by Tad Williams
He thinks I’m saying too much, Miriamele decided. She felt a flash of anger. But who is he to make faces? He got us into this trap; now, thanks to me instead of us going over the side as kilpafood, we’re at the master’s table drinking wine and eating good Lakeland cheese.
“But I am still astonished by your ill fortune, Lady,” Aspitis said. “I had heard that these Fire Dancers were a problem in the provinces, and I have seen a few heretical madmen preaching the Fire Dancer creed in Nabban’s public places—but the idea that they would actually dare to lay hands on a noblewoman!”
“An Erkynlandish noblewoman, a very unimportant one,” Miriamele said hastily, worried she might have gone too far in her improvisation. “And I was dressed to travel to my new convent home. They had no idea of my position.”
“That is immaterial.” Aspitis waved his hand airily, almost knocking over the candle on the tabletop with his trailing sleeve. He had shed the finery he wore on the quarterdeck, choosing instead a long, simple robe like those worn by knights during their vigil. But for a delicate gold Tree on a chain about his neck, his only adornment was the insignia of the Prevan House woven on each sleeve; the osprey wings wrapped his forearms like climbing flames. Miriamele was favorable impressed that a wealthy young man like Aspitis would greet guests in such modest attire. “Immaterial,” he repeated. “These people are heretics and worse. Besides, a noblewoman from Erkynland is no different than one of Nabban’s own Fifty Families. Noble blood is the same throughout Osten Ard, and like a spring of sweet water in an arid wilderness, must be protected at all costs.” He leaned forward and gently touched her arm through her sleeve. “Had I been there, Lady Marya, I would have given my life before letting one of them mishandle you.” He leaned back and patted the hilt of his scabbarded sword, studiedly casual. “But if I had been forced to make that ultimate sacrifice, I would have insisted that a few of them accompany me.”
“Oh,” said Miriamele. “Oh.” She took a deep breath, a little over-whelmed. “But really, Earl Aspitis, there is no need to worry. We escaped quite safely—it’s just that we had to flee to your boat and hide. It was dark, you see, and Father Cadrach…”
“Brother,” the monk said sourly from across the table. He took a draught of wine.
“…Brother Cadrach said that this would be the safest place. So we hid ourselves in the cargo hold. We are sorry for the imposition, Earl, and we thank you for your kindness. If you will only put us ashore at the next port…”
“Leave you out among the islands somewhere? Nonsense.” Aspitis leaned forward, fixing her with his brown eyes. He had a dangerous smile, Miriamele realized, but it did not frighten her as much as she knew it should. “You will ride out the voyage with us, then we may put you safe back in Nabban where you belong. It will be little more than a fortnight, Lady. We will treat you well—both you and your guardian.” He briefly turned his smile on Cadrach, who did not seem to share Aspitis’ good humor. “I think I even have some clothes on board that will fit you, Lady. They should suit your beauty better than your…traveling clothes.”
“How nice!” Miriamele said, then remembered her imposture. “If it meets with Brother Cadrach’s approval.”
“You have women’s clothes on board?” Cadrach asked, eyebrow raised.
“Left by my sister.” Aspitis’ smile was untroubled.
“Your sister.” He grunted. “Yes. Well, I shall have to think on it.”
Miriamele started to raise her voice to the monk, then remembered her situation. She strove to look obedient, but silently cursed him. Why shouldn’t she be allowed to wear nice clothes for a change?
As the earl began to talk animatedly of his family’s great keep beside Lake Eadne—ironically, a freehold that Miriamele had visited when a very young child, although she did not now remember it—there was a rap at the door. One of Aspitis’ pages went to answer it.
“I come to speak with the ship’s lord,” a breathy voice said.
“Come in, my friend,” Aspitis said. “You have all met, of course. Gan Itai, you were the one who found Lady Marya and her guardian, yes?”
“That is true, Earl Aspitis,” the Niskie nodded. Her black eyes twinkled as they reflected the lamplight.
“If you would be so good as to come back in a while,” Aspitis said to the sea watcher, “then we will talk.”
“No, please. Earl Aspitis.” Miriamele stood. “You’ve been very kind, but we should not keep you any longer. Come, Brother Cadrach.”
