Returner's Wealth Read online

There was a small indignant gasp. ‘I sought no payment.’

  ‘Take it all the same,’ Eli told her calmly.

  They fell silent, and Micah listened to the sound of rustling and clinking as more objects were removed from the rucksack and laid out on the stone floor. He heard the other sound too, the one he’d heard earlier, coming from somewhere in the shadows at the back of the cavern; a low wheezing sound that got louder and higher, before collapsing back on itself into a low rumbling groan. Jura sighed.

  ‘I take some of this too,’ she said, and Micah heard a clacking sound, like bits of wood being collected together.

  ‘You can use those?’ said Eli. He sounded surprised. ‘I only keep them on account of their smell. That sack of mine can conjure up a stench that would scare the dead, and them pine nubs do sweeten things.’

  ‘Ground up and boiled, they make a paste that soothes the canker.’

  Eli paused. ‘The canker?’ There was concern in his voice.

  ‘Asra is growing old,’ she said quietly. ‘We both are …’

  ‘We none of us are what we once were, Jura,’ Eli observed gruffly.

  ‘But it is not only the canker it soothes,’ Jura was saying. ‘Boils also, ulcers and such.’

  ‘Here, take as many as you like,’ said Eli. ‘And I don’t know for sure what this stuff might be, but if you’ve a use for it, Jura, then take it.’

  Micah heard her breath hissing through those pointy teeth of hers. ‘Wyrmebane,’ she whispered. ‘Rare white wyrmebane – a powerful weed.’

  ‘Good or bad?’

  ‘It can start a heart that has stopped – from terror, exhaustion, cold,’ she said. ‘It can stop a healthy heart … ’ Her hand slapped down on the rock. ‘Like that! You tell me if that is good or bad?’

  ‘I’d have to think on that,’ said Eli as he shifted round, his leather coat creaking, and dragged the backpack across the floor. ‘Except for that wyrmepelt and scentsac, Jura, you are most welcome to anything that I have collected which you can favourably employ.’

  ‘But this, it is not right,’ Jura objected. ‘We should exchange, Eli. You give. I give—’

  ‘It’s not necessary. I—’

  ‘Wait.’ There was more rustling. ‘The rains are coming, Eli. Take this. Rub it into your feet. It will help protect them from whiterot when your boots are wet through. And this …’

  There was the sound of a stopper being popped.

  ‘Hellfire, Jura,’ Eli gasped. ‘What is that?’

  ‘For leeches. One dab, they curl up and drop.’

  ‘Not surprised,’ he said, and grunted. ‘Whiterot balm. Leech ointment.’ He chuckled. ‘I swear, Jura, is there nothing in the high country you ain’t learned how to cure?’

  ‘Wyrmekin teach wyrmekin.’ She paused. ‘As wyrmekith teach wyrmekith, no?’

  Eli snorted. ‘More like every man for hisself, from my experience.’

  ‘But you learned.’

  ‘Learned more from you than any kith, truth told.’

  ‘But also others.’

  Eli sighed. ‘I’ll allow I gleaned a few helpful tips along the way,’ he said. ‘Some of them from kith …’

  ‘So,’ Jura said, and there was a certain triumph in her voice. ‘Which is why you should teach the boy, Eli Halfwinter. If you do not, then someone else will, only they will not teach him what he should know. Only bad things. How to steal and plunder, how to kill …’

  ‘Oh, I see,’ Eli drawled. ‘Back to that, are we? Like I said, Jura, I travel alone.’

  They fell silent once more. Micah opened his eyes again and looked across the cavern. Eli and Jura were still side by side in dappled light, each of them staring down at the rockfloor before them, and the small heaps of bartered items between.

  ‘Yet you brought him here to me,’ Jura persisted.

  ‘I’ve brought cracked wyves and injured wyrmes to you in the past, Jura. It ain’t no different.’

  Micah cleared his throat and sat up on one elbow. Eli and Jura looked round.

  ‘So you’re awake at last,’ Eli said gruffly. ‘Soon as I conclude my business here, I’m hitting the trail. I suggest you gather your stuff, Micah, and do the same.’

