Part Four:
Anniera
74
Gnag the Nameless
The portholes were closed. A single candle burned on a table.
When Leeli’s eyes adjusted to the dim light she beheld a stooping figure beside the robed woman. He was bald and thin as a skeleton. His cheeks were sunken, and his mouth drew down in an exaggerated frown. Veins twisted across the surface of his skull like traces of red lightning. The thing—for it was hard to call him a man—wore a robe that pooled around him on the floor. But it was his eyes that struck the deepest terror into Leeli’s heart. They appeared lidless, watching her dispassionately and protruding from a skull that was covered in milky flesh.
Gnag the Nameless looked profoundly old. He reminded her of a dead tree moldering on the forest floor, and his eyes were shiny white grubs bored into the flesh of the decaying wood.
“You have the whistleharp?” the woman asked Leeli.
Leeli clutched it without meaning to and scrambled away, pressing her back against the door. Gnag said nothing, but his gaze weighed Leeli down like a pile of stones.
“Good,” the woman said. “You’ll need it.”
“I won’t use it for you.”
The woman smiled. “You will.”
“What do you want with us?” Leeli asked.
“He wants what you have. Power.”
“But we’re only children.”
“Children with power.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
His eyes never leaving Leeli’s face, Gnag unfolded his arms and stepped closer, his robe dragging across the floor. He lurched and swayed as if he were still learning how to walk, and the sound of his footsteps was wrong somehow.
Gnag reached one of his long, bony hands toward her. Leeli pushed harder against the door, as if she might squeeze herself through a seam in the wood.
“Maker help me!” she pleaded.
The hull groaned as the sails filled with a sudden wind. The ship heeled to one side, and Gnag lost his balance. He tumbled across the floor and thudded into the wall in a tangle of limbs. Leeli saw that he had not two legs, but four—and not just four legs, but four squat, stout legs. Two of them ended in hoofs, and the other two had paws.
The woman gasped and rushed to help him up. Panting and snorting like a pig, Gnag stood again and shoved the woman away. He looked ill.
“Where are you taking me?” Leeli asked.
Gnag stared at her with his protuberant, milky eyes. When he finally spoke, his voice was deep and gurgling. “To my home.”
Leeli forced herself to meet his gaze. “Throg?”
“Anniera.”
Gnag was from Anniera? Leeli brushed the absurd thought aside, figuring that Gnag was trying to upset or confuse her somehow. She turned her attention to the woman, who seemed to be enjoying Leeli’s confusion as she huddled against the wall.
“Who are you, anyway?” Leeli asked.
“My name is Amrah.”
“What does he want with me?”
The woman glanced at Gnag but he only stood there, staring. He tore a chunk of bread from a loaf on the table and chewed on it in silence. Leeli was glad the woman was in the room, just to have something to distract her from Gnag’s creepy eyes. He wiped the corners of his mouth and folded his arms again, licking crumbs from teeth that looked like burnt toast.
“We’re taking you to Anniera,” Amrah said, smiling again at the doubt on Leeli’s face. “He is Annieran, as you are.”
“That doesn’t make any sense. He hates Anniera.”
“Because it hated him,” said the woman.
“I don’t understand,” Leeli said.
Gnag’s face remained expressionless, but the woman rolled her eyes. “Show me your whistleharp.”
Leeli pulled it from her coat and held it out suspiciously. The silver pipe glistened in the candlelight.
The woman stepped forward and snatched it from around Leeli’s neck. “Do you know who this belonged to?” she asked, holding the whistleharp as if she were holding a dead fish.
“Madia Wingfeather. My great-grandmother.”
“Madia. The great queen of Anniera. The great abandoner of children,” Amrah said, and Gnag showed some emotion as a look of hatred passed over his face.
“What do you mean?” Leeli asked.
“Imean, girl,” Amrah said quietly, hiding the whistleharp in her robe, “that she was the Nameless One’s mother.”
The thought was so bizarre, so impossible, that Leeli’s mind reeled. “That means he’s my—my—”
“Great uncle,” said the woman.
Gnag watched Leeli, his nostrils flaring with each breath.
