Raven's Ladder

by Jeffrey Overstreet

  At the sound of the new chieftain’s laughter—a hysterical cough and a sneer like a mocker-dog’s—the caged child became enraged. He turned away, exposing a back that was deeply scarred. “Skell Wra,” the chieftain was laughing. “Skell Wra.”

  The statue turned in the air again, several branches of the tyrant’s living throne pawing at it and stroking it. Upright, Cal-raven was drawn closer to the chieftain’s face.

  Keeper, he silently spoke. I would destroy this thing. Give me opportunity.

  The chieftain seemed curious about the statue’s face. “Cal,” he growled, “Marrrcusss.” One of those dark, swaying branches over his head descended, carrying a trophy that the chieftain carefully regarded, grinning a wall of teeth so white and polished they might have been newly installed.

  It was a skull, blackened and charred, staring back at Cal-raven through empty sockets.

  When the chieftain spoke again, he spoke in the Common tongue. “Is thisss a good likeness?”

  Cal-raven’s breath caught in his throat.

  “Hmmm?” The chieftain leaned forward. Cal-raven could hear him sniffing as if suspicious. “Cal.” The voice slithered through the slit in the sculpture’s eye. “Marcusssss.”

  Cal-raven brought his trembling hand down to his side to close over the hilt of his knife. I will kill this abomination, he silently vowed. I will cut out his heart.

  “Your predecessor pillaged the ruins of Abascar,” the Seer sang sweetly to the chieftain. “But you will do mightier things. Ryllion is ready. When Queen Thesera boards her ship tomorrow, she and her children will be within reach. They’ll all be there, in full view of their people. Then those weak-minded Cent Regus fools you prepared will strike. They’ll tear the royals to pieces. Ryllion will appear like the people’s hero. He’ll slay the fools you trained. And the grateful Bel Amicans will give him the throne.”

  The chieftain cackled, exuberant. “My servant.”

  “Though he knows not what he’s become, the first of the Cent Regus Strongbreed will govern House Bel Amica. And when the time’s right, I, Malefyk Xa, your creator, shall unleash you, the greatest of all Cent Regus. And you’ll grip him just as you grip this statue of Abascar’s King Cal-marcus.”

  Not in Barnashum, not in the slavers’ pit, not even in the Bel Amican cell—Cal-raven had not felt so helpless since House Abascar burned and collapsed. Pictures of his people flowed past him. Tabor Jan walking the wall, blind to the danger. Lesyl, her voice raised, likely to be near Partayn at the time of the attack. Jes-hawk and Brevolo, working with Ryllion, unaware of the extent of his villainy.

  We must go back.

  Even as he thought this, he knew it was too late. He could never reach Bel Amica in time to save Cyndere or Partayn. And what would become of Emeriene? of Tabor Jan and Lesyl?

  As he leaned back inside the statue, the stone began to soften, ready to release him. He shifted in alarm, and the chieftain turned his attention to the statue in surprise.

  A rat-beast standing at the curtain squealed, distracting the chieftain. His purr resonated right through the arms of his throne, and Cal-raven felt the vibration through the stone. Then the chieftain dropped the statue to the ground, and Cal-raven heard a chip from the toe break away. Light gleamed through a crack that spread upward from the statue’s heel to the knee. He worked his hand down to his left thigh, touched the stone encasement, and melted the crack shut before it could spread. Sweat trickled down his back.

  The chieftain snarled a decision. The statue left the ground again, and the throne’s tentacles carried it out through the curtain and planted it upright in the wagon. Cal-raven immediately parted the stone of the eyes and the mouth, drawing in deep breaths.

  Jordam climbed wearily to his feet, and his eyes did not meet Cal-raven’s. It was clear from the despair in his face that he had heard and understood every word.

  One of the Strongbreed slammed its spear against a battered Jentan cymbal. Jordam, clearly terrified, lifted the wagon’s shafts and pushed it on its grumbling wheels down the long aisle that opened through the assembly of unblinking half men.

  “Ryllion,” Cal-raven whispered, exhausted.

  “rrStop,” Jordam growled softly.

  “He’s going to kill—”

  “Stop!” Jordam barked, as if forgetting that he was followed by rat-beasts. “Cyndere, Jordam. Bel!”

