The Farwalker's Quest Page 28

  They were nervous about being spotted until Zeke reassured them.

  “The stones say to stay here awhile,” he explained. He’d spent more than an hour poking in the pile of rocks the Reapers had removed from their field. “Well, what they really said was, ‘You’ve tumbled enough. Let moss grow to hide you. Rest and grow ready before you tumble again.’ I’m sure that means we’ll be safe here for more than a couple of nights. Don’t you?”

  So one week bled into the next, and even Scarl began to relax. Pulling weeds and hauling water from sunrise to sunset, the Reapers had little time to gossip with neighbors. Their guests tried to make themselves useful without attracting attention. They pulled weeds and hauled water, too, but when they could, they gave more valuable help. Zeke became skilled at following the Finder’s whispered directions, and the subtle advice of stones didn’t hurt. He and Ariel pretended to merely chance upon honeybee hives, medicinal plants, and piles of deer droppings for fertilizer. Though the Reaper family had little enough bounty to spare, nobody suggested the newcomers leave.

  Then one day the Reapers reported a stir in the village. A Finder had stumbled into Libros, raving of whirlwinds, phantoms, and floods. He’d been swept from the mountains into the Drymere, nearly drowning before the torrent that had caught him sank into the desert. There he’d wandered for weeks before locating the way back to town. Thinking him crazy, nobody paid much attention—except, perhaps, the man who had sent him.

  When he heard this, Scarl wanted to leave immediately. He feared the Finder’s return might give Mason questions that local trees could too easily answer.

  “But you still limp really badly,” Ariel pointed out. Scarl’s foot hadn’t turned black, but it was only starting to bear his weight. “If someone comes after us, they’ll catch us anyway.”

  He had to admit she was right. He considered sending her and Zeke back to Hartwater alone. She convinced him that would raise too many suspicions, after the story he’d told. So they remained, sticking closer together than ever, and Scarl took to leaning on a scythe instead of his staff. He barely let Ariel out of his sight, and he prodded Zeke for warnings that the stones didn’t give.

  They still had to eat, though. Not long before sundown one evening, the three of them slipped through the cornstalks to the river that meandered along the Reapers’ fields. Hidden beneath a veil of weeping willows, they hoped to catch fish.

  Finding an eddy, Ariel took off her boots and waded, collecting periwinkles for Scarl’s hook. She and Zeke giggled at the strange way he flung his bait into the water and yanked it back out. They stopped laughing when he landed a fish. He was just unhooking another when footsteps approached on the bank.

  “A Fisher now, instead of a Storian? Your trade changes swiftly.”

  Scarl whirled. A hand parted nearby willow fronds, and a girl Ariel’s age stepped through. She led a small, mincing man by the hand. Short, black hair clung to his scalp, and his narrow shoulders were draped with an extravagant blue cloak.

  Scarl’s eyes darted, scanning the riverbank for henchmen and gauging the distance to his scythe. It hid in the grass out of reach, not far from the intruders’ feet.

  Ariel gasped. “Mason?” She was less frightened than angry—no stones had warned Zeke!

  The man cocked his sharp chin to her voice. Only then did Ariel spy the milky sheen in his eyes and the lazy droop of his lids.

  “Mason Tree-Singer, yes. You must be the Farwalker. Alive.” He nudged the girl at his side, who stood staring. She led Mason closer.

  Scarl gestured quickly for Ariel and Zeke. They splashed to him.

  “He’s blind,” Ariel whispered.

  “No less dangerous,” Scarl muttered. He herded his companions a few paces upstream and searched again for movement in the green curtains around them.

  “No less aware,” Mason added. “I might have expected a visit from Scarl Finder on his latest arrival in Libros. Not courteous, really, to make the blind man seek you. I believe you owe me an explanation. At the least.”

  Before he replied, Scarl tapped Ariel and pointed across the river, his eyebrows raised in a question. Zeke nodded for her. She realized what Scarl was suggesting. She bobbed her head, too, but turned a troubled scowl back to the current. She could swim to the far bank, but she wasn’t sure about Zeke, who ran fast but floundered in water. And Mason couldn’t follow regardless, but what of his guide?

