Auralia's Colors

by Jeffrey Overstreet

  “Where have you been?” the king roared, grabbing up the fireplace poker again and waving it as he advanced upon the boy. “And where is my attendant?”

  “Apologies, my lord,” the boy whispered, bowing low and holding up the bottle. “Your attendant was harmed in the courtyard riot. No one noticed his post was empty until I found Wilfry running around in the kitchen. I will take up the post for the night. I brought you some new goblets.” The ale boy cast a glance to Cal-raven. “For you both.”

  “Never mind the goblets,” snarled the king. “The bottle will do.”

  Cal-raven pulled back one of the tapestries and pushed through a curtained door, all thoughts of raising cups in celebration left behind.

  “Hagah, stay,” said the king intently. “Hagah…stay!”

  But the dog was already through the curtains, grumbling as if tracking something, nails tapping and scraping along the marbled floor. Cal-raven did not send him back.

  As he moved down the corridor and up a winding stair, he lost all sense of time and space. His thoughts crumbled into each other like dying embers—wolves, cheers, whispers, flames, a hand of stone, a rumor of colors.

  Back in his chamber, he watched Hagah amble to the windowsill, rest his chin there, and draw in deep breaths of the outside air. He fell into the blankets before an expansive window, still in his hunting garb.

  The rulers of Abascar slept, their half dreams taking place in far separate worlds.

  16

  INQUISITORS

  A muffled cannonade of vawn footfalls. Shouts of the king’s errand-runners. The Early Morning Verse. The snap, creak, and jostle of market carts being assembled along the road.

  These sounds clattered and echoed down to the dungeons, reminding the prisoners that the world went on undeterred without them.

  Some captives were awake, stinging from the whiplash of their dreams, remembering deeds that had sent them to these small rooms of rock, reek, and reprimand. One by one they crawled to their barred cell doors in hope that something about the dreary scene would have changed—a freshly woven spider web, a new resident cursing in a cell.

  In whispers, they passed along gossip as quietly as an underground stream. The prince was ill. His wolf hunt had been rainy and cold. A week of wedding preparations was postponed. The king’s troops were interrogating Housefolk to find the masterminds of a grudger rebellion.

  One by one they noticed the colors, the mysterious glow of a cell midway down the long corridor.

  It was seven days ago they first heard the crying from that cell—a voice so young their hearts, though stony and cold, broke at the sound of it.

  “She is bait,” the guards had told them. “Bait for the exiled mage. He’ll come and try to take her. And should you sound the alarm in time, you will be rewarded.”

  They tried to speak with the prisoner, but she had not shown her face. They imagined the faces of past lovers, sisters, or mothers and believed her delicate and beautiful. While they would often grouse to one another that they had been framed for their crimes or complain about how justice had failed, in the presence of the young girl, as witnesses to her unwarranted punishment, they could not muster claims of their own innocence. Her cries were born of purest grief, not of indignation, contempt, or physical injury. Her voice was hollow with loss, without a hint of rage or shame. The world had gone wrong.

  Mesmerized by the mysterious colors, they leaned against their bars and gazed into the glow as if sleeping in a field under the stars. Some compared the lights to an unsettling display called the Northern Lumination, when the night skies beyond the Forbidding Wall seemed splashed with vivid paint. It was a marvel thought by some to be the work of sorcery. But for most, the colors reminded them of times before the Proclamation.

  Soon the river of whispers began to quietly speak her name—Auralia, Auralia, Auralia, Gatherer girl who defied the king—but she remained just out of reach.

  Auralia could not distinguish the whispers from the trickles of water running along the walls or from the distracting itch of noise beyond the distant gate. She listened instead to the echoes of life proceeding as usual in the city and beyond that even in the Gatherers’ camps. She longed for the sound of wind in trees, but no wind would ever lose its way so badly as to seep into these deep passages.

  Outside the walls of Abascar, Auralia had survived by the sharpening of her senses, eyes attuned to the burnished gold of an apple among yellow leaves; nose keen for the rich, heavy spice that rises when walking on a bed of thyme; ears striving to recognize bats by their midnight chatter.