  Jordam roared and began to run down the hill. Cal-raven shut his mouth. Rat-beasts scampered up alongside, eying the statue suspiciously.

  Jordam brought the wagon to a rest at the river’s edge. Rat-beasts crowded around the wagon, glaring at the beastman. He lifted the statue to lay it in the boat. Cal-raven caught a glimpse of veins bulging from his forehead.

  “rrThey’re sending us in,” Jordam mumbled to the statue’s face. Then he let it tumble, facedown, into the boat, which rocked, jerked, spun, and was soon back in the current. It was swept along through the sludge and pulled violently down into the earth.

  The river dropped steeply, and the boat was battered and tossed as it descended. The sculptures rolled, their sides grinding against one another. The breath was beat from Cal-raven’s lungs. Sludge washed over the edges, filled the bottom of the boat, and began trickling into his confinement. He quickly sealed the eyes and opened a window on the back of the figure’s head.

  “Where are we going?” he called.

  “Old dock for prisoners and prizes.”

  “What’s waiting there?”

  “rrNothing. Anymore.”

  Cal-raven felt the boat suddenly seize as if caught on some obstruction. Then it rocked, and he heard Jordam groaning with the weight of the bulky sculptures as he unloaded them.

  “Are we alone?”

  “Yes. rrStrange.”

  Cal-raven opened a larger cavity in the back of the statue’s head so he could survey their predicament. They were at the jagged edge of a continent of stone, a plate that jutted out over the water, in a large underground cavern. Jordam stood on the edge of the shelf, lining up the sculptures.

  Two half-starved vawns stood motionless and bony, as if they’d died on their feet. They were harnessed and hitched to wooden sleds on metal runners.

  Jordam was about to jump back onto the boat for the statue, but he stopped when he saw Cal-raven’s head protruding from the back of Cal-marcus’s likeness. Cal-raven heard him laugh for the first time—a gruff guffaw.

  “Is it safe enough yet?”

  “No.” He shoved Cal-raven’s head back inside the statue. “You said there were boats. Boats waiting to take us out of here.” Jordam stamped his foot. “Boats under the stone. rrReady.” Cal-raven lay down, took a deep breath, and decided to stop asking questions.

  The sled’s runners sang along, searing and scraping as Jordam drove one of the wretched animals around the corners of the rigorous corridor. Cal-raven felt it coast to a stop, heard Jordam speaking in the beastman tongue. Then the sled moved again, the feeble vawn groaning as its knees and spine crackled.

  Cal-raven watched a female Cent Regus creature turning to study them as they passed, her face a monkey’s mocking grin, teeth bared, while her long, hairless hands hugged a sagging, pregnant belly.

  He had never seen such a thing before.

  Jordam said his name. He opened the statue’s eyes and looked forward. “rrVery close now.”

  The sled rested at a crossroads. “Wait. Stay.” Jordam reached up and tugged the harness free from the vawn, then slapped its side. The signal would have sent any other vawn trotting away, but this one moaned, leaned against the wall, then sank to its knees and rested its snout on the ground.

  Jordam gestured to a stairway that ascended from the crossing. “Abascar prisoners wait there. I bring them down.” Then he spat out the jutting stone tusks, growling with relief.

  “And when you bring them down…” Cal-raven’s voice was trembling. Who will be among them? Who lives?

  “If anyone comes.” Jordam put his hands over Cal-r
aven’s two small windows. “rrCover.”

  “Yes.”

  The beastman drew a long blade, its edges notched with scars. Then he dropped down on one knee so Cal-raven could hardly see him. “Thank you,” said the beastman before he got up. “Thank you, King of Abascar.”

  My hopes are placed in a beastman.

  He turned away from his father’s eyes, looked out through the back of the head. Three passages led away—the long way back to the boat, a corridor so dark it may as well have been sealed, and another that led down a torchlit stair.

  A shriek like the killing cry of a predatory bird cut the air. He twisted back to look through the statue’s eyes but saw only a frantic clash of shadow and firelight on the walls.

  Jordam’s in trouble already.

