The Fanged Crown tw-1 Page 14

  A tenday before, Zo’s chieftain father had been killed in a skirmish with the Scaly Ones, and Zo had taken the mantle of leader, even though he was too young to be married and still went by his childhood nickname. “Zo” meant “happy” in that particular dialect of the Chultan dwarves-or Dwarves of the Domain, as they called themselves.

  When the moon disappeared behind a cloud, Zo made a low noise that resembled the call of a hawk. At the sound, another dwarf-an older female dressed in layers of colorfully embroidered cloth-scurried into the clearing. The elder dwarf, called Majida by her tribe, ducked into a thicket of crimson flowers that brushed against her bare hands and feet without irritation. After checking the clearing one last time, Zo followed her into the floral-scented undergrowth. The dwarves were so used to the crimson nettles that they could easily navigate the tangled thickets while most creatures had to walk around or suffer painful rashes. The two dwarves crouched down and stared at the high mudthorn walls in the clearing in front of them.

  “Did they build the walls to keep something out or something in?” Majida asked. “Stupid humans. Don’t they know about the Jumpers?”

  Shorter than their northern kin, the tribe of Chultan dwarves were small enough to avoid the big predators, clever enough to avoid the traps and barbs of the jungle, and humble enough to be happy in their Domain, an extensive network of grottos and caverns. The dwarves avoided cities and other trappings of civilized life, but they were hardly feral, and would have had objections with anyone who described them as such. The Domain dwarves had a written language and a long memory, particularly about the savagery of the Scaly Ones and their abominations that still roamed the jungle thousands of years after the sarrukh had vanished. The serpent-abominations retained all of the cruelty and none of the finesse of their makers.

  “Are you sure about this?” Zo whispered.

  Majida glanced at him, surprised that her chief had expressed doubt. Majida had read the signs, and they had been obvious-or at least as obvious as anything in the realm of prognostication could be. She had discussed that with Zo and the tribal leaders-several times. Zo was like an infant when it came to leadership, but Majida was in her autumn years and had been shaman since before Zo’s father was born. Her spell wouldn’t be difficult, but the rest of the plan depended on Zo and his dwindling band of warriors. If Zo couldn’t handle it, the whole plan would fall apart.

  “I’m sure,” Majida assured him. “Besides, we don’t have a choice. We’ve lost three more in the past tenday.”

  “We’ll fight harder.”

  Majida sighed. Typical male, thinking all the answers came from how he handled his sword.

  “We’ve endured many things,” she said. “But he is a particularly bad man, Zo. We have to stop him before he goes any further.”

  “How do you know they are any different than the others?” Zo asked.

  “I only need to be sure about one.”

  Zo jutted out his chin. “I want to think about other plans.”

  Zo began to speak, but Majida touched his forehead in silent warning moments before a green-scaled jaculi slid out of the gloom. They waited in silence as it slithered by, the sickly glow of its eyes scanning the underbrush for prey. It paused just outside their thicket, the sound of its hissing breath uncomfortably close.

  From where Majida was crouched in the underbrush, she could see that it was an exceptionally large snake, and she had no interest in tangling with it. The clever jaculi were much faster than either she or Zo, so there was no point in trying to run from it. It would simply overtake them, immobilize them, and eat them while they were still alive. The jungle had thousands of gruesome deaths to offer, but being slowly digested by a jaculi was one of the worst ways to die that Majida could think of.

  Zo was trembling beside her, and Majida could sense the fear cresting in him. Soon he would bolt and run like the child he was. She laid a restraining hand on his shoulder and pressed her finger to her lips. She whispered a few words, and an indistinct form appeared in the palm of her hand. At first it was just a circle of blue light. But soon there was an outline of a wing, and she felt the distinctive feel of feathers against her hand. Smiling faintly, Majida hunched her shoulders over the glow and held it close to her chest. When she felt the little body grow warm, she opened her hand to reveal a perfect white bird with a crown of golden feathers.

