Raven's Ladder

by Jeffrey Overstreet

  “Don’t explain to us,” they said. “Explain to the chieftain.”

  They broke into a run, carrying Jordam between them.

  When they stepped through the gates into the throne room, they flung him forward as if casting wood on a fire. He skidded on his chest through puddles and piles of carnage and came to a stop facedown at the foot of the dais.

  It was quiet, but he knew there were Cent Regus all around, watching, uncertain, wondering how this new chieftain would behave. He heard the labored breathing of the creature at the top of the dais stair.

  “rrMy massster,” Jordam wheezed, wishing he could get his disguise back. “I welcome…and honor you.”

  At that, he heard the sound of snakes uncoiling—great, slithering sounds of the throne’s arms. He felt one of those tentacles coil about his ankles, and suddenly he was lifted through the air, his head a pendulum. He was carried up the stairs, his forehead slamming against the edge of each step until his head was full of light, and he sneezed blood. The arm turned him around and raised him up, and he saw the chieftain lean forward in eager anticipation.

  Through flashes of pain, he saw the face of this chieftain and was thoroughly bewildered. For he was not like any Cent Regus he had seen before. “You,” said the chieftain, “smell wrong.”

  This beastman had been cut open and sewn shut. This was something new, and Jordam knew at once that the white giants had been hard at work, giving the Cent Regus curse a new shape.

  “Only one Cent Regus was ever such a fool as to refuse Essence,” said the chieftain.

  Something smelled familiar.

  “Mordafey told you once,” said the chieftain’s voice in soft delight. “He told you that if you ever betrayed him, he would meet you again in some dark place. And you would not recognize him.”

  Everything within Jordam strained to writhe in shock and sudden, overwhelming fear.

  Mordafey.

  The creature went on, emboldened. In his rising enthusiasm, his voice had become many—a predator bird, a slavering wolf, a serpent—the tones of a cluster of creatures twisted together within his body. “Four brothers,” said Mordafey. “You all could have been here. Beside Mordafey. Do you even think about the brothers, Jordam?”

  “rrBetter things. To think about,” Jordam spluttered. “You’ll never know what I know.”

  Mordafey drew Jordam in closer, hanging him like a piece of meat on a rack, and as he spoke, he spat in Jordam’s face. “Jorn, sssshot by an old Bel Amican man. Goreth, ripped into pieces. And Mordafey—you spit poison into Mordafey’s face. Mordafey could hardly run fast enough to escape the arrows. And then…then the white giant punished Mordafey.”

  “rrLooks like the white giant gave you everything you wanted,” Jordam answered. “You don’t need brothers anymore. You never wanted them anyway.”

  Mordafey laughed long, loud, triumphant. “Mordafey holds the whole Expanse in his new arms. You can’t escape him. Not even on a prongbull. Nor can you refuse his gifts. So take this, Jordam, as your second chance. Mordafey wants to see you kill again.”

  Jordam was driven hard and fast down through a steaming vent that had opened in the floor. Headfirst he was carried down, down, down.

  He saw the cauldron of boiling Essence for only a moment, dark as a bottomless pit, before he was submerged in it.

  32

  SUBTERFUGE

  Nuch to Wynn’s dismay, Gelina wore even more perfume when she returned to the harbor dock the following night. Even among stacks of damp cargo crates and the scent of hot torch oil, he could smell her before he saw her, and so the scratching began.

  Slinking down the marketplace stair, she pranced past the ogling harbor workers, a cork in her crooked white teeth and a beveled green glass bottle in her hand.

  Balax the guard stood up from his guard post like a dog smelling dinner. Whether he rose for the cider or the seductress, Wynn did not know or care. “Like a bull-gully fish to a big fat worm,” he muttered.

  Gelina’s beads clicked and snapped together, strategically strung over her gown, every visible region of her buxom body dancing as she frolicked up to Balax. Balax’s eyes were on the bottle. She set the cider on the step in front of the forbidden corridor. “Don’t touch,” she laughed. “You’re on duty.”

  Balax glanced about.

  Alert as cats in a fishyard, Balax’s brothers, Biggas and Broot, were on their feet, all but drooling for a taste of the cider.

