“It was a fire in the old granary,” she said gravely.
“No! That beautiful roof ... At least it was empty.” She looked quizzically at me. “Usually it’s used to store surplus produce for the winter.”
“It did have your dragon in it.”
It took a moment to realize what she meant. “I suppose it did. Does that mean the Scholars won’t be able to finish studying it? That would be a pity. Dominus Vitor seemed so pleased with it.”
She smiled. “I believe that having the flesh largely burned off will aid in the preservation of the bones, and indeed make it far easier to transport than otherwise. I must congratulate you, Mr. Greenwing, on the fact that your first response was for the irreplaceable beauty of the building and your second for the food it might have held.”
Should I have thought first about the dragon? Or—my heart sank. “I’m very sorry it happened. Master Dart will not be happy with me.”
“It’s hardly your fault.”
I had to look away from her mildly amused glance. (She and Sir Hamish had much the same deep appreciation for the many small ironies of life.) “Apart from, er, running straight after my uncle just as it was expected I would do, the fire was lit as a diversion to keep everyone occupied while I was carried off here in a barrel.” I gestured at the river behind us. “I know that my—that Jack would have had a better idea if I’d just waited to hear him explain it! I’m sure they decided on a plan ... We need proof of crimes. So far all we have are suppositions.”
“There is kidnapping, arson, and extortion,” said Red Myrta. “Speaking of which, Mum wants to see you.”
MYRTA THE HAND STOOD alone in front a door into a cliff.
It was a real door, wood painted glossy black trimmed with white, accentuated by a brass door-handle and a horse-shoe shaped door-knocker. Myrta the Hand was wearing the same sort of clothes she had when I’d first met her, which indeed were much the same as my own: breeches, shirt, waistcoat, coat. Hers had lace at the cuffs and throat, were in a wonderful deep blue cloth that went beautifully with her auburn hair, and made her look as if she were a noblewoman-in-disguise out of a play.
“Don’t gape like an idiot,” said Red Myrta, elbowing me. “Here he is, Mum, though I don’t think he’ll be much use in his current state.”
Myrta the Hand wrinkled her nose. I stopped and carefully backed a few steps so I was standing downwind. “My apologies,” I said, with an abbreviated bow that my entire back protested but did not make me actually fall over. The walk there had not taken much more than a few minutes, but had helped me loosen up somewhat. “I spent the night inside a whiskey barrel. You wished to see me, ma’am?”
“You are very like your father when you smile like that,” Myrta the Hand observed. She was holding a pair of tan leather gloves, and now drew them on, slowly, as if the act took much attention.
“Were you acquainted with my father, ma’am?”
She smiled. “I met him on furlough a few times. He served with my mother.”
Red Myrta looked at her mother in astonishment, but I was growing increasingly aware—perhaps increasingly sober? Though to be frank I felt dizzy and dazed and not quite up to snuff—of the looming time, and I continued. “May I ask you a few questions, ma’am? They have to do with my father and with an, er, a magical ceremony I believe will take place shortly.”
“The ceremonies are tomorrow,” Myrta the Hand said firmly. “It is the beginning of the Winterturn Assizes. We still keep the customary rites to protect and hold our lands.”
Were they not highwaymen? I decided not to ask too many diverting questions, fascinating as the answers would probably be. “This is a ceremony to do with the cult of the Dark Kings.”
Her face drew into a magnificent frown of disapproval and rejection. “We have nothing to do with those obscenities. Why do you think our camp is where it is? We guard the Hollow from those who would pervert it.”
Could I believe her? I wanted to. I decided I would trust the Chancellor’s willingness to continue her acquaintance with Red Myrta into the Forest. “Ma’am, you relieve me greatly to hear that. Nevertheless, I was captured last night and transported to a perch in the middle of the Magarran Strid in order to be made a sacrifice to the Dark Kings on the Fallowday of the Autumn. Do you have sufficient guard on the Hanging Hill today? My father was found—” I stopped suddenly, remembering just who had told me where my father had been found. Mr. Hagwood had proved himself an untrustworthy ally.
