The Ale Boy's Feast (21 page)

“More unlikely claims,” snapped Petch. “Has it occurred to you that at any moment this river might take a turn and steer us farther from Bel Amica?”

Trying to ignore Petch’s challenges, the ale boy said, “This doesn’t smell like the Core anymore. It’s like … like we’re just outside somebody’s garden.”

“Birds like gardens,” mused Batey.

“The breeze is blowing the other way,” snapped Petch. “I don’t smell anything.” He spoke to Batey as if the scar-faced Bel Amican was the only one worthy of his respect.

I grew up underground
, the ale boy wanted to shout.
I know a thing or two about tunnels and currents. There’s something green and growing ahead
.

Batey sniffed the air. “Beastmen had us slaving in such thick clouds of stench, I think my smeller surrendered.”

Petch changed the subject, steering attention away from the ale boy and rambling on like the river’s flow, divulging every scrap he could summon from his tremendous head on boating, tunnels, and what might or might not lie in the darkness ahead.

To flaunt his expertise on underground materials, Petch lectured them on the varieties of dark and glittering stones he recognized in the walls’ dense layers: kaystone, endelode, gormenpeake. He was certain that the rank and rotting weeds mucking up their progress were jenkan-tails and timmola hay. But when an Abascar man suggested that the air smelled of spicemoss, no, said Petch, it probably wasn’t. Anything suggested by Abascars was bound to be worthless, it seemed.

“Hush,” said Batey. “It’s important that we listen just now. We need to hear the river’s temperament.”

“True, true,” said Petch quickly, nodding too much. Then he spoke about how he’d learned about listening during slavery, how he’d come to know the footfall of differing beastmen so he could look busy when they passed.

Imagine what he’d do in Auralia’s caves
, thought the ale boy.
His talk would wear the colors off the walls
.

They rowed on until they reached a stronger current. The river ahead rushed through an archway shaped like a keyhole. The travelers pressed on through it, their rafts in single file, taking advantage of the close walls to drag themselves along with their makeshift oars. Up ahead, splashes echoed.

They glided into a vast, open space. The wide but shallow stretch of the river rippled beneath a high ceiling supported by porous pillars—some thick as Tilianpurth’s tower, some thin as saplings. This covered country seemed to stretch on forever in all directions. The water was agitated, alive with tiny crimson frogs that flung themselves at the pillars and burrowed into the holes.

“If the boy hadn’t held out his glowstone,” said Petch, “we might have surprised them. Might have caught some and had us a meal.”

Frogs from beneath the Cent Regus world?
the ale boy wanted to ask.
You were just complaining about the water they swim in. Help yourself
. He sank into a sullen silence.

As the rafts grumbled against the shallows’ bed, the Abascars laughed quietly at the frogs’ frantic dance and marveled at the patchy colors of rust and red on the pillars.

On the raft behind the ale boy’s, Em-emyt found humor in almost everything, croaking froglike deep in his own thick throat and casting jabs at Kar-balter. “Look at you,” he chortled. “Lost your hair. Skin and bones. Anxious. You look more like a cavelizard every day.”

“Look at you,” Kar-balter barked back nervously. “A hole in your head from a beastman’s arrow … Half your wits spilled out.”

“True,” Em-emyt answered. “Then, I was missin’ a few to begin with.”

“I don’t know about bringing Abascars with us, Batey,” Petch was whispering at the front. “None of them’re right in the head. They’ll spoil our escape. The rafts would be lighter and faster without them. Wouldn’t drag along the rocks.”

“That boy helped us build these,” Batey growled. “Brought us food. Show some gratitude.”

“You don’t think he was winning our favor for a time just such as this when he can’t get anywhere without us?”

One of the Bel Amican raftsmen struck the water with his oar-stick and speared a dead frog carcass, lifting it into the air. He offered it to Batey, and Batey pointed to the ale boy. He refused it with a polite lift of his hand. Batey cocked an eyebrow.

“Water’s still foul.” The boy shrugged. “I’m waiting for something better.”

