Returner's Wealth Read online

  There was a sharp crack, like the snapping of a twig, and Eli’s walking staff jumped in his hand. He raised it and held the tip out towards Micah. Wrapped around the end of the staff was a twisted loop of oiled wire.

  ‘A choke-snare,’ Eli observed. ‘Harder the wyrme struggles, the tighter the noose gets.’

  Eli tugged hard at the wire, till the end that had anchored it to the base of the thornbush came free. He tossed it aside.

  By the time they reached the end of the scrubby ravine, and the trail started to rise once again, half a dozen more snares had been tripped by the cragclimber. Micah was bracing himself for another arduous climb when he heard a sound. He paused and listened.

  There it was again. Weak pitiful whimpering …

  ‘Eli!’ Micah shouted. ‘Eli, over here!’

  The wyrme was lying flat on its belly, legs splayed and chin resting in the mud. It was the size of a pack-mule, pale blue in colour, with an orange crest that ran from the top of its head to the tip of its tail, and dark velvety black wings at its shoulders, half unfurled and twitching. One of its back legs was caught in the snare. The wire had cut through the skin and bitten deep into the bone. Its eyes were clouded over. Its tongue lolled out of its head …

  Eli stopped beside him and looked down. ‘Been trapped for days by the look of it,’ he opined through gritted teeth. ‘See them wounds there?’ he said, nodding at the trapped limb. ‘Got so desperate it tried to bite off its own leg.’ He crouched down. ‘I don’t hold with trapping wyrmes,’ he said. ‘Kin got that one right. There’s plenty of natural death to profit by without the need to cause suffering such as this.’

  Thick yellow pus oozed from the wounds as Eli freed its leg. The wyrme didn’t stir.

  Micah watched the cragclimber closely as he stooped low and rubbed the back of his powerful fingers slowly up and down the wyrme’s throat, before placing an ear to its chest.

  Eli straightened up. ‘Only one kindness we can do for this poor creature.’

  He gripped its head tightly with both hands and placed a boot on its back. Then, with a sudden jerk, he tugged the head upwards, twisting it at the same time. There was a muffled crack from inside the wyrme’s slender neck, and when Eli let go, the creature slumped to the ground, dead.

  Micah swallowed. ‘Shall we gut and skin it?’ he asked quietly. ‘Honour it by using to the full what it has to offer?’

  Eli smiled at the sound of the familiar words. ‘Not this time, Micah, lad,’ he said. ‘Putting the poor creature out of its misery is one thing, but thieving from a snare is quite another.’

  He shifted the heavy pack on his shoulders.

  ‘No, much as it galls me, we must leave this wyrme to the kith that laid the snare – unless carrionwyrmes rob him of his prize, as I fervently hope will be the case.’

  Setting off again, they crested a series of barren hills, and arrived at a steep cliff-face shortly before nightfall. It looked like a stack of griddlecakes heaped up one on top of the other, the rock soft and yellow-brown, and with thin shadow-filled crevices between each of the cliff’s individual layers. Micah’s heart fell. It would have been a challenging ascent at the start of the day. Now he was footsore and boneweary, and the steep climb looked all but insurmountable. But when Eli started climbing, Micah bit his tongue.

  A dozen or so feet up, Eli stepped into a shallow crevice. It didn’t look like much. It offered little protection from the driving rain and was scarcely more than a ledge with an overhang of rock, so low that Micah had to bend double to fit under it. He glanced at Eli, who was crouched down, his hands grasping a slab of rock that was wedged into the cliff-face.

  With a low grunt, Eli braced hard and shoved. There was a grinding of rock on rock and the slab shifted to one side, revealing a small opening in the crevice wall. Without looking back or saying a word, Eli unshouldered his rucksack and pushed it through the opening. Then he thrust his head and shoulders into the gap and disappeared from view.

  ‘Come on,’ his echoey voice floated back.

  Micah pushed his own backpack into the dark opening and scrambled inside. In the darkness, he felt Eli reach past him and heard the rockslab scrape back into place across the entrance. There was a spark of light, then a glow, as Eli lit a lantern and held it up.

  Micah’s jaw dropped.

