by Dorian Hart
“Greetings!” said Ernie cheerfully.
The woman looked shocked at having been spoken to; she quickly knelt like the others and pressed her head to the ground.
“Mighty sky lords,” she said, “who have descended through Posada’s Tears, how may we serve you?”
Posada’s Tears! “Is that what you call the waterfall?” asked Tor.
“Yes, holy one. Posada weeps tears of joy that his waters are returning to the great sea.”
“I’m not a—”
“You may stand, my daughter,” said Dranko, stepping forward. “What is your name?”
The woman stood. “I am Yuja, lord.”
Tor was torn between being delighted and aghast at Dranko’s cheek.
“Yuja, does the sight of my face make you want to kill us?”
“Of course not, my lord!”
“And has a woman with blue skin been to visit you sometime in the past month?”
“No, my lord.”
“Great. Then how would you feel about letting us stay in your village tonight, maybe give us something to eat, and tell us about that jungle over there?”
Yuja, after looking appalled and confused at Dranko’s previous questions, relaxed into a relieved smile. “My lord, we would be honored to have such guests at Lakeside this evening. Tonight we celebrate Leafturn. Come. Follow.”
Dranko turned around and grinned. Grey Wolf rolled his eyes, and Certain Step frowned.
“It is not right,” Step muttered, as Yuja led them back along the edge of the lake. “We should not be presenting ourselves as gods. It is blasphemy. It is said that a man—”
Dranko interrupted with a laugh. “Who exactly is it that says all those things?”
Step glared at him. “Did they not have holy scriptures in your church of Delioch?”
“Yeah, but I tried to find excuses not to read them. And look. First, I never said we were gods. Don’t blame me for our friend’s honest mistake. Second, Aravia here actually is a god, and she’s the one who allowed us to descend majestically through their holy waterfall. So it’s not even completely untrue.”
“I’m not a god,” said Aravia.
“Close enough,” said Dranko.
This was all beside the point. “Posada’s Tears!” Tor exclaimed. “That’s one of our clues to the Crosser’s Maze! Maybe they also know about the…the whatchamacallit.”
“The Whistling Stone,” said Aravia.
“Maybe they do,” said Dranko, “but it’s already late afternoon. Even if we sent you out on the carpet to look for cities in the jungle, soon it’ll be too dark for you to see. We’ve all had a long day, what with nearly getting drowned and smashed by rocks, and you and Kibi in particular could use a night of rest. You can scout the Tangled Green tomorrow, find the city, come back, and we’ll figure out the best way to get us all there.”
Lakeside, as Yuja called it, was a tiny village of little wooden huts with thatched roofs. Its population couldn’t have been more than two hundred people, and by the look of things every one of them was helping set up for a huge party in a field between the town and the lake. A bonfire roared, long tables were being heaped with bowls of food, children were dancing and chasing and laughing, and many of the adults played trilling melodies on Y-shaped pipes.
“Is that all for us?” asked Tor.
“No, my lord, “ said Yuja. “At the Feast of Leafturn we celebrate the end of summer and the start of the harvest season. My lords have arrived on an auspicious evening, as is fitting.”
Tor hurried up until he walked beside Yuja. “We’re not gods, you know. I don’t think it’s honest for us to give you that impression.”
“Of course you are not. But the gods sent you down to us through Posada’s Tears. You are holy to the god of the sea.”
Perhaps he ought not to mention that he worshipped Brechen, the other god of the sea and one whom Posada didn’t like very much. But still. “In truth, we came down through the waterfall by accident. We were saved because Aravia is a wizard. Otherwise you’d have found our bodies floating in your lake. At least you shouldn’t be calling us lords.”
Yuja laughed. “As you wish. Humility is a hard-earned virtue, but I am not surprised to find it in your practice. The gods’ will may seem an accident to his creations, but I believe you are blessed. Now come, let me introduce you to the people of Lakeside, and then we pray you will join us for our feast.”
