The Ale Boy's Feast

by Jeffrey Overstreet

  “Took me many seasons. Several years. A long time.” He spoke out of the corner of his mouth. “A long time of staring out the greenhouse windows …”

  Warney waited. The old man seemed to have forgotten him already. It was as if his attention had retreated into an engine of whirling gearwheels at the back of his mind.

  “Took you a long time to what?”

  The old man blinked, a stone catching in the gears. “To see what no one else sees. Puzzle, puzzle.” He turned to one of the trash bins, lifted the crate, and dumped a pile of rotting roots. As he strained, muscles bulged through the slack brown flesh of his arms. He almost seemed a man made of roots and branches himself. Above him, netterbeaks gathered on the greenhouse roof to see if he was disposing of anything edible.

  “You’re Myrton,” said Warney. “The gardener.”

  “Gardener. Cure-maker. Chemist. Scientist. The more I study, the more mysterious the world seems. Puzzle, puzzle—I like mysteries. Well, well.” He shrugged and tossed the crate aside, then turned, and a wispy smoke-reed had replaced the sweetstalk. He puffed thoughtfully.

  “You fix people.”

  He sighed. “I’ve been known to try repairing a thing or two that’s broken. Repair. Reconcile. Restore.”

  “You’re workin’ on a cure for them beastmen.”

  “Puzzle, puzzle. Better to say I pay attention to what helps green things grow healthy. Still, sha-woof! It’s a dangerous trade.” He raised his fingers and wiggled them to show that more than a couple stopped bluntly at their knuckles. “Perilous. Life-threatening, even. Broke my daughter’s leg, you know. Blam.”

  “Can you make this right?” Warney pointed to his empty eye socket. “Now don’t get me wrong. It’s just a glassy. But it was a gift. And that’s not all the blasted thief took. She’s got my cap, the one Auralia made for me. And she took it in there.” He pointed at the Seers’ Keep. “Time’s short. I’m leavin’ this house today.”

  “Puzzle, puzzle.” Myrton rubbed his hands together as if this were a game. “Eyeballs. I’m no good with glass. What else could an eyeball be? A berry. A swatter-ball. Do grapes grow big enough?” He frowned. “I’ve never told anybody how to get inside that Keep. Whoof! Nobody’s asked. I doubt anybody who gets in will come back out alive. Perhaps as a cloud or a light or a burst of noise. Sha-wham! But not alive. Ho, no!” He spat out the smoke-reed and unpocketed a carrot to crunch.

  “You’re talking to the One-Eyed Bandit,” said Warney. Familiar resolve burned inside him. “I’ve broken out of places nobody knew had an inside. But I saw that wretched woman walk right through the wall. That’s some trick. How’d she do it?”

  “Oh, I haven’t solved the Seers’ magic. Strange. Foreign. Unnatural. Yeeps! I doubt anybody born in the Expanse can rightly figure them out. Not from around here, those monsters.”

  “Not from the Expanse?”

  “Wouldn’t bet a bellflower’s bud on it, Bandit!” Myrton looked down and kicked the severed hand aside. “Puzzle, puzzle. You see that? Body parts. The Seers leave a trail of them. Ever since they set foot—set foot, ha! Ever since they slithered into Bel Amica, they’ve been giving us potions to unbalance our wits. They distort. Dismember. Poison. They meddle. Like they have some kind of grudge. They tinker with us, like I tinker with mosses, weeds, and ivy. Except I’m trying to plant things that live, so ripe fruit falls in piles. The Seers pull up our roots and shove our stems into vases full of sweet poison.”

  Myrton shivered, then reached under his apron, pulled out an enormous moth, and cast it into the air. “Whoof! And here’s the thing, Bandit. I think the Seers are enjoying it. Bel Amica’s fools just keep coming back for more. I’m glad the queen finally drove them into hiding. But trust me, Bandit.” The carrot’s nub disappeared with a crunch. “They’re still dangerous. You don’t want to go inside that place.” He tucked a celery stick between his teeth and muttered, “Six vegetables for every smoke-reed. Six.”

  “Auralia made that hat,” Warney groaned, slumping back down to the ground and knitting his fingers over his bald head. “It’s all I have left of her colors. If you had a daughter, you’d understand.”

  “I do have a daughter,” said Myrton. “Surprise! Wow!” And then he sighed. “And I almost lost her due to my very own foolishness.”

