“The Northchildren. They remember you. They came to gather you before, to unstitch your skin and smuggle you away. But someone snatched you from their grasp.”
“You’re alive?” he says to convince himself. “Everything’s exploded. And who is that, the one lying there?”
She rises to her feet, glowing. “I’m done with that skin. It’s just not strong enough. That’s what the Northchildren say. I remember now how it goes. I’m remembering a lot all of a sudden. What my home’s like and how to get there.”
He allows himself another view of her folded, ash-dusted form—a shed skin, hair singed and blackened, bones.
“You’re…you’re different than the rest of us,” he says. “You come from somewhere else, don’t you?”
“I was brought from somewhere else. But all the four houses…they all came from somewhere else, ale boy. A long, long time ago. But they’ve forgotten. A fifth house. I woulda told them, but I forgot too. I was just a baby when Krawg and Warney found me.”
“Is that where the colors come from? Take me with you, Auralia.”
“I can’t take you. Not yet.”
“Then tell me how to get there.”
“Nobody can take you. You gotta make your own journey when you find the tracks. And you can’t see them unless you remember how to look. They can be anywhere. On the road or off it. Even in dungeons. They’re different for Gatherers than for kings and different for anyone in between. Even a beastman can find them, I suspect. They might take you on a long journey. Or it might be just a few steps.” She shrugs and then yawns in sudden weariness. “Anyway, I’ve come to the threshold. Northchildren are unlocking the door. But don’t worry, ale boy. I think you’re already remembering how to find the tracks.”
He startles as she reaches through the shroud to tousle his hair. “Fire boy,” she sadly whispers, “you look like you’ve been in Yawny’s oven.”
He feels his tears coming now. “Auralia. The house. It’s fallen to pieces. It’s all burning. And Auralia, my mother. My mother and my father. They—”
“I know.” She reaches for him, and he falls into her embrace. As her strange, glittering veil wraps around him, he remembers its stinging texture. This cloth was laid across him once, when he rested in the cradle. It tugs at something inside him. It shields him from heat and pain. He wants to draw it around him. Auralia holds him as he cries.
Tears are in her eyes now too. “They are not suffering, ale boy. That’s long past. It’s time to look to what’s ahead.”
“Auralia.” He pulls free of her embrace, and suddenly he smiles. “When I was in the fire. My parents. I heard them calling me. From a long time ago.”
“Yes.”
“And I remembered. My name. They said it over and over.”
“The remembering. It’s slow and ever so strange. But when it comes, it’s all so clear. I’ve done what I came to do. I brought the colors to try and remind folks.” Her voice falters, choked on feelings. “But I guess it takes more than just showing. They’ve gotta be willing to see. Their remembering will be long and painful.” She stares into the distance where flames twirl like dancers, a thousand writhing strands. “When I think of Cal-raven…it hurts.”
She is different indeed. Queenlike. No longer afraid or timid. “I’ve got to get home before I become forgetful again. When you reach the end of the steps meant for you, don’t linger, ale boy. The Expanse…it can do that to you. Distract you. Make you forget. Make you think you’re home and that it’s all you need. But you know it isn’t. You want so much more.”
She slowly descends to one knee again, until her gaze is even with his. Her face is still so small, shimmering, as it had been on the lakeshore under the moon. Tears spill down her face, and when she bows her head, they fall into strands of her hair.
The glow of the firelight behind him goes out, and a sudden shadow stretches across the floor to ascend the walls. The drums have stopped. The Northchildren are bowed low. Auralia looks up at what casts that shadow, the presence looming behind the ale boy. He can hear its breath, like waves sighing against the edges of the lake. He does not turn, but he knows what is there, what has come.
And then she laughs. “Oh, I am remembering it all. That beautiful language. The light. Oh, the light.”
He glances at the Northchildren. Here, in the presence of the Keeper, at the edge of death’s barrier, they seem more substantial, more real. He sees faces through their dark veils, hears murmurs as though through a wall. They seem familiar.
