The Monster in the Hollows Read online

  “The people aren’t afraid,” Janner said, finally realizing what was so different. “It’s after dark, the streets are full, and there are no Fangs slithering about. Everyone’s happy. I’ve never seen that before.”

  “It’s the way it was and the way it should be,” Artham said. “All the work has been done, dinner is on the table, and the children are alight with a final burst of energy before bed. That’s when stories get told. Look.”

  They passed a lawn where a fire crackled in a stone ring. A grandmother sat on a bench with a book in her lap, reading to a circle of children gathered at her feet. Whistleharp music drifted to their ears, and with it the sound of singing. Janner caught the scent of something delicious as they passed a window where a family sat around a table. It reminded Janner of the Dragon Day festival in Glipwood, where he’d seen Armulyn the Bard singing by the fire. But here, no one was afraid. There were no Fangs to be afraid of.

  Janner spotted the Kimerans a few streets ahead as they rounded a corner after Danniby. The climb up the hill from the waterfront was gradual, but Janner and the others were unused to long walks after their voyage, so by the time they turned the corner after the crew they were all breathing a little harder.

  Oskar, however, was spry as a thwap, grinning as he marched in front, wide-eyed and looking everywhere at once. “Walking the streets of Ban Rona!” he said to himself between grunts. “Never thought in an epoch that I’d sail across the Dark Sea! Firepits! Flowerbeds! Oh, Maker, let there be books too.”

  Danniby waited beneath a shingle that read: The Orchard Inn and Cookery. He smiled and swung open the door as they approached, and the smell of pumpkin and cinnamon and butter wafted over Janner. The Kimerans had already found seats around wooden tables or near the fire blazing in the stone hearth. Hollowsfolk turned and studied the sailors, but Janner sensed only curiosity, no malice or suspicion. After a moment, the locals returned to their conversations and their food, leaving the weary crew to themselves.

  Oskar squeezed through the room to an open table and waved the others over. As soon as Nia was seated, he plopped into his chair and tucked a napkin into the collar of his tunic.

  A fair woman with her hair in a bun approached the table and stood with her hands on her hips. “Welcome, travelers. Danniby likes my pumpkin bread or else you’d be at a different inn right now.” Her eyes passed over each of them till they landed on Nia. “So is it true?”

  “Is what true?” Nia asked.

  “Are you really Nia Wingfeather?”

  “I am.”

  “And you brought a Fang to Ban Rona?”

  Janner steeled himself for his mother’s anger, but it didn’t come.

  “No. I brought my son,” Nia said. “He’s no Fang, however much he may look it.”

  The woman seemed satisfied with Nia’s answer and took their orders without further interrogation. Janner asked for grape cider and a bowl of henmeat stew, hardly able to believe he was eating dinner in an actual inn without a Fang in sight.

  Podo stood and raised his mug of rootberry ale. “Crew of theEnramere!” The Kimerans roared in answer and raised their own mugs. “Maker bless Gammon of Skree, who routed the Grey Fangs at the battle of Kimera and saw to our escape! May he and his cold soldiers fight till the land is free again. Maker bless each of you fer sailing the Dark Sea with dragons beneath and Fangs behind!” The men cheered as the Hollowsfolk watched with amusement. “Maker bless the Green Hollows, where Gnag the Nameless fears to tread!” Now the Hollowsfolk cheered. “And Maker bless Anniera.” There was a respectful silence. Men and women stared at their mugs. “May that great kingdom rise from the ashes.” Podo looked at Nia and Artham, then at Janner and Leeli.

  “And Maker be with Kalmar tonight,” said Janner, quietly enough that only his family heard.

  “So be it,” said Artham.

  The room erupted in cheers as the kitchen doors swung open and servers carried out trays and trays of steaming food. Janner tried to eat with a glad heart, but his gladness was tinged with worry for Kalmar. He prayed that Rudric was true to his word to make sure his brother was well fed and unharmed until they could secure his freedom.

  When they had finished eating, the innkeeper, a skinny, bald fellow named Norn, showed them to their rooms. He had a spring in his step because Danniby had filled his inn and promised him a vat of elderberry brew at the next harvest. Each room had two beds, so Nia and Leeli took one, Oskar and Podo another, and Janner ended up with Artham. The rooms were simple but comfortable, with soft beds, a wardrobe, and a writing desk.