“The Abascar boy would have us starve,” laughed Petch.

“He didn’t say that,” said Batey, exasperated.

“You’d prefer poison to hunger?” the boy asked, then wished he hadn’t, because it meant that Petch would go on talking.

“Why is it the Abascars aren’t speaking of hunger? What’re they hiding?”

“Patience,” the boy barked back. “They’re hiding barrels full of patience. For something better.”

“You don’t think Bel Amicans know good eating? What we call a daily marketplace you Abascars would call a royal feast. Who put you in charge?” That Petch’s smile could expand to fill such a wide, fierce face was unsettling. “Saved a few Abascar slaves, and suddenly you think you’re a king.”

The boy waited. Surely someone would stand up and defy this blathering fool. Petch seemed incapable of saying anything that didn’t create a confrontation.

When no one joined the argument, Petch smirked at Batey. “You’re talking to this boy like an equal. But the best Abascar apple may yet be full of worms.”

Exasperated, the ale boy climbed from the foremost float back through the train of floats that followed, past the Bel Amicans, over the cargo of shields, spears, and ragged blankets, past the Abascar people, until he arrived at the eleventh. There, he slumped down between Nella Bye and Irimus Rain. They could guess from his scowl what was wrong.

“Some monsters feed on argument,” Nella Bye whispered. “Feed them silence.”

“But everything Petch says is—”

“Never throw dirt at a Cragavar monkey,” Irimus mused. “What?” Nella Bye laughed. “An old hunter’s saying.”

“Why shouldn’t you throw dirt at a Cragavar monkey?” asked the boy.

“You’ll get worse than dirt thrown back at you.” Irimus smiled. “And it’s the monkey’s idea of fun.”

“You were never a hunter, Irimus Rain,” laughed Nella Bye. “Where did you hear that?”

“Folks muttered it behind my back in the Abascar council. I never introduced
a new idea. I just picked at the ideas of others. Quite the bull-bottom I was. Back then.”

The ale boy relaxed, glad to hear some of the old, familiar Abascar talk.

“Ever seen a bull-bottom bother a Cragavar monkey?” Nella Bye murmured to the ale boy.

They laughed as Kar-balter’s oar thrust steadily against the riverbed.

As the oarsmen dragged the floats along through the shallow water, the ale boy lay back against Nella Bye, watching the copper and cream-colored pillars go by and listening to her softly sing an unfamiliar melody. Crystalline clusters of salt drew flocks of frantic yellowmoths who chewed hungrily at the deposits, and Irimus traced one of the moths’ erratic paths as if trying to translate some foreign script.

Having returned from the dark, what will these people become when they walk in New Abascar?

“What’s that song you’re singing, Nella Bye?” asked Irimus.

“I’ve been hearing it since before the water awoke me,” she answered. “It’s in the mist. Above me somewhere. Like bells.” She palmed her belly where the killing shot had gone in. “It’s like I’ve broken open, and there’s more pouring into me. More for me to feel.”

“For all the glory of Abascar’s palace, I’ve never seen anything quite so beautiful as this,” mused Irimus. “We opened the earth and stuffed it with what we called treasure. Never thought to look around at what treasure might be there already. Who knew that there were worlds such as this beneath our feet?”

As the course narrowed and deepened again, the rafts took a different order, and the ale boy’s raft became second in line. Those with oars knelt down for deeper strokes. As they dodged stone spikes that poked up through the water, there were quiet remarks about how they felt like giants boating through a mountain range at sea.

After hours of difficult work, they found themselves moving against a calmer, smoother current. The walls, pulsing with glowstones, fell away. The rowers, their arms and backs aching, began to grumble.

“Batey,” shouted the ale boy. “Look!”

In the faint yellow glow, the passengers could see a scrap of dry and pebbled shore on the right and a bank of smooth, timeworn stone on the left.

Batey nodded, pleased. Petch, waking in haste to assess the situation, stood and crossed his arms, posing like a captain surveying his fleet.

“Do you see why this is good?” the ale boy asked Batey as the rafts drew together. “We could move upriver faster if we took to walking on the shore.”

