5
THE ALE BOY
S even winters spread and deepened the cracks in House Abascar’s walls, and the king set workers to mending them with mortar and new stone. Inside, the people grumbled to see such effort invested in a facade when so little attention was paid to their domestic complaints. A wall could not defend their homes against snow, rain, and wind.
To make the people understand, King Cal-marcus encouraged his officers to share details of their patrols with Housefolk. Evidence of beastman activity quite near the house was easy to find, and fearful people were obedient people, striving to ensure that the king cared to protect them.
And if the people did not like to see him giving attention to the walls, surely they would disapprove if they learned of his latest endeavor. The king had commanded the Underkeep’s miners to embark on an ambitious new mission—to open a tunnel northward all the way to the River Throanscall. This tunnel would divert water to the Underkeep, power new engines of industry, accelerate their mining, and much more. It was a grand idea, and it was his own. It was a way to begin a new era in Abascar, one that would turn the people’s attention away from memories of Queen Jaralaine.
But he knew that the Housefolk were so intent on whatever disrupted their immediate comfort that they had no vision, no grasp of what House Abascar could become. No, the truth would not serve them just yet. The familiar threat of beastmen remained his best persuasion to silence their complaints.
Beastmen were not the only frights haunting conversations and furrowing brows in Abascar. As visiting traders spread out their spices, cheeses, dried meats, windup toys, cutlery, potions, powders, soaps, and dull weavings, they also spread reports that something mysterious and large had been troubling the waters of Deep Lake. One tale claimed the phantom had stormed down from the north by night, as if a piece of the mountainous Forbidding Wall had sprouted legs and come hunting with a rabble of Northchildren.
Sons and daughters gasped and asked, Could it be not a danger at all, but perhaps the Keeper, the protector in their dreams, come to their waking world at last? Parents scoffed and said if anything had crawled out of those mountains, it certainly wasn’t a friend. A resurgence of superstitions long suppressed disgruntled them. This included an age-old rumor that if a traveler spoke of Northchildren, soon afterward someone near at hand would disappear without a trace.
As the fallen leaves darkened and decayed, the blood of the Expanse began to freeze. Gatherers bustled about more intently beneath the branches of vine-wound trees, clearing plumspider webs and snatching hoards of winter fruit the spiders had stored.
Their thievery did little harm. Plumspiders spent summers digging storehouses for food, and after they prodded fruit and nuts into those burrows, they guarded them with venomous teeth in the autumn. But winter dulled their memories, and they spent the colder months sluggishly creeping about the forest floor, mindlessly searching for their hard-earned feasts. They would hardly miss what the Gatherers had taken.
And so it was one afternoon, as the laborers felt the lateness of the hour in the aching of their backs, Ersela, the Gatherer appointed to watch for beast-men, recognized the staggering gait of someone approaching. She exclaimed in relief, “Somebody better hold Radegan down, ’cuz here comes the ale boy!”
The walking barrel—it seemed a wooden keg with legs—trudged awkwardly into their midst and sat down with the thrum of a hollow drum. The small boy who carried the barrel appeared, a bashful, red-cheeked face under his tousled mop of gold brown hair. He thrust his arms all the way to his elbows into the pockets of a heavy cloak that would have comfortably fit a boy twice his height.
Rakes landed in clanging piles, and shovels were sheathed in the mud as the Gatherers huddled, smacking their lips, grinning the grins of children about to make mischief.
“What’ve you got for us this time, boy? Hope there’s rum or apple brandy!”
“Blackberry wine would do me well. Takes the chill out of the air.”
“Surely it is the season for pear cider!”
The boy looked down at the length of cloak that concealed his feet. “Fill the barrel, please,” he murmured meekly.
“We’ll get to putting apples in that bucket when I say so,” said Radegan, a muscular, stubble-bearded brute who worked shirtless and brash in any weather. He elbowed the giant who was working alongside him like a bodyguard—Haggard, the Broad-Shouldered, whose crazed and wide eyes peeked through a mask of yellow hair.