  The cave was small and round and completely sealed. On all sides, in carefully ordered piles, bundles and neat stacks, were provisions. Dried fish hung in clusters from hooks in the cave’s roof, a scuffed liquor barrel was wedged in one corner next to several sacks of grain and packs of carefully wrapped dried meat. Pots and vials of medicaments took up one side of the cave, stacked one on top of another. A shallow dip in the rockfloor, with a heap of blankets laid out inside it, occupied the rear wall.

  Eli unfastened the top of his rucksack and began sorting through its contents.

  ‘The high country’s a harsh and unforgiving place,’ he said in in a low voice, as he stored his newly acquired provisions away. ‘But I venture you know that already.’

  Micah nodded, mesmerized by the abundance all around him in this tiny cave.

  ‘Here in the wyrmeweald, there are six seasons that you’d do well to note,’ Eli continued. ‘First there’s halfsummer, time of green shoots and growth, and then there’s the bloom of summer, time to gather. Then comes the dry season, harsh and thirsty, followed by the rain season – through which we’ve lately travelled …’

  Micah opened his own rucksack and tentatively reached inside.

  ‘Soon,’ Eli continued ‘it will get colder. The rain will freeze and the rivers stiffen with ice – halfwinter – a time to take stock of provisions and make plans …’ He swept an arm round the cave, indicating the riches it contained. ‘In preparation for the harshest and most unforgiving time of all. Winter in the wyrmeweald. Fullwinter.’

  Micah nodded, taking his provisions out of his rucksack, one by one, and placing them on the floor in front of him.

  ‘Many recent departers perish in their first fullwinter in the weald,’ said Eli. ‘I’ve seen it happen. Those who survive do so by falling in with any company that’ll take them – often of the worst sort, and learning from and outdoing their misguided teachers …’

  Micah flinched as first Cleave’s, then Solomon Tallow’s brutal faces flashed into his mind.

  ‘It would be a shame if that happened to you, Micah …’

  ‘Is that why you’ve brought me here?’ said Micah. ‘Shown me all this?’

  Eli nodded. ‘This is my winter den. It’s kept me alive for many a year, and could do the same for you. You see, Micah, there is a way to live in the wyrmeweald without thieving, killing and despoiling. A way I can teach you if you wish it.’

  Micah emptied the rest of the contents from his backpack and pushed them over to Eli.

  ‘I wish it,’ he replied.

  Eli gathered up the provisions, then glanced up at Micah. ‘By the way, do you want to tell me what happened to that jacket of yours?’ he asked.

  Micah looked down and plucked at the tear in the leather, and at the calico beneath. ‘I didn’t think you’d noticed.’

  Eli grunted. ‘There’s needles and gut-thread in that box over there if you want to make some repairs,’ he told him.

  ‘Thanks,’ said Micah, then added, ‘I didn’t want to bother you with what happened. It was back at the scrimshaw den. That wyve collector, Cleave, waylaid me as I was filling the water containers. He had a knife …’

  He watched as Eli methodically added the provisions to the store, not looking at him. But his casual indifference no longer fooled Micah. The cragclimber was listening intently.

  ‘I beat him, though. I beat him good.’ His face dropped. ‘But then he tricked me with a coward’s head-butt. I was down and defenceless …’

  Eli grunted again. His top teeth gr
azed his lower lip as he concentrated on stacking the pots of salve on top of one another in the corner.

  ‘Then some kith came along. Solomon Tallow and two friends of his – Jesse and Esau, I think they were called.’

  He paused and looked at the cragclimber. Eli’s face registered nothing.

  ‘I guess that had they not, then Cleave would have killed me. He’d already sliced open my jacket and shirt with his skinning knife, and was fixing to cut my throat when Solomon stopped him dead. Dealt with him, he did. Then recovered the things that Cleave had filched, which was when he noticed the scar, unless he’d seen it before …’

  Micah was aware of babbling now, the words tumbling out under Eli’s impassive gaze.

  ‘He saw the scar?’ Eli said quietly.

  ‘Through the split leather,’ Micah said, nodding.

