Raven's Ladder

by Jeffrey Overstreet

  He passed some of the queen’s attendants and inquired about directions to the music hall. He had only one wish of his own tonight. He would not bother to raise it to any moon-spirit. He would either fulfill it or find a drink and retire to his bed.

  “Lesyl’s not here,” said a tall, spindly man with thick discs of glass propped on a wire in front of his eyes. With a tray of precise tools before him, he was leaning beneath the open lid of what appeared to be a huge wooden desk, turning screws and straining a blanket of wires. The instrument hummed in answer.

  “Did she say where she was going?” Cal-raven asked.

  “Someone came to take her down to the Hall of the Red Walls,” he said. “There’s a storytelling contest tonight. Should be quite a crowd.”

  “Thank you,” said Cal-raven. The thought of a storytelling contest encouraged him. Warney always loved a good story, always sat right among the children, leaning in, breathless with anticipation.

  He would go look for Lesyl and Warney in the rock.

  “Hoo!”

  The girl blocking Cal-raven’s path held glass discs up to her eyes, magnifying them.

  “Why are you following me?” He wanted to be angry at her persistence but laughed the question at her owl-like appearance.

  “Hoo, hoo, I’ve heard about you,” she hooted, and she made her eyes grow and shrink by pushing the lenses farther from her face and pulling them back in. “I’ve never seen a real live king before.”

  He pulled up his hood, dismayed that he could be so easily recognized. He stepped out of the way of a crowd spilling from the corridor into this cavernous gathering hall and watched them hurry toward the stage at the other end where the storytelling contest was already under way. “Aren’t you a little young to be out so late?” He leaned against the wall, and the stranger stayed in front of him as if this were just a step in a dance. “Who are you, anyway?”

  “Hoo-hoo!” She handed him one of the discs, then held the other to her eye. “My name’s Obrey.”

  Reluctantly he raised the glass to his eye in time to see her blush.

  “I made this.” She pushed and pulled the glass before her lips so he could see her crooked teeth up close. “I come from faraway north.” She slapped her hand across her mouth to cover her gasp, as if she had just released some secret she’d sworn to keep. Embarrassed, she dashed off through the crowd in a flurry.

  The gloves, he thought, watching her go. Krystor was wearing the same white gloves when I saw him yesterday. This girl must serve at the glassworks.

  From a distance Obrey had been as annoying as an itch. Up close, she was more intriguing. And familiar.

  Over the din of the crowd, a voice amplified by a horn announced that the final contestant in the storytelling contest was ready to take the stage.

  Firecrackers sizzled and popped. The crowd cheered. Stars with streaming tails soared up to the ceiling of the auditorium and burst over the elevated stage. The storyteller, a brown-robed man with hair that frayed like a fan, led two elaborately painted, vawn-drawn carriages beneath the line of lanterns draped across the stage.

  In the bowl-shaped cavern, the storyteller’s voice bounced back from the walls so all could hear. As he spoke with great emotion, one carriage came apart, the walls swinging open and the roof unfolding, transforming it into a model of a colorless dome surrounded by a wall.

  Cal-raven froze. That’s my father’s palace, he thought. He watched the curtain at the back of the stage, expecting the Seers to appear. Surely they had arranged this humiliation.

  As he crept around the outer edge of the crowd, searching for Warney, the storyteller summarized Abascar’s fall. Smoke and light burst from the dome, engulfing the stage. Actors behind the curtain screamed in convincing anguish. A dramatic silence followed while the smoke cleared. A small young man staggered out from that cloud, coughing and clutching his chest.

  “A survivor!” announced the storyteller.

  The crowd cheered, recognizing this as the central character.

  Actors dressed as beastmen charged at the boy. Their costumes were impressive—wild manes and flashing eyes, teeth that stabbed from their mouths like knives. But the boy made a dash across the stage and dove into a water trough that had appeared while the audience was distracted.

  The narrator described how the boy had floated on Deep Lake, certain he was dying. Staring at the rising moon, he called out. “I have heard that the moon watches over us,” the boy sang in a faltering voice. “So, please, raise me up. My heart wants so much more.”

  A great angled mirror on the ceiling reflected this evening’s moon. There was no fakery; Cal-raven had seen that very crescent on his approach.