  Warney glanced up at him. “Oh. Right. Sisterly Emeriene. What happened?”

  “Emmy liked secrets when she was young. Wanted to be the first to know important things. Probably why she stuck close to Cyndere—to learn what went on inside the castle. She’d watch my experiments and write about them. And she happened to be there one night when my curiosity took me off the path of wisdom.”

  Warney listened, hoping to relay these details to Krawg so he could craft them into a fireside tale.

  “It’s good to want to heal broken things,” said Myrton, “and of all creatures I know, nothing heals its own injuries like a shockwyrm. It’s the flash that ripples through their bodies. Zzzark! I tried to catch that flash by cutting right into it. Puzzle, puzzle. Something sprayed out and hit my lantern. It blasted windows off my greenhouse. Boom! Shot fire into Emeriene’s leg.” He chewed the celery, lost in the memory. “Burnt the bone to breaking in three places. She’ll never walk right again. Not a day goes by I don’t thank the world’s great mystery that she’s still alive.”

  Myrton rubbed his hands together again as if he could clear the muddy stains. “A shockwyrm’s a rare and wonderful beast. I was wrong to cut into it for curiosity. But the Seers, they’re cutting into people. Rumors say that … well …” A shadow passed over his face. “Let’s just say that I’ve seen more than one woman who was carrying a child go inside, then come out carrying a lesser kind of wealth in trade.”

  “They’ve bought—”

  “Look, Bandit. Look.” Myrton pointed up into the fog that roiled about the roof of the Keep. “What do you see?”

  “Fog. Wait, sky. Nothin’ else.”

  “Oh, there’s something else. Puzzle, puzzle.”

  Warney squinted. Through a rip in the vapor, a sharp white thorn pricked the blue sky. “The moon!”

  The moment the moon sailed into view, a burst of birds flew up from the roof of the Keep. They flapped about, cawing and crying, until another wave of fog rolled over the patch of sky again, and they settled.

  “So?” Warney asked. “The moon’s still up.”

  “Yes. But what else did you notice?”

  Warney chewed his lower lip. “Birds?”

  “Why did the birds rise, Bandit?”

  Warney squinted again, staring at the same spot of sky. The white curtains parted to reveal the sliver of moon again. Birds flung themselves up.

  “Them birds, they like the moon?”

  “Do birds usually get excited about the moon? No. But who does?”

  Warney came to his feet. “Seers. They’re always goin’ on about moon-spirits.” He pointed at the rooftop. “The birds, they’re scatterin’ because something happens to the roof when the moon’s in view.”

  “You ever heard of moonpetals, Warney? I could show you some inside. They’re flowers that open only when the moon’s in the sky. Puzzle, puzzle. They get some kind of cold nourishment from that pale light.” Myrton swallowed the celery. “Tell me. Have you ever seen a Seer eat anything?”

  “You’re sayin’ the Seers need moonlight.” Warney’s bony hands made fists. “You’re sayin’ that when the moon comes shinin’, they let in the light.”

  “Poom! Surprise! If you really mean to go inside, that’s all the help I can give you.”

  “Maybe not.” Warney grinned. “Got a ladder?”

  6

  THE SECRET OF AURALIA’S CAVES

  ite sails and pieces of driftwood became tents as if Soro had designed them for that very purpose. But as Cal-raven helped raise these uncanny lakeside shelters, his attention fractured. Those caves at the base of the colorful cliffs called to him.

  “We should have a
look inside,” he said as the sheer, smooth stone face purpled with the sunset’s hues.

  “Must I, master?” The Abascar pillarman lay on the shoreline stones staring skyward as stars awoke. “I’ve spent too much time in the Underkeep’s dark. I’d like to lie here and look at the sky.” He wore a smile of happy exhaustion. Their flight with Old Soro’s kites had left them both dizzy.

  Absently, Cal-raven pinched the line of lighter, smoother skin that circled his ring finger. The colors on that cliff face … I’ve only seen colors like that in things that Auralia made …

  Soro, spreading a canvas to sleep on, said, “Shouldn’t you get some rest before you wake the cave’s trouble?”

  “Trouble?” said Cal-raven. “I have to see what’s inside.”

  Nat-ryan sniffed a deep breath of the lakeside air as if drinking from a glass of chilled plum wine. “Think I’ll sleep in the open for the rest of my life.”