“First,” Radegan continued, “you can hand over your stash, or we’ll take it ourselves!” He and Haggard mustered all powers of intimidation. They were a formidable pair, this young, notorious thief and the silent behemoth who followed him everywhere. Radegan’s thieving had won him a nickname—“the Fox”—and ten years of hard labor besides. Haggard’s temper had burdened him with six years of the same. Setting roots down in the hard soil of Gatherer life, Radegan and Haggard had only grown more thorns.
“Radegan, you know the order of things.” The patient, maternal Gatherer who helped keep tempers calm, Nella Bye was elegant, educated, and better mannered than most. “Just because the boy once risked his job to bless us with a drink does not mean he’ll do so every time. Don’t go abusing him.”
“I myself don’t got no gripe with the boy,” blurted Krawg. “But Haggard’s right. While the stuff we gathered yesterday is warmin’ the guts of Cal-marcus’s fat and happy Housefolk, my belly wants some fire.”
There was hearty agreement from the mob, and the ale boy shuffled closer to the barrel as if he might dive inside for refuge. “Fill the barrel, please,” he murmured. “Ya got so many apples there. Won’t take but a minute. Duty officers will come and cart it away soon.”
Grabbing him by the cloak collar, Haggard brought the boy’s tiny nose up to his own bristling beard.
“Try and scare us with talk of the duty officers?” Radegan sneered. “Haggard will put somethin’ in the bucket, all right. Somethin’ about the size of a boy.”
As Haggard gripped the boy’s cloak, that small, frightened face vanished. The boy slipped free of his oversized garment and landed in a heap, wearing only a rumpled brown tunic. Haggard blinked at the empty cloak in his grasp. Radegan stepped in quickly to search the pockets for the little bottles of relief they had hoped the boy would bring.
As surprising as a new stream running down a dry path, a song coursed through the trees. Singing was not strange among the Gatherers. But this was the wrong song for the moment, and it stilled the riot over the ale boy’s belongings. Radegan backed away from the cloak, nearly stumbling over the boy.
“That’s the Deep Night Verse,” said Krawg, annoyed. “But…it’s only early evening! Who’s singing that?”
All eyes turned to a pair of birch trees that stood arched like a gate. At the base of one of the trees, there was a bramble of thistle and vines that unfolded and stood. The leaves shifted and rustled, and suddenly the onlookers discerned a gown of strange and awkward angles, papery with translucent leaves deep green and purple, sewn together with fronds of broadweed pulled from the river nearby. The edges of this figure blurred, like smudged paint, merging with the colors of the forest’s wild backdrop.
The Gatherers recognized the figure’s clever face, and murmurs of laughter and discomfort spread. But the ale boy looked as if he’d seen a ghost.
Auralia was still small, although she had been among them fifteen years now. Against the rich colors of her gown, her silverbrown hair glistened like the edge of a storm cloud trying to quench the sun.
Krawg, who usually greeted Auralia with a shout and an embrace, was flustered to have spoken harshly within earshot of the girl. He covered the redness that was rising to his cheeks and edged behind others in the mob.
Auralia looked about silently, then smiled as though solving a puzzle. She picked up the rope tie at the top of a lumpish harvest bag, which was twice her size, dragged it to the barrel, loosed its strand, and lifted out a handful of green a
pples and purple plums. She stood on tiptoe, prodded them over the barrel’s edge, and they fell with soft thuds onto the bed of straw at the bottom.
Nella Bye glared at Radegan, her icy blue stare the only force devastating enough to freeze the roguish burglar where he stood. Then she moved to help Auralia.
The season’s first snowflakes crept timidly down through the branches while Auralia and Nella Bye whispered together and filled the barrel; while the ale boy sat hypnotized by this strange apparition clad in purple and green; while raven calls echoed from the east, rang overhead, and faded into the west.
From the moment she arrived, the ale boy was fumbling for his wits. When Auralia spoke, her voice whispered in his ear no matter where she stood.
So when she approached him, he felt vulnerable and ashamed. He pulled on his heavy cloak, wishing he could disappear within it.