  From the ceiling’s shadowy secrets, a rain of sparkling dust fell and settled over the floating boy. Wind chimes enhanced this silver shower with musical tones. The audience applauded, enthralled. “Moon-dust!” someone shouted. “His prayers are answered!”

  The story unfolded in a way that Cal-raven could have predicted. The boy swam to shore and made his way to Bel Amica, where he became an apprentice to a tender-hearted Seer. The Seer explained that Abascar had fallen because its king had barred his people from following their desires. At the edge of the stage, another actor staggered into view, playing a drunken king, and then retreated backstage, his momentary appearance drawing laughter and applause.

  The Seer was suddenly joined by Bel Amican soldiers, who were played by, yes, real Bel Amican soldiers. In their gleaming plate armor, they received an ovation fit for heroes. And the boy stood up, clearly amazed and worshipful.

  Just then, a man in the audience rose, shoved others aside, and stormed out of the crowd, ranting. This, too, inspired laughter, but the distraction was quickly forgotten.

  Cal-raven followed him.

  “Krawg,” he called, running to join the old Gatherer. “Krawg, where are you going?”

  “Can’t take any more of this krammed nonsense. They’re just throwin’ candy, givin’ these folks what they want to hear. That isn’t storytelling.”

  “Let it go, my friend. It’s just one story.”

  “That’s not what’s stuck in my throat,” he barked back. “It’s what happened here before this story. Did you see it? Someone told the story of the tricksters. My story. My idea. Somebody stole it from Mawrnash, brought it over here, and pumped it full of noise and flash and dazzle. What good will it do me to tell stories if people just steal ’em and change ’em?”

  “Jes-hawk told me your story. The Bel Amicans changed it?”

  “They made that rebellious fool of a boy their hero. The one who broke the dollmaker’s heart. He’s no hero at all. He ruins everything.”

  “Let me get you a bottle of ale, and we’ll talk this over.”

  The Gatherer paused and then blinked at him in surprise. “You? Buy me a bottle of drink, master?”

  Cal-raven smiled.

  He moved to the nearest ale wagon, and when the vendor saw who he was, he dutifully set out a bottle. Reaching into his pocket, Cal-raven asked if he might have another. “No coins,” the vendor insisted. “You’re our guest. But give me a few moments, as that’s my last bottle.”

  Cal-raven thanked him, surprised, and gestured for Krawg to wait while the vendor shouted to an errand boy.

  As he turned, he noticed two hooded drinkers at a nearby table. He found he could not move. Lesyl and Partayn were sipping ales and talking excitedly together, leaning close. To anyone passing, they would seem to have known each other for years.

  Getting steadily louder, the storyteller was reaching the climax of his tale. The young survivor was now a Bel Amican hero, married to a beauty who had devoted her life to the moon-spirits. He had, through the blessing of the Seers’ potions, become Ryllion’s fastest battlefield runner. In the closing scene, an actor playing Ryllion commanded the boy to hunt down a beastman, and the crowd roared when he slashed a stuffed monster into pieces.

  The pageant closed when the boy presente
d his sword to Ryllion, saying, “I am blessed by Bel Amica’s greatest teacher. May the moon-spirits bless you as you lead this house to vanquish the curse.”

  “All hail Ryllion!” shouted a soldier from the crowd. This drew scattered applause from the crowd and shrieks of adoration from more than a few Bel Amican women.

  Lesyl, recognizing Cal-raven, moved to get up, but Cal-raven urged her to stay. Partayn regarded Cal-raven with surprise, then waved for him to join them at the table. Glancing back at Krawg, Cal-raven repeated his gesture for patience, then slumped down onto a bench beside Lesyl rather than on the bench Partayn had offered him.

  “Horrible,” said Lesyl, nodding toward the stage. “Abascar’s suffering exploited for Bel Amicans’ pleasure.” She looked pale as if the story had made her sick. “Is this really how Bel Amicans decide what is true—by what gets the loudest cheer?”

  The heir took no offense. “The people got what they wanted—praise and affirmation. That’s the Seers’ way.” Partayn scowled at his drink. “I’m tired of sitting on the sidelines and whining whenever the crowd applauds a bad story or a shoddy song.”

