The Shepherd of Weeds (27 page)

The loss of the beloved boar had galvanized the party in Templar, and it seemed that everyone was collected and
accounted for, the various jobs dispensed and battle cries shouted—with the exception of Rowan. Rowan remained a source of great worry for the apotheopath, who hoped that the young man would turn back from his quest for vengeance and join them. Perhaps even with some news from the front.

“They won’t wait much longer. Your brother will not be aided by an ill-prepared army,” Cecil said quietly. “The scarecrows have marched,” he reminded the trestleman. “It has begun.”

Indeed, that very morning, Ivy had fortified Lumpen’s army with bittersod, a weed known for its warlike traits. They departed wordlessly, after the horrifying discovery of the loss of the bettle boar. Leading them on were Lumpen’s confident form and that of the much smaller Grig—and a caravan of half a dozen other trestlemen from the Knox. Their destination: the Lower Moors, and the imposing and impenetrable gates at Rocamadour.

“Yes, the strawmen issue forth—but to what army do we entrust our fate?” Peps muttered.

“To Ivy. And the Army of Flowers, Peps,” Cecil replied kindly. “Have more faith in the ancient writings. Now, be quiet for a minute and watch. You’re in for a treat.” Cecil fell into a contemplative silence, studying his niece below.

A breathless silence had descended on the scene. The air was heavy and punishing, and it felt to the girls as if it might storm. Shoo opened his black beak and cawed loudly—three
sharp, shrill cries—while Ivy and Rue scanned the skies nervously.

“Ivy was born with a particular talent with plants—they are simply more
alive
around her, and part of the Prophecy answers to this very point,” Cecil whispered to Peps. “She can speak to trees—the very forest awakens at her command. Nature shall again return to its pure state. Only then will poison cease to be a way of life.”

Peps frowned. It was a big burden on such small shoulders, he thought dismally, and he wondered if Cecil felt the same.

In the square, the two girls held hands. And then, in the vacuum before the clouds broke open and nature’s fury was released, Ivy had a moment of doubt. She looked quickly to Rue, whose round face betrayed a similar nervousness, and her heart sank further. What if her plan failed? There was no time for additional regret, though, as for only the second time in her life, Ivy watched as the sky blackened to the color of pitch, and the winds picked up—and the birds of Caux descended upon her.

Ivy had called upon the crows, the jackdaws, the grackles, and the ravens—black-feathered, the color of night—for her secret errand.

Her golden hair whipped about, and the stark attire and soft moleskin apron, another gift from Gudgeon, pressed against her skin. The stones from the King were secured
carefully in an upper pocket, sewn tightly closed. Ivy felt Shoo grip her shoulder. Above, the gale force of the birds threw open the leaded windows of the workshop, filling the room, and its occupants, with a whipping wind and their shrieks and cries.

And then the birds were gone, as quickly as they came, and the square was picked clean of the brush and twigs, each bird carrying aloft a small sprig of an invasive plant—a token of war from Poison Ivy.

In the aftermath, there were but two birds that remained. The albatrosses Klair and Lofft awaited the girls stoically. Ivy and Rue climbed on—the seabirds’ bodies as light as the air beneath them.

ecil and Peps ran to the square.

“Well, Uncle.” Ivy managed a smile. “Looks like this time we get a proper goodbye!”

“So it seems, young one. A first.” The apotheopath’s eyes shone. “But it won’t be for long, this goodbye—we are all to meet, as arranged, in the Lower Moors, northwest of the Hawthorn Wood,” her uncle assured her.

Cecil said something quickly to Lofft—it sounded to Ivy’s surprised ears like a distant gull’s cry carried over the sea and wind. Lofft nodded and bowed his regal head.

“You have the stones?” Cecil asked, a pained look passing over his old face.

Ivy nodded, feeling them in her apron pocket. Gudgeon had laced it shut against both the possibility of loss and their awful stench.

Earlier that morning, Cecil had finished deciphering Lumpen’s scroll, and Ivy had one last conversation with her beloved uncle about the stones. It was a private—and awful—one.

Cecil had raised his head from Lumpen’s parchment, his face wild and pale. “The stones …” His voice drifted off. “It is no wonder that traitor Flux understood them.”

Ivy had waited, a cold dread growing in her stomach.

A blank, dull look overtook her uncle’s face; he gazed unseeing out the window.

“Uncle?”