Half an hour later Horn’s Company sat at a heavily laden table, devouring a meal the likes of which they hadn’t enjoyed for weeks: spiced lamb stew, a bewildering assortment of unfamiliar fruits, bowls of sweet custard, and something Tor guessed was a carrot paste, scooped up with hunks of chewy bread. Their cups were kept filled with water flavored with drops squeezed from a red citrus fruit called a riman.
The little yellow people of Lakeside wanted to hear all about them, especially how they came to waft down from the sky through the great mountain cataract. They were mostly unfamiliar with goblins; their only interaction, such as it was, had come decades earlier when a goblin body had washed over the falls and been fished out of the lake. As such they found Dranko more curiosity than menace. After Tor himself regaled them with an account of Kibi’s heroics in the Yarakt, several of the children wouldn’t rest until Kibi had lifted up the chair on which the largest of them sat.
Certain Step was uncharacteristically nervous. This seemed like the perfect place for him to open up and relax. Not that he was ever very talkative, but he seemed to be going out of his way not to talk to the people of Lakeside. Maybe it was the great reverence in which the locals held Horn’s Company; if Step were to say anything, it would probably be some angry diatribe about how they were stealing glory meant for the gods. Perhaps it was just as well that he was silent, but it seemed a shame for him to miss out on such a grand celebration.
Tor relaxed for the first time in who knew how long. His thoughts were unusually quiet and orderly in his mind—at least when he wasn’t thinking about Aravia. She sat next to him, chatting with the townsfolk, laughing at their stories, and being much more social than was typical. Pewter delighted their hosts by unashamedly leaping to the table and whisking food off their plates.
Most of the villagers were farmers or fisherfolk, and they were governed by a council of elders to which Yuja belonged. All eight of them sat opposite Horn’s Company at the longest table.
“We have a question for you,” said Dranko. “We need to travel into the jungle, and we’re looking for a city, or maybe the ruins of a city. The only name we have for it is Calabash, the City Vitreous. Any of you know where that is?”
The council elders glanced at one another. The oldest, a woman named Fawra, spat out a fruit seed into a little earthen bowl. “There are no cities in the jungle.”
“The jungle is a big place,” said Dranko. “We got a good look at it on our way down the waterfall. Have you explored the whole thing?”
“No,” said Yuja, “but generations of our people have traveled through the Tangled Green, and there are no records of even a village beneath its leaves. The jungle is not hospitable.”
“And no one from Rockhome or Whitefields has ever mentioned a city,” added another of the elders, a tall woman whose name Tor had forgotten.
“Not even ruins?” asked Ernie.
“Not even ruins,” said the woman.
“Of course,” muttered Grey Wolf.
“Then what about something in the jungle called the Whistling Stone?” asked Morningstar.
“Do you mean the Singing Stones?” asked Yuja.
“Maybe,” said Dranko. “Why do you call them that?”
“The Singing Stones rest at the southern end of a cluster of hills. Winds blow constantly down the hills from north to south and are channeled through a narrow gap between two rocks. The sound it makes is like a child’s song, high-pitched.”
“That must be it!” said Tor.
“And could you tell us where the Singing Sto
nes are?” Dranko prompted.
“In the jungle, north and east of here.”
“How far, exactly?”
“I’m not certain.”
“Close to fifty miles,” said another of the elders. “I visited them as a child. They are to the north and east of Lakeside. Five days walk if nothing slows you. There’s a large patch of red vases you’ll want to avoid as you get close.”
South of the Whistling Stone, east of Posada’s Tears. There was math involved; Tor turned to Aravia. “Doesn’t that mean we can figure out how far away the city is?”
“Maybe,” said Aravia. “We don’t know how literal, how specific were the instructions from Shreen. If the city is exactly south of the stone and exactly east from here, then yes. If we assume the Whistling Stone is precisely fifty miles northeast of here, then Calabash is only thirty-five miles away. We could reach it tomorrow on the carpet before lunch. But another possibility is simply that our destination is generally east of the waterfall and south of the stone, in which case we have narrowed down our search only to half of the entire jungle. Thousands of square miles.”