  Here in the cell, she recalled the smell of a fallen tree near her cave, the one diggerbugs had ruined, rotten and soft. She was weary from the malodorous air, and her throat was raw and burning.

  Silverblue lanternlight drifted stale and cold from the iron gate down the dungeon stairs, illuminating the edges of her dark corridor. These cells, shrouded in steam, were like the caves of the sleeping fangbears in winter, misty with the faint heat of bodies curled into cramped spaces. Those in bondage were kept out of the light’s reach and revealed their presence by the occasional scrape of cold steel chains, link against link. Sometimes they would crawl to the bars and squint at her—haunted faces lined with longing. She was often awakened by their fits of coughing and obscenity. Occasionally one hummed the opening notes of a tune, but then all resolve failed, and silence returned, more unbearable than before. That was the worst of it…when someone tried to sing.

  Weariness plunged her into half consciousness, cold water too shallow for drowning. She was out of place, left in this puddled stone box with only the cloak of her colors.

  The cloak. It lay before her too vibrant to ignore, and yet it was a torment. It was not meant for this place. It was meant to shine, for everyone to see.

  It had happened so fast. Not the way she had hoped.

  The echoes of the king’s ultimatum haunted her sleep. “Orphan! Outcast! Woods-girl! Runt! You would taunt me by appearing disguised as my lost queen? You have no place in such extravagance. Disown it. Surrender it to us willingly, and pledge yourself to the glorification of Abascar. Give it up to us to be unraveled and studied. Then you can walk free!”

  They left her. No one took the cloak, although they all had in their own ways betrayed a secret desire.

  At first she was surprised. But every time she thought of daylight or release, Cal-marcus’s challenge returned to her with piercing clarity. The king’s pride was wounded too deeply, his authority tested before his people. She could have offered him his dreams, and he would have refused them to avoid the appearance of weakness, to escape a confession that there were things beyond the wall worth having, things he could not control.

  Auralia’s journey from the ceremony to the cell was a short one.

  In a locked, bare-walled room, she had climbed onto one of two wooden stools at a round, stone table. She was careful to keep the luminescent bundle from trailing across the filth, and she pulled her feet up and away from red smudges on the floor. There were fingerprints in those crimson scribbles. The heavy shackles, anchored to the wall with chains, were too large to bind her tiny wrists. But she felt shackled all the same, for this room was so small, its ceiling so low, without windows or views or decoration.

  This would be where Abascar would assert its control and test her.

  Casting the cloak across the table, she examined it for tears or snags. As if on cue, the door burst open, and a woman entered, grey as the mantle she wore. Her fading hair, pinned high, almost grazed the ceiling. She waved her hands in protest, then snatched the cloak as if it were a soiled rag and cast it into the corner.

  “What a fragile, feeble weave you’ve made. Take a tug at this.” Her sleeve was thick and woolen. “Simple, tough. That’s what Housefolk wear. Useful for all manner of work. What could you find in the wild that will last as long as this?”

  Auralia cocked her head like a curious bird. “Bones, I s’pose.”

 
With a scowl, this towering woman closed the door, and Auralia heard a heavy wooden beam slam into the latch. She counted the corners of the room nervously. “Such a small space,” she said to the woman. “Makes people seem enormous. In the woods, everybody’s properly small.”

  The woman seated herself across from Auralia and began her tirade, grasping the edges of the table as though she might lift it and slam it down. Auralia sat with head bowed, chin barely above the table’s edge, hands clasped tightly in her lap.

  The questions stung like slaps. Years had weathered the woman’s voice. She sounded like an old huskbird, raspy and rude, and the sounds reverberated in the closed room.

  There were no surprises in the questioning. No, Auralia answered, she did not believe the people should rise up in violence against the king.

  No, she had not been sent by an angry mage.

  No, she knew nothing more of her beginnings than the Gatherers could tell of Krawg and Warney’s discovery by the river.

  No, she did not recognize the likeness of an old man sculpted in clay—she had never seen him in the wild.

