The shepherd of weeds, p.17
The Shepherd of Weeds, page 17
“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.
Chapter Sixty-one
Departure
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.
Chapter Sixty-two
As the Crow Flies
he Field Guide to the Poisons of Caux describes the journey to Rocamadour in this manner:
The ancient city of Rocamadour, composed of dark stone mined of a vein deep beneath the Craggy Burls, was serviced at one time by an unflinchingly straight road that cut a path between Rocamadour’s wide, imposing gates and the capital city. While the road is no more, stretches of it remain—particularly in the encroaching forest of hawthorns, which guards the Tasters’ Guild from the west and is deemed unfriendly to tourists and journeymen alike. Should you be summoned to the dark, stone city, it is highly advisable to avoid this wood, as it is judged somewhat troublesome. The overgrowth of hawthorns, with their deep canopy of sharpened barbs and tearing thorns, is uncharted—and is a suspect in the disappearances of untold travelers.
For the ancient hawthorns are quite treacherous. They bind people within their ancient cloaks of bark and are said to contain imprisoned souls.
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.
Chapter Sixty-three
Escort
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.
For some time, Ivy had tried to keep her disturbing visions at bay. In Templar, they seemed to have subsided, providing her some welcome respite, and she had kept them from Cecil lest he worry. But even there, if she moved her head too quickly or concentrated on a problem for any length of time, small purple sparks glimmered in the utmost corners of her perception. A wounded healer, she thought. Never again right in the shadows.
Now, as they approached the Tasters’ Guild, the visions returned in force. Evil sparks bobbed and weaved, determined not to be consigned to the mere corners of her mind. The world before her rippled, like a dark, cruel flag—and on several occasions Ivy was struck with the terrible sense that reality was fraying, becoming undone. As if the fabric of life itself was being pulled apart.
She thought of her mother’s treachery. Ivy was in the uncomfortable position of agreeing with Flux—her mother was a great disappointment. Clothilde seemed bent on her own success at any cost. Hadn’t she nearly turned Ivy over to Vidal Verjouce in the abbey on Skytop? And in Underwood, she had casually poisoned Rowan to test Ivy’s healing abilities.
Ivy felt the small, stitched pocket in her apron, where the King’s stones resided. Shriveled now, they were beyond all recognition.
A sudden shift in direction brought Ivy back to the present.
“What is it?” Ivy leaned forward to speak with Lofft.
“Something approaches,” Lofft explained, his words carried back to her on the wind.
Ivy scanned the horizon, but saw only the incessant purple flares of her own personal nightmare. The herons, and their sharp eyes accustomed to fishing, had keyed in on an intruder. Klair was flying with Rue off to the rear, on the right, catching an easier ride on Lofft’s airstream, and she had no chance to communicate with Rue. Ivy waited for something to appear.
The herons were calling out to each other in their high, reedy voices—the otherworldly sound did nothing to calm Ivy’s nerves. They were descending slightly, wings tucked, for whatever they sought was flying at a lower altitude. The air stung Ivy’s lungs as she tried to breathe. Streaks of white were slashing by, and at first she took this for snow—but this was no snow. It was ash. She covered her face with the crook of her elbow, holding on tightly with her remaining hand, ducking down and sheltering her face from the stinging air. Below, the scarecrows had converged, milling about in great numbers—they had reached the Lower Moors.
The herons, in perfect synchronization, banked sharply to the left, pursuing their quarry, and the albatrosses followed. Ivy regained a firm hold on the reins, but all the same, the sharp turn nearly knocked her off. Recovering, she shouted to Lofft not to worry. But the words died upon her lips as she saw the enormous figure in the sky directly beneath them.
Ivy had but a moment to take the apparition in—its silhouette was a shadow above Lumpen’s gathering forces. But through the silting ash and patchy cloud cover, she saw dark, greasy scales gleaming upon the frightening beast’s wide wings, and it seemed to be hovering, peering down upon the gathering forces beneath it, working its way back and forth, searching, spying. This was no normal vulture, she realized. What new, terrible creature had come forth from the bowels of Rocamadour?