“Then why have you never heard of him? Why is his name not in the histories of Anniera? Why was he not coddled in the Castle Rysen as you were?” Amrah leaned closer. “Why is the Shining Isle a guttering ruin?”
“I don’t know,” Leeli whispered.
Amrah’s voice grew sickly sweet as she crossed the room and placed her hand lovingly on Gnag’s shoulder. “Shall I tell her, my lord?”
Gnag shoved Amrah’s hand away. He clenched and unclenched his jaw before he spoke. “I am the elder twin of Jru Wingfeather. Behold the one who was cast out!”
He wobbled forward and removed his robe.
Gnag’s four legs weren’t his own, but were instead those of two pitiful cloven, bent over and straining beneath Gnag’s weight. One of the little creatures had a goat’s body and head but the arms of a man; the other was furry like a Grey Fang but had the head of a hogpig. Their shoulders were harnessed to a crude basket, which supported Gnag’s real legs—legs that were malformed and crumpled beneath him like dead branches.
Of all the awful things Leeli had seen, this was the worst. Gnag the Nameless, subjecting these poor creatures to such humiliation; Gnag the Nameless, bony and leering; Gnag the Nameless, crooked and cruel. Gnag the Nameless—Leeli’s great uncle?
Gnag dropped the robes, concealing the two cloven. He leaned to his left and they bore him over to the table so he could tear off another hunk of bread. He waved a hand at Amrah and turned his back to Leeli. “Lock her up.”
Amrah pulled Leeli to her feet and led her out of Gnag’s quarters and into the light. After her encounter with Gnag the Nameless, the Fangs on deck seemed of little concern—puppies by comparison. When the door closed, separating Gnag from the rest of Leeli’s world, she drew a deep breath and exhaled it slowly.
“That story—it can’t be true,” Leeli said.
“When the Nameless One was born,” the woman said as they crossed the deck, “Madia was disgusted. When Jru followed, she rejoiced. They deemed Gnag too ugly, too deformed to be a part of their precious family—your precious family. He was cast out. But Bonifer Squoon rescued him. He told Gnag everything.”
“Bonifer was a liar,” Leeli said.
“Everyone’s a liar.”
“Madia wouldn’t have just—justthrown out her baby.”
“Then why was Lord Gnag raised in Throg without a soul knowing there was another Wingfeather born? Because he was weak and ugly. And the Shining Isle, that land of beauty and strength,” Amrah said sarcastically as she opened a hatch, “would not have him.”
“But who cared for him in Throg? Bonifer Squoon?” Leeli asked, not just because she wanted to know, but because she didn’t want to be locked away in the dark.
“Bonifer visited him often, and my mother cared for him for years. But an old man—a very old man—raised Gnag. He had lived there for epochs, seeking to unlock the great power of theholoréandholoél. Do you know what they are?”
“The ancient stones.” Leeli glared at Amrah. “That’s what you used to change Kalmar. But who was the old man?”
“He was a fool,” Amrah said. “A fool who lacked the wisdom of the Nameless One. He melded and melded—but all he made were monsters. Slogging things, useless beasts—what you call the cloven. Many he kept in the castle or in the Deeps, an
d many he cast into the Blackwood. He tried to bend his subjects to his . . .will.” Amrah stifled a smile that Leeli didn’t understand. “But it was useless. His subjects had to choose. They had towant to meld. That was the Nameless One’s revelation. It didn’t matter if he twisted their bodies as long as their souls remained straight. The melding would only work if he first showed them what power awaited, what glorious strength might be theirs if only they sang the song in the stonelight. Gnag tried to tell him but he wouldn’t listen. Then the old man banished my mother and I from Throg.” Amrah prodded Leeli into the berth. “So he killed the old man in his sleep.”
A shiver ran down from Leeli’s shoulders and she stopped in the doorway. “He killed him?”
“He was your age at the time.”
“But why?”
“The old man saw Gnag the way Madia saw him, as a useless and loathsome thing. He wanted to meld him with a rat or a thwap—something puny. Gnag refused. The true king of Anniera was not to be corrupted, but glorified. So he killed Ouster Will and brought us back to serve him.”
“Ouster Will,” Leeli said, struggling to believe it. “The Ouster Will?”
