by Tad Williams
Yis-fidri turned at last. “My wife and I must speak with our people before anything can be decided. This would be a new thing, and could not be done lightly.”
“Of course,” said Eolair. His voice was calm, but Maegwin could hear the suppressed excitement. “Of course, whatever may be best for your people. We will go away now and come back to you in a day or two, or whenever you say. But tell them that it will perhaps save Hern’s folk, whom the dwarrows often helped before. The Hernystiri have never thought anything but good of you.”
Maegwin had another thought. “Are there tunnels near the Hayholt?”
Yis-hadra nodded. “Yes. Asu’a, as we call it, was delved deep as well as built high. Now its bones lie beneath the castle of mortal kings, but the earth underneath that castle is still alive with our diggings.”
“And are those maps here, too?”
“Of course,” the dwarrow replied proudly.
With a satisfied nod, Maegwin turned on the Count of Nad Mullach. “There,” she said. “That is the final answer I sought. A course lies open before us: we would be traitors to our own folk not to take it.” She lapsed into grave silence.
Eolair rose to the bait. “What do you mean, Princess?”
“You must find Josua, Count Eolair,” she said abruptly. She was pleased at the calm authority in her voice. “You heard what Yis-fidri said at the table. This matter of the sword is of utmost importance. I was already thinking that Prince Josua must be informed, in case there is a chance this knowledge can be used to defeat Elias. You and I know that as long as the High King prospers, Skali Sharp-nose will remain at our necks like a knife. Go find Josua and tell him the secret of the sword. That will be the deed that saves our people.”
In truth, Maegwin did not quite remember all the details of the dwarrow’s tale—she had been occupied with her own dire thoughts—but she remembered that it had something to do with Josua and his father’s sword.
Eolair was astonished. “Go to Josua?! What do you say, Lady? We have no idea where he is, or if he even lives. Do you ask me to leave our people in their need to go rabbiting off on such a fool’s mission?”
“You claimed you heard that he was alive,” she responded coldly. “Only a short while ago you were lecturing me on the chance of his survival. Can we afford to assume he is dead?”
It was hard to tell from his practiced expression what he was thinking. Maegwin took a breath before beginning again. “In any case. Count Eolair, you fail to see the full importance of what these folk have told us. Maps of our tunnels are important, yes—but we can now send to Josua maps of Elias’ stronghold, and of the secret entrances that could be the High King’s undoing.” Listening to herself, it did suddenly seem like a good plan. “You know that Skali will never loosen his grip on our land as long as Elias rules at his back in the Hayholt.”
Eolair shook his head. “Too many questions, my lady, too many questions. There is merit in what you say, certainly. Let us think about it. It will take us days to make semblances of all these maps. Surely it will be better if we consider it carefully, if we talk with Criobhan and the other knights.”
Maegwin wanted to set the hook now, while Eolair was hesitating. She feared that more time would mean time for the count to think of another solution, and for her to sink back into her in clarity of purpose. Being near him made her heart heavy as stone. She needed him to go away—she felt it now as a deep longing. She wanted him gone, so the pain and confusion would stop. How was it he could cloud her wits this way?
She made her face cold. “I do not like your resistance, Count. In fact, you seem to be doing precious little here, if you have time to follow me down holes in the ground. You might be better employed on a task that has some chance of saving us from our current situation.” Maegwin smiled, purposefully mocking. She was proud of how well she hid her true feelings, but this cruelty, however necessary, filled her with horror.
What kind of creature am I becoming? she wondered even as she carefully watched Eolair’s reaction. Is this statecraft? She felt a moment of panic. Am I being a fool? No, if is better he goes away—but if this is how kings and queens must see their wills accomplished, Bagba’s Herd, what a terrible thing!
Aloud, she added, “Besides, Count, you are pledged to my father’s house—just in case you had forgotten. If you wish to flaunt the first request Lluth’s daughter has made of you, I cannot prevent you, but the gods will know and judge.” Eolair started to speak. Maegwin lifted a hand to stop him—a very dirty hand, she could not help noticing. “I will not argue with you, Count Eolair. Do as you are told, or do not. That is all.”