Ivy’s voice brought him back—his attention, like a whip, sharp and pained.

“Ivy,” Cecil began bitterly. “We were wrong. They are not of the earth, to be planted in the ground. Oh—a heavier burden I cannot fathom.”

And then, haltingly, Cecil explained to Ivy just what was expected of her.

Now, in the courtyard, Ivy looked to Peps, who was a trestleman transformed. He had Gudgeon outfit him in a spectacle of warfare. There was the usual flamboyant cloak, true, but beneath that was an assembly of delicate chain mail—light and airy, but, as Gudgeon promised, impenetrable. A small, dangerous pick hung from a belt, and he brought only a skin of wine with him.

“Peps, you don’t plan to eat?” Ivy teased her well-fed friend.

“I vowed not to eat until my brother can do the same,” he explained seriously.

Ivy nodded. “Well, for the sake of all the fine restaurants in Templar—and for Axle—may that be soon, Peps.”

To her uncle, she turned again. “The birds will drop the first offensive. It’s the most invasive species I could find, but all the same, it will take some time to grow. And, Uncle, I will find Rowan. We have thousands of eyes—Shoo has sent out scouts. He will be at the Lower Moors.”

“I dearly hope so.”

There was something sad in the apotheopath’s inflection that Ivy caught.

“Uncle? We
will
see you at the moors?”

“I have a small errand first. Should it keep me longer than I wish …”

Peps cleared his throat awkwardly and kicked a stray pebble with his boot. Cecil stared sharply at the trestleman, whose discomfort only grew.

“I will be there, Ivy,” the apotheopath promised.

And then, before the tears could come, Ivy and Rue asked politely if the giant seabirds might now take them aloft—take them to the dreaded city of Rocamadour.

he Field Guide to the Poisons of Caux
describes the journey to Rocamadour in this manner:

It was high above these very woods that Ivy and Rue would soon soar upon the giant albatrosses’ backs.

“We go as the crow flies,” Lofft was explaining to Ivy as they rose easily on an invisible updraft. “We are an hour’s journey to the Lower Moors, where we will be sheltered by the hawthorns as we gather—although beware of their treachery. And from there, little more to the gates of Rocamadour.”

Ivy clung to the silken ribbons of the harness with cramped hands. While flying upon Lofft’s enormous back was a great honor, flying on this errand—to war—made the trip a dismal one. Punctuating her misery was the bleak winter landscape below them; the earth had heaved and shifted with the heavy frosts and seemed to be neither mud nor turf—but some new and ugly compromise between the two. The river
Marcel—the times they saw it—was a ribbon of greenish brown, a layer of sickly ice that captured felled trees and refuse in strange, shadowy clumps. This was no ordinary winter—Ivy barely recognized her land below. From this, she thought, no spring could ever be born.

They had been joined by a flock of great blue herons, and their wings worked in long, graceful strokes beside the seabirds. One bore the trestleman Peps upon his back—and at another time Ivy might find reason to smile at this were their errand not so dire. Peps was not ever a trestleman who appreciated heights (some did, living on bridges high above perilous gorges), but, in the face of Axle’s captivity, he was a man reborn. Still, he refused all entreaties to conversation, holding his harness with white knuckles, and he kept his eyes upon the horizon stoically, never once looking down.

As the travelers got closer, the mountains fell back to their right and the land opened up into a stretch of rolling pasture—small, prickly hills and low, boggy glades. There they saw the startling sight of hundreds and hundreds of marching scarecrows, in orderly lines, making their way behind the figure of Lumpen Gorse—yarrow stick brandished high, a ribbon from Ivy’s hair streaming from its pointed end.

And there was another sight, too, in the distance, one that Ivy could never forget.

Rocamadour.

Great plumes of filthy smoke hovered above the city
limits—the haze having taken on a weather system of its own, billowing greenish yellow clouds, the color of pea soup—here and there small orange flares from below. Ivy’s blood ran cold. There, somewhere within the choking gases of scourge bracken, was the spire—and her beloved Axle. And his captor, bent on undivided devastation.

Her father.

he great blue herons were to be their escort, and once aloft, they shifted their position wordlessly and advanced to the front, forming a streamlined V. The bird carrying Peps broke formation first and commanded the center point, most forward. The wind was strongest here and buffeted the tiny man’s cloak violently, and Ivy could only imagine how Peps would feel about this rough indignity.