by Tad Williams
“I don’t care a fig about cost,” said Simon. “But your idea isn’t a bad one.”
The discussion that followed stretched through the best part of another hour, but the king grew less and less interested in what even his closest advisors had to say. He could see now what common sense decreed, and delaying it any farther would serve no purpose.
“Enough,” he finally said, then waited for the table to fall silent. “Here is what we will do. We will send a force of Erkynguards and other mustered soldiers to the River Laestfinger on the eastern border. Duke Osric and Captain Zakiel will recommend the size of the force to me. Osric will lead them.” He paused a moment while Osric made the Sign of the Tree and blessed Simon in a loud whisper. “The duke and our forces will camp on the Erkynlandish side of the river and demand a parley with that Redbeard fellow or whoever it is who speaks for the Thrithings-folk these days. And as Pasevalles suggests, Astrian and his friend will cross the river in secret and make their way into the grasslands, with the idea of finding out as much as they can about the prince’s whereabouts.” He paused and fixed first Pasevalles and then Osric with his hardest, most steadfast gaze. “While Prince Morgan is a prisoner, nothing will be done about beginning any sort of fight with the Thrithings-men without my approval—even if you must write to me first and wait for my reply. Is that clear, Your Grace?”
Duke Osric nodded vigorously. “Of course, Your Majesty, and I thank you for your confidence in me. I will do nothing more than you order. I would not risk our grandson’s life, never fear.”
“I will say that precisely to Astrian and Olveris, my king,” Pasevalles agreed. “Your words alone will guide them.”
“Good.” For the first time in days Simon was not exhausted, did not simply want his responsibilities to end. Horrible as it was, Morgan’s capture at least presented him with important decisions to make and a course of action. “Come back to me by this time tomorrow with your recommendation on how many men we can send, Osric—and you too, Captain Zakiel. His Grace will need your help with the muster rolls.” He paused at a new thought. “And somehow we must find the gold for this as well. Pasevalles, you must help Osric and Zakiel to assemble the money to do what must be done. It may mean more taxes.” He looked around. “Are you all willing to shoulder that burden?”
There was a moment of silence as the nobles contemplated paying higher taxes.
“You have only to ask us, King Simon,” said Countess Rhona suddenly, “and we stand ready. We want only to bring the prince back safely, and to protect the High Ward.”
“The Hernystirwoman says what we all believe,” said Earl Rowson, trying as he usually did to drag himself back into the center of proceedings.
“I am glad to hear that,” Simon said, doing his best to let go of the anger he now seemed to feel toward almost everyone. Surely it was Miri’s absence that made the world feel so out of joint.
But our Lord of Angels, he prayed, please let me have Morgan here alive and well to greet her when she returns! Please, Elysia Mother of God, show mercy on a poor sinner like me and bring our grandson back safely! I’ll build you another cathedral, or feed the hungry . . . or both! Just show me a sign.
Simon stood to show that the council was ended. Several of those gathered around the Pellarine Table looked worried, Tiamak more than any of them, but Simon could not afford to doubt the choices he had made. Something had to be done, and it was almost impossible to imagine denying Osric a leading role. But if the duke could be managed carefully and kept on a short leash, he would do well. Simon knew he had made the sensible choice—the kingly choice.
But he avoided Tiamak’s company as he left the Throne Hall.
* * *
“You’re supposed to come back now,” said Aedonita. “Nurse Loes said so.”
“I don’t have to,” Lillia told her. Aedonita was her favorite friend, but sometimes she acted as though she was the real princess.
“You do! She said you were supposed to come right away. She said you didn’t eat any of your porridge.”
“I happen to be thinking about my mother,” said Lillia. “She died, you know. Right up there.”
Aedonita looked up the stairwell in dawning horror, then vigorously made the Sign of the Tree. “You shouldn’t be here, Lillia! Lady Rhona said you weren’t supposed to come near the stairs.”
Lillia rolled her eyes. “I have to go on these stairs every single day, silly. Don’t be stupid. And Lady Rhona isn’t even around today. She’s been with my grandfather all morning.”
“But I’ll get into trouble!” Aedonita was unable to keep the whine of fear out of her voice. “The nurse told me to bring you back.”
“I’ll come when I’m ready,” said Lillia. “Tell her I’m praying for my mother’s soul. Go on. You won’t get in trouble if you tell her I’m praying.”
Aedonita clearly wasn’t as confident about that as Lillia was, but she turned and trudged back down the stairs toward the residence’s main hall where the children were imprisoned.
All but me, thought Lillia. I’m not going to go running just because Nurse calls.
She had not been lying to her friend—not entirely. She really was here on the stairway because it was the place her mother had died, or so everyone told her. The spot fascinated her, in part because of the strong feelings she had whenever she came near it or thought about what had happened to her mother. It made her sad and scared, but she wanted to think about it, too—like an itch inside her head that she had to scratch. Sometimes she had been so mad at her mother that she’d wished Idela would go away somewhere, but then she did. Had it happened because Lillia had wished it?
But I also wished for her to be nice to me, and to give me a ruby necklace. Those things didn’t happen.
It was all very confusing and frustrating.
* * *
• • •
Lillia went back into her own bedchamber on the third floor to look for her lady doll. It looked a little like her mother, although the hair was the wrong color; she wanted to make it slip on the stairs and fall like her mother had, even though she knew stupid old Loes and even Auntie Rhoner would say it was a wicked thing to do. But as she was leaving the room Lillia heard footsteps on the stairs, so she stopped and peered out between the door and the frame, worried that the nurse might have come to fetch her. It was only Lord Pasevalles though. He was coming up quietly, like he didn’t want anyone to hear him, so she stayed behind the door and watched as he climbed past the floor with the royal chambers and up the steps toward the top floor where all the empty rooms were.