“Mr. Greenwing?”
“Ma’am, seven years ago today my mother and I were brought word that my father’s body had been found hanging in the Forest. Do you—do you by any chance know where his body was found?”
No need to get into all the complications involving the bones of bull, boar, stag, and the tiny little matter that my father was not dead at all.
Myrta the Hand looked at me for a long moment. She said, “Every seven years on the day before the Winterturn Assizes the Magarran River performs what we call the Turning of the Waters. You have witnessed the first stage, I expect, where the water turns red and the river vanishes?”
I shuddered involuntarily. “Yes, ma’am.”
“It is a disturbing sight,” she said, slightly condescendingly.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“We leave some of our number at the Hollow on guard. Since we came there we have permitted no perverse rites to be held upon it.”
Was that why the cult had gone to the Ellery Stone? But then why had they brought me here?
—Wherever here was, exactly. All I knew was that it was by a cliff and not far from the Strid.
“There are three natural stone bridges where the waterfall enters the gorge. One is always above; the other two are visible in the heart of the Strid when the waters recede. Their names are Ethduil Endodon.”
“‘The bridges into shadows’. Dear Lady,” I said, things tumbling into place. “The false letter accusing my father of treason had a coded message from ‘We who speak for the shadows’.”
“What was the text of the letter?” the Chancellor asked with almost incredible mildness.
I clenched my sausage fingers together, as if that would help me remember. I had a reasonable memory for these sorts of things ... and that letter had corrupted my adolescence.
“It was addressed to the Flower—that’s right:
Flower of Hope:
You have done well establishing your first position. This letter supplies what you need to move to the next. Soon it will be time for our people to return to glory. The stones of the forest are older than the trees, and the water redder than the blood of empires. When the restoration comes, we will need you. Be ready at all times. You know what the red water and the white stone can do.
We who speak for the shadows.”
“The restoration?” Myrta the Hand said sharply. “You’re certain it spoke of the restoration?”
“Yes, for the word struck me. Not as much as the red water and the white stone do, now that I’ve seen what the water can do.”
“It’s only begun. There’s still the turn,” Red Myrta said.
Her mother nodded, eyes on me. “The restoration, when it’s a matter of those perverts with their cult, is not just the restoration of their prominence, but of the old practice of having the gods walk.”
“My aunt said something about today being the day the true gods can walk ...”
“Not precisely. It is the day that a certain rite can bind the Dark Kings to a human host. The Bridge into Shadows extends from—” She stopped suddenly. “Myr—send your birds to collect the others. We have to get to the stone bridge before noon.”
We all looked up at the sky. I was completely disoriented, and for a few dazzled moments was sure it was past.
“East is that way,” Red Myrta said in exasperation, pointing in the opposite direction. “We can’t have much more than a quarter of an hour, Mum. And at least their sacrifice isn’t waiting on the rock for them to f
etch him.”
“They don’t need him to be. They’ll have done all the preparations last week. The idea is that once the rite happens the host has the power of the Dark Kings and can walk the river to meet their priests.”
WHERE, I WONDERED, was my father in all this?
Myrta the Hand led the Chancellor and me not into the cliff (for which I was cravenly grateful) but along a narrow trail that led along its foot. We walked single-file, me in the middle, and very quickly. I had to think light-footed thoughts to keep up with the highwaywoman. It didn’t appear, from my occasional glances back, that the Chancellor was having any trouble. She looked entirely and thoroughly at home in the rough Forest in her Scholar’s robes, her hood the green-and-gold stripes of Morrowlea, the trim on her robes in gold for her rank.
After about ten minutes Myrta the Hand stopped. I had managed to focus my attention on my surroundings sufficiently that I did not walk into her. She didn’t seem to notice.
“We’re a few hundred yards from the rendezvous,” she said softly.
“Rendezvous?” I asked, even more quietly. “With Red Myrta?”