  Cal-raven shrugged and marched up the scree-strewn slope to the mouth of a cave, then pressed on into the shadows.

  Bird nests of twigs, leaves, and strands of luminescent string perched on stone outcroppings. Scattered shreds of fabric, clumps of crumbling chalk, fading lines of wall-sketches—each chamber was filled with echoes from a vivid symphony. What figures remained were abstract and strange, the traces of a half-remembered dream.

  Could this have been her workshop?

  He passed through a high-ceilinged chamber with a waterfall wall of luminescent blue, then moved up a tunnel to pull back a dust brown curtain. Faint light fell on a slender arm of vapor that reached out and rested its fingers on his shoulder. Beyond, a small bowl of a cave rippled with shallow water. Beside the pool a blanket of sewn leaves was cast back from a bed of dry sponge-bark.

  Looking up, Cal-raven found what seemed another pool of water suspended on the ceiling. Glowstone stalactites, wet from the rising mist, punctured its shimmering surface, dissolving the illusion. Cal-raven was looking at a canopy of cavespider webs. The thickly woven mesh rippled in the currents that wheezed through the wall’s intricate fissures. He shivered, even though he knew that cavespiders are as gentle and fragile as they are enormous and long legged. If he stared, he could glimpse them there, picking their way nimbly through the nets in search of tiny flies and beads of water.

  He let the curtain close and knelt beside the rumpled leaf-blanket, cautious as if he might wake some invisible sleeper. A square platter of thin, broken slate held a rough crust of bread. He sniffed it, then laughed. It was not bread at all but a brick of brown clay that warmed in his hand and emanated the scent of a freshly baked bun, which only made him hungrier for the real thing. Toy food, he thought. When hunger woke Auralia, she crafted what she could not reach.

  A sound like oars splashing came from far away, a distant echo from a world below. This pool, he realized, came not from seeping rain or springs but from fog that rose from a deeper reservoir; the mist dampened the webs and stalactites until they dripped a slow rain. He cupped a hand to the pool, touched the water to his tongue, then drank several handfuls.

  The water was warm and invigorating, but it awakened the white pulse behind his eye. Weary of his vision’s bright stain, Cal-raven lay down, rested his head on the feather-weave pillow, and looked up into the ceiling’s shining spikes.

  Waking dreams filled his mind as if the pillow were soaked in them. “I want to pick berries. I want to catch fish from the lake for my lunch. And I want my dog.”

  Dear old Hagah. He’ll forgive me anything, no matter how often I disappoint him.

  He drew from his shoe the pebble of the Keeper’s footprint and began to soften its edges, flaring them out into a star-shaped ornament. He did this without thinking—had done so since childhood at Scharr ben Fray’s urging. “Practice until you don’t know you’re practicing. Practice until a day is not complete without a new sculpture. Keep the power hot on your fingertips.” The work calmed him.

  “I want to sculpt something new. To return from the day with soreness in my back and find a feast waiting at the fire. I want storytelling. And music.” He began to hum the verses of the Abascar hour songs.

  I need these songs. I need the order of an Abascar day, an Abascar night.

  Drunk on the strange water, he sang his way back through ceremony songs, ballads of history, poems of epic romance, as many as he could recall, rediscovering a tapestry of memories.

  He was eight years old, kneeling beside the River Throanscall, pressing the mark of the Keeper’s footprint into this pebble. The white scar pulsed brighter, as if from the stone.

  He was a young soldier in training, riding a vawn alongside Tabor Jan, driving beastmen from the Gatherers’ harvesting ground. But a girl among the Gatherers drew his eye. The white scar blazed from her forehead.

  He was leading a charge in a fangbear hunt, a hunter’s chant on his tongue. But Forbidding Wall peaks snagged his attention, gleaming like the serrated jaw of a flay-fish, while Tabor Jan turned and, without hesitation, cast an arrow into the prize. The scar flared so sharply it hurt.

  As he sang, he began to see a subtle golden thread that bound these memories into a story—a thread of longing that had led him from mountains to fields to faraway city walls. The cord stretched into mystery, and his restlessness burned strong as ever.

  He stared into the canopy of glowstone spikes and sparkling webs, which glistened like a clear night sky. I want to know where Auralia’s colors come from.

