The Chestnut King: Book 3 of the 100 Cupboards (21 page)

“The Blackstar?” Henry asked.

“Perhaps,” Mordecai said. “Perhaps not. We have searched for it before. Nimroth hid it before his madness rose to its fullest tide. He carried only a disguised pebble in his last year enthroned, much to the disgust of his heirs. In the end, even he believed it to be real. He does still. His sons entombed him with it. But if you have seen his husk, you may know this already.”

Caleb tumbled a stack of decayed books off the windowsill and onto the floor. Pages ripped free and slid through clouding dust. He rattled the casement off its hinges, threw it down into the street, and whistled.

“Notch and stirrup! They come!” he shouted. Then he turned to Mordecai. “Brother, we cannot carry books. The witch is in Dumarre, that much we know—the emperor’s phalanxes would not form against us without her whispers in his ear.” He picked up his bow. “We have galleys to race or I should beg to perch here and wait for the finger-men.”

Mordecai straightened, dropping his hands. “I would
have given my sight for Eli FitzFaeren in this room, at this task. I have been useless.” He looked at Caleb. “Nimiane wishes us to race into her arms, and she baits the hook well. We may yet bite.” He rubbed his jaw, and Henry watched his father’s eyes unfocus, staring away past the books and the walls, past the house and the life-drained land. “She has left us three moves with little difference between them. We are taken by the fingerlings, or we run to her snarling but powerless to make the kill, and her fingerlings come behind us. We defeat the fingerlings, and still we run to her. That buys time, but time is of little use. As you say, we race the galleys already.” He sighed, and his eyes reentered the room. “What does she fear? Not death. The coming of her madness? We must find a way to play beyond the board. We must do the unexpected.”

“Unexpected or no,” Caleb said, “what we do, we must do now. Much has already been decided for us. We outstrip the finger-men on horseback, or soon, very soon, we face them on foot.”

“Henry?” A voice drifted out of the pyramid. Henrietta’s whisper. “Henry? Are you okay? What’s going on?”

Birds screeched, and the long howl of the great dog echoed through the house.

Downstairs, wood splintered.

Henrietta
leaned her back against Henry’s little bed and stared at the darkness. He had told them to stay and had ignored their objections. By the time she really had managed to clear her head and get her bearings after diving through a world-seam on a tower wall, Henry was gone.

She flicked on her flashlight and pointed it down at the little cupboard to Endor. It was weird thinking that Henry could be carrying the other end around. It was weirder thinking that she had just come through that tiny door. She wiped her nose and checked her fingers. The bleeding had stopped.

“We should save the batteries,” Zeke said.

Henrietta killed her light. “We should go after Henry.”

“Let me know when you figure out how.”

“If he hadn’t lost Grandfather’s journal, we’d be able to. We could set the compass locks to Endor and crawl through downstairs.”

The floor creaked as Zeke shifted. “We’re here for him. We can wait.”

“Does he even need us?” Henrietta asked. “It’s not like
either of us did much in there. We rang the bell. You threw the hatchet.”

Zeke laughed. “Which bounced off.” A backpack slid across the floor. “Henry’s pitching. Slap your glove and talk him up. Pitcher throws better when a team props him, even if it’s just with chatter.”

Henrietta sat in the dark and listened to Zeke breathe. “You mean like, ‘Atta babe, down the pipe,’ and that stuff my dad would say? Then we’re just cheerleaders.”

Zeke yawned. “We’re in the field with him. We back him up. If a pitcher’s real good …” He yawned again, slowly.
“Then
we’re just cheerleaders.”

“Boys are ridiculous,” Henrietta said. “You’d never call each other ‘babe’ after a game.” She waited for a response. “Zeke?”

Zeke snored.

“Sheesh.” Henrietta turned her flashlight on. Zeke had pushed his backpack against the wall and was lying flat on his back with his head propped up on it and his mouth open. Henrietta scooted closer to the little door to Endor, crossed her legs, and listened.

She couldn’t hear much. More noises drifted out of the other doors. She looked over at Zeke. She could never sleep in this room, not with so many doors open. A sudden burst of wind pushed through the Endor cupboard, carrying a funnel of ash. She slid her backpack over and blocked it. After a while, she pulled the pack away. Could she hear something? She leaned closer. Thumping? Voices?