“We’ll camp here,” announced Petch, ignoring the boy.

“The rafts are light,” said Batey, his eyes brightening. “If we share the load, we can carry them. Or some might walk in the shallows and tow the rafts along.”

“We won’t find a safer place,” said Petch immediately. “How many want to camp here and look for food?”

The ale boy bit his tongue as Petch won a chorus of cheers. A crowd that thought with their stomachs would never know wisdom. And yet he knew that if he’d been the one to suggest they stop here, Petch would have mocked him.

“Never throw dirt at a Cragavar monkey,” he muttered.

“Say again?” asked Petch.

Batey took a coin from his pocket and spun it on a fingertip as if plotting a bet. Bel Amicans were already rowing to the shore and climbing out.

“Hallowed halls of Har-baron! Is that daylight?” shouted Kar-balter.

Far ahead along the flow, narrow fissures in the distant ceiling lined the walls in gold. Excitement spread, the survivors’ gazes burning as if to rend the ceiling open.

But the boy, keeping watch on the water that flowed toward them, spotted a floating patch of green—a tangle of leaves and buds red and thick as apples. “Riverbulbs. Batey, if we find where this grew, we’ll have food. Real food. Riverbulbs don’t grow without—”

“Water,” said Batey. “Good, clean water.”

“Bel Amicans, camp on this side.” Petch gestured to the wide, smooth shore. “Abascars can camp over there. That will help us keep things straight.”

“Keep what straight?” murmured Irimus.

Some Bel Amicans began to draw together at once, but the Abascars seemed not to have heard Petch’s instructions, and they steered their rafts to the same smooth shore.

“I like your idea,” said Batey as the ale boy set his bare feet down on stone. “We don’t want to sleep when there’s a chance that daylight might show us a way to the surface. And if we don’t find food soon, I’m not sure we’ll have strength left to stand.”

Irimus and Nella Bye, slow getting off their raft, looked back at the narrower passage. “Is it still following us?” asked Nella Bye. “I can’t see.”

“Is what following?” asked the ale boy. “Irimus thinks he saw something.”

“Thought it was just a tree branch at first,” said Irimus. “But then I saw it moving against the current.”

They watched together for a while but saw no sign of pursuit.

When he saw Petch showing an interest in their quiet concerns, the ale boy took his glowstone and walked up to the sun-painted wall. Moving along it, he left the crowd behind. At the end of the scatter of sun spots, a line of glowstones stretched on ahead. His steps were uneven and stumbling, and hunger tightened its fist, insistent.

Keeper
, thought the boy,
you knew what you were doing. You let me fall so I’d find this river. So I’d learn it was safe. So I could fulfill my promises
.

A tumble of river rocks came into view on the strand before him. They had been arranged in a circle, and the dust around them had been recently disturbed.
A crowd gathered here. They sat in the sand and leaned back against the rocks. Not long ago
.

In the center of the circle, he found clumps of a melted candle. A scene flickered in his memory. “Storytellers,” he said. And then, uncertain, “Northchildren.”

Irimus guided Nella Bye up beside the ale boy, and she put her hand on his shoulder. He looked up into her unseeing eyes, and she spoke the words before he could.

“I’ve been here before.”

artayn, heir to Bel Amica’s throne, snored softly, his jaw resting against his sister’s shoulder, and Cyndere winced as he exhaled a cloud that reeked of beer. “Since you escaped slavery,” she muttered, “moderation has not been your strong point.”

Across from them in this, the fourth carriage of the southbound royal procession, Queen Thesera did not notice. In the swaying light of a swinging lantern, she held a jeweled mirror and stared at her reflection as if studying a wrecked ship that she’d vowed to rebuild.

I can’t believe we’re letting her sail away
, thought Cyndere.
I suppose she’ll be safer on the islands. But I cannot lose her to the sea the way I lost father
.

Outside the carriage the vawn-riding soldiers called signals affirming all was clear. Then the night was silent again. It felt as though they were traveling across the bottom of the sea.