  Jura stood up and crossed the cavern floor to Micah. She crouched stiffly beside him, her beautiful face lined with concern as she lifted his shirt, plucked at the bandage and examined the wound. It was raised and puckered, the black stitches looking like a row of flies. She placed the backs of her taloned fingers against his red skin.

  ‘You are well enough to travel?’ she enquired. ‘Your pain is less than before?’ Her dark-green eyes peered deeply into his own, her gaze as disconcerting as ever.

  Micah nodded on both counts. He scrambled to his feet.

  ‘The boy’s strong,’ said Eli. He fastened his backpack and heaved it up onto his shoulders. ‘I’ll bid you farewell. May there be less time until the next time.’

  He turned brusquely away. Micah grabbed his belongings and hurried after him.

  ‘Wait,’ Jura told him. She crossed to one of the earthenware urns that stood in the shadowy alcoves, reached down inside it, and returned with a handful of small, dark-green, waxy-looking leaves. ‘Chew on these to keep the pain at bay,’ she told him, piling the leaves in his outstretched hands. ‘One at a time.’

  She pushed a leaf into his mouth when he opened it to thank her, and Micah bit down. The leaf tasted acrid sour and his tongue went numb. And when he swallowed the juices that welled up in his mouth, his body tingled with warmth.

  Micah glanced up.

  The cragclimber was already over by the waterfall at the far end of the cavern, backpack on his shoulders and hat brim down, about to disappear. Micah stuffed the rest of the leaves in a jacket pocket and struggled to catch him up, his own rucksack bouncing awkwardly as he loped over the rockfloor. He paused at the ledge, turned and looked back, intending to wave, or say goodbye, or thank you – something at least to mark his departure.

  But the wyrmekin was nowhere to be seen. From the dark shadows at the back of the cave, he heard the sound again – that wheezing panting sound, deep and rumbling, as though the chamber itself was alive and breathing.

  Eighteen

  Micah emerged from behind the waterfall into bright daylight. He squinted and pulled the brim of his hat low down over his eyes; he tried to blink away the dazzle. Eli was up ahead, making his way determinedly along the narrow path without a backward glance.

  Micah hurried along in his footsteps, until the track widened sufficiently for him to walk by the cragclimber’s side. Eli showed no sign of acknowledgement, and Micah struggled to think of something to say. Eli travelled alone. He’d told Jura as much when he thought Micah wasn’t listening, but, Micah realized with a growing sense of unease, he didn’t want to be left behind.

  The sun was high and strong, and the air was suffused with the heady scent of the broad pale leaves and heavy blossoms that stewed in its fiery heat.

  ‘I must have slept through the night,’ Micah began, as casually as he could.

  Eli glanced round at him. ‘You slept through three nights in all, Micah, boy,’ he said.

  ‘Three nights!’

  ‘Thrashing about like a rockwyrme in a snare.’

  He fell silent. Micah dropped back a pace. He watched Eli’s broad shoulders sway from side to side.

  ‘You waited for me, all that time?’ he ventured.

  ‘Only to see if you’d recover,’ Eli said, and snorted. ‘I agreed to stay as an undertaker,’ he told him. ‘As it turned out, my gravedigging skills were not required.’

  Micah looked down at his boots as he continued through the lush forest that clung to the steep cliffsides of the ravine. It was far harder to climb than it had been to descend, and when his wound started to complain, he chewed on another of the dark
waxen leaves. Then another.

  Mistwyrmes and fisherwyrmes shrieked overhead. A snatterjab folded its wings back and dived like a falling arrow.

  Micah took another leaf, and trudged on. Five minutes passed as the two of them made their way up the track through the steaming ravine forest, to the accompaniment of a skeeling chorus of fisherwyrmes overhead, working the waterfall. Save for the regular clack clack of his walking staff as it struck the hard track, Eli was silent.

  ‘Jura said I was attacked by wyrmekin,’ Micah said, determined to show Eli that he could keep pace with him and keep up a passable conversation at the same time. ‘What I don’t understand is why,’ said Micah. ‘I mean, I wasn’t doing nothing …’

  ‘Nothing you were aware of, maybe,’ Eli told him. ‘Could have been stomping right past a nest of wyves for all I know.’

  ‘Wyves?’ said Micah, wiping the sweat from his face. He remembered Jura’s question. You are a wyve collector?