  Balax snatched the bottle, lumbered out to the edge of the dock, and made as if to cast it into the harbor.

  Wynn held his breath. Gelina cried out, “Stop!”

  Then Balax laughed. “Had you worried, didn’t I?” He took one quick swig. “Just to clear my throat, mind you.” Returning to his post, he handed the bottle to his brothers. “No more than a drop,” he admonished them.

  “And afterward, we’ll have orange-chew. Can’t have Captain Ryllion sniffing your beards for drink.”

  He sat down on the step of the tunnel’s entrance. Gelina sat beside him, drew the guard’s head down to her bosom, and rested her chin on his ear.

  Wynn waited, scratching his elbows, hoping the perfume and cider would work their magic.

  Slowly Balax raised one of his hands and spread his fingers as if he had never seen them before in his life. He voiced an unintelligible question, confused. Gelina began to laugh that rolling, resonant music. Balax giggled. They rose together, and Gelina drew him back into the tunnel. Just before the darkness erased them both, she cast an urgent glance at Wynn.

  Biggas and Broot replaced Balax on the step and set the bottle between them, eying it as if it might attack them.

  Drink the cider. Sleep.

  Biggas picked up the bottle, sniffed it, then took a deep gulp.

  Broot leapt to his feet and cursed. “Has your head come off? Ryllion will open you up and pour that swallow out on the rocks! We’re gonna get the lash!” He marched past the pallet of barrels, muttering, “If I’m gonna be the last one standing, I’d better clear my head.” He knelt to scoop cold water onto his face. “Gotta wake up.”

  Biggas was already failing, his hands hanging down to his ankles, his head swaying low. He fell forward so that his forehead hit the boards, held that awkward pose, and then collapsed onto his side, asleep.

  Wynn climbed onto one of the barrels and peered into an empty space among them. “Now.”

  Tabor Jan stood up, then ducked back down. “One of them’s still awake!”

  “Broot’s not gonna drink it,” Wynn whispered back. “Go now, while he’s talking to himself!”

  “Too risky.” Tabor Jan remained in the shadows.

  Shouts broke the quiet. Wynn looked across the harbor. One of the boats listed, and a violent clamor came from its hull. Red torches converged on the dock beside the boat, and men were calling for arrows and axes.

  “The scourge,” Wynn whispered.

  “What’s that?”

  “Something’s been sinking boats. Haven’t you heard? Something in the water.”

  Broot, his face dripping, had noticed the disturbance. Turning back to his brother, he shouted, “Biggas! It’s striking again!”

  Wynn held still, his hand frozen in a firm command to Tabor Jan to stay down.

  “Biggas?” Broot came to his feet, gaping at the sight of his sprawled, sleeping brother. “Biggas, are you awake?”

  Wynn had a clear view of the baffled guard as something like the tail of a giant eel rose up from the water behind him, coiled around his legs, and pulled him sharply from the dock. Broot disappeared into the waves without even time to cry out.

  “Sacred backside of Tammos Raak!” Wynn gasped. “What was that?”

  In the confusion Tabor Jan sprang from hiding and made his move, carrying the birdcage before him in both hands.

  A column of smoke billowed black against the dusk. A cargo ship was in flames.

  Something had breached the hull, flooding the cargo hold. Now the whole c
raft would go down.

  It wasn’t the first time. Ryllion had heard the horrific accounts, but he had always been out on patrol. He knew what skulked below the surface. He had seen the feelers in the wild. In Cent Regus territory he had seen them burst up, coil about a lurkdasher, and drag it squealing down into the ground. His own patrols had reported tentacles descending from the canopy of branches in the Cragavar forest. Abascar survivors had spoken of something rising up through the stone of Barnashum. All these frightful descriptions fit what the shipyard workers had glimpsed—bristling, serpentine limbs attacking the hulls of ships as if hungry for the living things inside.

  The Seers had, for once, lacked answers.

  As he stormed through the closing marketplace, Ryllion heard the vendors’ heartbeats quicken, heard their excited whispers. “There goes Ryllion. He’s off to fight that monster in the harbor. He’s going to pull it up like a weed.”