  She tugged Scarl’s sleeve with objections. He raised his palm: wait.

  “If you want an explanation,” he told Mason, “I suggest you ask Elbert.” He drew Ariel and Zeke several steps farther away. “Or your favorite Fool. Perhaps even Liam can—”

  “Stop slithering from me!” Mason hissed. His command startled Ariel, but not so much as what followed. Without a breath of wind to cause it, the willow arched over them shook.

  Zeke eyed the tree and backed away from the dangling fronds.

  “I would have brought more than this girl to guide me,” Mason added, “if I planned to finish the work you abandoned.”

  Scarl bristled. “The work I abandoned involved telling darts. Not murder.”

  “Take care.” Mason wagged his head. “Take care whom you accuse, and of what. Some of your sloppier comrades got carried away, that’s all. I can’t control men like that.”

  “You sent them,” Zeke grumbled.

  “Ah. The third voice. You must be the youngest son of Jeshua Tree-Singer. Both of whom the trees now ignore.”

  “Shut up.” Without thinking, Ariel rose to her friend’s defense. Scarl’s hand fell on her immediately. She ignored his warning to add, “You don’t know anything.”

  “On the contrary.” Mason fumbled for a riverside boulder and eased himself to a seat. He waved off his guide, who retreated. “But there is one thing, I admit, that you know and I don’t,” he continued. “I know you spoke with the mouth of the mountain. Tell me what it said.”

  “Send your thugs home first,” Scarl retorted. He had finally spotted the other people he’d anticipated would be hidden nearby. Following his gaze, Ariel saw the shape of a man behind a tree trunk. Zeke pointed out another farther away through the fronds.

  “They’re here to protect me, not harm you,” Mason said. “Several men we both know have left the world unexpectedly. I’m told they had your help. You’re a fine one to cry murder, I must say.”

  Unable to stand Mason’s disdain any longer, Ariel said, “That’s your fault. He was only protecting me.”

  “Hush.” Scarl squeezed her shoulder. She pulled from his grip. This was about her, after all. She wasn’t going to be silenced like a student who had talked out of turn.

  Mason’s attention fell wholly on her. “What is your first name, Farwalker?”

  So the trees did not tell him everything. She decided it couldn’t matter and told him herself. “And you might as well leave us alone,” she added. “The message we got on Cloudspear was blank.”

  “Was it? I wonder.”

  Ariel opened her mouth to say that the dart’s devastating silence had been broken only by the insult of ashes. Something held her tongue, and it wasn’t Scarl’s growing agitation. Ariel was gaining trust in her instincts, and she heeded them now. She took a few steps closer to the Tree-Singer, mostly to prevent Scarl from quieting her with his hands.

  “Check the dart for yourself if you want,” she snapped. “I’d give it to you now, but it’s back in my bag. Or did you already snoop through our things before you followed us here?”

  Surprise and irritation fought on Mason’s face. Clearly he was unused to such hot retorts.

  “I didn’t follow you. I just asked my green friends where you were. I’ve known for days you’d taken shelter with Reapers.”

  “You’d better not hurt them,” Zeke growled. “How can you call yourself a Tree-Singer, anyway? What trees are friendly with you? Trees would never say that killing anyone was okay.”

  “Just because I value their help does not mean I
always take their advice,” Mason replied. “The trees do not realize how foolhardy humans can be.”

  Zeke snorted. “Oh, I bet they know just from talking with you.”

  “Silence, boy! I won’t take insults from the likes of you.”

  “Be careful,” Ariel told Mason, giving in to a temptation too great to resist. “He’s killed more people than Scarl has.” She ignored Zeke’s wounded glance, but at Mason’s startled expression, she added, “There’s a lot the trees don’t seem to have told you.”

  She couldn’t have picked a sharper or more dangerous weapon. Mason only lowered his head and curled his hands into fists, but the two men in the distance edged closer. Scarl reached to yank her shin deep into the river.

  “I’ll tell you something, you impudent kitten,” Mason growled. “You scratch at me now from your grave. The trees have already told me your search ended on Cloudspear. No Vault has been revealed for a Farwalker to blather about. That is the only reason you are not dead.”

