Chapter Eighteen A Cold, Yawning Castle
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
A COLD, YAWNING CASTLE
We reached the Fervent Peaks the same way we had months ago: in the rain after dark.
The road up the mountains, steep and narrow, had been made thinner by erosion.
The hot springs Sybil and I had once bathed in were brimming with earth and rock.
Debris had broken away from the Peaks and was sliding precariously downslope into the Tenor River, which rushed now with a fervency I’d never seen, carrying chunks of shale with it as it fled into Traum.
All around it were pieces of broken nets, broken boats. We wove around them like we’d woven around Aisling’s ruins upon the tor—and we were not alone.
There were folk of the Peaks upon the road. Men and women and children in oiled leathers. Some held lanterns, others empty nets, and all wore the same thin, wanting face I’d only ever seen on sprites or in a looking glass.
They were frightened and hungry.
When they saw Sybil in the cart, dozens of voices called out.
“There was a terrible earthquake—the mountains are fissuring! What have we done to anger the Ardent Oarsman?” A man lunged over a crack in the road and grasped at Sybil’s hand at the edge of her cart.
“Please, Diviner. There is rock in the river, the fish are gone. Lend me a coin, that I might travel to the Chiming Wood—”
Hamelin reached to his belt and withdrew his sword. “Get back,” he barked, knocking the man off his feet with the broad side of the blade.
“For pity’s sake.” Sybil gripped the side of the cart. “Lend him some coin.”
Hamelin nodded at the faces on the road, then the darkened windows to the village houses.
“We’re folk of the Peaks: Strength and vigor are our greatest qualities.
Whatever disaster has befallen them, they will pull themselves out of it.
” Hamelin did nothing but spur his horse. “What is harrowing is hallowed.”
I reached into Fig’s saddlebag. Drew forth the gold coin Benji had presented me with in the Seacht and held it out to the fisherman. “Here.” I lifted my visor. “Take it.”
When he looked up into my stone eyes, he gasped. “What are you, sir? A Diviner?”
I slid the coin into his hands. “I’m nobody.”
Up the winding road we went, our pace limping. Higher we rose, the wind sharper, the air colder. I waited for the road to bottom out on that plateau, where the basin and the windblown dwelling stood.
But we never made it there. Three enormous boulders stood in our way, blocking the road entirely. To its right, a new, crude path was cut, torchlight gleaming from its mouth. “Where is King Benedict Castor?” a cool voice called. “And where is my son?”
Benji and Hamelin rode to the front of the caravan, where several figures waited, Avice Fischer ahead of them all. Under dim torchlight, she looked like the Ardent Oarsman had the first time I’d seen him—shrouded in a cloak, movements as rigid as the surrounding mountains.
That, and she was holding his godsdamn oar.
Avice handed Hamelin the oar, then nodded to the king. “Welcome, sire. We’re pleased you arrived safely.”
“The road is in tatters.” Benji was out of breath. Red in the cheeks and slumped in his saddle. “The way was a labor.”
“There was a great quake in the night, sire.”
Benji nodded swiftly. “But the tournament, the feats of strength, will continue, surely.”
Avice’s eyes narrowed over the king, chill mountain air passing between her and the rest of us.
Of all the nobles I knew, Avice Fischer wore her former knighthood the best, her affect befitting someone who had spent a deal of time in armor and had grown used to wearing an impervious exterior.
“Of course, King Castor.” She found Sybil in the crowd and bowed.
“It’s our pleasure to have you with us again, Diviner. This way, if you please.”
She led us up the new, crudely carved path. We traveled around the mountain in an upward spiral, stopping every now and then when we heard the quiver of crumbling rocks.
“It’s safe ahead,” one of the fisherman nobles called, his torch flickering in the wind. “The young king was gracious enough to alert us of the dwelling, high in the Peaks. A castle, tucked away, like a lost inheritance.” He looked back at Sybil. Nodded solemnly. “A gift from the Ardent Oarsman.”
The gargoyle made a sound of flatulence.
Higher we climbed, the knights trailing behind, every sound swallowed up by the roar of the nearby waterfall. Mist wet my clothes, my hair. I felt a chasm behind me. An infinite openness. Were I to fall, it would be like one of Sybil’s dreams. A dark, horrifying plummet.
But then the lip of the path was there. The nobles ahead stepped onto a tableland, and the king, Maude and Sybil and the gargoyle and me—the knights and their horses—joined them.
