On the Edge, page 25
“Is there a spell on the trees?” Declan asked softly.
“Bone ward,” Rose murmured back. “Very old, very strong.”
They came to a halt at the trees marked by chimes. Most skulls were possum, wolf, lynx, but three were human, and one, heavy-jawed and oddly flat, had two thick fangs curving down like sabers. Declan nodded at the bizarre skull. “Troll.”
“That’s correct,” Jeremiah said. “One came our way from the Weird about fifty years ago. Killed two little girls and ate them.”
“How did you manage to bring him down? Their hide’s too thick for a bullet, and they’re immune to most poisons.”
Jeremiah plucked a wide triangular leaf from a low branch and held it up. It was slightly larger than his hand. “Forest Tear. If you boil the sap of the tree, it makes glue, clear, odorless, and very strong. We served the troll a freshly slaughtered cow on a blanket of these leaves dipped in glue. Trolls are dumb creatures. He got down on all fours to eat his feast, and the leaves stuck to his feet and hands. He tried to shake them off, and when that failed, tried to pull them off with his teeth and got a leaf stuck to his face for his trouble. Then he panicked and rolled, until he was completely covered. The original plan was for him to suffocate to death, but he somehow got to his feet and ran blindly, until he knocked down a power line pole and got himself electrocuted.”
“I’m beginning to see that one doesn’t disturb your town without consequences,” Declan said.
“Oh, we’re just simple country folk.” Jeremiah gave him a mild smile. “We don’t take kindly to having our children murdered, but really we keep to ourselves. We’re mostly harmless.”
Magic streamed to him, gathering about his body in a deep red cloud. He raised his hand up to the sky. His black eyes narrowed to mere slits, and he barked a single word. “Break!”
The magic shot up and vanished. A moment later a long serpentine body crashed through the canopy and thudded to the ground. A leech bird. About five feet long and pale blue, it resembled a stork, but instead of the normal feathers, its tail split into two long, snake-like whips, tipped with blue tufts. The leech bird flailed in convulsions, slapping its broken bat-like wings on the ground. It had no beak. Instead, its jaws were very long and narrow, full of sharp needle-teeth. Magic spiked from it in dangerous bursts, but they fell short of Jeremiah.
“Dreadful creatures. Foul magic, too. Common wisdom says you’ll turn into one if bitten. I haven’t witnessed that happening in my lifetime, but I wouldn’t discount it.” Jeremiah raised his rifle and shot the leech bird twice. It jerked and became still. He waited a minute or two, approached the carcass, then pulled out a machete from his belt and hacked the head from the bird in a single chop. He picked it up and tossed it at the ward. The head crashed into the woods and vanished. Wind stirred the chimes. Bones rattled against each other with a dry clatter.
“It takes blood to open it,” Jeremiah said. He hacked at the leech bird, carving it like a chicken, and nodded at the bloody chunks. “Each of you, take one and pay your dues. Quickly now before the blood cools.”
One by one they fed the carcass to the ward. When Jack descended from the trees and dragged the last piece to the spell and pushed it in with his furry head, the chimes froze, but beyond them the Wood came to life, as if someone had pressed Play on an invisible remote. Branches shivered. Small red leaves fluttered to the ground here and there, breaking free from the vine garlands dripping from high branches. Magic bloomed like a flower.
“Come,” Jeremiah ordered.
In they went. The Wood grew darker here, older, harder. You’d never guess the town roads were only a half hour away. The trees were truly enormous now. It would take several people with their arms outstretched to enclose one of the trunks. Odd creatures skittered in the branches: some small and furry, some scaly, some with eyes that glowed orange and red. Jack spat, and hissed, and promised trouble in his cat language, until Declan picked him up to keep him put.
Twenty minutes later, they finally reached Wood House. It sat on top of a low man-made hill, shaped like a pyramid with its top chopped off. A wooden palisade, centuries old and slathered with clay to protect it from moisture and fires, surrounded the apex of the hill. Moss and underbrush hugged its roots, trying to climb up the palisade, and pale flowers thrust through it to the sun, as if a wave of greenery had crashed against the wooden walls. Rose remembered coming here only once, when she was very small.