Eolair’s eyes narrowed, as though he saw her truly for the first time and did not like what he now saw. His contemptuous expression leaned against her heart like an impossibly heavy stone, but there was no turning back.
The count waited a long time before answering. “Very well, Lady,” he said quietly, “I will do as you command. I do not know where this sudden fancy—fancy! It seems a kind of madness!—has come from. If you had asked my counsel in this thing and treated me as your family’s friend instead of a vassal, I would have heeded your wish happily. Instead you will have my obedience, but there will be little love with it. You thought to act the queen, but instead you have proved yourself only a callow child after all.”
“Be silent,” she said hoarsely.
The dwarrows stared at Eolair and Maegwin curiously, as if they performed a quaint but inscrutable pantomime. The lights of the Pattern Hall dimmed for a moment, and shadows grew monstrously tall among the labyrinthine walls of stone. A moment later the pale light flared once more, illuminating the darker corners, but a certain shadow had taken up residence in Maegwin’s heart and would not be dismissed.
The Eadne Cloud’s crew did not handle Miriamele and Cadrach gently as they routed the pair from the hold, but neither were they especially brutal. The sailors seemed more than a little amused by such an unexpected couple of stowaways. As the captives appeared beneath the lightening sky, the crewmen jeered mockingly, speculating on the vices of monks who took young women as companions, and on the virtue of young women who allowed themselves to be so taken.
Miriamele stared back defiantly, undaunted by their rough manners. Despite the well-known sailor’s custom of going bearded, many of the Cloud’s crew were smooth-cheeked, not yet old enough to grow whiskers. She herself had seen more in a year, she felt sure, than these youths had seen in their whole lives.
Still, it was clear the Eadne Cloud was no plodding merchantman, no carrack bobbing like a washing tub as it carefully hugged the coastline, but a lithe ocean-rider. A child of river-fronted and sea-wrapped Meremund, Miriamele could tell the ship’s quality just by the spritely way the deck rolled beneath her feet and by the sound of the white sails crackling overhead as they drank deeply of the daybreak wind.
An hour earlier, Miriamele had despaired. Now she found herself taking great breaths, her heart rising once more. Even a whipping from the captain would be bearable. She was alive and upon the open sea. The sun was rising into the morning sky, a beacon of continuing hope.
A glance at the standard snapping on the mainmast confirmed that Cadrach had been correct. The Prevan osprey flew there, ocher and black. If only she had found more time to talk to Dinivan, to find out more news of the Nabbanai court and where the Prevan house and others stood.
She turned to whisper a warning to Cadrach about the need for secrecy, but was brought up sharply before a wooden stairway by the sailor at her side, who even in the stiff breeze smelled excessively of salt-pork.
The man on the quarterdeck turned to look down upon them Miriamele, startled, sucked in a sharply audible breath of air. His was not a face she knew, nor did he seem to recognize her. He was, however, very, very handsome. Dressed in black breeches, jacket, and boots, each minutely wrought with gilt piping, with a brilliant cloth-of-gold cape swirling around him and the wind blowing his golden-blond hair, this strange nobleman seeme
d a sun god out of ancient legends.
“Kneel down, you louts,” one of the sailors hissed. Cadrach dropped immediately. Miriamele, nonplussed, complied more slowly. She was unable to take her eyes off the golden man’s face.
“These are they. Lord,” the sailor said. “The ones the Niskie found. As you see, one’s a girl.”
“As I see,” the man replied dryly. “You two remain kneeling,” he directed Miriamele and Cadrach. “You men, go. We need more sail if we are to make Grenamman tonight.”
“Yes, Lord.”
As the sailors moved off hurriedly, the one they called lord turned to finish his conversation with a burly, bearded man that Miriamele guessed was the captain. The nobleman glanced at the prisoners once more before making his leonine way off the quarterdeck Miriamele thought his eyes might have lingered on her longer than curiosity alone would dictate, and felt an unfamiliar tingle run through her—half fear, half excitement—as she turned to watch him go. A pair of manservants scurried after him, trying to keep his wind-whipped cloak from snagging on anything. Then, for a brief instant, the golden-haired man looked back. Catching her eye, he smiled.