“Keep me?” Aspitis put a hand to his breast. “Should I complain at being the victim of such lovely company? Lady Marya, you must think me a dullard indeed.” He bowed and took her hand, holding it for a lingering moment against his lips. “I hope you do not think me too forward, sweet lady.” He snapped his fingers for a page. “Young Thures will show you to your beds. I have put the captain out of his cabin. You will sleep there.”
“Oh, but we couldn’t take the captain’s…”
“He spoke out of turn and did not show you proper respect, Lady Marya. He is lucky I do not hang him—but I am willing to forgive. He is a simple man, not used to women on his ships. A few nights sleeping at general quarters with his crew will do him no harm.” He dragged fingers through his curly hair, then waved his hand. “Go on, Thures, lead them.”
He bowed to Miriamele again, then smiled politely at Cadrach. This time Cadrach returned the smile, but it seemed little more than a baring of teeth. The little page, lantern held carefully before him, led his charges out the door.
Aspitis stood silent a while in thought, then found the wine ewer and poured himself another gobletful, which he drank off in a long swallow. At last he spoke.
“So, Gan Itai, it is unusual for you to come here—and it is even more unusual for you to leave the bow at night. Are the waters so untroubled that your song is not needed?”
The Niskie shook her head slowly. “No, Ship’s Master. The waters are very troubled, but for this moment they are safe, and I wished to come and tell you that I am disturbed.”
“Disturbed? By the girl? Surely Niskies are not superstitious like sailors.”
“Not like sailors, no.” She pulled her hood forward, hiding all but her bright eyes. “The girl and the monk, even if they are not what they say, are the least of my worries There is a great storm coming down from the north.”
Aspitis looked up at Gan Itai. “You left the bow to tell me that?” he asked mockingly. “I have known that since before we set sail. The captain says we will be out of deep waters before the storm reaches us.”
“That may be, but there are great shoals of kilpa moving in from the northern seas, as if they are swimming before the storm. Their song is fierce and cold, Earl Aspitis; they seem to come up from the blackest water, from the deepest trenches. I have never heard the like.”
Aspitis stared for a moment, his whole aspect slightly out of kilter, as though the wine had finally begun to effect him. “Eadne Cloud has many important tasks to perform for Duke Benigaris,” he said. “You must do what it is your life’s work to do.” He lowered his head into the palms of his hands. “I am tired, Gan Itai. Go back to the bow. I need to sleep.”
The Niskie watched him for a moment, full of imponderable gravity, then bowed gracefully and backed out of the door, letting it fall shut behind her with a quiet thump. Earl Aspitis leaned forward across the table, pillowing his head on his forearms in the circle of lamplight.
“It is good to be around a nobleman once more,” Miriamele said. “They are full of themselves, yes, but they do understand how to show a woman respect.”
Cadrach snorted from his pallet on the floor. “I find it hard to believe you could see any value in that ringleted fop, Princess.”
“Hush!” Miriamele hissed. “Idiot! Don’t speak so loudly! And don’t call me that. I am Lady Marya, remember.”
The monk made another noise of disgust. “A noblewoman chased by Fire Dancers. That was a pretty tale to spin.”
&nbs
p; “It worked, didn’t it?”
“Yes, and now we must spend our time with Earl Aspitis, who will ask question after question. If you had only said you were a poor tailor’s daughter who had hidden in fear for her virtue, or some such, the earl would leave us alone and put us off at the first island where they take on water and provisions.”
“And make us work like dogs until then—if he didn’t just throw us into the sea. I, for one, am growing tired of this disguise. It is bad enough I have been an acolyte monk all this time, now should I be a tailor’s daughter as well?”
Although she could not see him in the darkened cabin, Miriamele knew by the sound of his voice that Cadrach was shaking his heavy head in disagreement. “No. no, no. Do you understand nothing, Lady? We are not choosing parts like a children’s game, we are struggling to stay alive. Dinivan, the man who brought us here, has been killed. Do you under-stand? Your father and your uncle are at war. The war is spreading. They have killed the lector, the Ransomer’s chief priest on the face of Osten Ard, and they will stop at nothing. Lady! It is no game!”