She didn’t want to yell for Henry. He could be hiding.
He could be in the middle of something. There was no “could be” about it. He was sure to be in the middle of something. She bit her tongue and waited—listening to distant sounds trickle from the other cupboards, the creaking of the old, battered farmhouse, and the breeze moving through the broken round window at the end of the attic. Zeke rolled onto his side and stopped snoring. Sighing, Henrietta imitated him, lowering herself to her side and propping her head on her backpack. With her mind wandering, imagining horror after horror pursuing Henry, she stared into the dark mouth of the little cupboard.

“Atta babe,” she whispered.

Time crawled by, measured by an unknown sun outside and Zeke’s breathing in the attic. Henrietta blinked. Her mind was foggy. Had she been asleep? She wasn’t now. She could hear voices. She rolled forward and put her ear in the cupboard mouth. Henry was talking to someone. Caleb? It
was
Caleb. She laughed. He’d found them.

She pressed her face into the cupboard. “Henry?” she said. “Henry? Are you okay? What’s going on?”

No one answered.

Caleb and Mordecai both stood straight. Neither flinched. Shouts rose from downstairs, and the dog’s baying grew. Caleb, breathing slowly, looked at his brother and smiled with tight lips. His eyes held no fear. Drawing one of his short swords, he held out the hilt to Mordecai.

“We stand here,” he said.

Mordecai nodded, taking the sword. He turned to Henry. “Is the way open to Hylfing?”

“Maybe,” Henry said. He shifted nervously. His father didn’t seem to be in any kind of hurry. “But the fingerling followed us through once already.”

Caleb ducked into the hall and disappeared.

Mordecai set his right palm against the black pyramid. One swift movement of his wrist sent Henry rocking backward. His father had opened the seam more than head-high with nothing but his own strength—a hole, bounded by deep purple and twisting green. “These stacks are useless.” Mordecai pointed to one side of the room. “But these”—he turned to the wall behind Henry, mounded with scrolls and rotting leather and loose pages—“one sentence may mean a different world. Take as many through as you can. Store them safely in the ruined farmhouse. Get to Hylfing.”

Caleb stepped back into the room. “They come cautiously,” he said. “But they are armed and helmed and wear collars and chains. It will not be easy.”

Henry sagged. He didn’t want to get anywhere. He’d just finished getting somewhere, and it had been horrible. He wanted to plant himself firmly in the shadow of his father and uncle, wherever they might go. “Can’t I stay?” he asked.

“If I could keep you with me, I would,” said Mordecai. “I would keep you with me if you were weak as well. But you are not. Find Fat Frank. We will meet you in Hylfing if
we can. Wait at The Horned Horse, but do not wait more than a single day. If we do not come to you, travel with your cupboard. Stay nowhere long. Enter the mounds together and demand passage to the Faerie Queene. They are stubborn now, but you have bullied faeren before. The district mounds will be no help. They will not aggress beyond their regions, and Dumarre must run mad with a plague of faeren if we are to succeed. That city must receive no galleys.”

Caleb drew back an arrow on his big horn bow and leaned into the hall. He kissed the nock and held it, un-shaking.

“If the faeren will not or cannot take you to the queene, and they may not—no one has received an audience in my lifetime—then you must travel into the hills to the southeast. Search for a great triple-trunked chestnut. Wait beside it, but not for long. If no faeren show themselves, then set a flame to the tree. Tell those who come that you have a treasure for the Chestnut King from Mordecai Westmore. Give him these ancient pages and tell him what we seek, what we need, and what must be. He may help you. Do not bow or grovel or apologize. Speak to him like a brother and an equal.”

Henry’s head was spinning. He didn’t understand, and what he did understand, he didn’t like. “Who is the Chestnut King?”

“He won’t find the tree,” Caleb said to his bowstring. “I have stepped through its shroud and seen its trunks but
once. The outlaw king has little love for our blood.” He straightened and whistled sharply.

Henry looked at his father and his uncle. Shouting rose through the floor. “What will you be doing?” he asked. “Where will I find you again?”

“This time,” Mordecai said, “we will seek for you.”

The huge black dog bounded into the room. Caleb relaxed his bow, dropped to one knee, and held its broad face in his hands. The dog froze, and Caleb stared into his brown bovine eyes. Then he whispered in its ear. The dog twisted in a circle and dropped to the floor beside Henry’s feet.