  A sharp hiss sounded behind him, and he pivoted once more to find two sniveling rat-beasts tugging at the back of the sled. He tried to bend his knees and duck out of sight, but the hollow within the statue was not large enough. He slipped his hands up into the statue’s head and began pressing a thin layer of stone to cover the cavity.

  The rats were now shouting at the slumped vawn and dragging it back to the sled. The ensuing screeches and roars told him the beast was not at all pleased. The sled suddenly jerked, then spun, and one of the wooden slats framing the wagon gave way. The statue fell backward out of the sled and thudded hard against the floor. Cal-raven’s head rang as if his own skull had cracked. He called for Jordam in the dust-clouded space as the statue began to roll…

  …and fall.

  The statue of King Cal-marcus slid, feet first, down the stair.

  It skidded to a stop in a dark, deserted space, then spun slowly on the pivot of Cal-marcus’s hands, which were folded solemnly before him.

  Cal-raven lay still. Warm blood ran from the back of his head down over his face, where it pooled inside his father’s face.

  “Go ahead, Tabor Jan,” he muttered. “Keep on cursing my name. Biggest fool in the Cent Regus Core—that’s what I am.”

  In the distance Jordam’s fight continued. Whatever he fought was losing in a painful way.

  Outside, the complaint of a metal hinge accompanied the snarl of a heavy door.

  The statue moved. Someone was dragging it. He heard the voices of beastmen.

  He groaned, turned his head sideways, and rested his cheek in blood that was draining out through the statue’s eyes to the floor.

  Moments later the statue was set upright. Back on his feet, Cal-raven blinked blood from his eyelashes. Through a dizzying haze, he saw a figure of radiant colors approaching.

  31

  REUNIONS

  Cal-marcus?” The pregnant beastwoman staggered toward Cal-raven, clutching her belly. She spoke with the voice of a weary old woman. “Look. Look. The stone is weeping blood.”

  That’s my blood, he thought. Then he remembered that he was still encased in the standing statue of his father.

  His vision blurred, as if he were waking in a colorful garden. Those hues congealed, and the white scar burned in its center, bright as ever.

  “You were such a fool, Cal-marcus,” the voice from the dream continued. “Such a beautiful fool. What made us think we were ready?”

  He blinked. There was no beastwoman. He was delirious. Someone was wiping blood and dirt from the statue’s face with a rag.

  “Fools, we were. Greater fools for bringing another into such darkness.”

  Carefully he looked out to see where he had been taken.

  Figures were moving through a glow, in front of a shining curtain. Then the curtain moved too, and he saw that it was draped about someone’s shoulders. The luminous stranger moved out of sight. The busy company that remained was outlined by spitting torches.

  The figures were beastmen—five, burly and hushed. Like small fang-bears they were, but with human faces. After unfolding and spreading out long strips of ragged fabric on the floor, they began to arrange feathered arrows in straight lines. This simple task seemed to require fierce concentration, as if straight lines were a new idea.

  Bright colors flowered in his view again. The beastmen stopped and turned to watch the shining figure in fascination. Cal-raven’s gaze followed, and he felt a thrill of certainty.

  My eyes lie, or I have found Auralia.

  Someone small—not a beastman, but a boy—hurried past in front of him. “Roll ’em up,” said a youthful voice. “Wrap ’em. There’s a fight in the corridor. I think Jordam’s come back. If he has, then we should be ready to run. The time has come.”

  The woman’s voice rang out again: “Raven!”

  It struck him so sharply that he looked to the right, but the statue’s head could not turn.

  “Cal-raven,” she said again, “we can’t do this. It’s too dangerous.”

  Cal-raven answered at once, without yet comprehending why the voice rang him like a bell. “Don’t fear,” he heard himself whisper.

  The boy whirled. He drew back his hood and put a red, callous hand against his bald crown, which was crimson and cracked as if roasted in an oven. His eyes shone like white beacons.

  The colors intensified, their source coming closer, and the boy darkened into a silhouette against the shining figure. As if asking a question, Cal-raven touched his finger where the Ring of Trust had rested.

  But this was not Auralia—this woman embraced and illuminated by Auralia’s colors, her hair short and silver and edged with the colors she wore, her eyes dark as caves, her face worn like stone after a hundred years of rain.