They climbed up the side of the hill, using ancient stone blocks placed there like giant steps. The wooden gate swung open with a creak. A weather-scarred totem pole stood to the right, next to a bonfire pit filled with stones. A tall oak rose straight up, a small wooden lookout platform sitting in its branches like a tree house. To the left, a big log cabin waited for them, its walls so layered with moss and lichen that the building seemed to have grown from the Wood’s floor, and behind it a scattering of smaller buildings only intensified the illusion: the structures sat together like toadstools in a ring.
The wooden gate behind them shut, and Rose turned to see Leanne sliding a heavy wooden beam across it. A few other familiar people walked in the yard: all about her age, most single and magically adept. The Edgers with the least to lose, she realized.
“Welcome to Wood House,” Jeremiah said.
TWENTY-ONE
LEE Stearns claimed he was half-Cherokee Indian, but his hair, skin, and face said he was whiter than the Pillsbury Doughboy, and rumor had it that both of his parents were about as Cherokee as pizza. It wasn’t something people dared to say to his face or behind his back. His skin was smooth and pale, almost satiny, despite his advanced age. He looked at the world with watery blue eyes, and his hair was corn silk blond. It was as if the sun had bleached him. Lee drew the eye. He was also known to lose his temper if he thought people stared at him too much, and as Rose found a seat across from him at an old wooden table in the Wood House hall, she took care not to look at him too long.
Gaping at the other five elders wasn’t a good idea either. There was a lot of power in the room, and they looked far too somber to tolerate foolishness right about now.
Rose glanced to her grandma. Éléonore gave her a careful smile. Rose looked at her hands.
She was terribly aware of Declan, sitting very still next to her, about as perturbed as a granite crag. At least the children were excused from the meeting. Leanne had brought Kenny Jo to Wood House, probably so the elders could question him. George and Kenny Jo decided to call a truce for the time being in the name of exploring Wood House. They got off easy.
“Why don’t you introduce us to the young man, Rose?” Jeremiah said.
Rose cleared her throat. “Directly across from us is Adele Moore.”
If Grandma pretended to be a hedge witch, Adele was one. She was tall for an older woman, with skin the color of coffee grounds. Her hair streamed down to her waist in long gray dreads, each lock woven with bead strings and leather cords tingling with small bone and wood charms. Her clothes were layers of threadbare fabric, green, olive, and brown. She wore a dozen necklaces, some of dried mushroom caps stuck onto a thin thread, some of dried blossoms, some of discarded snakeskin, and one or two of tiny, cheap beads probably bought at Wal-Mart, of all places. Her face was wrinkled, and her hair had lost its color, but Adele’s eyes were quick and young.
“To the left of Adele is Emily Paw, Elsie Moore’s niece.”
Emily looked a lot like her aunt. Haggish and slight, she resembled a dried-out crow. Her mouth drooped downward, and in all of her twenty-two years, Rose had never seen Emily smile once. Of all present, with the exception of herself and Declan, Emily was the youngest and looked the oldest.
“You already know Jeremiah and Grandma,” Rose continued. “The man on the right is Lee Stearns. Next to him is Tom Buckwell.”
“Hello.” Tom Buckwell sounded like an ornery bear and looked like one, too. Big, almost seven feet tall and three hundred pounds heavy, he sat hunching his thick shoulders. He was also the hairiest man she had ever seen. His reddish beard was always tangled, his hair long, and the hair on his muscular forearms resembled fur. Rumors said that if he got drunk enough, he sometimes got his jollies by stripping naked and scaring hikers out in the Broken into thinking he was Bigfoot. Tom was also Fred Simoen’s uncle, once removed.
“And this is Earl Declan Camarine,” Rose finished finally.
Silence fell.
“How do we know you are who you say you are?” Lee asked.
Declan shrugged. “You don’t.”
“Then how do you expect to prove yourself?”
Rose tensed. She’d expected the question. It was natural that they would want to test him, but testing Declan was like trying to pet a strange pit bull.