Auralia kisses his forehead scar, cooling it. So many mysteries here in one place. She smiles. “Well? Will you tell me?”
“My lady?”
“Never call me anything but Auralia. Promise? And I will never call you anything but your own name. So hurry up and tell me what it is.”
“My name?”
“Your name. How can I tell the ones back home all about my brave friend if I do not know what to call him?”
He looks down at his blistered, soot-blackened feet. “You will not tell me where you are going?”
She gives him that playful smile he first saw when he met her among the Gatherers—when she protected him from Radegan’s temper. “I’m not allowed to say, ale boy. And I’m not sure yet myself.”
He loses his control and weeps. “If you’re not tellin’ me where I can find you, then I’m not gonna tell you my name!”
She embraces him. Her face is cool against his as she whispers, “Let me tell you something else instead.” She tells him where the thief concealed all her gifts to the Gatherers. “Go and find what’s been stolen. Take it to those who need it. While I’m gone, I cannot help House Abascar as I have. You, ale boy. You will be my hands.”
She turns then and passes behind him. He listens to her go. A powerful wind rushes about his feet, rising, lifting the great shadow up through the turbulent cavern toward escape. The Northchildren flicker and fade, like candles in the gale. The ale boy glances over his shoulder.
He sees Auralia, for just one instant, carried up into the shadow like an autumn leaf into a thunderstorm, the prince’s ring on her thumb glinting in the firelight.
He awoke, but he did not know how much time had passed.
And he lay still, remembering and weeping in the ashes.
30
THE REMNANT OF ABASCAR
B lack coral geese soared stark and sudden in a straight line, appearing from a continent of burdened clouds, crossing a river of grey, disappearing into a dark, miasmic island in the sky. The storms were winter’s harbingers, burdened with bad tidings.
Cal-raven watched them as he walked briskly among the silent, sniffing hounds. They found nothing, these surviving twelve dogs from the great hunting host of Abascar. But this breed knew nothing of surrender—only the moment and the hunger.
Cal-raven admired their unyielding hope. For him, surrender was dangerously appealing.
Each day the Abascar survivors became more desperate, contending with cloudbursts, sleet, bearcats, fatigue, nightmares, despair. They could appeal to House Bel Amica and hope that they might be taken in as refugees. They could flee to the deep south, to offer their services to the quiet, sedulous mages of House Jenta. Cal-raven had sent messengers prepared with appeals, but perhaps the survivors would be more persuasive if they arrived on a doorstep all at once.
Tabor Jan, leading the company on his large vawn, did not look at the migrating birds. Silent as slumber, his arrowcaster at the ready in his hands, the guardsman never turned his gaze from the path ahead.
Cal-raven sensed that even here, in this ragged multitude, he was alone.
Behind them marched the hard truth, the survivors. No one voiced hopes or plans. Not yet. They spoke of food and weather, of changing bandages, or taking a turn astride a vawn to rest their weary feet. Of immediate need. Of refuge.
Some, especially the children, collected fallen leaves, berries, and stones along the way, souvenirs of lands they’d never seen before. Lat
e autumn offered strange comfort, for the Housefolk had not seen such a conflagration of color in their years of compliance with Cal-marcus’s code. They had pictured a world snarled with thorns and putrid swamps.
There were seventeen vawns for one hundred and forty travelers; all Abascar’s horses had either died or run wild. Sixteen soldiers patrolled the path before and behind, and a few moved through the trees alongside.
Tabor Jan had trained the hounds to refrain from howling in this stealthy journey. Still, he knew their restraint would eventually give way as they grew too hungry to resist barking at the hint of prey.
But there was no prey. They found no sign of rabbit, goom, groundbelly, or flightless birds. Either the increasing numbers of beastmen had driven the wildlife from this region or the animals anticipated a winter more severe than any in recent memory.
Occasionally a patrol would drift wordlessly back to the company with a man or a woman or a child who had been found wandering alone in the trees, and there would be fresh tears, embraces.