Around us were the jagged fingers of the six mountain peaks that had once been seven, and another basin.
A mountainous bowl, filled with the purest crystalline water.
And next to it—an enormous edifice. Crude and made of shale.
The Ardent Oarsman’s castle.
Its door was bracketed by torches, the yellow light obscene against all the mountainous gray. But then that light fell upon the cold stone stairs at its entryway, and I froze.
There were creatures on the stairs. Twenty of them, looking exactly as they had the last time I’d been here. Jagged shale creatures the size of dogs, sleeping upon the stairs.
“Sprites!” Samuel cried.
Knights dismounted, swords drawn, but Avice Fischer and her fellow nobles didn’t move. Indeed, some were wearing smiles. “Take a closer look.” Avice’s voice was low. “As we said—it is safe here.”
Tory went first, her steps light. It was for naught. I saw it the moment I came upon the first stair. Not one of the twenty sprites was sleeping.
They were dead. Punctured through their necks by iron stakes and driven into the stone stairs, where they lay unmoving. From their stony backs, tiny gowan flowers had begun to blossom.
The gargoyle began to cry.
I stood unmoving, unable to parse what lay before me, blunted by a burning malice.
The nobles of the Fervent Peaks turned to the king, to Sybil, for their endorsement.
“Ignoble creatures are capable of any wicked deed, but to destroy the cathedral…” Avice shook her head.
“We chased them from this place last night, and they fled, bereft, from the mountains. Those that could not get away, well.” She looked upon the fallen creatures.
“Would that every sprite in Traum would die so easily.”
Benji nodded, that craven little fool, saying nothing of the carnage laid out like a welcoming in front of him. But Sybil—
“No.” She vaulted over the edge of her cart.
Came upon the stairs with steps so menacing several of the nobles fell back.
Her crown glistened in the moonlight and her veil caught the breeze.
Grip tight around the neck of the hammer I’d given her, her visage was so beautiful and terrifying it heartened me. “It is you who are wicked and ignoble.”
Maude’s voice echoed over the basin. “This goes beyond cruelty.”
Avice was the only noble who held her ground. “This,” she said plainly, “is how it’s always been done. You of all folk should know that, Maude Bauer. Now come.”
Hamelin walked beside his mother, and when they each laid a palm upon the Ardent Oarsman’s door, it yielded to them straightaway. Benji followed, eyes forward.
I helped the gargoyle, who was still sniffling, from the cart. “It won’t always be like this,” I murmured to him as we passed the dead sprites upon the stairs. “I won’t let it.”
We caught up with Maude, with Sybil, and I dropped my hand, my armored knuckles grazing over her hip. We walked, just like last time, together into the castle.
Flaxen nets had been placed upon walls, but they were trivial to the purple banners wrapped around castle columns like fingers around a throat.
The king’s mark was everywhere, rendering the Ardent Oarsman barely a memory in his own home.
A long wooden table had been placed over what had once been the Omen’s pool, an abundance of meats and breads and drink upon it, and yet for all that wine, all that food, nothing seemed to fill the cavernous belly of the hall.
Our echoes abounded, the roaring hearth and savory scents no match for the chill mountain wind that glided through the columns.
The castle was the same beast we’d trespassed upon months ago: cold and yawning.
“We’ve furnished the rooms, King Castor,” Avice said, pointing to a distant stone stairwell.
“Though I doubt they will live up to your Castle Luricht standards.” Her voice made it apparent how offensive she found those standards.
She turned her finger to the opposite side of the castle, where the pillars opened up, revealing the rest of the tableland and the adjacent basin of clear water.
“I’ve erected tents for spectators should the weather tomorrow be unforgiving. Please, take your seats.”
The same minstrel whom I’d seen in Coulson Fair and the Seacht had made the journey behind the knighthood. The poor sod was wet through from the rain. He fumbled with his lute, cleared his throat, and began to sing, his voice echoing through the hall.
“A colorful dream, the bright land of Traum, where the wind on the moors hums a tune.
Where the holloways lead you awry and along, and the gowans are always in bloom.
The knights are all noble, and the ladies so fair, and the oarsmen all set in their trade.
The fish are all caught, though the weather be fraught—and the gods, through dreams, lend us aid.
“But wherever you ramble, from woodland to sea, pray find the young king on your way. I lent him my oar, and he lent me his faith, and to his queen, the Diviner, did I pray.”
“Doesn’t he know any other song?” muttered Maude.