  “Truth doesn’t win many cheers.” Cal-raven scowled. As his gaze strayed from the spectacle, he noticed that Krawg was shuffling away without his ale.

  “I’ll sing something true,” Partayn growled.

  “They won’t like that,” said Lesyl.

  “They will if I sing it,” he said with a garish grin.

  As Partayn walked to the platform, Lesyl watched him go. “What’s troubling you, master?”

  “It’s smoky in here. Did you see? House Abascar collapsed.” He uncorked his bottle and drank. He drank it all. Planting the bottle back on the table, he said, “Now those poor survivors will have to decide whether to stick together…or surrender to the appeal of Bel Amica.”

  They sat in a long and uncomfortable silence.

  Then Lesyl said, “Krawg seems discouraged. You would think we’d be happier here than in Barnashum.”

  “Your second bottle!” the vendor called to Cal-raven.

  “I’d better go after Krawg,” Cal-raven sighed. “Lift his spirits. It’s what Abascar’s king should be doing, right?” He met her puzzled gaze for one more moment. “Try to keep from losing what we’ve fought so hard to preserve.”

  As he took the second bottle, the vendor again refused payment. “I worked with Deuneroi. Great fellow. Incredible what he did to try to help your people. Consider this a gift in honor of a courageous man.”

  Cal-raven thanked him again, wondering, What exactly did Deuneroi do? He followed after Krawg, but he could feel that somewhere along the way he had left something behind.

  Meanwhile the crowd continued to cheer.

  “Where are you going?”

  Krawg halted, scowling and tugging at the loose flesh beneath his chin. “Down to the water. I like the waves.”

  “May I walk with you?” Cal-raven offered him the bottle.

  Krawg took the bottle and embraced it tight against his chest. “Honored, my king.”

  Cal-raven limped away from the noise, out of the brightness, onto the dimly lit rubblestone paths that led toward the harbor. The Gatherer kept glancing back at him in disbelief.

  “I’m sorry we haven’t found Warney yet, Krawg. We will.”

  “Told him I was goin’ out on a ship,” Krawg groaned. “Thought I’d brave the waves with sailors. Warney got a rockbeetle in his belly over that. Tried to tie me down, bless his broken eye. Then them sailors wouldn’t take me. Now I can’t find Warney.”

  “You two have quite a history. Thieving. Hard years of harvesting. Then you rescued Auralia. And what a surprise she turned out to be.”

  Krawg paused on a broad stairway, his shoulders sinking. “We miss her so.” His voice was hoarse and heavy.

  Cal-raven put his hand on the old man’s shoulder, and that spurred Krawg into descending again.

  “Making stuff up,” he rasped, “Auralia made it fun. She played harder than a yard full of kittens. Made things that surprised folks and got their eyes to go huge. But here, it’s different. Everything’s about gettin’ cheered or bashed. Nobody plays.” He paused, staring at something in the road. Cal-raven saw it was a seashell. Krawg put it to his ear. “Ballyworms,” he whispered, amazed. “This one’s magic too!”

  “You’re a good storyteller, Krawg. In New Abascar you’ll tell Auralia’s story.”

  “Have you heard what they’ve done to Auralia?” Krawg’s lip curled in revulsion. “You haven’t heard?” He threw the shell into the shadows. “Follow me.”

  They wound their way through marketplace pavilions, canvases rippling with the incoming breeze. The marketers’ wares had all been cleared away, but a few figures lurked about, picking at the cobblestones under the tables like wild dogs or giant ruffled birds. Through the dusk blue air, Krawg led Cal-raven down a long aisle between the empty tables to a stair.

  A stench wafted from below like a warning. “Where exactly are you taking me?”

  “I was out lookin’ for Warney. Thought I’d sniff about in places where the least of all Bel Amicans go—the worried, the tangled up, the sobbers and complainers. I found a nest of smelly critters…”

  Covering his face, Cal-raven followed Krawg down to a platform that spread out just above the silverblue water. It was crowded with rickety, wheezy shacks, some dark and some alive with color and noise. Women’s laughter cascaded from one. Men were shouting in fevered argument about numbers in another.