  “The statue.” The boy put his hand against Cal-raven’s shell. “It spoke.”

  “I heard,” she whispered. “Raven, I’m afraid. What if you’re right? I heard you call out for the Keeper. I did not expect that anything would answer. But look… This is my husband’s likeness.”

  “Don’t be afraid, Mother,” said Cal-raven, his heart knowing already what his mind did not understand. Tears stung his eyes even as he pressed his hands against the stone of his father’s heart.

  As Cal-raven staggered forward through the dissolving statue, the boy spread his arms and backed up, shielding the woman behind him. The beastmen came to their feet, growling.

  “Don’t be afraid,” Cal-raven said again, rubble crumbling to the floor around his feet.

  “Who are you?” the boy demanded.

  “Raven,” the woman whispered. “What’s happening?”

  “Forgive me.” Cal-raven held up his bloodied hands as sand spilled from his sleeves. “I must look a fright.”

  The boy slowly brought his arms down to his sides. “She’s…she’s not talking to you.”

  “I was talking to my son,” said the woman to Cal-raven, and she closed her hands fast over the boy’s shoulders.

  Cal-raven reached his left hand up to his right shoulder as if he could feel her grip. “What?” He took a shaky step forward and then sank to his knees. “No. I am Cal-raven. Don’t you know me? I thought you were dead, or I would have come for you a long time ago.”

  The boy walked forward, raised a shaky hand, and brushed the blood-matted hair away from Cal-raven’s eyes. “She doesn’t know you, my king,” he whispered. “It’s been too many years for her. But me… I know you.” Then he rested a hand on Cal-raven’s shoulder. “I’m your ale boy.”

  “Rescue.” Astonished, Cal-raven embraced the boy. “Jordam told me you were here.”

  The boy began to cry softly, and his small hand patted Cal-raven’s back.

  “I hardly recognize you, boy. And here you are, working to save Abascar all over again.” He found it difficult to raise his eyes to that radiant figure who stood still in the center of the chamber.

  “We’re ready.” The boy stepped away, wiping his hands on his filthy trousers. “Our plan’s in place. We’ve got boats.”

  Cal-raven glanced to the beastmen, who were still looking from him to the statue’s ruin in disbelief. “It’s too dangerous. The river is difficult. And there are beastmen out
there.”

  “Cal-raven, come away from him,” said Jaralaine. Her voice, stern and fearful, was also familiar.

  “She means me,” the boy sighed. He turned to the woman. “Queen Jaralaine,” he said. “I told you this would happen. You know it’s true. I’m not your son. Here is Cal-raven.” He took her hand and led her forward. Her hand-stitched leather slippers shuffled in small, reluctant steps.

  Cal-raven’s whole body began to quake.

  “Some kind of.” The woman would not meet his gaze but stared beyond him. “Some kind of trick. He looks nothing like…” She stood stiffly, blinking as if sleepy.

  Cal-raven stepped forward and drew his mother gently to him. She kept her arms at her sides for a while, then raised her hands awkwardly as if to test him in an embrace.

  Crouched in a row across the chamber, the beastmen watched, uncomprehending. Then, one by one, they rose and returned to their work.

  Through the shining cloth, Cal-raven could feel a brittle, bony figure, like a wooden frame the Abascar tailors had built to display new garments. “How can you be so small?” he murmured into her ears. He had not known what to expect. He had feared finding her senseless or maimed. But no, this was his mother—aged more by ordeal than by time. Through that mask of hardship, he glimpsed the face he remembered. Through her fear and confusion, he heard the voice that had comforted him after bad dreams and taught him the names of flowers and the lineage of his house.

  For a moment he felt warm.

  Then she hissed as if stung and broke free of the embrace. “No.” She turned away. “No, this is not my son.” She flattened her hand at about the height of the ale boy’s head. “He is not grown yet. I still…” Her voice became faint. She looked around. “I cannot let…” She pressed her hands against her head. “What’s happening? Time. Time. Did you tell me, my son?” She reached out for the ale boy. “Forgive me, but I’ve forgotten. I need to walk in my garden. But the garden is dead. Cal-marcus. He’s so worried about me. He sent me this, you know.” She bundled the colors tightly around her as if the chamber had gone cold.