Miriamele choked back an angry reply, thinking instead about what Cadrach had said. “Then why didn’t Earl Aspitis say anything about the lector? Surely it’s the kind of thing people would talk about. Or did you make that up as well?”
“Lady, Ranessin was only killed late last night. We left early in the morning.” The monk struggled to keep his patience. “The Sancellan Aedonitis and the Escritonal Council may not announce what has happened for a day or two. Please, believe what I say is true, or we will both come to a terrible end.”
“Hmmph.” Miriamele lay back, pulling the blanket up to her chin. The feeling of the boat rocking was quite soothing. “It seems that if it weren’t for my inventiveness and the earl’s good manners, we might have come to a terrible end already.”
“Think what you like, Lady,” Cadrach said heavily, “but do not, I beg you, extend your trust to others any farther than you have with me.”
He fell silent. Miriamele waited for sleep. An odd, hauntingly alien melody floated on the air, timeless and arrhythmic as the roar of the sea, persistent as the rising and falling wind. Somewhere in the darkness outside, Gan Itai was singing the kilpa down.
Eolair rode down out of the heights of the Grianspog Mountains in the midst of the summer’s worst snowstorm. The secret trails that he and his men had so laboriously cut through the forest only weeks before were now buried beneath three cubits of drifting white. The dismal skies hung oppressively close, like the ceiling of a tomb. His saddlebags were crammed with carefully-drawn maps, his head with brooding thoughts.
Eolair knew there was no use pretending that the land was suffering only a long bout of freakish weather. A grievous sickness was spreading over Osten Ard. Perhaps Josua and his father’s sword truly were tied up in something vaster than the wars of men.
The Count of Nad Mullach was suddenly reminded of his own words, uttered over the King’s Great Table a year before—Gods of earth and sky, he thought, but didn’t it seem a lifetime since those relatively peaceful days! “Evil is abroad…” he had told the assembled knights that day. “It is not only bandits who prey on travelers and cause the disappearance of isolated farmers. The people of the North are afraid…”
Not only bandits…Eolair shook his head, disgusted with himself. He had been so caught up in the day-to-day matters of his people’s struggle to survive that he had failed to heed his own warning. There were indeed greater menaces to fear than Skali of Kaldskryke and his cutthroat army.
Eolair had heard stories told by survivors of the fall of Naglimund, the bewildered accounts of a ghostly army raised by Elias the High King. From the days of his childhood Eolair had heard tales of the White Foxes, demons who lived in the blackest, coldest lands of the uttermost north, who appeared like a plague, then vanished again. All during this last year the Frostmarch dwellers had whispered over their night-fires of just such pale demons. How foolish that Eolair of all people should not have realized the truth behind these tales—had he not spoken of just that at the Great Table!?
But what could it all mean? If they were truly involved, why should creatures like these White Foxes side with Elias? Could it have something to do with that monstrous priest Pryrates?
The Count of Nad Mullach sighed, then leaned far to the side to help his horse balance as they made their way down a treacherous hill path. Perhaps for all her foolishness, Maegwin had been right to set this task for him. But still, that was no justification for the way in which she had done it. Why should she treat him as she did in the underground city, after all he had done for her family and the faithful service he had given her father King Lluth? The terror and strangeness of their situation might be the reason for such unkindness, but it was no excuse.
Such thoughtlessness was yet another odd change in Maegwin’s demeanor, the latest of many. He feared for her deeply, but could think of no way to help. She despised his solicitousness, and seemed to think he was little more than a sly courtier—Eolair, who hated falsity, yet had been driven to master it in the loyal service of her father! When he tried to help, she insulted him and turned her back: he could only watch her sickening as the land around him had sickened, her mind filling with strange fancies. He could do nothing.
Eolair was two days making his way down through the silent valleys of the Grianspog, with only his own cold thoughts for company.
It was astonishing to see how quickly Skali was making his occupation of Hernystir permanent. Not content with taking over those houses and buildings still standing in Hernysadharc and the surrounding villages, the Thane of Kaldskryke had begun to construct new ones, great longhouses of rough-hewn timbers. The Circoille Forest fringe was shrinking rapidly, replaced by a growing expanse of mutilated tree stumps.