Declan’s eyebrows crept up an eighth of an inch. “I don’t have to prove anything. I came to you because Miss Drayton convinced me it would be beneficial to my cause. I’m here to kill Casshorn. I have no other purpose or agenda, and once I’m done, I’ll return back to where I came from. It’s up to you to accept me or not.”
It really was amazing how Declan could shift into blueblood mode. His tone wasn’t exactly imperious, but it made it seem as if his words were cast in stone.
“What Lee means is we would like to see some proof of your power,” Grandma said. “Please, indulge us.”
He bowed his head. “As you wish, Madame.”
Magic stirred within Declan, like a lazy monster, awakening slowly, stretching, testing its claws. It built stronger and stronger. A white glow rolled over his irises. It was as if the side of the room where he sat had darkened, but the magic within him glowed, swelling, rising, terrifying and impossibly strong like a hurricane.
The tiny hairs on the back of Rose’s neck stood on their ends.
Declan’s eyes blazed white. A ghostly wind brushed Rose. She could actually see it—a thin veil of pale glow, streaming about Declan, winding against him.
She reached out and put her fingers on his hand. He glanced at her with his star-eyes and pulled the magic inside himself, sheathing it like a weapon. She wasn’t sure what was more impressive: the sheer magnitude of his power or the ease with which he controlled it.
Lee opened his mouth and clamped it shut. Grandma looked pained. Up until now, some of them probably thought they could take care of Declan if it came to that. Now they knew that all of them put together could slow him down, but killing him would be another matter entirely.
Adele leaned forward. “We would hear about Casshorn,” she said. “If it’s at all possible, Lord Camarine.”
Declan leaned forward. “What I say here mustn’t leave this room. If it does, I’ll have to return, and I won’t be alone,” he said.
Heads nodded around the table.
“It goes back to the Empire of the Sun Serpent,” Declan said. “In the Broken, settlers from the Eastern half of the world came to the West and killed the native tribes, who lacked technology and the means to effectively resist.”
Lee looked like he was about to say something but thought better of it.
“In my world, the opposite was true. This continent was home to a powerful empire. Its people called itself tlatoke, and they called their realm the Kingdom of the Sun Serpent. Their magic was born in the jungle, and it was extremely powerful and difficult to counter. About sixteen centuries ago they crossed the ocean and began raiding the Eastern continent, terrorizing the coast of Anglia and what is now the Gaulic Empire, all the way south to Etruria. They killed, raped, stole slaves, and demanded bowls of gold dust in tribute. This continued for approximately two hundred years, until they abruptly stopped. Usually raids die down gradually, but the tlatoke simply vanished.”
Declan paused.
“Something screwed up the kingdom of the shiny snake,” Tom Buckwell said.
Declan nodded. “The raids had spurred research. A century later, the peoples of the Eastern continent had developed the means to cross the ocean, but the fear of the tlatoke was so great that almost three hundred years passed before the first voyage took place. When the first war fleets arrived at the Western continent, they found no tlatoke. Plenty of ruined cities and temples, but no people. More, a lot of the magic-saturated flora and fauna one would expect was gone. The woods were young. Even now it’s difficult to find a thousand-year-old tree. The species of plants and animals that did survive had developed great defenses. Western animals are bigger and stronger than their Eastern counterparts, and something as sluggish as a vampire vine has evolved into an active predator.”
“What killed the tlatoke?” Jeremiah asked.
“It is unclear. The searches of the ruins didn’t provide any definitive answers. If something did kill the inhabitants, they were consumed, because no intact skeletons remained. But the researchers did find signs of struggle. Broken furniture. Holes in the walls. Claw marks.”
“The hounds,” Grandma said.
Declan continued. “Eventually survivors were found, isolated bands hiding out in the wilderness. They were almost unrecognizable. Legends said the raiders had worn steel armor and brightly colored robes, but their descendants had regressed into primitivism. The use of magic and cultivation of crops were forbidden. The former tlatoke lived in small nomadic groups, wore furs, and hunted with bows and spears. In three hundred years, they managed to fall from a glorious, advanced civilization to people who no longer remembered how to read the writings of their ancestors. Their oral traditions persisted, however, and their legends spoke about a gift from the Sun Serpent, which then turned on them and destroyed their kingdom. Even in the Weird, gods don’t actually interfere in the lives of the mortal men. We pray to them, but we have yet to see definitive proof they exist. So nobody was quite sure where this gift came from. Perhaps it was manufactured by tlatoke priests. Perhaps it fell from the depths between the stars as meteorites do. Perhaps it was an artifact of a forgotten nation. Whatever its origin was, the gift destroyed the tlatoke civilization and vanished.”