  ‘Eggs. Wyrme eggs.’ Eli shook his head. ‘Kin take it bad when kith stumble across wyves, and they do everything in their power to protect them.’

  He kept on striding ahead. Silence closed in around them once again, loud and oppressive to Micah’s mind.

  ‘I met a wyrmekin once before,’ Micah said. ‘Back on the plains.’

  ‘I very much doubt it.’

  ‘I swear, Eli. She had on a suit of oxhide, with a hood that covered her face, and she had this lance which she used to control the wyrme she had – that, and this vicious choke chain …’

  ‘That weren’t no wyrmekin you saw, Micah,’ said Eli disdainfully. ‘Just a plainswoman playing the role of such for gain …’

  ‘Her wyrme was real enough,’ Micah protested, keeping the conversation going despite the negative turn it was taking. ‘It was huge. More than twice the size of a fully grown ploughox. It had scaly wings and fiery breath …’

  ‘And was more than half dead, I’d wager.’

  Micah fell silent as he remembered the wheezing beast’s raw sores and pus-crusted eyes. And the way those eyes had rolled in its head when its front legs had collapsed.

  Eli grunted. ‘Wyrmes are high country creatures. They sicken and die back there on the plains, just like horses and packmules perish up here in the thin air. Mind you, that doesn’t stop kith trying in their search for riches. Either way round, the poor creatures don’t last more than a season or two.’

  They walked on for a while in silence. The forest was beginning to thin out, and the head of the ravine was coming into view. When they reached the top, Micah realized, they would go their separate ways.

  I travel alone. Eli’s words sounded in Micah’s head.

  ‘Eli,’ he said, ‘how did you and Jura first meet?’

  Eli stopped in his tracks, and stood rigid still, staring ahead of him. Micah swallowed. Perhaps he’d gone too far? Eli spoke.

  ‘Boy, I want to assure you that you should not feel obliged to remunerate me for my company in the form of conversation. Y’understand?’

  ‘I … I think so, sir.’

  ‘Call me Eli.’

  ‘Eli.’ Micah swallowed again, the acrid leaf-juice sluicing down his throat.

  The cragclimber lurched back into motion, his head still held high and gaze fixed on some distant point. Micah followed, keeping half a step behind.

  It looked like a storm was on its way. Black billowing clouds, fringed with dazzling silver, were poking up over the far side of the ravine and roiling in. A chill wind set the leaves quivering and raised dust on the track.

  ‘Jura and I go back a long way,’ Eli said, without looking at Micah. ‘And our story is not one I find it easy to tell, especially on so short an acquaintance.’

  He peered up at the cliff-face thoughtfully, then turned to Micah. ‘But she taught me to respect wyrmes of every shape and description, to use to the full what they offer, but never to take it by force. It is a lesson I have learned well.’

  ‘Will you teach me?’ Micah asked, his head swimming and his mouth full of chewed leaves.

  Eli marched on up the last stretch of track without looking back, his boots kicking up dust. He reached the top of the ravine and paused, placed his hands on his hips and surveyed the view. Micah stumbled to a halt behind him. He felt giddy. A bit sick. He tottered forward and fell to his knees, then looked up to see Eli staring at him severely.

  ‘One leaf at a time, Jura told you.’

  Micah breathed in sharply. Of course she had – and he’d gone and pushed a dozen or more into his mouth at one time. He spat out the fibrous boll of chewed leaves.

  ‘Am I going to be all right?’ he said.

  Eli shrugged. ‘You’ll live,’ he said, ‘though I daresay you’ll sleep well tonight.’ His tanned features creased up questioningly. ‘Which way were you thinking of heading anyhow, boy?’

  Micah swallowed. This was it, then. The cragclimber who liked to travel alone was about to do just that. He scanned the distant horizon, then swept an arm vaguely before him, his outstretched hand lingering on a jagged line of far-off crags.

  ‘That direction, I thought,’ Micah told him, his voice as confident as he could muster.

  Eli had been good to him. He’d saved his life. Micah would not presume further on his kindness.

  ‘North-west, eh?’ said Eli, removing his hat and scratching his head thoughtfully. ‘Well, that is indeed a coincidence, Micah, for it is the way that I myself am heading.’