The company swelled to nearly two hundred. Each newcomer carried the names of many more who had not been found or had been found slain. Having left others behind to die, some were prone to stumbling and glancing over their shoulders.
Cal-raven tried to assemble words to assure them they had done the right thing by leaving the ruined house behind. But others spoke his thoughts before he could muster the courage.
“We could have stayed there, fought the beastmen, and tried to salvage our home, but the ground in Abascar is not safe.”
“Disease will spread quickly there.”
“With the walls down, we’d be vulnerable. Cent Regus won’t relent in their attacks.”
“Help may come from House Bel Amica, but it may not. And if it does come, it’ll be too late.”
“Soon snows and plagues’ll be dangerous as beastmen.”
“But where will we go?”
“We will journey to the Blackstone Caves,” Cal-raven said, finding his voice at last. “The Blackstone Caves are above the Cliffs of Barnashum, and we must reach them before the full freeze arrives. There we can burrow deep. Barnashum conceals a world of underground waterfalls. We can stake out a defensible hideaway, tend to the injured, and make a plan.”
The Caves, Cal-raven had thought. The Caves where I once ran to be alone or to walk with my teacher and learn the slow and silent work of shaping stone. Now I bring my house with me. Now I make it a place of hiding and, inevitably, survival.
As he spoke, the people quieted, and those far behind hurried to catch up. He could see the scowls and the suspicion, but he expected nothing more. He would have to earn their trust.
He turned, cleared his throat, and sought for a speech. He hated speeches, and he knew the people had learned to distrust them.
As if anticipating Cal-raven’s intent, Tabor Jan suddenly steered his vawn around to stand beside the prince and delivered a speech of his own.
“You look at Cal-raven as if you’re seeing the ghost of King Cal-marcus. Know this—Prince Cal-raven is as weary and worried as you. Each loss you suffer, he suffers with you. You are angry. And I assure you, your anger is but a spark. Cal-raven’s is a bonfire.”
Cal-raven had never heard his guardsman speak so many words at one time.
“Muster what strength and courage you have, and I swear to you, Cal-raven will match you—day for day, risk for risk, breath for breath.”
Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, Cal-raven said to himself, but he was not about to interrupt this surge of zeal. Tabor Jan had stunned the survivors into an attentive silence.
“I am Cal-raven’s guardsman. But I will stumble from time to time. Pick me up, for Cal-raven’s sake. And he, too, will grow weary. Encourage him. We give for one another’s good, and no one will give more than Cal-raven. Try to prove me wrong. Try to give more than he will. You won’t manage.”
Their eyes shifted from the guardsman to the prince, and he knew that he appeared pale and pathetic.
Tabor Jan placed his hand over his heart. “It is fair to say that too many words from Abascar’s throne have given you reason to worry. But Cal-raven does not sit on a throne or make himself separate from you. I have fought alongside him, and I can you tell you: he will not leave your side. He presses on for one reason only—to make right what has gone wrong in Abascar. Walls do not shape a house. For Cal-raven, you are House Abascar. He is the king we need. And if you are true to him, as I am, together we will become the wonder of the Expanse.”
What followed was far less than a cheer, but some of the people nodded, and the scowls softened.
Tabor Jan turned and fixed his friend with an expression of ferocious threat. “You’d better not make me a liar,” he whispered.
Cal-raven cleared his throat. With the sensation of stepping out onto a frozen lake, he began to speak, moving gingerly into the reverent silence his guardsman had prepared.
There was no coronation. But from that day on, the people addressed Cal-raven as their king.
The survivors’ journey wound down into hilly lowlands, through branches of the Cragavar woods, but the survivors felt as though they struggled up a steep incline.
The Housefolk whispered among themselves, refusing to treat Gatherers as equals. But the Gatherers’ coats of hair, bark, and rags became the uniforms of knowledge and experience. The children soon revered them as mysterious teachers.