  ‘Scar like that, Micah, there’s only one way you might have come by it.’ He frowned. ‘And wyrmekith like this Tallow of yours would know that well. Did he enquire as to where you came by it?’

  ‘He … he did,’ said Micah, ‘and I told him.’ A strange sense of unease gripped him. ‘Did I do something wrong, Eli?’

  ‘Let me put it this way,’ said Eli, shaking his head thoughtfully. ‘A wyrmekin is protecting a wyve up on that speckled stack. That much is clear. And now that Tallow and his gang know about it, they’ll go after the wyve for themselves, which means there’s going to be a fight.’

  A sly look crossed the cragclimber’s weatherbeaten face, an expression of cunning in those clear blue eyes that Micah had not seen before.

  ‘Which gives me an idea …’

  Twenty-Six

  The most ancient of the great whitewyrmes inclined his head. His scales were ash-tinged and his powerful wings were moss-spotted and bore the scars of many matings. A whispering sigh rose from deep in his throat, followed by the suggestion of a growl, low and almost imperceptible.

  As with all great wyrmekind, his speech was lilting and minutely cadenced. Its upper and lower registers were undetectable to the ears of the two-hides, while the sounds between were sonorous as distant thunder and subtle as softly falling rain.

  His companion – a younger wyrme, bright-scaled and pearly white – turned, the barbels on either side of his angular mouth flexing as he did so. A series of clicks and gentle flowing rasps sounded as he opened his jaws. The old wyrme arched his sinuous neck and whistled drily. In reply, the younger wyrme inhaled and vibrated the muscles at the base of his tongue, creating a resonant drone.

  The pupils in the old wyrme’s eyes widened, and white smoke plumed from his nostrils as the clicks in his throat rose to a reverberating rumble. The younger wyrme stepped back and bowed his head in supplication.

  The two wyrmes surveyed the cliffs around them, where the vast colony roosted. It was an ancient wyrme gallery. The soft stone of the yellow-grey cliffs had been tunnelled into by generations of great wyrmes, until the very core of the massive rock seemed to have been hollowed out, to be replaced by a labyrinth of winding tunnels and exquisitely chiselled fluted columns. Now, the wind that blew through the galleries added a plaintive whistling accompaniment to the wyrmes’ conversation.

  The old wyrme’s nose quivered. He turned his head and sniffed the breeze. His scaly lips drew back in a snarl as he detected the unmistakeable taint in the air. He turned back and looked down from the high boulder on which he was perched at the peaceful colony below him.

  The caverns were alive with whitewyrmes of all ages. Precious hatchlings flittered in and out of the lower galleries, the flares of their exuberant wyrmebreath causing the caverns to twinkle like windguttered lanterns. In the galleries above, older wyrmes rested. Each of them was curled round their own stone pillar, and it was the rub of countless wyrmes’ scales over the centuries that had caused the characteristic fluting to the columns, just as the claws of their tunnelling ancestors had added swirling grooves and striations to the cavern walls.

  He was old, even for the great wyrmes who measured their lives in rockweathering and riverflow. The eldest in the colony by far, he remembered when the valley country had yet to suffer the taint of the two-hides. But that time, when the newcomers had first set foot in the weald, was now long past. They had taken hold and spread like contagion, and now, if the younger wyrme’s report was correct, they were far beyond the highstacks and festercrags where the great whitewyrmes had once laid their eggs, and now threatened the ancient galleries themselves. And still they came on.

  Just then, the gentle hum of the colony was shattered by a long keening howl. The two wyrmes looked down, their yellow eyes fixing on a magnificent whitewyrme female standing on a jutting outcrop a little way below them. Her wings were raised, and her neck arched as she stared out towards the darkening horizon.

  The old wyrme glanced at his companion and shook his head, the crest rippling at his neck. His anguine tail switched from side to side. The younger wyrme replied with a soft rippling sigh.

  The impassioned call sounded again from the great whitewyrme on the rocky outcrop below. She pitched and gyred and flapped her wings in a frenzy of movement. Her neck was raised and her dark-red eyes sparkled like gemstones.