  ‘You are?’

  ‘The other side of that pass there,’ he said, pointing towards the crag with his staff. ‘There’s a scrimshaw den down in the foothills I’ve a mind to visit. Mind you, I’ll have to watch myself. You need two pairs of eyes in a scrimshaw den, I swear, one at the front and one at the back.’

  Micah swallowed, then took a breath. He wished the giddiness would subside.

  ‘Maybe I could be that second pair of eyes,’ he said quietly.

  Eli turned to him, a thoughtful look on his face. ‘Maybe you could,’ he said.

  He turned and walked on. Micah watched him stride away. It wasn’t an invitation exactly, but it would do, he decided.

  Hitching his rucksack high up onto his shoulder as he staggered to his feet, Micah ran to catch up with the cragclimber, and fell into step beside him. Eli turned to him gravely. Micah held his breath.

  ‘We can travel alone, together,’ he said with the faintest trace of a smile.

  Nineteen

  ‘The rain season,’ Eli Halfwinter observed. ‘Makes for hard travelling.’

  As if in answer to his words, the wind swirled and the sheets of rain rippled, darkening the air and fuzzing out the distant mountains. Visibility was down to the distance of an outstretched hand.

  ‘That way,’ Eli said.

  The wind keeled round, and the rain cascading over the brim of Micah’s hat blew back into his face. He wiped it away on the back of his hand, the saturated cuff of his jacket cold against his cheek. He looked down at his feet, and noted how the sheet of water that rippled across the rock splashed over the toes of his boots each time he placed a foot down.

  A skein of tatterwyrmes passed over their heads, screeching loudly as they glided jerkily on squalled air. Micah wrapped his raggedy cloak tight round his shivering body and tramped after the cragclimber. They made their way through the watery landscape, fording flooded gulleys and bloated streams until, at about midday, they came to a rain-swelled river.

  ‘We cross here,’ Eli pronounced, after surveying the torrential waters for a moment.

  Micah nodded back, though why the cragclimber had favoured this particular spot to wade across, he could not tell.

  ‘Roll up your cloak and stash it away,’ said Eli. ‘Then follow in my footsteps.’

  He waited till Micah’s rucksack was buckled and back on his shoulders, then st
epped forward, raising his arms for balance as first one boot, then the other, sank down into the torrent of water. Eli was knee deep. He ploughed forward, dragging one leg after the other, grunting with effort as he did so.

  ‘Come on,’ he shouted back.

  Micah grimaced, and followed. As he plunged into the water, it gripped him, threatening to spin him round, and he raised his arms – like Eli had done – to steady himself. He held still for a moment, trying to accustom himself to the powerful currents that tugged at his legs. The rain continued to fall, beating down upon his hat and shoulders, and stippling the river’s surface.

  Micah heaved himself forward, forcing one leg, then the other, through the flooded gulley as he took care to trace Eli’s footsteps. The water grew deeper, then deeper still, till it was up to his waist. Ahead of him, Eli continued crossing at an angle, his back turned towards the oncoming stream, and Micah did the same.

  As the water reached his belly, something slammed hard into his back, and reaching behind him, Micah grasped a rough and scaly object and found he was clutching a drowned wyrme by the tail. It was the size of a gamebird, but grey-scaled and bedraggled. Its skin was torn and the scales battered, and its sightless eyes stared into mid air.

  He pressed on. The currents were vicious and determined. Beneath him, gravel shifted and rocks slammed against his boots. But soon, as Micah approached the far side, the bed of the gulley began to rise. He heaved himself out of the water and collapsed in a heap on the bank, panting with exertion.

  The cragclimber looked round, his pale-blue eyes narrowed and unreadable.

  ‘Must have lost its footing,’ he observed, nodding at the dead wyrme in Micah’s hand.

  He took it and examined it quickly, before looping its tail round his belt and knotting it.

  ‘What are you going to do with it?’ asked Micah.

  ‘I shall honour it by using to the full what it has to offer,’ Eli said.

  They rested for a while, then set off again, tramping through the grey rain-filled afternoon.

  ‘A little bit further,’ Eli said at last, as the light began to fade, ‘and then we’ll rest up for the night.’