  Majida slipped a dagger out of the sheath she wore strapped to her upper arm. Holding the trembling bird tightly in one hand, she pushed the tip of the dagger into the skin just under its wing. When she pulled the knife out, blood flowed down the bird’s breast and stained its white feathers. Majida held the bird up, and it fluttered from her, out of the thicket, and directly past the jaculi, who caught the obvious scent of blood. An injured bird was easy prey, and the snake followed the bird away from the nettle thicket back into the gloom. As soon as it was out of sight, Majida felt Zo relax beside her.

  “Poor bird,” she said sadly.

  “You can make another,” Zo told her.

  Majida wanted to chide Zo for such a statement-as if the bird were no more important than a hood or a new breastplate-but she held her tongue.

  “Let’s go around to the southern wall,” she whispered. But when she moved, Zo caught her elbow.

  “Do we have to go tonight?” he asked. “Why can’t we wait and see what happens tomorrow?”

  “They’re vulnerable for an attack. They might as well cut their own throats. That’s how safe they are in there.”

  “You said they weren’t going anywhere until morning,” Zo reminded her.

  “So I did. Which means tonight is the perfect time to sit here and weigh our options,” she said sarcastically.

  Zo looked at her with a hurt expression. “I can’t tell if you’re serious or not.”

  Immediately Majida felt bad. She liked Zo well enough. When his father died, their tribal customs had thrust leadership on him, even though there were other dwarves more qualified to lead than he. Majida thought that he would be a good leader in a few years, if he lived that long and was smart enough to learn from his mistakes. The dwarves of the Domain were particularly shortsighted when it came to embracing talent and recognizing the accidental nature of a person’s birth. At different points during her long life, Majida’s tribe had considered her a miscreant, a seditionist, and a rescuer. Several times, she had thought her tribe would exile her from the Domain, except she was the best healer and caster the tribe had ever produced.

  “There are two ways the conflict can end: We can be picked off one by one until the Domain is empty. Or we can move.”

  “Move?”

  “Find a new Domain.”

  “Where would we go?” Zo asked. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

  By the look on his face, Majida knew he was imaging some green and verdant land just waiting for them. Majida had meant the last option as a farce, something that would bring him back to his senses, but he was actually considering it. Most of the dwarves of the Domain hadn’t strayed far from the hidden caverns they called home, and Majida was one of the few to have traveled extensively outside of Chult.

  “They don’t want our kind anywhere else,” she said firmly. “This is where we belong.”

  Zo scrubbed his stubby hands across his face. “All right. I’m putting my trust in you. What do you need me to do?”

  “Follow me.”

  The sun hadn’t broken the treeline when Boult woke up, but he could see well enough in the dim light to know that Harp and Liel were not in the room. And by the snoring coming from opposite sides of the room, he was sure that both boys were still sound asleep. Keeping an eye on the door, Boult began a systematic search of every inch of wall, floor, and ceiling. Shaking his head in disgust at the shoddy craftsmanship of the hut, Boult ran his fingers along the timbers at the base of the roof and poked at the seams between the boards on the walls.

  On one side of the room was a chest filled with clothes. Boult slid it
away from the wall and saw a cracked floorboard. Using his grubby fingernails to pry up the broken piece of wood, Boult saw that a small box had been nailed under the planks. He pried it open and pulled out a rolled-up parchment. A circle of red wax had sealed the parchment before being broken, and Boult took special care to examine it. He held the parchment to the light, examining the waxy ridges of the seal.

  “An otter? Or maybe a weasel?” he murmured to himself.

  Boult unrolled the parchment and held it up to the dusky light coming through the uncovered window. After reading the parchment several times, he put it back into the small box under the planks, replaced the chest, and headed outside.

  Stepping around Harp and Liel, Boult trotted down the stairs. He stopped mid-step when he noticed something on the trunk of the nearest tree. Glancing back over his shoulder at the sleeping figures intertwined on the porch, Boult inspected the ground between his feet and the tree. Besides a few rotting goldenfruit buzzing with flies and some patches of scrubby grass, the ground revealed nothing interesting.