  Then, clapping her wings, the whitewyrme leaped from the outcrop, spiralling as she rose. The sun struck her body, flashing across her wings and scales, and glinting on clawtips and fangs as she swooped round the colony in a low arc, her jaws open wide. There was a blast of yellow flame. Then another. And then, as the fire died away, the air echoed with a roaring call of unbridled longing as she beat her wings and flew off towards the rising sun and the distant highstacks.

  Twenty-Seven

  A keening cry echoed across the void. The kingirl turned her head.

  She was standing at the edge of the tall speckled stack, one hand on her tilted hip, the other gripping the savage-looking kinlance at her side. The pearl-white suit of soulskin hugged her slim body and was beaded with drizzle and opalescent. As she craned her neck back, the wind blew her long straight hair across her face. Golden-grey, the colour of weathered pine, her hair shimmered in the rainy light as she turned her hauntingly beautiful face to the sky.

  Her gaze fell upon the small wyrmeling, and she watched it wheel round in the wet air, its broad wings dipped to one side. It was learning.

  Each evening now, when the wyrmeling emerged from the fiery vent and took to the air, its flight was longer than the one before and performed with more grace and precision. It flapped languidly, then dipped the other way, and came swooping round in a smooth broad arc. Fire roared from its gaping jaws, then went out, then roared a second time as its whiskered snout led it into an upcurrent of air that sent it soaring ever higher in a rising spiral.

  The girl turned to the great whitewyrme behind her and looked deep into his eyes. The whitewyrme inclined his great head, arching his long sinuous neck with its jagged black scar, until their foreheads were almost touching.

  Overhead, the wyrmeling approached the top of the stack, flexing its wings, twisting them back, and beating down hard, its four taloned feet braced for landing. It came down lightly, its legs giving, then straightening up, but not losing their footing as it folded its wings and came to a halt.

  The wyrmeling looked round, its head cocked to the side. It surveyed the girl and the whitewyrme through one eye, the vertical slit of pupil pulsing wider for an instant. Then it dipped its head abruptly and skittered off towards the narrow crevice and scritched down into the warmth of the fiery vent.

  The kingirl continued to look deep into the whitewyrme’s eyes. Their familiar golden yellow had grown darker and was now a deep amber, the black pupils dilated and wide.

  Just then, the distant cry reached them again on the drizzling wind. It was a plangent wail of emotion, wild and impassioned and edged with menace. The whitewyrme broke the girl’s gaze. His long serpentine neck quivered and turned sharply as he s
tared off in the direction of the cry.

  The girl reached up and placed the flat of her hand against the creature’s tremulous neck. Her lips tightened, blanched.

  The call came again. Louder. Closer.

  The great wyrme skittered about agitatedly on the tips of his claws. He opened wide his mouth in a silent roar, and white smoke and flashes of yellow flame poured forth. His mighty wings flexed and bunched; his thick tail swished from side to side, sending loose stones tumbling down over the edge of the rockstack as he craned his long neck towards the sky.

  ‘Aseel, Aseel,’ the girl breathed, and bit into her lip as her fingers traced the length of the zigzag scar while tremors coursed through the whitewyrme’s neck.

  She closed her eyes and pressed her face against his breast. She could feel his heart beating fast; she could hear her own heart thumping faster still.

  Again, the keening wail echoed across the sky, urgent and imploring.

  The whitewyrme tilted back his head and a low rumbling growl reverberated at the back of his throat. It grew to a soft hissing sigh as his jaws parted.

  ‘Ay … ell … saaaah …’

  Smoke plumed from his mouth and flames lapped at the wet air, turning the droplets of rain to steam. The creature’s shoulder muscles tensed and contracted, and his vast white wings unfolded and flapped, raising him up from the speckled rock and pitching him into the air.

  The kingirl’s arm fell to her side as she watched the great whitewyrme rise up into the sky without her and move off with slow rhythmic beats of his mighty wings. She stood rigid, and she clenched her fists so tight her nails punctured the skin. She watched until he had disappeared from view into the rain-filled duskdark sky.

  A drop of blood fell from her bunched fist and plashed on the wet rock below. The girl lowered her head, the golden-grey hair falling like a shroud over her face. A stifled sob shuddered through her soulskinned body.