Eolair made his way along the ridgetops, watching the antlike figures swarming over the flatlands below. The clatter of hammer on wedge rang through the snowy hills.
He could not at first understand why Skali should need to build more dwelling places: the conqueror’s army, while of good size, was hardly so vast that it could not harbor itself in the Hernystiri’s abandoned dwellings. It was only when Eolair looked away to the lowering northern skies that he realized what was happening.
All Skali’s Rimmersfolk must be coming here from the North—old and young, women and children. He stared down at the tiny, industrious shapes. If it’s snowing in Hernysadharc in late Tiyagar-month, it must be a frozen hell up by Naarved and Skoggey. Bagba bite me, what a thought! Skali has chased us into the caves. Now he will move his Rimmersgarders onto our captured lands.
Despite all that his folk had already suffered at the hands of Skali Sharp-nose’s warriors, despite King Lluth struck down, Prince Gwythinn tortured and dismembered, and hundreds of Eolair’s own brave Mullachi dead beneath the gray skies of the western meadows, the count found suddenly and to his surprise that he contained depths of anger and raw hatred yet unplumbed. Skali’s men strutting in the roads of Hernysadharc was bad enough, but the thought of them bringing their women and families to live on Hernystiri land filled Eolair with an unchanneled rage stronger than he had felt since the first Hernystirmen had fallen at the Inniscrich. Helpless on the ridgetop, he cursed the invaders and promised himself that he would see Skali’s jackals whipped howling back to Kaldskryke—those who did not die on the precious Hernystiri soil that they had usurped.
Suddenly, the Count of Nad Mullach longed for the purity of battle. The Hernystiri forces had been so savaged at Inniscrich that they had been unable to fight anything but rearguard actions since. Now they had been driven into hiding in the Grianspog and there was little they could do but harrass the victors. Gods, he thought, but it would be fine to swing steel in the open once more, to line up breast to breast with shields flashing sunlight and sound the charge! The count knew it was a foolish craving, knew himself for a careful man who always preferred talking sensibly to fighting, but just now he craved simpli
city. Open warfare, for all its witless violence and horror, could seem a sort of beautiful idiocy into which one could throw oneself as into the arms of a lover. Now the call of that compelling but dangerous lover was growing stronger. Whole nations seemingly on the march, topsy-turvy weather, mad men ruling and dire legends come to life—how he suddenly longed for simple things!
But even as he yearned for unthinking release, Eolair knew that he would hate its coming to be: the fruits of violence did not necessarily go to the just or the wise.
Eolair skirted Hernysadharc’s westernmost outposts and circled far around the largest encampments of Skali’s Rimmersmen, who had spread across the meadowlands beneath Hernystir’s capital. He rode instead through the hilly country called the Dillathi, which stood like a bulwark along Hernystir’s coast as if to prevent invasion by sea. Indeed, the Dillathi would have presented a nearly impossible problem for any would-be conqueror, but the invasion which had undone Hernystir had come from the opposite direction.
The highland folk were a suspicious lot, but they had grown used to war-fugitives in the past year, so Eolair was able to find welcome in a few houses. Those who took him in were far more interested in his news than the fact that their guest was the Count of Nad Mullach. These were days when gossip was the most valued coin in the country.
So far from the cities, no one had known much of Prince Josua in the first place, let alone how his struggle with the High King might be somehow connected to Hernystir’s plight. No one in the Dillathi country had the slightest idea of whether King Elias’ brother Josua was alive or dead, let alone where he might be. But the highlanders had heard of their own King Lluth’s mortal wounding from the tales of wanderering soldiers, survivors of the fighting at the Inniscrich. Thus, Eolair’s hosts were usually heartened to discover from him that Lluth’s daughter still lived, and that a Hernystiri court-in-exile of sorts still existed. Before the war they had thought little of what the king in the Taig said or did, but he had been part of their lives nonetheless. Eolair guessed they found it reassuring that at least a shadow of the old kingdom remained, as though the continued existence of Lluth’s family somehow assured that the Rimmersmen would eventually be forced out.