Raven's Ladder by Jeffrey Overstreet Read Free Book Online Page A

Cal-raven. It was all he would tell the company for now. He didn’t want them frightened by his true destination. “Say-ressa’s fever is fierce, and chillseed is the surest help we know.” He turned to Krawg. “Gatherers learned how to find it in the wild, didn’t they?”
    “Blindfold me, my lord, and I’ll still find it for you!” the old man exclaimed.
    “Captain.” Cal-raven watched Tabor Jan reluctantly help the old man into the saddle. “Keep a close watch on the Cragavar. Keep our stonecrafting sisters close so they can—”
    “We’ll be watchful, my lord.”
    Cal-raven urged him to keep the people busy storing up food and fashioning wagons and wagon wheels in case they needed to set out from Barnashum soon. Then he turned abruptly to Krawg. “Why do you keep staring back at the caves? Have you forgotten something?”
    Krawg bowed his head. “I reckon, my lord, that I can find chillseed faster if I have help.” His hands opened and closed as if they were swallowing the rain. “He’s light as a bundle of bird bones. He could sit behind me on this animal. Surely…”
    “He?” Cal-raven smiled. He had expected this. He nodded to Tabor Jan, who hunched his shoulders against the rain, mumbled something, and trudged back into the caves.

    Storm light splashed across the northern darkness, as seven riders on six vawns departed across the flooding plains. The distant Cragavar forest seemed frayed and worn in patches, a dark and ragged blanket.
    Tabor Jan waited out in the open longer than was safe. He listened to the low wind and surveyed the star-glint on the thorns of rain-wet husker-brambles. Just as this weather would beat the summer’s loose husks from that sea of tangled boughs, so Abascar’s new troubles would purge the remnant’s weaker aspects. Only the most resilient would endure to the next season.
    He knew he would survive. But what of his friendship with the man who knew him best?
    His shadow leapt out ahead of him as a torchbearer came up from behind. “There you are.” It was Brevolo’s voice. She took his wrist and drew it around her hooded stormcloak, leaning into him. They stood watching the wind and rain. “So he didn’t take you with him. Look at it another way. Now you’re in charge.”
    “I’ve never been a superstitious man,” he murmured. “Never glimpsed a ghost. Never heard voices. I think those who claim visions of Northchildren are a little too fond of madweed. I’ve inherited no magical gift, at least none that I’ve noticed.”
    “There are still tricks you haven’t tried,” she laughed, relentless in flirtation.
    “I tried to talk to an animal once—a rabbit. The thing ran away up a dry streambed, drawing about a dozen other long-ears into flight. Like it had warned the rest that there was a madman on the loose.”
    “Let Cal-raven be Cal-raven,” she said. “You have your own path. And frankly, I’m uncomfortable following anybody who bases decisions on dreams. You should counsel him more forcefully. Abascar would do better with a practical leader like you.”
    As a child, Tabor Jan had chopped wood, raised boulder walls, and hunted. His renown had increased because of the bundles of firewood he could carry on his shoulders and because of his willingness to carry them wherever the king’s men commanded. That strength had gained him armor, a horse, and responsibility. His rise after that came from a near-perfect record for hitting his mark with the first arrow shot, even from the back of a charging vawn.
    Like anyone else, Tabor Jan had dreamed of the shadow that lurked in the forest. But he had been troubled by his father’s scorn for the idea, just as he was troubled by Cal-raven’s certainty that it existed and could be trusted like some infallible guide.
    The myths that Scharr ben Fray had poured into every question Cal-raven raised seemed as unlikely as the fables about how the long-ear got his ears and why the vawn must suck for