“I told you he was old. Kept alive by the Water from the First Well, all those years in Throg, trying to unlock the secrets of the ancient stones. That’s why Ouster Will conspired to murder Yurgen’s son, you know. He needed the Maker’s power, hidden in the deep of the world, and he tricked Yurgen into digging for it.”
“But how did he know the stones existed?”
“Because Gladys and Dwayne had walked the Fane of Fire.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Amrah glanced over her shoulder at Gnag’s door, then led Leeli into the room, lit a lantern, and shut the door. The berth was much smaller than Gnag’s, but big enough for a cot and a small table and chair.
Amrah sat on the chair and studied Leeli’s face. The lamplight warmed the woman’s pale skin and made her look more beautiful and less wicked. She gestured to the cot. “Sit, Leeli Wingfeather.”
Leeli leaned her crutch against the wall and eased herself onto the cot.
“I will tell you what I can.” Amrah stared at the lantern and spoke softly, and Leeli was so enthralled that she forgot she was a prisoner on Gnag’s ship. “The Fane of Fire lies beneath the castle where the First Fellows lived. It’s a secret, sacred place where the king and the Maker commune. Legend tells that it is a golden hall where the Maker dwells, and the stones there glimmer golden. Those stones, according to the First Books, keep the world alive. They hold unimaginable power. Do you know the tale of the sea dragons? How they sank the mountains?”
Leeli nodded uncertainly. This was Janner’s territory, but she had a vague understanding of the old tale.
“In the First Epoch,” Amrah said, “Ouster Will sailed to the dragon kingdom in the southern sea. He disguised himself as his brother Omer—a friend to the dragons for many years—and there on the shore, instead of communing with the young dragon as Omer did, he smote Yurgen’s son with a fatal wound. Then, casting off his disguise, he rushed to the Hall of the Dragon King and told Yurgen of his son’s wounding at Omer’s hand. ‘You can save your heir,’ he told Yurgen, ‘if only you dig into the deeps and harvest the stones that beat at the heart of Aerwiar.’
“You know the story. Yurgen and his dragons dug, they rent the earth, they trenched the sea, they sank the mountains to save the young dragon, and indeed Yurgen returned with two flinders of stone. But it was too late. His son was dead. Yurgen soon learned of Ouster Will’s treachery, but Will hid himself away. He took the stones to Throg, where he lived a thousand years, heedless of the anger that raged between Yurgen and men.”
“Using the Water from the First Well,” Leeli said.
“Yes. But when the dragons dug, they bent the shape of the world. The forests throve, mountains shifted, Anniera itself was torn from the continent, and the Well was lost.
“But Will was fortunate. Before he slew Yurgen’s son, he secreted a cask of the water and drank it whenever he weakened. A small amount, enough to keep his old heart beating. Gnag watched him do it. But little by little, the cask ran dry. Will grew frantic, reckless, mad with age. He melded carelessly, so eager was he to make some new thing. Then Gnag killed him and drank the last of the water himself.”
“But what does any of that have to do with Anniera? Why would he burn the island?”
“So many questions,” Amrah said with a smile. “Lie down. We can talk more tomorrow. You should sleep.” The woman’s voice softened, and Leeli’s eyelids drooped as if on command. “Rest, Leeli Wingfeather.”
She felt the woman’s eyes on her as she drifted to sleep.
75
The Isle of Anniera
The ship thudded into a dock, and Leeli awoke with a scream. An acrid smell filled her nostrils. Smoke—but not the pleasant smell of chimneys or cookstoves.
The door opened and a Green Fang thrust his head into the room. “Welcome to Anniera.”
She squinted up at the Fang silhouetted by sunlight. It was daytime, thank the Maker. She had thrashed in her dreams all night, waking occasionally and crying herself back to sleep in the darkness. It had been the longest night of her life.
She swung her feet to the floor and grabbed her crutch, feeling for her whistleharp out of habit. When it wasn’t there she panicked, then remembered that Amrah had taken it the night before. Leeli felt powerless without it. She took a deep breath and reminded herself that Gnag needed her alive.