  He was back in Barnashum’s Blackstone Caves, in a chamber where his people had assembled pieces of Auralia’s art. The gallery’s aura enveloped a figure playing soft, sad notes on a string-weave—a song of lament for House Cent Regus. Cal-raven thought of Jordam, of the faint hope that the beastman represented.

  In my hatred I almost killed him.

  In the singer’s final verse, the dissonant chords resolved into a hopeful, ascending anthem. She sang of a fallen tree, its branches filling with birds that lifted it up and carried it away. Something might yet rise from the ruins of failing houses. The last note floated into the air like a firefly.

  The singer looked up, and he knew her. Lesyl. He let go of the music’s golden thread and reached out, instead, for the freckle-faced singer. Leave Bel Amica, Lesyl. Forget about Partayn. Come with me.

  At once the pulsing light faded. Lesyl smiled softly, and Cal-raven felt a cold knife against his neck. He gasped, falling back against his attacker—Ryllion, with blood on his teeth.

  Cal-raven woke beside the pool, water dripping against his neck. He choked on Ryllion’s name.

  “Fallen tower of Tammos Raak!” he gasped. “Cal-raven, you fool’s fool, you’ve forgotten!”

  Hiding inside a statue before the throne of the Cent Regus chieftain, Cal-raven had listened to a Seer describe a plot against Bel Amica, a trap about to spring. Had it happened? Had Captain Ryllion killed Queen Thesera, Partayn, and Cyndere? Or had the rebellion failed?

  “My failure made me forget,” he growled, as if making an excuse to himself. He rose and stepped into the pool, took hold of a glowstone stalactite, and snapped it loose from the ceiling’s webbed hold. Sculpting a hilt and a blade from the long stone spike, he cringed at the bloody images that filled his imagination.

  Ryllion’s slaughtered my people or thrown them in prison. Tabor Jan, Say-ressa, Lesyl … I’m not fit to be their king. And what of the Bel Amicans? Emeriene …

  Leaving the pool behind, he found the corridor dark. The sun had set.

  Through the strange echoes of wind and trickling water, he heard a distant footfall on the lakeside pebbles. As he moved quietly down the steep tunnel toward the sound, his knuckles brushed against a velvet curtain. He paused. He had not noticed this doorway on his ascent. He pushed it aside.

  A fading glimmer caught his eye, as if someone carrying a lantern were hurrying away. The space was heavy with the air of decay. As he stepped through into the dark, something rolled and cracked underfoot like dry kindling. His grip ti
ghtened around the shining stalactite sword.

  “Is someone there?”

  A splash like an oar in a lake. There was water, deep water, nearby, perhaps on the other side of this chamber’s wall.

  But the sound faded, and the air was still, like a predator waiting for the right time to strike. He felt strangely cold. He felt observed. His throat went dry. Holding out the glowstone sword, he looked down.

  Bones were strewn all across the floor. Bones of animals and beastmen. But this was no accidental scattering. The figures below—a wild, violent struggle of twisted bodies—were all turned toward the same subject, their white skulls gaping.

  Fighting a wave of revulsion, Cal-raven stepped through the bonefield toward the goal of their skeletal reaching—a pinnacle of black stone. In the sword’s faint light, he could see a shape. He ran his hands along contours too symmetrical to be accidental.

  A statue. A young woman.

  Cal-raven climbed onto the carved sweep of the figure’s trailing cloak and worked his way around to stand before her. The cloak and hair were littered with bones, twigs, leaves, and pebbles in wild whorls and patterns.

  Cal-raven’s questing hands found a gob of wax—the stub of an old candle—resting on the figure’s outstretched arm. He found crumbs of broken sparkstone beside his feet and molded the fragments together until they were large enough to break against a sharp edge. In a moment the candle was lit, the light swelling to illuminate a small sphere of space.

  He had seen her once a long time ago, deep in Abascar’s dungeon, only moments before he rode out through his father’s gates for the last time. But he recognized her even though the sculptor had given this Auralia a posture of anguish and desperation. Caught in midstride, she strained to escape her pursuers, the ghastly swarm of bodies and bones that clutched at her garments.

  More candles waited around the ripples and wrinkles of her cloak. Cal-raven lit those too, freeing more details from shadow. The ceiling’s stone had been molded into vicious expressions, and hands clawed at the hair as if reaching for the girl.