  The willow above them didn’t shudder this time. It convulsed. Fronds snapped up and back down like whips. Gray-green leaves filled the air. Everyone on the riverbank gawked.

  When the wind and water had borne the fluttering slivers away, every dangling frond between Mason and Ariel had been stripped bare.

  “I heard that,” Zeke said. Belatedly Ariel realized he meant more than the swish and flutter of leaves.

  Mason’s face glowed with fury. “Willows,” he muttered. “Frothy and sentimental, particularly over idiots and children.”

  Zeke stepped back out of the river to stroke a leafless stem. “No, it’s not just the willows. They all will forsake you if you try to hurt her now. I just don’t know why they haven’t already. You’ve been warned before.”

  His lips working, Mason flicked leaves from his shoulders and hair. “I’d get rid of you anyway,” he told Ariel, “if I thought you were lying to me.”

  “But what are you so worried about?” she asked. “What if we had found the Vault?”

  “He’s blind,” Zeke said. “He doesn’t want anyone else to see wonders, either.”

  “No, I’m not nearly so vain. But I am blind, and as a result I see some things more clearly. I can tell the difference between what people need to be happy and what they only think that they need. We do not need anything that might be in the Vault. Worse, it would unleash greed and envy. The very idea of treasure sparks evil in people like Gustav Fool. Besides, treasures turn our attention from what’s in our hearts to what’s in our hands. The trees agree with me there. So if a few lives were lost to keep the attention of everyone else on their hearts, so be it. More lives were saved.”

  “People are too stupid to learn or make wise decisions or share?” Scarl asked. He shook his head.

  “We have proven it over and over again.”

  “You’re wrong,” Ariel said. “And the trees think so, too.” She didn’t mention the stones. She still couldn’t understand why the world had so often helped them in a quest that had ended only in disappointment. “But it doesn’t matter, I guess.”

  “No, it doesn’t,” said Mason. “You sought the Vault and found nothing, only a hoax from the past. Spread the truth, Farwalker. Put the legend to rest.” He sneered as he rose. “You can say Mason Tree-Singer sent you. That will mean more than the word of an orphan with no master.”

  Stung by his words, Ariel only glared. He rang a small bell sewn into the hem of his cloak. The girl who had led him reappeared. She barely dared to peek at Ariel as she took Mason’s hand and guided him from his stone seat.

  “Were you ever kind?” Zeke wondered. “Why do the trees hear you at all?”

  Mason stopped and turned back. “I was kinder before I understood that people can be ruined by kindness. The tree that knows only sunshine uproots at the first storm. And when action is needed, fear drives it better than kindness. But I will show you that I am not the demon you think. I will help you, Farwalker, and rid Libros of you at the same time.”

  Mason called a name. One of his henchmen approached. Though his face bore no threat, Scarl shifted to stay between Ariel and the stranger.

  “I can hear from his gait that your caretaker is lame,” Mason told Ariel. “I will give you a horse and what food you may need to go home. Or wherever you will, outside of Libros. I have not enjoyed dealing with any of this, and I long to forget a few names—including yours. Tell my guard here what you might need. It will be delivered tomorrow. Make quick use of it.”

  Mason shuffled back up the bank with the girl. His second guard followed after.

  “I won’t say a ‘goodwill’ we all know would be false,” Mason added over his shoulder. “But good-bye.”

  Once he was gone, Scarl eyed the assistant with mistrust.

  “He can be harsh,” the man murmured. “But he’s usually right.”

  Scarl waved him away. “Go. We don’t need his gifts. It’s enough that he’ll let us keep breathing.”

  The man winced at the sarcasm.

  Ariel shifted. Standing in the river, her feet had grown numb, but the rest of her pulsed with strength. She hadn’t realized how much the shadow of Mason had darkened her days. Now he’d walked away. She understood Scarl’s resentment, but she decided that wasn’t reason enough to refuse Mason’s offer.

  “Enough food for two weeks of travel,” she told the man. “And a horse big enough to carry a rider, too. That’s all we need.”