“Beo shares a memory of the tree,” Caleb said. “He will guide you.” Rising, Caleb stepped into the hall. “Brother,” he said. “We cannot wait longer.”

Mordecai followed him. “Work quickly,” he said over his shoulder. His face was set, his eyes black as night, faerie light draining into them. “When I call your name, do not hesitate. Pass through the doorway and set fire to the cupboard behind you.”

“Fire?” Henry asked. “I don’t have fire.”

His father smiled. “My son,” he said. “My strong son, of what are you made?” Turning, Mordecai pulled the door closed behind him. He was gone.

Henry slumped to the floor. The pony-size dog slid toward him.

“Henry!” Henrietta’s voice rattled through the room. “Henry, what’s going on?”

*  *  *

Coradin stood at the base of the stairs. Two others stood with him. The remaining three still pushed against the archers in the back of the house.

He had taken two long-handled swords from the armory, and he gripped them now. Both had long, slender blades, bending slightly. He had stood on many fields with swords of similar size and shape, but never quite like these. It was like every blade he had ever held had only been a promise, a taste of this pair, untouched by time and passing ages. Their weights were perfect, the silver edges sharpened into transparency. More than steel had been braided and hammered into the blades. Every life they had taken had made them stronger. Every drop of blood drawn had given up its strength and fallen away from the blades ashen. They sucked and whispered in the air now, thirsty for life, for their first feeding since the fall of FitzFaeren.

Coradin’s helmet was silver, with braided brows around the eyeholes and noseguard. On the back, in place of a plume, a single black finger curled. Three silver chains bound the helmet to a black collar and ran down to a broad black belt of steel, decorated only with a circlet of white fire on the buckle. Twin scabbards hung on his back, between collar and belt.

The others wore similar helms, but each had chosen different arms, weapons loved and used in forgotten lives—an ax, a mace, swords like scythes.

The boy was upstairs. Coradin, the swords, could taste him.

Go
.

He stepped forward, but something inside him resisted. An instinct. Hold. He will strike us on the stairs. He drew his foot back.

Go
.

Coradin arched as fire erupted into the back of his scalp, burned down his spine, and ripped through his mind. Breathing heavily, he was blank again. As cold and ruthless as the swords in his hands. He was a sword in another’s hand, a mindless tool.

His mouth opened, and a voice crawled out of him. His blood-mother’s voice. “Mordecai Westmore, son of Amram!”

Coradin stepped onto the stairs and began to climb. An arrow tore through his chest, and he staggered backward, catching himself before he fell. Looking down, he saw no shaft. One feather stood out alone against his ribs, scraped off by the arrow’s passing.

Nimiane’s laugh poured out of him. “Death is not so easily delivered to these, my messengers! Come and see if the two brothers can stand before them.”

A burst of air rolled down the stairs, gathering dust and ash, pushing the fingerlings back.

“Nimiane!” Mordecai’s voice swirled with the air. “Your soul shall be shriven from the husk of your flesh, your darkness unmade. Death finds you. We shall be his guide.”

Coradin laughed. His pierced body quaked. The high voice, not his own, echoed in his helmet, through the dust, and filled the ancient house. “Death? Death does my
bidding. He and I are one, as fused as Nimroth’s body and soul. While there is life, I will live, drinking of it, feeding on it, feasting on its death. When you have killed all living things, then I shall go hungry. Then I shall fade. Not before.”

Zeke sat up. “Henrietta, why are you yelling? Just wait.”

Henrietta glanced at him and then shoved her mouth all the way against the cupboard to yell again. But her lips didn’t touch the wood. Her face slid forward through the wall, and suddenly, she was blinking in a lit room mounded with papers and books and scrolls. The room seemed to be shaking. With wind? Was there a storm? And someone was shouting. A woman.

A pile of papers moved toward her, staggered, and almost overbalanced. She jerked back, into the dimness of Henry’s old room.

“Wow,” said Zeke, and then Henry, groaning under the stack of manuscripts, tripped into the room, collided with Henrietta, and sat on Zeke.

Caleb’s dog leapt out of the wall, knocking Henrietta through the doors and into the attic. The little room was officially full.

Dropping more as he came, Henry followed her with his pile. When he banged it onto the floor, the whole attic shook.