Tabor Jan had successfully delegated tasks during the rude awakening of the journey’s start. It was with a mix of astonishment and fear that Gatherers like Krawg and Warney heard their names called to teach others how to construct makeshift tents, how to find edible roots from patterns of leaves, and how to discern poison’s disguises. The respect brought Krawg strength and humor, and soon he threw his crutch away.
The caravan’s greatest burden was the salvation of those who could not sleep. Once she had exhausted a substantial reservoir of tears, Wenjee—who tired easily even when riding a vawn—found enough voice to raise the walls of Abascar behind the closed eyes of her listeners. She took pride in preserving Abascar’s legacy for the Housefolk, even if the histories she described bore little resemblance to the house they had known. For most of them, Wenjee’s bizarre imagination provided a welcome escape from heartache.
One night Wenjee’s story grew raspy and faint, and in the morning they found her still and cold, her tongue swollen, her throat clenched, as if the tales had grown too large and squelched her voice. The remnant of Abascar gathered around as the soldiers hoisted her onto a pallet of sturdy boughs and carried her in a solemn procession, to bury her out of sight and scent of predatory hunters.
“Stories must be heavy,” a little girl had said.
When carried by the vawn, Cal-raven clattered small blackstones together in his hands, unable to find enough peace to sculpt them as Scharr ben Fray had taught him.
“Move into the eye of your storm,” the mage had said, “where you cannot hear the world about you, where your fears cannot reach you. Let your thumb move across the stone until it finds the shape within the stone, the image waiting to be revealed.”
Here there was no escape from fears. That magic remained frozen.
He was wary of the forest, as though a new menace were prowling there. Scharr ben Fray was fond of saying, “Hasn’t our experience taught us that there are more things at work in the world than our experience can teach us?” Cal-raven concluded he had not experienced enough—not yet—to name the trouble he sensed. Sometimes he became suspicious of the ground beneath his feet. Without the solace he found in molding stones, Cal-raven sought other ways of giving shape to the rising fury within him.
At night he armed guards with alarm horns and then took others out on their vawns, patrolling the area, riding hard and fast as though pursuing nightmares to trample underfoot. More than once they surprised a beastman. More than once they tore into their foes with swords, arrows, and spears until there was nothing left but the stains of
blood on their flesh in the morning.
“This does not help me feel better,” Tabor Jan muttered.
“I’m not interested in feeling better,” he answered. “I’m interested in sending a message. We can be dangerous too.”
For the soldiers, the burden of the people’s dependence was excruciating. They quickly tired of the constant inquiries about their destination, and they wondered if they could trust the maps Cal-raven sketched from memory.
So there was great relief in Tabor Jan’s voice when he laughed out loud and said, “The calling geese! Their cries have an echo. The Cliffs of Barnashum must be just ahead.”
He moved to the fore to speak with Cal-raven, who had become so quiet and remote that he seemed a ghost.
“I know how much you wish to reach the Blackstone Caves, but I have the snow chill in my bones. The hounds know it too. They sleep pressed together, and one is always watching the sky. There are old bear caves in the cliffs. Surely we can defend those for a while, even if we have to split into groups for a time.”
Cal-raven did not hesitate. “We will camp here then,” he said in a voice like a shred of fog, “until we see clear sky. But we’ll have to move on to the Blackstone Caves before winter. Our spirits will choke if we stay in these bear caves for long. We need room to move about, to develop relationships, to store food. We need a new house. But you are right. Snow’s coming. And the bear caves are better than traveling in wet and freezing rags. We will trust the weather to break soon.”
The weather proved untrustworthy.
They stared out from the bear caves down the rocky slopes, through whirlwinds of snow, to the forest as it slowly turned white. Above them loomed a massive plateau that seemed to be turning from stone into ice, and it revealed no passage or further retreat. It was as though they had come to the end of the world, to a wall that could not be breached.
When a hint of smoke reached the caves one night, Tabor Jan disappeared to investigate. Cal-raven, furious with his friend for heading out alone and on foot, could only pace, wait, and stare out at the starlit snow. Eventually he fell asleep in the mouth of the cave.
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