  No, she had never been to Bel Amica, and, no, she had never been offered wealth or treasure, nor had she been threatened or commanded.

  Tell them how to find her caves? She could not explain it. There was no map. She only knew how to find them by going there.

  When the old woman rose and announced that this confirmed her worst fears about the Gatherer children—that they were indeed no more than insolent liars—Auralia thought it was finished, and she would be cast out of Abascar.

  But perhaps the trials had only begun?

  When the beam slammed down to bar the door again, a man dressed in the bland greens of a Gatherer put his elbows on the table, rested his scruffy chin in his callused hands, and smiled as if to put her at ease.

  “They needn’t bar the door,” Auralia sighed. “It’s too heavy for me to budge. And I wouldn’t know where to run.”

  The man launched into a practiced speech, a story about his days as a Gatherer, how he had earned his way into the house. He’d deserved to be left for the beastmen, and yet King Cal-marcus, in his mercy, had granted him another chance.

  Auralia knew that these rags and rough vernacular were a charade. And when she asked him what his offense had been, his memory faltered, and he fumbled as if searching for a missing page. She asked him which camp had been his home, and he shrugged and said they were all the same. She would not meet his pompous, leering, lying eyes.

  “Them colors you done wove together, they’d make a fabulous flag for the king. Take a look at this—what if you and me, we took a bad situation and turned it to good?” He pulled a fold of golden cloth from his pocket and held it high like a prize. “This here’s a patch marked with a rune, a symbol representing King Cal-marcus ker Har-baron’s royal line. Try stitchin’ this patch, why don’t you, in the center of your weaving?”

  Auralia laughed, thinking this was a joke. “It’s finished. It’s done. There’s no more stitching to do. And it doesn’t belong to the king. It’s not about the king.” She lifted the cloak, spread it out like a banner, and draped it over the shackle pegs pinned to the wall. Standing before it, she was entranced anew, and the red thread was restless in her hand. She longed to unleash its glory again.

  “What does it mean then? That thing you’ve made.” The impostor crumpled his patch, which suddenly seemed so flimsy and plain. “What is it for?”

  Auralia squinted into the colors and shrugged. “Can’t say what it means. It’s not a riddle. It’s not somethin’ you solve. It’s more like a window. Look through it for a while.”

  This was not the answer the impostor wanted. He smacked the patch down on the table again. “This is the king’s rune. It must be marked on any approved work of color. As you can see, it’s rather dull. But you could change it. Make it shine, like the colors you’ve put in the cloak.”

  “It doesn’t have shine in it,” she explained with a sigh. “It’s just a gold square, and no special gold. It’s got no surprise. It’s got no problem. It’s just a stamp. Anybody could make another one just like it.”

  “There are many others, on the flags and the banners. It’s the sign of his approval. It’s the sign that something belongs to Abascar.” He nodded to her cloak. “Like what you’ve brought.”

  “It’s not for him to own,” she said, exasperated and weary. “It’s for him to see.” She picked up the patch. “Look at this. Nothing to wonder about. Nothing alive.” She tugged at its corners. “I could pull it apart. We could tangle the threads with others, and then it might become something to look at.”

  He grabbed the patch, muttered something about having been warned, and banged at the door until the beam was lifted.

  No one explained. No one apologized. Not the Housefolk, the officers, or the magistrates who paid her visits. Instead they pinched and poked her skin, tugged and scrutinized her silverbrown hair, emptied her pockets of stones and shells and balls of yarn. They dug into her head, hunting for stories or revelations she did not have to offer.

  One was obviously chosen for her motherly persuasiveness. She spoke sweetly, as if Auralia might answer to such a tone and be fooled into surrendering her work to the king.

  Auralia stared into the colors of the cloak, watched the way the tremulous lanternlight sent fiery gleams rippling across it, and she strained to catch the perfumes of the threads, some scent of the woods.