  Boult moved closer to the trunk where three runes had been seared into the bark. The marks were still fresh-a wisp of smoke hung in the air as if the bark still smoldered under the mystical mark. Boult stood in front of the trunk for a long time as he analyzed every nuance of the scorched lines. Slowly, he made a circuit around the house and found runes on trees every few feet around the hut. Behind the house, where the vegetation was thicker, it took him longer to locate the runes, but they were there. When he was done, he paused for a moment, watching as the streams of sunlight angled across the tops of the trees and flooded the grove with rose-tinted light.

  Boult lit his pipe. He made a slow walk around the perimeter of the fence, chewing on his pipestem and standing for an overly long time in front of the goat pens. Then he returned to the front of house and sat on one of the logs around the cold fire pit. Boult puffed on his pipe, turning his griffon-head tamper around in his hands. When he saw Harp stir, he tamped out the pipe and secured it in his pouch.

  “You look terrible,” Boult said as Harp sat down across from him on a log.

  “Thanks,” Harp said, resting his head on his hands. “Kit and Verran still inside?”

  “Yes,” Boult said, taking a closer look at Harp. “Didn’t get much sleep, did you?”

  Harp shook his head.

  “She did a number on you and not in the good way.”

  “Shut it, Boult,” Harp said in a low voice.

  “What did she do? Guilt you for ever daring to touch her precious body?”

  “I’m not having that conversation with you.”

  “Women. They’re right in it with you, and then they change their minds, and somehow you’re a monster.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Wasn’t that the gist of the conversation? How could you treat me like a such a whore?”

  “Were you listening?”

  “I didn’t have to. I just imagined what she would say to get you to look like that.”

  “I should have done things differently.”

  “Maybe so. But not with that girl.”

  “Watch yourself, Boult. I still care about her.”

  Boult looked over his shoulder at the porch where Liel was just sitting up, her long hair tousled and her dress falling off her shoulder. She saw them looking at her and straightened her clothes. Then she pulled on her boots and came to sit beside Harp.

  “If you’re going to show us those ruins, we should leave soon,” Boult said, leaning forward and resting his elbows on his legs. “Before the sun gets too hot.”

  “Maybe we should just go to the ship,” Liel said after a moment.

  “You don’t want to go to the ruins?” Boult asked.

  “Maybe you could take me home,” Liel said.

  “We can do that,” Harp said with relief. “If that’s what you want, I think that’s the best plan.”

  “I don’t know,” Boult said. “I’d like to see the ruins.”

  “You don’t care about the damn ruins,” Harp said.

  “I’ve seen that disease you talked about last night, Liel,” Boult said, abruptly changing the subject.

  “Which disease?” Liel asked with confusion.

  “The one that swells up the tongue and chokes its victim,” Boult reminded her. “You didn’t have time to heal him?”

  “No, he died within moments,” Liel said.

  “You’ve seen a lot of people die in the jungle,” Boult said.

  “I’d rather freeze to death in a snowfield than spend another day here,” Liel said.

  “What about Cardew?” Boult asked. “Yesterday you said you wanted to get proof of what he’d been doing.”

  “She’s changed her mind,” Harp said irritably. “And just wants to go home.”

  “Where do you think Cardew got the map?” Boult continued, ignoring Harp’s obvious frustration.

  “The one with the sites marked on it?” Liel said. “Queen Anais must have given it to him.”

  “But why would she issue a writ for a colony? Why not just send down mercenaries to search the ruins?”

  “To keep up appearances? To satisfy her accomplices? How should I know? I wasn’t privy to those discussions.”

  “Accomplices. That’s an interesting word.”

  “The queen has interests that she keeps well hidden,” Liel said in a monotonous voice. It sounded like she was reading a line of text from a book.