  Norn the innkeeper brought Nia ointment and fresh bandages for Janner’s wounds. The ointment was in a clay jar, and when Nia lifted the lid, a bitter smell wafted out.

  “What’s that?” Janner asked, wrinkling his nose.

  “Something I wish I had weeks ago when you first got hurt.” Nia took a rag and dabbed it in the jar. “It’s a mixture of gadjic shavings, sludgeberry squeeze, and sweetroot. We call it gadbalm. Not only will it heal you quickly, it numbs the pain. Lie down.”

  Janner winced with each poke, dab, and wrap, but he immediately felt his scratches tingle with warmth. He didn’t know if his weariness was because of the medicine, but he found he couldn’t hold his eyes open.

  Nia pulled the bed quilt up to Janner’s chin. “I’ll wake you for breakfast,” she said and kissed him on the forehead. “Get some sleep. We’ll bathe and find new clothes tomorrow after the council. I won’t be able to rest knowing your brother’s alone in a cell.”

  “I’m not sleepy,” Janner said with a yawn, and the next thing he knew, it was morning.

  He stumbled downstairs to find everyone eating oats and milk in a heavy silence. Before they had finished eating, Danniby arrived to summon them to the Keep.

  A mist lay on the harbor in the early light, obscuring everything but the tops of the cliff walls in the distance, where the tiny flicker of watchfires glowed. As the Wingfeathers walked the short distance to the Keep, the city woke. Birds sang in the boughs of trees that lined the cobbled streets. Garden gates swung open as sleepy-eyed men and women of all ages stepped out to greet the day. Dogs bounded down the front steps of the houses for their morning walks, and wagons clattered by.

  Janner noticed clusters of children with leather satchels waiting at street corners. Few of them looked happy, and some looked as if they might fall asleep standing up. Some sat cross-legged on the sidewalk mindlessly poking a stick between cobblestones, while others found benches on which to sprawl. Some of the girls stood in groups of two or three, giggling or playing clapping games.

  “Mama,” Janner asked, “what are all the kids doing standing around? Don’t they have chores to do?”

  “School,” Nia answered absently, as if Janner had interrupted a deep thought.

  A long wagon topped with several benches and drawn by four donkeys rounded the nearest corner and halted. The driver said, “Mornin’,” to the children at the corner, and with a chorus of grumbles and yawns they boarded.

  “They don’t look too happy about it,” Janner said, watching over his shoulder as the wagon halted a few blocks down the street to load another group.

  “Why would they be?” Podo said. “Wastin’ a whole morning learning when they could be outdoin’. I’d be grumpy too.”

  “Theyare doing something, Papa,” Nia said. “I loved school, and so did Mama. You would have loved it too if you hadn’t grown up in Skree, running with those rotten Stranders.”

  “Well,” was all Podo could say to that.

  “Will we go to school?” Janner asked. He had never been to an official school. In Skree, schooling had been abandoned when the Fangs took over, so it was left to the parents. He had read plenty about schools and libraries and apprenticeships, but all he had in Glipwood was a mother determined to teach him T.H.A.G.S. (the Three Honored and Great Subjects all Annieran children studied: Word, Form, and Song). He loved reading and writing so much it was hard to imagine not enjoyi
ng a whole day of it with other students.

  “All I know right now is that Kalmar is in a dungeon, and we have to get him out. We’ll worry about school later,” Nia said as they approached what appeared to be a main thoroughfare. Big trees grew out of a median that lined the center of a wide street running straight up the grassy hill to the Keep. The houses here were bigger and boasted fancy cornices and even fountains in their front gardens.

  Danniby led them up the hill to the main gate, where guards stood on either side of a portcullis. It reminded Janner of the entrance to the Fork Factory, and a shiver ran down his back. For the first time that morning, he felt a hint of dread. What if that man—what was his name? Bunge. What if Bunge had hurt Kalmar—really hurt him? What if all the Hollowsfolk on the council were more like him than Rudric?