  A formidable figure burst from the shadows and rushed toward Cal-raven. She wore little more than seashell necklaces above rustling skirts of dried seaweed. She was as large as the thugs that Captain Ark-robin had posted at Abascar’s main gate, and her arms were thicker than most soldiers’ legs. She walked in a cloud of perfumes that caused his eyes and throat to burn even before she came close enough to touch his arm. Through a flimsy veil that rippled with her breath, a mischievous smile shone.

  “Please,” she asked in a tremulous whisper, “Gelina’s lost out here.”

  “You’re lost?” Cal-raven fought the urge to run as her curling fingernails scratched faint lines up his arm.

  “We’re all lost down here,” she moaned. “But Gelina’s learned that being lost can be beautiful.” A lascivious music had entered her voice. “And oh my. From a distance you strike quite a stature, but up close Gelina can sense that you’re feeling lonesome and weary. Why don’t we put our burdens down awhile. Maybe we can help each other.”

  “I’m busy.”

  “You don’t even know what I’m offering you,” she persisted, draping her arms around him and pressing her claws into the small of his back. “Gelina normally makes a man work hard to earn her privileges, but her moon-spirit has led her to you. It’s her duty to fulfill…”

  Krawg called after him from a distance, and Cal-raven dropped out of the woman’s embrace. He ran, leaving her there, hearing her heave an expansive sigh.

  Krawg waved the unopened bottle toward a crowd waiting outside a wedge-shaped structure near the platform’s edge. Then he urged Cal-raven around a corner, out of sight of the crowd. Backing into a recess in the wall, he said, “You’ll have to go in without me. They threw me out last time.”

  “Who?”

  “They call themselves ‘Auralia’s Defenders.’”

  23

  AURALIA’S DEFENDERS

  At first it seemed the darkest space in Bel Amica.

  They have no mirrors, Cal-raven realized.

  Then he noticed that the people crowding about the stage were all looking up. One enormous mirror hung suspended, tilted to reflect the people themselves, faces pale as blurred constellations on Deep Lake.

  The stage itself was tiled with blue glowstones, cut so flat they seemed a frozen pond.

  The purple curtain behind the stage still wavered where a small man had just emerged. In his simple brown robe, he might have been a stablehand, perhaps eight years old, still skin
and bones.

  In the mirror above, his image was cast in a blue shimmer. He performed his speech with his back to the crowd so that the mirror magnified his gaunt face to immense proportions. His eyes were fever wild, as if apprehending horrors no one else could see. The hair that framed his face was like silver feathers blown back by a gale-force wind. And his hands flashed about his face like angry birds.

  “I know what we’re all thinking!”

  Cal-raven was reminded of a teacher he had suffered as a child, an imperious woman who had always said “we” when she really meant “you.”

  “I know,” he continued, eyes like a predator bird above a fish-crowded lake. “We’re thinking, they did this to her. They did it. And they should pay.”

  The tone was as seductive as it was punishing, but the voice did not match the face. Was the speaker just an actor mouthing words while the lecturer hid behind the curtain?

  The crowd stared up into the sea of their own mournful faces. Many held bundles of black thread, squeezing them or winding and unwinding them. A ritual, he wondered, or just a popular nervous habit?

  Their yarn twisting became fitful as a statue rose up through the stage floor. Cal-raven leaned to get a clearer view. It was a young woman hunched over and holding her head—a poor statue indeed, for the proportions of the child were wrong. The head was larger than it should have been, and the face twisted in exaggerated anguish. It was not the mirror’s distortion. The eyes had been sculpted large so her pain could not be ignored.

  The speaker lifted a whip from the base of the statue. “This,” the speaker said, “is what we did to her. Again and again!” Crack! Crack!

  Cal-raven recoiled.

  “Do we understand? No, we do not. I tell you that it was you—you—who did this to poor Auralia. And I—Bahrage of Bel Amica—am guilty too. We never lived in House Abascar, but we denied what our dreams told us every night. The Keeper exists!”

  “The Keeper exists,” the assembly muttered in chorus.

  “The Keeper exists,” said Cal-raven, surprising himself.

  “You say that now. But no one said it when Auralia was dragged before House Abascar’s King Cal-marcus for claiming that very thing.”