“We have to act on your first assumption,” said Grey Wolf. “If it’s the second, then we’ve lost. But if it’s less than fifty miles from here—”
Tor had no doubt. “It must be that! Shreen wouldn’t have bothered with his directions otherwise. We could be holding the Crosser’s Maze by this time tomorrow!” He looked at the row of the elders across from him. “What are red vases?”
“A carnivorous plant,” said Yuja. “They grow by the dozens on vines as thick as your waist. Their flowers resemble large crimson vases, as large as a barrel and beautiful, but they have a way of detecting scent or motion nearby. The vines twist the vases and they engulf their prey, including people who come too close. Inside are juices that dissolve their food very quickly.”
“They are one of the many reasons we seldom journey into the Tangled Green,” said Fawra.
“There are also the knife-leg ants,” said Yuja.
“And the tri-horned auruk,” said another of the elders.
“And the ear ticks,” added Fawra.
“And the—”
“You know what all that sounds like?” Dranko interrupted. “That sounds like a bunch of stuff we’re going to fly over.”
“Maybe,” said Aravia. “It depends on whether the city is visible through the jungle canopy. If not, we’ll have to assess the carpet’s navigability vis-à-vis the jungle’s density.”
“The jungle is quite dense,” said Yuja. “Foot travel will be slow. Do you have any options that could take you elsewhere?”
“I’m afraid not,” said Morningstar. “And we’ll need to get started first thing tomorrow.”
The evening deepened into night; the clouds rolled away to the south, leaving behind a bright half-moon and a million unhindered stars. Tor concentrated on the food and the good company of their hosts and did his best not to think about Aravia, though he was more certain than ever that she sneaked furtive glances at him. Why would she do that? Was it because maybe his carpet-rescue of Kibi had been so heroic in her eyes that she was reassessing how she felt about him?
Stop that. Stop it. Not helping.
In fact, she was watching him right now! He opened his mouth to ask her why, but what came out instead was, “Maybe you could do some magic to entertain our hosts.”
“I can’t,” she said. “I had to improvise a version of levitation that was both instantaneous and with a wide field of effect and that would last long enough for us to descend all the way to the ground. I doubt that I could lift a walnut before I get a good night’s rest.”
“It was worth it!” Another thought popped into Tor’s head. “If your magic is exhausted, how come these still work?” He held up his light-rod.
“An enchanted object stores the power that drives its function. The aether only comes into play during its creation. It’s a complex subject; there’s a whole book on enchantment theory back in the Greenhouse.”
“Your books! I mean the ones in my pack. They must have gotten soaked in the river and then the lake! I wish there had been something I could have done to save them.”
She smiled and then laughed. “There is nothing to worry about. Abernathy’s books, like most spellbooks, are enchanted to be waterproof. But it’s sweet of you to be concerned.”
She looked into his face, and for a second he thought he knew that expression, that it was the same one he himself made when looking at her and had no idea what to say, or rather knew exactly what he wanted to say but couldn’t because it would go all wrong. Aravia opened her mouth, closed it, opened it again.
“Tell me about your home,” she said finally. “About Forquelle. You never talk about it, but it must have been remarkable to grow up in such an illustrious baronial household.”
Only briefly did he wonder why she asked; instead he felt a kind of confused joy that she had chosen a topic of conversation, sparing him that agony.
“Oh. Well, it was…” Dear gods, he had been about to say “boring,” which was probably the quickest way to reduce Aravia’s regard for him. “I was extremely lucky, I guess,” he decided to say. “I had a private tutor who taught me all kinds of things. Not just ordinary things like letters and arithmetic, but heraldry, astronomy, history, religion, even some music, though I had no aptitude for any instrument. And diplomacy, though I was an even worse diplomat than I was a musician. I tend to say whatever comes into my mind, which you may have noticed.”
She smiled at that, and his heart nearly burst.
“I’ve learned all sorts of things; I just find it difficult to remember most of it. Cawvus, my tutor, despaired of me, I know. I was smart enough to learn everything he tried to teach me, but my mind always wandered. It still does. There’s always something new to think about, usually before I’ve finished thinking about the previous subject.”