  But he was not on his way to save the ship. With all of Bel Amica distracted by this horror, he’d seize the opportunity to get some work done in secret.

  “Spirit,” he murmured, “you’ve given me this desire for the throne. You’ve given me these gifts—these claws, these senses, this strength. You’ve prepared me. Give me success today, and I will turn the attention of everyone to the moon-spirits.”

  He dashed down a staircase onto the dock. Across the waters of the inlet, flame bloomed along the collapsing hull of that historic vessel, Helpryn’s Vision. The firelight illuminated the queen’s own ship alongside—the Escape.

  But as he reached the tunnel to the Punchbowl, he stopped, snarling. Biggas was crumpled in a heap. Balax and Broot were nowhere to be seen.

  His clawed hands opened.

  “Captain?” squeaked a voice.

  It was that meddlesome Abascar boy. The fool was standing by the door of the tunnel, holding Balax’s club.

  “Get away from that door, rodent!” Ryllion barked.

  “I’m guarding it,” he yelped. “Can’t you see? These useless guards got all drunk. But I’m dependable.” He brandished the club with pride.

  Amusing, Ryllion thought. Might make a good soldier someday. “Where are the others?”

  “Balax? I don’t know. But Broot. I saw something pull him into the water.”

  “Did anyone go inside?”

  The boy hesitated a moment. His pause was worrying. Ryllion pushed him aside and lunged into the tunnel.

  There it was again, that low rumble in his chest. The noise had become an involuntary response to his anger. He had grown strong under the Seer’s care, but his improvement carried a heavy price. Certain manifestations of his body were now beyond his control—his pungent scent, the rapid growth of bristling hair on his limbs, the dark lines of veins that pulsed across his face and chest. The Seers had tried to help him with makeup, just as they had treated his burns after a venomous beastman spat in his face. He was weary of seeing people flinch as he passed by.

  But here he did not mind the growl. He wanted to frighten anyone who might have gone inside.

  His keen nose caught a whiff of perfume. “Gelina,” he scoffed. “That smelly seductress again? Balax, your head’s no better than what most people sit on.”

  At a fork in the path, he listened for a moment. All was quiet.

  The urge to surprise and torment Balax was difficult to resist. Both he and Gelina were fools. But fools could be useful pawns. He would spare them this time, so long as Gelina had not gone as far as the Punchbowl.

  A stairway to his left lead to an observation corridor lined with windows from which the king had watched the construction of his ships down in the Punchbowl. Ryllion heard nothing, smelled nothing there.

  To his right, another stair led down to the floor of the Punchbowl itself.

  He took neither path. He marched straight ahead, onto the stone arm that reached out over the Punchbowl. The Seer would be there, watching over their secret.

  He could hear Pretor Xa’s voice, like a searing alarm, echoing in the vast cavern. He smelled the Punchbowl’s salty brine, heard something like the panting of a pack of wild pigs.

  Ryllion walked onto that long ray of stone. It broadened to form a platform where Pretor Xa stood between a large wooden barrel and a massive, chalk-white crystal that burned with ghostly light. He was leaning against a tall wooden lever that protruded from the stone like a flagpole while his left hand twirled a staff like a baton. His lidless eyes were large and his skullish grin triumphant.

  “They’re ready,” seethed the Seer.

  Reaching the end of the promontory, Ryllion gazed down to the shallow pool of seawater. The snarl in his chest slowed, became a flutter of pleasure as he found that all was as it should be.

  A boat lay on its side, as if waiting to be released through the stone gate into the inlet. The water was almost still, but on one side of the cave it was troubled by the activity in a large cage.

  Beastmen—thirty, perhaps forty of them. Wolf-men skulking and spitting. Reptiles hissing and slamming their tails in the shallow water. Monsters like bears shaking the bars and howling at their captors.

  “They’re loud,” Ryllion worried. He tapped his claws on the lid of the wooden cistern at the platform’s edge. “Too loud.”

  “We’re deep down. Out of sight,” said the Seer. “And look at them. Eager. Hungry.” He then struck the sheer stone of the promontory with his staff. The silver ferrule at the end released a blast of light and a low sound that shook the cavern walls.