They were descending quite quickly now, and Ivy lost the specter in the rush of nothingness and buffeting ash. But Rue hadn’t. Klair had wisely held back, and Rue had a better angle on the beast.
“Ivy!” Rue called desperately, her voice strained upon the wind. “It’s Rowan!”
Rowan—Ivy thought. The scales of Grig’s wings flashed in her mind’s eye.
Klair called a sharp, wordless cry.
“Lofft!” Ivy screamed. They were careering downward at great speed, and she was worried her dire warning would go unheard. “Tell the herons to stop their attack! That’s my friend!”
Indeed, Rowan hovered above the gathering forces. He was bent on revenge and in search of Flux; his journey had brought him fruitlessly to Rocamadour and then here, to the Lower Moors and the gathering of Ivy’s forces. Something in the Army of Flowers had caught his eye. He lost it, though, just as soon as he had found it, and, cursing under his breath, he began to methodically retrace his path. His wings seemed like natural appendages now, and he was able quite freely to hover, as a kestrel would.
There it was again; his heart raced. An unusually lithe scarecrow, understuffed, a yellowish tinge to his features. This one seemed to break ranks often, and, even more strange, he wore impossibly shiny boots.
So engrossed was Rowan, he failed to see what gathered above. When he finally heard the shrill cries of war, it was too late. He threw his head upward and his eyes locked with Ivy’s.
Ivy looked down upon her friend’s face as he gazed skyward—his wings outstretched, a fierce look of satisfaction across his familiar features. And she realized they were going to collide.
Chapter Sixty-four
The Lower Moors
ut as the herons dived, with Lofft in their midst, another shrill cry from Klair reached the group. Instantly the birds fell back in an impossible array of dives and tumbles, each seemingly in defiance of gravity, and when they gathered again, they did so on the ground.
Peps, stepping off the great heron’s back, looked pale and his knees threatened to fold beneath him, but Rowan was there with a sturdy arm.
“Peps.” Rowan smiled. “You’re a natural! We should get Grig to outfit you with a set of wings of your own!” He turned to the inventor, who had joined the welcoming party. “What do you say, Grig? Why not whip up this brave man a smaller set when you can?”
Rowan winked at the gathering, which included Lumpen and Grig’s assistants, while Peps, looking as if he very much disagreed, concentrated on trying to regain his breath.
Their remarkable arrival, while a surprise for those on the ground, was soon overshadowed by the business at hand. As Rowan folded his wings with care, Grig scrutinized them.
“Master Truax”—the inventor frowned—“these wings need immediate care. After every flight they need to be inspected carefully for rips or tears, and you’ve already ignored my warnings on two occasions. They need to be oiled and repaired. These conditions here, the ash and filth in the air, they gum up the works, and they are particularly hard on the small scales. I am afraid that flight is simply not recommended.”
They stared at the dark walls across the moor, soot and ash raining down upon the stark heads of the gathered army.
“Well, it’s time to do something about that ash and filth, then.” Rowan turned to the group. To the inventor, he added privately, “Don’t worry, Grig. The wings will bear me. There’ll be time enough to examine them when we’re celebrating our victory.”
Ivy surveyed the dreary landscape. Nearby, Grig and his team of assistants had been overseeing the contents of his jingling caravan, which, from what Ivy could see, consisted of more of his complex and inexplicable inventions. Everywhere, deflated weather balloons lay on the frozen earth in lopsided shapes, the leather bladders waiting for air. Ivy knew that soon they would be inflated; the curious tut-tut noise of their paddles would fill the air, their baskets attended to by scurrying trestlemen. Packages, some large, some curiously small, were being organized upon the lifeless earth, crates pried open. Bundles and canvas-covered carts were being distributed to the scarecrows who gathered in orderly contingents. They formed a giant patchwork that stretched out as far as the eye could see, awaiting Lumpen’s word.
In the gloom, the night birds stood guard—the owls, the nightjars, and the loons formed a watchful front. Shoo flapped noisily from Ivy’s scarecrow, Jimson, alighting on her shoulder.