“I think there must be different kinds of intelligence,” said Aravia. “I can tell from talking to you that you’re not stupid. And you have an instinct for honesty and action, which are great virtues.”
Had Aravia actually complimented his intellect? Tor flushed.
“But you said you left all of that behind, intentionally,” Aravia continued. “Why? Why throw away the advantages of such privilege?”
Tor had already explained this to Ernie, but when he thought of his reasons now, they sounded poor and selfish. Maybe he could frame it differently. “It’s…I don’t think I’ve thrown them away at all. In fact I’d say I’m putting them to a greater purpose here with our company. At home all of my education was in preparation for a life of idleness and luxury. I’d sit on a throne and tell people how much tax they owed or settle their land disputes or oversee the gem ledgers. All the while I’d be pampered and fawned over, dressed by servants, flattered by servants, eating fancy food prepared by servants, served by servants, cleaned up by servants. But now, here, I can take all of my tutoring alongside my sword training and truly make a difference in the course of our kingdom, of all Spira. Like the goblin shaman said, ‘I will protect.’ I’ll protect you, Aravia. I’ll protect all of you.”
Aravia reached out and put her hand upon his on the table but then yanked it away as though she’d received an electric shock, which might have been how Tor would describe the feeling of Aravia’s hand being there in the first place.
“Aravia, what’s the—”
“It’s Pewter. He says Step is leaving, moving quickly, and he has the flying carpet!”
Tor instinctively glanced down at his pack near his bench, and sure enough Vyasa Vya was not in its customary spot, rolled up and tucked through the pack’s bottom loops.
“Certain Step is betraying us!” Aravia banged her cup down on the wooden table to get the rest of the company’s attention. “He’s stolen the carpet!”
His friends leapt to their feet nearly as one. Many of the little people of Lakeside stood as well, looking at Horn’s Company i
n confusion.
“That way!” Aravia shouted, pointing back toward the town. Tor caught a glimpse of Step hurrying through a gap between two houses, so he grabbed his sword and gave chase, knowing he could make up the distance faster than anyone else. What was Step doing exactly, and why? Tor reached the gap and sprinted through, finding a little dirt road beyond and more houses. There was Step! The man looked behind him and saw Tor chasing him and ran even faster, but Tor knew he was gaining. His head hurt from his earlier crash-landing, but he felt well enough to catch up to his quarry. Past the second row of houses was a long stretch of grass, and Certain Step had stopped next to a person who must have been waiting for him. That person looked up sharply, and Tor stared across an empty twenty feet into the eyes of a blue-skinned woman.
Lapis!
She chanted and waved her arms and traced patterns in the air, not unlike Aravia when she cast her spells, so he charged, covered half the distance, and stopped.
Why had he stopped?
He didn’t know.
He didn’t want to kill Lapis, either, which was strange on its surface since that was all he could think about a second ago, but it made more and more sense as he thought about it.
“Turn around,” she said. “Kill your friends when they arrive.”
Tor turned around. A crowd arrived, the other members of Horn’s Company and about twenty of the villagers.
“It’s Lapis!” Grey Wolf shouted. “Tor, what are you doing? Stop her!”
From behind him came the sound of Lapis’s voice uttering a string of harsh syllables, untranslatable words that felt like stinging hail against his mind, each one making him wince. The villagers turned in a creepy sort of unison to face the members of Horn’s Company.
“What is—” Ernie said, before being interrupted as the villagers attacked them. The little people had no weapons, so they threw kicks and punches, grabbed legs, bit, scratched.
Ernie threw one off of him before being overborne by three more. Grey Wolf and Morningstar stood back-to-back to make it easier to fend off the attacks, but neither had drawn their weapons, and that was a nice change for Morningstar, who Tor expected might not mind killing in self-defense. Aravia, Dranko, and Kibi were mobbed, flailing around trying to throw off their attackers. Dranko fell to the ground, his weak leg giving way beneath him.