  “Is that so? You learned a bit while in Cardew’s keeping, then?”

  “Boult,” Harp warned.

  “You said he discovered the parchment with the portal spell in the ruins?”

  “I have no idea where he found it,” Liel said. She looked perplexed, but there was no anger in her voice. It was same thing Harp had noticed when they were talking the night before. It was as if all her emotions had been extricated from her body. Harp remembered wishing there was a way to do that in the months after he got out of prison. He had wanted to hollow out his insides so that he was just a shell without any painful memories or recollections of joy.

  “But you said it was ancient magic,” Boult continued.

  “That’s what I thought,” Liel explained.

  “I don’t understand why he dragged you to Chult when he could have hired a sorcerer the same way he hired the mercenaries.”

  “Why does it matter?” Harp said, suddenly feeling more alert. Boult was being annoying, and the direction of his questions was unnerving.

  “Appearances,” Liel repeated. “Cardew will do everything to keep up appearances.”

  “Were the mercenaries killed?” Boult asked

  “I don’t know,” she replied. “Cardew came back from the ruins alone.”

  “Do you think he used the portal?” Boult was firing questions so rapidly that Liel barely had time to answer. Harp couldn’t help wonder why Liel kept answering them, why she didn’t tell Boult to shut his mouth. But she was so compliant. That was another part of her personality that had not been there during their time in the Moonshae Isles. The Liel he had known was anything but compliant.

  “I think so.”

  “How did you find the cavern with the machine?” Boult asked.

  “I was getting water from the river.”

  “There are closer watering holes to the camp than that one,” Boult pointed out.

  “I’ve been looking all over the jungle.”

  “For ruins?” Boult asked.

  “For whatever Cardew has been planning,” Liel said. “Had Cardew been to Chult before?”

  “No. Yes. I’m not sure.”

  “But you’re his wife. How could you not know?”

  “He would go away sometimes,” Liel explained. “I thought he was at Anais’s court, but he could have been anywhere.”

  “Even running around the jungle? Constructing machines that operate using skin and blood?”

  Liel’s eyes widened, and Harp laid a hand on her
arm. “Stop it, Boult,” he warned. “She doesn’t know all the answers.”

  “Are you sure, Harp?”

  “What are you getting at? Because you are starting to-”

  “Here’s what I know,” Boult interrupted. “I know that Cardew didn’t build the machine or the cages. He probably didn’t even know about them.”

  “You don’t know that,” Harp said, staring at the dwarf. “Do you?”

  “I think whoever sent Cardew to Chult has been here for a while, making things, collecting things, generally doing bad things in the jungle,” Boult continued. “What do you think about that theory, Liel?”

  “That might be true,” Liel said slowly.

  “Who do you think that is?” Boult asked.

  “Queen Anais,” she said promptly.

  “What does Queen Anais want with ancient magic?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Speculate,” Boult ordered brusquely.

  “The Torque is very powerful,” Liel said. “The queen wants the Torque.”

  “What Torque?” Harp asked.

  Liel’s coppery skin grew pale. “Torque?”

  “You didn’t mention that last night,” Harp said.

  “Didn’t I?”

  “What did Cardew say about a torque?” Harp asked.

  Boult piped up before Liel answered. “Liel, Harp got a nasty sting from some bastard flower. Do you think you could heal him?”

  “It’s nothing,” Harp said, annoyed that Boult had distracted Liel from answering his question.

  “When we go to the ruins, we should be as strong as possible. What do you think, Liel?”

  “I think he’ll heal on his own,” Liel murmured, looking at the ground.

  “So, what about the cups?” Boult asked.

  “What cups?”

  “And the food on the plates?” Boult continued.

  “Stop asking me questions,” Liel said in a low, tense voice. For the first time in the conversation, there was an unmasked warning in her tone. But that didn’t stop Boult. From the smirk on the dwarf’s face, Harp knew that getting a rise out of her was what Boult had wanted all along.