“With everyone,” she said, nodding significantly at the Chancellor. “There are a number of people who wish to witness what is to happen here so that appropriate responses can be made.”
“I suppose that’s true.”
“We do all understand that you are one of them, Mr. Greenwing,” the Chancellor murmured. I bowed slightly. She smiled at me, then turned attentively to Myrta the Hand. “In this matter we are your pupils, and await the master’s instructions.”
“My daughter loved her time at Morrowlea. I will be forever grateful that you permitted her that opportunity.”
“She wrote an excellent entrance essay.”
“She spent long enough on it. Now: I had not previously been given all the pertinent details, and so did not know we were to expect a Restoration ceremony. I had thought it was an ordinary ritual intended to disrupt the bindings the Winterturn ceremonies strengthen.” She glanced at me. “That one does involve sacrifice, though usually of animals: the bull, the boar, and the stag at this time of year.”
“They are used for a semblancing spell.” Or by people who wanted to make it look as if someone had used the semblancing spell ...
She shrugged. “I am not a student of the old cult except insofar as I wish always to fight them. I lost my mother to the Stone Speakers of Loe.”
I stared at her. “But you didn’t think my father was the traitor?”
“He isn’t.”
“But everyone thought he was.”
“Who would listen to an outlaw?” she replied bitterly. “Enough. Suffice to say that I contemn those who worship the Dark Kings. The plan was to wait until the sacrifice was well-begun and then to disrupt it and arrest the participants.”
“Very good. And now?”
“And now that we know that their goal is not the ordinary disruption, but the full restoration, we must prevent them from making the first cut.”
“Surely if we disrupt it—”
But the Chancellor was shaking her head. “Did you not obtain sufficient magical theory in History of Magic? Mr. Greenwing, the spell has already begun; you are already fully implicated in it. As soon as blood is spilled, the gate will open.”
Chapter Thirty-Five: Cut Across
A grey jay screamed.
It sounded exactly the same as all the rest to me, but Myrta the Hand cursed and set an even faster pace. I felt it hard, and had to concentrate to keep up. Running did not seem to translate to walking at high speed.
“It is my life’s work,” she said through clenched teeth.
I made what I hoped was an encouraging grunt. I didn’t have the breath for anything else.
“I would do anything to prevent this from happening. I gave up everything to pursue the traitor.”
“Traitor?” I asked, or rather gasped.
“The traitor of Loe. Be silent! We’re nearly there.”
Myrta the Hand was obsessed with the traitor of Loe?
Perhaps obsessed was too strong a word. I looked at the portion of her profile I could see from my angle behind and slightly to her side. Her voice was intense, her eyes had a fixed intensity to them. She had lost her mother at Loe.
If I had been an adult when the letters came about my father?
I would have gone to Eil if I’d had to walk there.
She hadn’t recognized Ben or Jack, but it had been night ... and I hadn’t recognized him, either.
It had never occurred to me to wonder what everyone else whose families were lost at Loe had thought of the news. What did they make of the play? Were they as angry as they were scandalized? The Sixth Division of the Seventh Army had contained many Alinorel soldiers. They all had friends, families, wives, husbands, parents, children ...
Myrta stopped at a grouping of shrubby evergreens (junipers? Hal would know) that looked identical to the hundred others we had passed, but which presumably contained an identifying characteristic to her. She gestured the Chancellor and me to draw as close as possible. I wished I didn’t smell so badly; the stench rising off my clothing made me want to gag. I had to listen carefully. There was a deep subterranean rumble, tangible through my boots now that we were standing still, just about audible so that the lower dips in Myrta’s voice dissolved into the background noise.
“We are very close now,” she said in a voice that seemed to fall silent even as it reached me. “We are coming up to the Gate of the Strid, where the Magarran river exits Crimson Lake through the Falls. The Falls will be nearly dry now: the turn will begin to return at noon precisely.”
“What causes it?” I asked.