“The last apples of the year are always the sweetest. Don’t you agree, ale boy? Hard to be patient and let them ripen so purple, but if you do…Look at how many they’ve picked!” She drew in air through her nose as if breathing pungent incense. “They’ve stirred ’em up, and now the whole woods smells like wine. The king’ll be pleased with how hard everybody worked, won’t he?”
“Yes!” the boy agreed in spite of himself.
“The Gatherers keep the whole house going.”
“Uh-huh.”
Even Haggard and Radegan began helping. Radegan dragged a bag of apples to the barrel and eyed Auralia suspiciously, as though she were taunting him. But it was clear to the ale boy that she was as innocent as she looked.
She sat down on the ground next to him. Through the growing white of the falling snow, he saw her eyes sparkle with affection for this crew of bedraggled souls.
“Ya see, that there’s Krawg.” She pointed out the old man passing in front of them with an armful of wild pears. “He found me by the river. I love him so. And I made that yellow scarf he’s wearin’. Krawg! Ya better tuck that scarf into your cloak before any duty officers come along and strangle ya with it!”
Krawg ducked behind Big Yawny, then glanced back around the massive man and broke into his famous grin of brown and sideways teeth.
Auralia’s eyes were as wide as they would go when she leaned close to the boy, smiled brightly, and winked like a conspirator. “Wish I could sneak all of you away and start another house. These folks are buckets of fun compared to the Housefolk, don’t you think?”
The ale boy nodded. When she said something, he found himself wanting to agree.
He reached into his coat and produced from a secret fold a small and clear vial of drink as blue as a summer sky. “The king’s favorite sweet ale,” he whispered. “Don’t tell anybody I gave you this. He calls it Mountaincapper. And believe me…you don’t want to swallow it all at once.”
She accepted the vial with fingers so cautious and steady it might have been a precious jewel. “Like someone melted a cwauba bird stone.” She looked at him with renewed interest. “Not from among the Housefolk, are ya? You’re too kindly mannered to be one of them!”
He felt her fingertips on his forehead, the very place where the mouse scar rested above his right eye. “Your eyes have no lashes. And you have no brows…” She lowered her voice. “Were you in a fire?”
He turned away. “I really should get back.”
But she did not laugh as others did. “It’s a beautiful color, your scar,” she said. “Like plum wine. Like your name written right where all can see.”
His mouth made a round O, and he stood up, clutching his cloak. “My name?” He did not understand what was happening to him, why his heart broke open in that moment, why tears stung his eyes. She had unlocked something inside him. Questions rose like water in a well, and he knew if he did not escape, they would pour out of him.
So he was quite startled when Auralia stood up, fast and straight, her head tilted askew, birdlike. She became perfectly still, staring through the busyness of the Gatherers.
When her brow crumpled and she gasped, he felt a sensation like tiny pins pressed against his neck. He started to ask what was wrong, but his breath caught in his throat. She raised her hand. “Hush.”
Nella Bye noticed Auralia’s sudden change. She, too, turned, surveying the trees, wincing in apprehension. Like a gorrel after a winged predator passes across the sky, she sniffed the air twice. “Why isn’t Ersela back on the watch?”
“Beastmen!” Auralia shouted. “They’re coming! Get back to the huts!”
“Aw, come now, ’Ralia. Why do ya think—” Warney stopped his protest and spun on his heel, his one good eye gazing to the southwest, tracking the shrill and jagged noise of someone in abrupt and terrible pain.
“Beastmen!” roared Haggard, the first word he had spoken all day. He grasped a heavy bough from the tall trunk of a storm-broken tree.
“They’ve got Groaney!” growled Radegan. “That sheepskull wandered too far from the harvesting site!”
Haggard tore the branch free and wielded it as a weapon. “Go back home! Go back!” he roared bearlike at the other Gatherers. “Back, scum eaters! Back to your holes! Hasty, now! Haggard’s gonna teach the beastie a lesson!”
The ale boy could not move, paralyzed by a surge of memory.
He had once been caught up in a mass of Housefolk driven like a herd of sheep. That company of woodcutters had abandoned their stand of pillar trees at the sound of distant warning horns. He had seen no beastmen. But that night, deep in his small den near the Underkeep breweries, had been a dark and sleepless one. The nearness of such savagery had made his world seem more fragile. He had never been more thankful to dwell among the privileged within Abascar’s high stone walls.