  In a comforting voice the motherly questioner asked if Auralia knew the tale of Queen Jaralaine. Wild things took root in her garden, she explained, barbs and poison thorns. The queen’s mind was distorted, and her madness sent her ravenous into the woods. Auralia said the Gatherers’ tales of Jaralaine were quite different…that she had gone mad from her confinement, returning to die in the wild she had once known.

  “Confinement? This is safety, unless you refuse to surrender what you have done and said. The magistrates want to send you to jail. I’ve heard that the jailer…” The woman stopped short of saying his name or what he would do.

  Auralia was not listening. She was watching the woman’s hands as they strayed across the textures of the cloak, which glittered like jewels at the bottom of a clear pond.

  “How do you make new colors? Show me how it’s done.”

  “Like I keep sayin’,” Auralia laughed, incredulous, “I didn’t make nothin’ that’s new. I found the colors. They’re everywhere.”

  “How, then, did you find them?”

  “By accident, mostly. I’d be looking for the Keeper, and I’d come across something new. A bird. A stone. Wildflowers with roots trailing in a hidden stream. Sometimes, you don’t see a color until you’ve looked at something a long time, and then you see it’s been there all along. After that you see it everywhere.” She took the woman’s hands, pointing to a bold blue vein. “See? See how much is in your hands?” Auralia’s spirits rose as her thoughts returned her to the forest.

  The woman folded her hand and drew it away. “We can show you all the treasure of Abascar, Auralia,” she said, returning to her orders. “You can use any colors you like from wonders in the Underkeep, if you pledge yourself to craft what Cal-marcus requests. You’ll be so much happier here with the Housefolk, where the wilderness can’t corrupt you. You…” She stopped, a curious new question in her face.

  “I know. You can smell the forest, can’t you?”

  She pulled the colors to her face, caressed her cheek. “Fernblossom. The river. Herbs. Wild honey. And something darker here. This. You wouldn’t, perhaps, let me have this patch…just the smallest piece…would you?” She spoke with a hint of mischief. “Of course you mustn’t tell anyone. It would just be a secret between you and me.”

  Auralia answered, “You’re not the first to ask me that.” She reached into her pockets, drew out a bundle of golden strands. “You can take these threads. Something to help you remember.”

  The woman held the threads up to the lanternlight.
“Beautiful. Like autumn. Like honey. What are they?”

  “I made them from long and bristly hair I pulled from a beastman’s mane while he was sleeping.”

  The woman flung the threads aside and choked and staggered backward, her face purpling with revulsion and rage. “Insolence!” She hissed through clenched teeth, “You’ve touched an abomination!” She gestured to the tapestry. “Are there…are there curses and poisons woven here too?” She wiped her hand on the edge of her cloak, shuddering as if stained with something vile. “Now I see how reckless you are. Nothing good can come from wandering beyond the lands Abascar has tamed. A purging of poisons, that’s what you need.” She leaned against the door. “You touched my hand. What have you done to me?” She scratched at her wrist. “The jailer…he’ll beat the darkness from you.”

  Alone again, Auralia watched the lanterns dim, their oil burning low. The air grew stale and cold. Was this what it was like for the blind Bel Amican woman?

  Then the last inquisitor arrived. She was a servant girl, much younger than Auralia, with gaps between her teeth and carrot red hair under a grey hood. She peered warily at Auralia in the darkening room, as though sent to comfort someone diseased or disfigured. She pulled something from the fold of her cloak and set it on the floor—a white-furred house cat, which took to sniffing at the floor’s dark smudges and creeping about in the corners.

  “That’s Ghosty,” she said proudly. “You could have a kitty too if you came to live with us.”

  “I live out by the lake,” said Auralia sadly. “I play with cats all the time. Big cats and little cats. They’re everywhere. You should come and visit.”

  Jealousy flickered in the girl’s green eyes. She spoke mechanically, pacing through the words she had rehearsed to find her way back to her assignment.

  “See my honor stitches?” The girl pointed to braided ribbons of blue, orange, and green pinned to the shoulder of her ash grey cloak. “I got ’em ’cause I learned the right answers to all the questions that there are. I can teach you.”