She pushed through the door and coughed her way across the deck in a haze of smoke. The sun was a red torch, low in the east. The Grey and Green Fangs were busy lashing the ship to the dock, drawing in the sail, and shouting orders to more Fangs on shore. No one seemed to notice her, and there was no sign of Amrah or Gnag.
She covered her face and squinted through the smoke at what was left of the Shining Isle.
The earth was charred, black, and muddy. Not a single blade of grass greened the ground. Stone walls and the remains of several structures, all blackened with soot, lay wasted near the dock. Black tree stumps crowded a distant rise like old fence posts and tombstones. There had once been a forest here. A forest and a village, it seemed. Only the dock remained unburned, but it was shabbily built, suggesting that the original dock had been destroyed and the Fangs had hastily constructed a new one.
The ship floated in a small harbor cut from the rock, but to the left and right stretched a craggy shoreline buffeted by waves. It reminded Leeli of the cliffs in Glipwood, only smaller. South of the harbor lay the estuary of a river that vomited ash and sludge into the sea. Everywhere Leeli looked, she saw destruction: ashes, smoke from smoldering stumps, piles of scattered stone, and in the distance the gentle mountains of Anniera, burning, burning, burning.
“The Shining Isle,” gurgled Gnag from behind her. “Beautiful.”
He stood on the dock beside Amrah, draped in his black robe, and Leeli shuddered at the knowledge that the two little cloven bore him up. His eyeballs gleamed in the shadow of his cowl. Gnag tilted forward, and he seemed to float along the dock to the shore.
“Good morning,” said Amrah kindly, beckoning to Leeli with one of her white hands. “Come. We’ll eat on the way.”
Leeli took a deep breath, then crossed over the ashen waters and limped onto the island of her birth. The last time she had been here, she was a baby. She had been grabbed by a Green Fang, and her leg had been terribly twisted. It throbbed now as she imagined it. Then she remembered Wendolyn. Podo’s wife. Leeli’s grandmother, who had died at the hands of the Fangs as the Wingfeathers made their escape. Leeli had heard these stories, but now they were as real to her as the ground under her feet.
How she had longed for Anniera! She had imagined being welcomed by her mother and father’s people, ushered into a new home where she had always belonged. It was never like this in her daydreams—never with Gnag the Nameless wobbling before her, surrounded by wolve
s and smoke. The worst of it was that she was alone.
Gnag stopped in front of a carriage, and two Green Fangs removed his robe. They unbuckled Gnag’s tiny legs from his little platform and lifted him into the carriage while the two cloven gasped for breath, working their shoulders and bleating with relief. The two horses harnessed to the carriage were muddy, their manes and tails matted and clumpy, their eyes drooping with weariness.
“Come on, then,” Amrah said, waving Leeli over to the carriage. “It’ll be all right.”
Leeli knew Amrah couldn’t be trusted. The woman had destroyed many lives and was in league with Gnag the Nameless—and yet her gentle presence was Leeli’s only source of comfort, even if it was a charade. What other choice did she have?
Leeli slogged through the black mud, slipping more than once while the Fangs looked on in dispassionate silence. She struggled into the carriage and pressed herself into the corner, as far from Gnag as possible. The door closed, the horses pulled, and Gnag stared at her with eager eyes.
They rolled over the hills, a bleak world barren of any color or life or movement other than that of the guttering flames sparking the hills. The land was sallow and silent, as dead as a corpse, riddled with deep holes and piles of dirt. The few Fangs she spotted in the distance meandered about purposelessly. Gnag, as far as she could tell, never once looked out the window, which probably meant he had made this journey many times before.
Gnag waved a finger at the black landscape. “Does it trouble you?”
“Yes,” Leeli answered quietly.
“Good.”
“But why? Why did you do this?”
Gnag grinned at Leeli, showing his brown teeth. “Because I could.”
“That doesn’t make any sense!” Leeli sniffled and hugged her knees.
“Tell her,” Gnag said, rapping his white knuckles on the ceiling. “I’m hungry.”
The two cloven clambered down from the roof and through the windows, bearing satchels of food and a waterskin. They tended to Gnag with little grunts and whines that were disturbingly affectionate.
The Warden and the Wolf King Page 34