The burly captain stared down at Cadrach and Miriamele with poorly hidden disgust. “Earl says he’ll decide what to do with you after his morning meal,” he growled, then spat expertly with the wind. “Women and monks—what could be worse luck, and especially in these times? I’d throw you over if the master didn’t happen to be aboard.”
“Who…who is the master of this ship?” Miriamele asked quietly.
“You don’t recognize the crest, doxy? You didn’t recognize milord when he was standing in front of you? Aspitis Preves, Earl of Drina and Eadne is master of this ship—and you’d better hope he takes a liking to you or you’ll find yourself sleeping in kilpa beds.” He spat more gray citril juice.
Cadrach, already pale, looked ill at the captain’s words, but Miriamele barely heard. She was thinking of Aspitis’ golden hair and bold eyes, and wondering how in the midst of such danger she could suddenly feel so unexpectedly fascinated.
20
A Thousand Steps
“There. Now you have witnessed for yourself.” Binabik gestured at Qantaqa with helpless disgust. The wolf sat on her haunches, ears flattened and hackles raised, her gray pelt starred with snowflakes. “Qinkipa’s Eyes!” the troll swore, “if I could be making her do it, have assurance that I would. She will walk back toward the abbey, but only to stay at my side and no more.” He turned to his mount again. “Qantaqa! Simon mosoq! Ummu!” He shook his head. “She will not.”
“What’s wrong with her?” Sludig kicked at the ground, lifting a cloud of snow into the biting wind. “Every hour we do not find him the trail grows fainter. And if the boy is hurt, every hour leaves him nearer to death.”
“Daughter of the Mountains, Rimmersman,” Binabik shouted, “every hour of every day is leaving all of us nearer to death.” He blinked his reddened eyes. “Of course we have need for haste. Do you think I do not care for Simon? Why have we been at trudging here and there since sunup? If I could exchange Qantaqa’s nose for mine. I would with certainty! But she was badly frightened by the horror at Skodi’s abbey, I am thinking—see! It is only with reluctance she is even following!”
Qantaqa had again balked. As Binabik looked back, she dipped her massive head and whined, barely audible against the rising wind.
Sludig slapped his leather-clad hands on his legs with a wet smack. “Damn me, troll, I know! But we need her nose! We don’t even know where the boy went, or why he won’t answer us. We have been shouting for hours!”
Binabik shook his head morosely. “That is what gives me the most worry. We did not go far before finding his horse—half of a league at the most. We have been twice that distantness now, and most of the way returning, but still no sign of Simon is there to see.”
The Rimmersman squinted into the flurrying snow. “Come. If he’s fallen off, he’d probably make his way back down his own tracks…while they lasted. Let’s drag the wolf a little farther, head back toward the abbey. All the way back this time. Maybe if she actually smells the boy close by, she will do better.” He urged his mount and the trailing pack-horses forward. Binabik grimaced and whistled for Qantaqa. The wolf came reluctantly.
“I am not liking this storm that comes,” the troll called, only a short distance ahead, the Rimmersman had already become a bulky blur. “Not any bit. This is the outrider for the darkness we saw gathering in the north near Stormspike. It is coming down with great swiftness.”
“I know it,” Sludig shouted over his shoulder. “Soon we will have to look to our own safety, whether we find the boy or not.”
Binabik nodded, then thumped his hand sharply against his jacketed chest, once, twice, then a third time. Unless the gods of his people were watching, no one saw his anguished gesture.
The abbey, lately the scene of such wild horror, had become a quiet, snow-draped sepulcher. The mounds of drifting snow obscured most signs of what had become of Skodi and her young charges, but could not hide all. Qantaqa would not approach within an arrow’s flight of the silent walls, Binabik and Sludig themselves only crossed into the abbey’s door-yard long enough to make certain that Simon was not one of the still, white-shrouded forms, then left hurriedly.
When they had put a thousand paces between themselves and the abbey, they stopped and stood silently for a while, sharing long swallows from a bottle of kangkang as they listened to the mournful wind. Qantaqa, obviously happy to be heading away from that dire place once more, sniffed briefly at the air before curling up at Binabik’s feet.