  The guards at the gate stared at Artham as they passed. He still wore the canvas draped over his wings, but it was obvious he was hiding something.

  Just through the gate was a grassy courtyard, and beyond it lay the Keep. It was a sturdy but beautiful structure, built of log and stone with living vines creeping up its walls and winding around its pillars. Some of the vines were heavy with colorful fruit, and people with long poles gathered it into baskets, pausing now and then to pop a grape or redberry into their mouths. Janner counted four stories, each with windows flung wide on balconies where people looked out over Ban Rona to the sea. Leafy branches peeked over the edge of the roof. Janner had never heard of trees growing ontop of a building, but the people of the Green Hollows seemed able to grow anything anywhere they wished.

  The two main doors of the Keep stood open, and Danniby led them through and into the great hall. It took Janner’s eyes a moment to adjust to the dim light filtering through windows in the ceiling, but he knew immediately that the hall was full of people. They sat around an enormous tree that rose out of a mound in the center of the room. Its trunk was bigger than the biggest glipwood oak, and its lower branches were as fat as trees themselves. The limbs rose like strong arms, up, up into the reaches of the ceiling and out to every wall, and Janner realized they grewinto the walls and ceiling of the Keep itself—which meant the branches he saw sticking out of the roof were a part of the tree too. He couldn’t tell where the tree ended and the Keep began.

  In a nook shaped by the enormous roots was a wooden throne where Rudric ban Yorna sat in the glory of his strength. He wore a black tunic and cape. His beard with the seven jeweled braids cascaded over the expanse of his chest, where the red pendant glimmered. He should have been diminished by the size of the tree, but it served instead to magnify his station. Janner knew Rudric wasn’t a proper king, but the title of Keeper seemed in this moment the greater one, and he had to resist the urge to bow.

  Around Rudric gathered hundreds of Hollowsfolk, all sitting on the grassy floor; young and old, male and female, fair and rugged, they stared at Nia Wingfeather and her companions. Janner felt that any discomfort or fear his mother carried must have been transformed into some marrow-deep power in her, for under the heavy gaze of the council she seemed equal in bearing and strength to the Keeper across the room. They were as formidable as the towering cliffs on either side of the harbor, with some invisible chain slung between them.

  “Queen Nia,” Rudric said. He stood, and his voice boomed through the hall like a rolling boulder. “It is time to discuss the Fang.”

  9

  The Council in the Keep

  Come. We have a place for you.” Rudric gestured toward a waist-high twist of root to the left of his throne. Nia led Leeli, Janner, Oskar, Artham, and Podo through the multitude to the tree. Janner could feel every eye in the room watching, and he was self-conscious of the way he walked, the way he held his mouth, how filthy his clothes were. He wanted to exude the same quiet strength as his mother, but he was pretty sure he exuded nothing but awkwardness.

  They approached the root, and Rudric motioned for them to sit. Beside him were the chiefs: four men and three women seated in smaller chairs. Each of the chiefs had a dog, either curled at the foot of the chair or leaning against it. Rudric’s dog sat at attention beside his throne and looked big enough to swallow the others. Each woman’s hair and each man’s beard was adorned with a single jeweled braid that matched one of Rudric’s seven braids. They frowned as the Wingfeathers sat on the root bench.

  “I’ve been the Keeper of the Hollows for five years,” Rudric began. “You fled Anniera nine years ago. It was at least nine years before that since you set foot in our land.”

  “Yes, Keeper,” Nia said. “It’s been a long time.”

  “I’ve gathered the council today in order to hear your case, but also to help you understand why things happened on your ship the way they did. I’ve no wish to offend the Queen of the Shining Isle.”

  He waited for Nia to answer, but she only lifted her chin and listened.

  “When Gnag the Nameless and his Fangs overran your kingdom, we heard rumors, but we didn’t believe them for days. We smelled the smoke a full day before we saw it. I was in the company that sailed to Anniera to give aid where we could, but—” Rudric cleared his throat. “But the whole city was burning. Flames scorched the sky. We brought back as many survivors as we could, but they didn’t number enough to fill a single ship. It was terrible. I saw Fangs dancing in the fire and trolls everywhere. I saw other creatures too.” He lowered his voice. “Long-legged things, skittering things. Things that lumbered and wailed and leapt over burning houses.”

