it was a dragon. The beast’s horns curled backwards instead of up, and it didn’t seem to have any wings. The designs on its torso made it look as if it had a chest full of hair. Perhaps it was supposed to be one of the wynns the wildmen kept talking about.
He was still trying to figure it out when Gwen stepped in front of the chair, blocking his view. The wildmen rose with their Thane and held their cups high. Kael scrambled to mirror them.
“Fate’s die has fallen in our favor once more, my wildmen,” Gwen declared, her voice ringing through the Hall. “We’ve lived to see another day. May we live to see many more.”
It wasn’t a celebration, and it certainly wasn’t one of Uncle Martin’s toasts. Kael hadn’t figured out what it was — he just knew it meant they would get to eat.
After they’d taken a drink from their cups, dinner began. The wildmen passed their plates around in a circle, each scooping a portion of whatever dish sat in front of him until every plate was full.
“What a glorious feast!” Baird cried. Then he began shoveling roast pig into his mouth with both hands.
“Have you figured out the caddocs?” Griffith said around a large chunk of boiled goose egg.
Kael thought he had.
The wildmen were thrilled to have a healer among them once again — not for the fact that it would make their lives any easier, but because it had given them the chance to revive the ancient tradition of caddocs.
From what he could gather, there were often ice storms at the summit. The storms raged so fiercely and for so many days that Thane Cadwalader had come up with a way to both entertain his people and keep his warriors sharp: fearsome skirmishes designed to push the battlers to their limits.
Kael had gotten an up-close look at the caddocs during his first dinner with the wildmen. He’d been deep into his food when the warrior sitting beside him had flung the icy contents of his cup directly into the face of the warrior across from him.
They’d then proceeded to stand in the middle of the Hall and beat each other with their fists — striking one blow each on the top of the head, back and forth until one of them finally lost consciousness. Kael had spent the rest of his dinner trying to flatten out the knots on their heads. But instead of learning from their bruises and easing back, the caddocs had only gotten worse.
The night before, a whole table of warriors had erupted into a fight. They smashed their benches into clubs and chased each other around, turning the Hall into their personal battlefield. The other warriors had cheered for their mates while the craftsmen beat their hands upon the tabletop in a charging rhythm.
Even Kyleigh had seemed to enjoy herself. She’d stood on their bench and hurled dishes into the fray — cheering each time she managed to smash a plate across a warrior’s head.
Kael, on the other hand, thought he could’ve done with a little less chaos at dinner. He and Baird had taken refuge beneath their table for most of the evening — and after the battle was finished, Kael had spent several hours more trying to paste the warriors back together.
Now he choked down his food as quickly as he could, watching out of the corner of his eye for trouble.
Griffith held up a finger. “What does the water represent?”
“Washing away ill will,” Kael said thickly. “It’s all in good fun.”
“Right. And why is it important to pay attention to the rules?”
“They’re different for every caddoc.”
Griffith smiled widely. “Very good. I think you’re ready.”
Kael nearly choked. “Ready for w —?”
An icy lash slapped across his skin. It washed over his face and slid in chilly lines down his neck. Kael blinked the water from his eyes and saw Griffith standing before him, an empty cup in his hand.
“What in Kingdom’s name was that for?” Kael gasped.
“You know very well what it was for. Now get out there,” Kyleigh said. She shoved him off the bench with her boot heel and Griffith dragged him into the middle of the room by his leg.
“It seems we have a caddoc,” Gwen said, eyeing them from her table.
Kael didn’t think it seemed like that at all. “He’s only a child!”
“Scared, mutt?” someone hollered.
Kael’s face burned as laughter filled the Hall.
“Why have you called this man to caddoc?” Gwen said.
“Because he’s a filthy mutt and I plan to slap his face off,” Griffith replied — with what Kael thought was an alarming amount of enthusiasm.
Gwen’s finger trailed a line down her jaw and across her bluish-black lips before resting, curled, beneath her chin. “That seems reasonable.”
The wildmen’s excited howls drowned out Kael’s protests.
Griffith spread his fingers wide. “Open-handed, and you have to keep your boots planted. If you move your feet, I get to punch you.” He smiled. “Last man standing wins.”
Kael couldn’t believe it. This was mad — even for the wildmen. “I’m not going to fight him. I’m not going to hit a child —”
A stinging pain cut his words short. The world hadn’t even come back into focus before Griffith slapped him again, jerking his head to the side.
“Keep those feet pl
anted,” he warned. “I’d hate to have to punch you.”
Kael felt as if two enormous bees had stung his face. He hadn’t even realized Griffith could reach him. “I don’t want to — oomft!”
Griffith slapped him across the mouth. “Then you can stand there till you pass out. Makes me no difference.”
A blow across his ear made Kael realize that he had to do something. He caught Griffith by the wrist and tried to put him to sleep, but the boy twisted out of his grasp.
“No healer’s tricks!” he crowed, slapping him hard in the side of the head.
The skin across his jaw was beginning to swell horribly. Kael didn’t want to hurt Griffith, but it was also clear that the boy was never going to relent. Perhaps he could just tire him out.
He turned his skin to stone and waited. Griffith seemed to realize that he was up to something. His hands hovered out in front of him, bobbing like the heads of snakes. Kael didn’t even see him move: he just heard the hollow thud as Griffith’s palm struck his hardened skin.
The boy swore and wringed his hand out in front of him. Kael heard howls he recognized and knew the craftsmen were cheering for him. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Kyleigh leaning over Baird — no doubt telling him every detail of the fight.
Griffith flexed his hand, grimacing as he studied Kael’s face. “What was that?”
Gwen had her boots propped on the table and her arms resting upon the claws of her chair. “Do you withdraw your caddoc?”
Griffith shook his head.
“Then keep fighting. You’re beginning to bore me.”
Kael stood still as Griffith slapped him again. Once, twice, three times his hands struck Kael’s stoned flesh and bounced away. But the fourth blow was different.
The thudding sound was louder. It rattled his insides a bit — like the tremor of a giant’s steps. He felt a hairline crack begin to snake its way down his chin on the fifth blow, widening on the sixth and seventh.