“Holy Aedon, troll,” Sludig said at last, “what manner of witch was that girl Skodi, anyway? I have never seen anything to match it. Was she one of the Storm King’s followers?”
“Only in the way that those like her do what the Storm King wishes, whether they are knowing it or not. She had power, but she was hoping to become a Power—which, I am thinking, is very different. A little Norn Queen with her own little band of followers was what she was wishing to be. Times of war and strife are the arising times of new forces. The old order begins its changing, and those like Skodi appear, seeking to make a mark.”
“I only thank blessed God for wiping out the whole nest of them to the smallest pup.” Sludig shivered and scowled. “No good could have come from any of those witchlets surviving.”
Binabik looked at him curiously. “The innocent can be molded, as those children were, but sometimes luck is granting that they can be molded back. I have little belief in evil beyond redeeming, Sludig.”
“Oh?” The Rimmersman laughed harshly. “What about your Storm King? What good thing could you possibly say about such a black-hearted hellspawn as that?”
“Once he loved his people more than his own life,” Binabik said quietly.
The sun made a surprisingly swift crossing through the murky sky. By the time they halted again, early twilight was approaching. They had twice more covered the distance between the abbey and the spot in the deep woods that they had decided on as the outermost point. All their shouting and beating of bushes had been to no avail. Simon remained unfound, and now darkness and fresh storms were fast approaching.
“Aedon’s Blood,” Sludig said in disgust, then patted Simon’s gray mare. which was roped to the train of pack horses. “At least we did not lose the damnable sword as well.” He waved a hand at Thorn, but did not touch it. Where the black sword was visible through the loose swaddling, snowflakes lit upon its surface and slid away, leaving it free of the white that spattered everything else. “It makes our decision more difficult, though. If the lad and the sword were lost together, we would have no choice but to search.”
Binabik looked up with angry eyes “What ‘decision’ do you speak about?”
“We can’t very well abandon everything for the stripling, troll. I’m fond of him, the good Lord knows, but we have our duty to Prince Josua. You and the other book-readers keep sayi
ng that Josua needs this blade or we are all doomed. Should we ignore that to hunt for a lost boy? Then we would be more foolish than the boy was for getting lost in the first place.”
“Simon is not foolish.” Binabik buried his face in the ruff of Qantaqa’s neck for a long moment. “And I am tired of being an oath-breaker. I swore for his protection.” The troll’s voice was muffled by the wolfs pelt, but the straining edge was unmistakable.
“We are forced to difficult choices, troll.”
Binabik looked up. His usually mild brown gaze had turned flinty. “Do not be speaking to me of choices. Do not go teaching me about difficulty. Take the sword. On my master’s grave I swore to protect Simon. To me, nothing else has more importance.”
“Then you are the most foolish of all,” Sludig growled. “We are down to two left while the world freezes around us. Would you send me alone with the sword that could save your people and mine? All so you need no be an oath-breaker to a dead master?”
Binabik straightened. His eyes brimmed with angry tears. “Do not dare speak to me of my oath,” he hissed. “I am taking no advice from a witless Croohok!”
Sludig raised a gloved fist as though to strike at the little man. The Rimmersman stared at his own trembling hand, then turned and stalked out of the clearing. Binabik did not look up to see him ago, but instead returned to stroking Qantaqa’s shaggy back. A tear ran down his cheek and vanished into the fur of his hood.
Minutes passed without even a bird’s cry.
“Troll?” Sludig stood at the edge of the glade, just beyond the horses. Binabik still would not look up. “Listen, man,” Sludig continued, “you must listen to me.” The Rimmersman still hung back, like an unexpected guest waiting to be invited indoors. “Once, soon after we first met, I told you that you knew nothing of honor. I wished to go and kill Storfot, Thane of Vestvennby, for his insults to Duke Isgrimnur. You said I should not go. You said that my lord Isgrimnur had given me a task to perform, and that putting that task’s fulfillment in jeopardy was neither brave nor honorable, but foolish.”