But now he was unhidden, far from safety. There was no one to organize the scattering Gatherers, no one to point them down the best paths, no one to arm them. The threat was close, and the killing—he could hear the death sounds that had sent Auralia to scurry about the clearing. Abascar’s walls were a good hour’s travel away.
Auralia shoved the Gatherers. “Go, go, go now!”
Some reached for their tools. Others leapt like rabbits—and a few like far less graceful creatures—into the brush in hopes they were headed in the right direction. Haggard’s courage had burnt up like a dry leaf, and now he was running pell-mell. Krawg and Warney paused to fuss over Auralia. But with both hands she picked up the abandoned tree-branch club and threatened to give the old men a Haggard-sized beating.
When she turned to see the ale boy transfixed with fear, Auralia dropped the club and dashed to him. “You’re too small and slow. You’re gonna need some help.” She crouched, lifted her strange green outer cloak over her head, and quickly cast it over the ale boy. “If they come close, hide in the bushes under this cloak. They’ll go right by you.”
“But…” He pushed his head up into the hood, it settled around his shoulders, and he could see again. It was light as air, if a bit too large. But he was not looking at his new disguise. He was staring at Auralia.
Shed of her camouflage, Auralia was clad in a cacophonous jumble of colors. She had stitched together gold and greens so bold and bright that it seemed the air had split its seams and burst open, summer reaching into winter. Her shoes were heavy pondpads stitched around her feet with red reeds.
He would have kept on staring, but another searing shriek—one that ended with a chilling note—sent his heart thumping. He was sure it would now be too late to meet the one Haggard had called Groaney.
“Are you sure I’ll be safe?” he asked Auralia.
“It’s how I watch beastmen without being seen. Now, get down low in them bushes. Don’t let your feet show. Pull the hood over your face.” Auralia pressed down on his head and shoulders and kicked him to send him scrambling. The frost had settled into his bones, and it was hard to run. He thrust out his hands and clambered into a depression where rain had run beneath a fallen tree, and then he lay still.
At first he thought he hea
rd a heavy boulder rolling across jagged stones. Then he knew—it was the snarl of a beastman. He chanced a glance from under the fold of his hood.
Engulfed in heavy snowfall, Auralia stood in the clearing as defenseless and resplendent as a sunflower.
A hulking darkness stood at the clearing’s edge. Steam rose from its bristling shoulders, which were as broad as a bull’s. Its eyes were those of a man in a rage, but its bearded jaw, lined with yellow teeth, was that of a rodent. Blue and bulging veins pulsed along its smooth pink scalp and yellow throat. From shoulders to waist, it resembled a brown fangbear, save for those massive human hands. In one clawed fist it clutched a club with two sharp metal prongs that dripped gore into the patchy snow.
The boy had heard tales of the beastmen, heard that each manifested unique disfigurements from a corruption that confused their bodies into the natures of differing beasts. So it was true. The image would return to him in nightmares—his own nails would turn to blackened claws, feet spreading into black hooves, teeth sharpening, skin thinning into translucence, body slowly hunching forward.
The beast seemed momentarily bewildered by the dazzling costume of its prey. Then its pink lips drew back from a wall of fangs. It laughed a spluttering guffaw and dug two ruts in the ground with the prongs of its weapon.
Auralia stared back at the monster and spoke something like a quiet incantation.
A cough, like a question, burst from its lips. It dropped the club, patted its head, closing its fingers around the shaft of an arrow now buried deep between its eyes.
The creature’s jaw sagged open. It looked left and right. And then its knees buckled. It crumpled into a heap upon the spiked club, which burst its lungs with a gurgling wheeze.
Shaking the earth, six giant vawns leapt over the fallen tree and the concealed boy. They hissed and stamped at the snow-dampened soil, and their armored riders shouted with confidence, circling the steaming beastman corpse. One of the soldiers, red-bearded and tall, fired another arrow from a caster into the beastman’s back. The creature rocked with a spasm and then was still.