She gave me a reproving glance I felt to the soles of my feet. “We can speak of natural mysteries and magical phenomena later, Mr. Greenwing. Suffice it now to say that we come with some of my people to the Horn. Those coming from the town will be on the far side, the Ivory Tower.”
I could not refrain from a small snort of appreciation for the name.
Myrta the Hand ignored me. “Between the two is the uppermost of the three stone bridges. The lower two will be visible because the water is down. I don’t know upon which the cult priests will be doing their sacrifice. If it is the uppermost bridge, either side will be able to approach. It occurs to me now that give that it is the Restoration that they are seeking, they might choose the middle bridge as the most appropriately symbolic.”
Another jay screamed an alarm.
“They’re coming,” Myrta said. “Everyone else is in position—it will take too long for anyone else—we must be the ones to go down to the middle bridge. Come. It is nearly noon.”
We followed her off the narrow track onto an even narrower and fainter trail that soon petered out at a hole in the rock. This was the burrow of some creature; it was far too small for us. Myrta the Hand seemed to take it for a sign, for she turned, walked a certain distance, turned again, and thus zigzagged us between two outcroppings that I would have sworn, ten feet away, held no possible space between them.
The air was cold, and it had that breathless not-quite-damp feel of incipient snow. The wind swirled around the rocks, chilly even in the heat of our exertions. I followed Myrta the Hand with anxious care. The limestone outcroppings were rough and sharp-grained; I scratched myself simply brushing past. And all the time the stones were vibrating with that deep rumble that rose up into my veins like the sound of the earth’s own anxiety.
A deep boom echoed through the stones.
I did not need Myrta the Hand to say “They’re starting,” to know what that meant. I had heard the gongs and the drums, that night at the Ellery Stone, when the cultists had transformed from fools to villains.
“Down the ladder—back to the drop—lead with your right foot. Count—it’s forty steps down. Don’t step past forty.”
I did not even question as she stepped aside for me to go first. I turned so my back was to the drop, saw in th
e curving bulge of a stone pavement the indentations someone had carved there long ago, and put my right foot in the first. Left in the next. Right. Left. After five steps I needed my hands to keep my balance. Right. Left. Ten steps. Right. Left. Twenty.
Boom
That time I felt the shock coming through the stone.
Above me little flakes of loose rock and plant-matter were pattering down. The Chancellor or Myrta the Hand, presumably, coming down after me. I did not look up. I did not want my eyes blinded with rock-dust at this stage of the proceedings from my own stupidity.
Right. Left—
Boom
Thirty steps.
There was that wail starting up, the high atonal ululation I remembered from the Ellery Stone. It cut across the vibrations, sending up weird harmonies in the stone, as if the whole gorge was a bell or the sound-board of an instrument and it was resounding to the singer’s voice.
Aiiieee—aiieeee—aiieee-a-a-a
Boom
Thirty-seven steps. I had to grip tightly with my fingers, clench my toes, as I reached blindly down to the next foothold. If I had started with the left foot, what would have happened? Would I have stepped down confidently to find that there was nothing below me but the Magarran Strid?
Boom
Thirty-eight—thirty-nine—and very carefully, very slowly, very cautiously—
Boom
Forty.
I opened my eyes and turned even more carefully, even more slowly, even more cautiously around before even trying to put down my other foot. I was glad I had.
I stood on a ledge perhaps two feet deep. It was the bottom of a kind of natural chimney that led up the cliff face; as trees and shrubs in the top reaches had obscured the initial drop, so down here the—
Boom
—The arrangement of rocks and fissures obscured the descent. I could not, looking up, even see the Chancellor above me, just rocks white and grey and black from their own shadows.
Boom
The shock that time rattled my chest-bones. I took a breath. Two feet ahead of me the ledge ended as if a knife had sliced it off. To my left there was a bulge of rock and then nothing; to my right an indentation at about hand-height that suggested one was to go that way, around the obscuring outcrop.
Whiskeyjack Page 29