  Nodding, the man trotted away.

  Scarl gave Ariel a cross look. “I don’t know why I keep thinking I am in charge.”

  “Me either,” she said. For what felt like the first time all summer, she laughed.

  A horse was tied outside their shed the next morning. The Reapers praised the generosity of their Tree-Singer, and nobody bothered to contradict them. The three friends simply wished their hosts a good harvest and began riding south.

  The old cart horse was neither fast nor as nimble as Orion had been, but he was large enough that all three could sit on his back with their packs slung over his withers. In a few days, chimney smoke greeted them over the pines. Riding in front, Ariel noticed no difference in Scarl. But Zeke, sandwiched in the middle, felt the Finder’s body tense as they rode into Hartwater.

  They went to Derr’s empty house, where Scarl collected a few things. They stayed long enough only for a warm bath apiece. On their way back out of the village, Scarl reined in the horse before the door where Mirayna had lived. That home also stood empty—for his return or for someone who wanted it more.

  Ariel and Zeke sat with their own memories while Scarl gazed a long time at the house. Both started when he spoke.

  “Her wheeling chair is inside,” Scarl murmured. “She told me, Ariel, or tried to, how I could take it to pieces and use them to make you something like a bike.”

  Both touched and appalled, Ariel turned to stare at him.

  “I doubt I can do it,” he continued. “But I might be able to pass her words to another skilled Allcraft who can.”

  “That’s okay.” She shook her head. As much as she’d always yearned for that thrill, no speed or wind could wash away the sadness of a bike made from Mirayna’s sick chair. “I mean, thank you,” she added hastily. “But someone else might need a wheeled chair.”

  He sighed. “Maybe so.” He nudged the horse into a walk.

  As they drew near Canberra Docks, Ariel understood better why Scarl hadn’t wanted to linger in Hartwater. Her insides cramped and her skin crawled with apprehension. The familiar smells of cottonwoods and the sea, the distant cries of gulls, the salt-damp air on her cheeks all welcomed her home. But they also reminded her that while these wild things remained, the most significant face of her home had been lost.

  The horse crested a rise, and its riders looked down on the docks. With the sun low, boats angled back from the sea. A few roofs winked in the distance. Ariel realized with a start which one had been hers. Slate shingles were missing, snatched by some storm. N
o one had replaced them. No peat smoke rose from the chimney, no herbs hung to dry from the eaves. The windows were shuttered, the rear garden bare. Behind this sharp reality flickered an image Ariel had seen in a dream: the village square as a graveyard. It wasn’t unreal enough.

  “Stop,” she said, her voice shrill. “Scarl, stop!”

  He reined in the horse.

  “I don’t want to go in,” she whispered.

  “I do,” said Zeke. “For a little while. Maybe not long.”

  “They’ll lynch me if they see me,” Scarl said. “I’d planned to set you down about here and say good-bye.”

  “No.” Ariel clutched his arm where it reached around her for the reins. “You can’t.”

  “Where else could I take you?” Scarl asked quietly. “Surely you’ve seen enough of me.”

  Where else indeed? The question wormed through Ariel’s mind.

  “Ashes,” she murmured.

  Like a telling dart springing open, the Farwalker dozing inside her snapped awake. Ariel twisted hard on the horse, nearly knocking Zeke off with her elbow. She beamed up at Scarl. They hadn’t spoken of the dart since their meeting with Mason, but its riddle, understood, now shone in her eyes.

  “You can take me to the Vault,” Ariel said. “It does exist, and I know where it is.”

  CHAPTER

  43

  At Tree-Singer Abbey, only the seasons had changed. Goats grazed the hillside. Ash knelt plucking weeds from a garden. He straightened to see two young people and a Finder crossing the yard on a horse.

  “Oh, great boughs and branches!” he cried. “My lost goats, are you safe?” He peered with suspicion at Scarl. “My old limbs can’t fight, but the trees on these hills hear me well. Shall I beg them to thwart this man’s path?”

  Ariel threw her leg over the horse’s neck, slid to the ground, and ran to give Ash a hug. “He’s my friend,” she told him. “We’ve come for a visit.”