“What happened?” Rose asked.
“The continent was settled. New countries sprang up. Some, like Adrianglia, won their independence from their mother states. The tlatoke became a bizarre historical mystery. Then, about three hundred years ago, the great-grandfather of the current Duke of the Southern Provinces decided to drain a mire pond. As the pond was drained, a strange egg-like object emerged, sheathed in clay. It was too heavy to move, and so His Grace ordered the shell broken. Under the clay lay ceramic, followed by a layer of pure iron, then more ceramic, then lead. Finally when all the layers were cut through, His Grace found a strange device. As soon as the device was touched, it came alive and produced the first hound. The hound killed one of the workers. The magic it absorbed then streamed back into the device, and a second hound was born.”
“You should’ve destroyed it,” Emily Paw said.
“We tried,” Declan said. “The device absorbs magic. It’s impervious to fire. Attempts were made to crush it and encase it in molten metal, but they were unsuccessful. It’s made of a material not found in the Weird. As far as we know, its function is simple: it pulls magic from its environment and produces hounds, which then collect magic and return it to the device. We don’t know why it does what it does. We know human beings are the hounds’ preferred prey. We know it can’t be stopped.”
“Is that what killed the Weird’s Indians?” Tom Buckwell asked.
“That’s what some believe. The device was classified as an ‘imminent threat to the realm.’ A bunker was built, mimicking the original object: several layers of iron, lead, ceramic, and glass were arranged in such a way as to provide maximum isolation from the environment. The device was placed into the bunker. Its existence was kept secret from the general public to prevent panic or terrorist acts.”
Lee Stearns snorted. “Of course.”
“The bunker is located in Beliy Forest,” Declan said. “It’s an ugly, inhospitable place, and nobody in their right mind trespasses there. The structure itself sits on a slab of ceramic, and the forest is burned, salted, and fenced off for a mile around the bunker. Once every two weeks a crew made up of members of a secret branch of the Duke’s personal guard travels to the bunker and destroys any encroaching plants or animals to prevent the device from accessing environmental magic. Approximately two weeks ago, Casshorn Sandine, brother of the current Duke, broke into the bunker and stole the device. It was brilliantly done: he had been secretly cutting a narrow trail into the forest for the last year and a half, ending it about twelve miles from the bunker. He then compromised the bunker and airlifted the device twelve miles to the trail by means of an Airforce wyvern he had stolen from a local armory. The device killed the wyvern but not before it got Casshorn to his escape route. He loaded the device onto a cart and drove it out of Adrianglia into the Edge.”
“I think we all could use something to drink,” Adele said.
ONCE iced tea had been distributed, the mood in the room lightened and Rose breathed easier.
“Why would Casshorn do it?” Adele asked, sipping her tea.
“Why is good, but I want to know how come the beasts aren’t killing him,” Grandma said.
Declan drained half his glass. “It’s difficult to understand Casshorn. He’s mad, but he has flashes of genius. He’s amoral, but he takes pains to be polite. He’s failed at everything he ever tried. Casshorn expressed the desire to be a duke like his father. Centuries ago titles used to be hereditary. Now titles are administrative posts that carry a great deal of civil and military responsibility. One can’t inherit a title. One must earn it and pass the requisite examinations proving his or her competency in order to claim it. The higher the rank, the more stringent are the requirements. Sons and daughters of nobles often receive very specialized education from birth in anticipation of trying to assume the title. They have an advantage, because they watch and learn as their parents govern, in the same sense as the baker’s son knows about baking bread from watching his father make it. But no matter how good their test scores are, nobody, not even an heir to the throne of Adrianglia, can assume a title without first providing service to the realm. Some choose civil, some military, but all have to serve. The mandatory period of service is seven years in the military and ten for the civil service.”