  Leeli leaned her head on Podo’s arm and squeezed her eyes shut. Janner looked out over the council and saw men and women with ashen faces remembering the terrors of days past.

  “We fled,” Rudric continued. “Anniera was a ruin, and we feared the Green Hollows would be next. So we boarded ship and sailed ahead of the smoke with Fang ships in our wake. The watchers at the Watercraw weren’t prepared for a fleet of Fang ships and couldn’t get the gate raised in time. The Fangs followed us right into the harbor. Thousands of them. Men, women, and children armed themselves and fought from the piers. We put out fire after fire, launched stone after stone, and when the Fangs leapt overboard and slithered through the sea, when they crawled out of the water like a plague, we fought them with swords, hammers, bows, and spears. We fought with our hands.

  “Many men died, Nia. More than you would believe. Your family in Ban Rugan: Malik and the rest of the Igiby clan, the Boormyn clan, Yarley Craigh and his five daughters; your aunts and uncles, your cousins, Nia. All dead.”

  Nia’s eyes were closed. She sat straight and still, but Janner could tell Rudric’s words stung her.

  “It was a terrible time. For nine years Fangs have plagued our waters. Six times they’ve attacked in force. A whole fleet of ships tried to break through the Watercraw and failed. Again and again we drove them back. They dared not come through the Blackwood, though over the years even the cloven have grown bolder. Lands that were once safe for sheepherders and grazers are now in danger of twisted things that rove the forest and its edges.”

  Rudric paused again to see if Nia had anything to say. She didn’t.

  “All these years, our northern borders were untroubled. The Fangs were vulnerable to the cold. We saw the way they dragged and cowered when an icy wind blew, and how they never sent skirmishers from the north hills. We were safe for a long time. But last year, something changed. A new thing came to the Hollows.”

  Rudric motioned to someone on the far side of the hall and two massive doors swung open. Two men entered, rolling a cage on a wooden cart. In the cage was a ragged, broken thing.

  Its snout was longer than the Grey Fangs Janner had seen at the Battle of Kimera. Those Grey Fangs had seemed intelligent, more so than the snakelike ones. But this creature snarled and rattled the bars of the cage with beastly strength. Even from the other side of the hall, Janner could see that its eyes were blank with madness, devoid of anything human; it swung its head about, throwing a hungry, unthinking gaze at everything it saw
. Its snout was curled in a permanent snarl, revealing long, needle-like teeth, and a dry, black tongue lolled out of the side of its mouth like a dead fish. Its fur had been torn out in patches, revealing sickly pink skin.

  When it saw the array of Hollowsfolk, its thrashing intensified. It arched its back and loosed a papery shriek that was the closest thing to a howl the wretch could manage. Its black eyes roved the room, and Janner was terrified that its eyes would linger on him, as if they were empty wells into which he might fall forever. Janner would have grabbed Leeli and run had Rudric not been so calm.

  “This,” the Keeper said, “is only a shadow of the thing we captured. Its name was Nuzzard and he spoke quite well when our scouts at the Cullagh Orchard caught him. He was part of a company of Grey Fangs sent to test our borders for weaknesses. The others died. You know what happens when they die?”

  Nia nodded. “They turn to dust. We’re no strangers to Fangs, Rudric.”

  “Good. Then do you know what happens to them over time?”

  Nia hesitated. Janner thought about the Grey Fangs in theEnramere’s brig. They had grown more violent by the day, but what happened to them after they were set adrift no one knew. They had probably died, but as Podo said, that was in the hands of the Maker.

  Nia looked at the sniveling monster in the cage and shuddered. “This, I suppose.”

  “The Grey Fangs are dangerous enough in their ordinary form—if it can be called that—but what theybecome is even worse.” Rudric crossed the room and stood before the cage. The creature shook the bars and howled its papery howl. “They become the stuff of scarytales. I hate to imagine what would happen if this thing were loose in the Hollows.” Rudric nodded at the guards, and they rolled the wagon away. “So you see, Your Highness, we cannot let a Fang loose in the land.”