  The beastmen quieted, attentive. The ripples around the cage slowed and stilled.

  “Many of you were at Barnashum,” Ryllion called down to the creatures. “Many of you heard my instructions to destroy the remnant of House Abascar. You failed me there. You made not a scratch on that host of weak, half-starved survivors. You could not even get through the door.”

  Pretor Xa translated his words into the crude Cent Regus tongue. But Ryllion knew that some of the beastmen understood already, for even before the translation began, he discerned a spiteful murmur among them.

  “Tomorrow morning,” said Ryllion, “you will have a second chance. We have kept you sedated.” He patted the side of the cistern. This barrel had released a steady drip of slumberseed oil into the pool, the haze of its aroma rendering the beastmen dormant for days. “Tomorrow morning you will awake, sharpen your claws, and claim great treasure.”

  He gestured to the heavy door strung from chains and ropes. “Beyond that gate is the Rushtide Inlet. And with this”—he put his hand atop the wooden lever—“I can open that gate and let the water pour in. But I will not. No, tomorrow morning the Seer will release you. You will climb into the boat. And then he will open the gate, let the tide rush in, and raise the boat for sailing. You will stay hidden inside the boat. And silent. The Seer will steer the boat out through the harbor. He will bring it alongside a great ship. On that ship the queen and her children will be waiting.”

  This provoked a change among the beastmen. Their thirst for blood was greater than their impatience.

  Ryllion held up his hand. “The Seer will release you. Kill everyone on that ship as fast as you can. And I shall reward you for your work. You will have prizes unlike any in the Cent Regus world.”

  Hysteria broke out in the cage. The beastmen were ravenous now, ready to do this simple task, ready for the reward.

  Except one.

  “What?” The Seer translated the voice that hushed the other predators. “We kill your queen. You kill us after.”

  Ryllion growled. “No.” He hammered his fist against the cistern. “If you do right, I will use you again. After we have taken House Bel Amica, we will go back and take House Cent Regus. I will bring down the chieftain, and we will reign over the Expanse together.”

  The Seer knelt and reached around the barrel to the spout. A few drops of the slumberseed oil splashed into the shallow water.

  Ryllion covered his face to avoid catching any whiff of the oil and turned to
leave. The beastmen groaned as the aroma spread below.

  As Ryllion and the Seer retreated through the corridor, Ryllion’s misgivings began to scratch at him. “How can it fail?” he muttered. “As soon as the beastmen leap into view…as soon as the first scream sounds…the queen, Cyndere, and Partayn will hurry below deck.”

  “If they make it that far, you’ll be waiting there to finish them in secret,” said the Seer. “And then you’ll appear on the deck of the ship in full view of the people. Everyone will see you cut down those beastmen. We’ve prepared you for this. Your soldiers won’t even have time to put arrows to their bows. The people will mourn their loss, but they’ll know that you saved the rest of them from a Cent Regus invasion.”

  “They’ll find the boat—”

  “I’ll sink our boat. Put aside your worries, boy. The beastmen aren’t the weakness in our plan.”

  “The weakness?” Ryllion sought to suppress that rising growl. “You see a problem?”

  The Seer was silent, waiting, as he walked alongside.

  “You think I won’t kill the queen.”

  “We know you can kill Thesera. And we know you’ll enjoy cutting up Partayn. But Cyndere.” The Seer dragged his staff along the floor and said no more.

  “After tomorrow,” he said, “you won’t doubt me anymore. Cyndere humiliated me at Tilianpurth. She ran away with a beastman. Who knows what corruption she carries now. She’s a blight on House Bel Amica.”

  “When you take Bel Amica’s throne, you’ll be the ruler of three houses. My kindred and I will give you a gift beyond measure. A steed upon which you will conquer the last great house.”

  “A steed.”

  “House Jenta has always sought a way to master the air. Wait until they see their conqueror coming for them astride a winged beast.”

  “A winged horse?”

  “Better. Malefyk Xa is tending to a little collection. Wait until you see them. You’ll rule the Expanse, both land and sea, from the air. You’ll fly.” The Seer rapped him on his maned head, then turned and stalked back toward the Punchbowl.