Lillia knew Nurse Loes wouldn’t dare scold her if she was with Lord Pasevalles, so she left the doll behind and wandered out into the third floor hall to meet him when he came back down. Maybe if she asked him he would tell her more about what happened to her mother, because none of the women who took care of her ever would. It soon became clear, though, that Pasevalles was not coming right back down, so she decided to go to the top floor and find him.
Lillia went up the steps lightly, not because she was trying to be quiet but because she was thinking about her mother slipping and wondering where exactly it had happened. She was still frowning and thinking about what it might feel like to fall down such steep stairs when her head rose above the fourth floor landing, and she saw something that made her stop where she was. Lord Pasevalles was kneeling in front of an open door at the far end of the passage, holding a candle very close to the ground as he stared at the floor of the room.
Lillia thought he must have dropped something, but seeing him there made her uneasy, though she could not have said why. It just seemed . . . private. She backed down a couple of steps and leaned against the wall, suddenly breathless.
Then she heard a grunt from the corridor above; she thought it must be Pasevalles getting to his feet again. She didn’t want him to think she was spying on him—althoug
h perhaps she had been, just a little—so she turned and hurried back down the stairs as quietly as she could, then down the next set as well before moving to the edge of the second floor landing. She could see several of the children gathered in the hall below her. Aedonita was trying to organize a game there, without success; Lillia thought that she could do it better. She almost forgot about the stairs and Pasevalles when a hand came down on her shoulder, making her jump a little and squeak.
“You scared me!”
Lord Pasevalles smiled. “I beg your pardon, Princess Lillia. I was just upstairs looking for the Mistress of Chambermaids. Was that you I heard on the steps?”
“No.” She wasn’t certain why she told the lie. She was the princess of the whole castle—why shouldn’t she be on the stairs if she wanted to be?
“Ah.” Pasevalles nodded. “I thought perhaps you were pretending that I was an evil ogre or a robber king—that you were spying on me to find out the truth of my terrible deeds.” He said it in a light, teasing voice, but something still seemed wrong to her.
“Don’t be silly,” she said. “I’m just watching the other children down in the hall. I don’t want to play the game they’re playing.”
“Have you been up here long?”
He definitely seemed suspicious of her, and now Lillia began to wonder what he had been doing on the top floor of the residence, if it might be something to do with her mother’s death. Maybe Lord Pasevalles was trying to find out how her mother had fallen down the stairs, but he didn’t want her to know that. “No, I just came up here,” she told him.
Pasevalles was still playing the spying game, or pretending to. “Well, if I really were a bandit king like Flann, or a huge, frightening ogre,” he said slowly, “do you know what I’d do to any spy I caught?”
“What?”
“Oh, something very, very bad.” He leaned down so his face was close to hers. “But you don’t need to know what that might be, do you? Because you’re a good girl and not a spy. Isn’t that right, Princess?”
He smiled again and bowed. Then, without waiting for an answer, he turned and climbed down the stairs to the main hall.
He has a secret, she thought, and felt a flutter of excitement, along with a pinch of worry that she always got when she knew others wouldn’t approve of what she was thinking. And I want to know what it is. Because nobody should be allowed to keep secrets from the only princess of the whole castle.
19
Footsteps
After so much time lost in Aldheorte, Morgan was beginning to understand why the Sithi called their forest settlements “little boats” and the city they had abandoned, “The Boat on the Ocean of Trees.” The great forest really was a sort of ocean.
He stood in the upper branches of a great ash, its crown looming over the other treetops like a church steeple above a village, its great trunk creaking in the wind. Morgan felt as if he were on the edge of some great understanding. Most of the forest seemed to lie beneath him, but only its surface, an endless seascape in a hundred different greens, with here and there the early gold of late summer leaves starting to turn.
From the ground the upper reaches of the forest were as unknowable as what lay beneath the waters of any ocean. And from above, where he now stood, the earth and all its byways were just as hidden, just as secret.
Passing winds ruffled the treetops below him like a hand stroking a cat’s fur.
All my life I’ve looked at the outsides of things and thought I saw them whole. All my life I’ve seen forests and never wondered about the things that happen in them every moment—every creature with its own life, no matter how small, every tree and plant trying to find the sun.
So many new ideas filled his head but he had no one to tell them to. How would anyone who lived alone ever know if they were mad? Again Morgan thought he might be losing his wits—how else could he hear the words of a dying Sitha in his dreams? Other times he wondered whether this was how his grandfather and grandmother had felt during the Storm King’s War, as if important things were happening but people themselves were too small to understand those things.
He had hoped that climbing this tall, gray-barked ash would at least give him some idea of where the edge of the woods might be, but even from up here, nothing met his eye but the endless canopy of treetops, reaching out so far it seemed they must extend to the end of the world.
Morgan knew the ancient wood could not stretch on forever, but at the moment that was very hard to believe otherwise. For him, the forest had become everything.
* * *
• • •
Days went by, each the same but for the small particularities of life with ReeRee’s troop. The Chikri might not be people, might not cure the ache of loneliness that had become Morgan’s constant companion, but they were lively and individual in their way.
ReeRee’s front leg had entirely healed now. She scampered up and down trunks and from limb to limb beside the other young Chikri with an energy that exhausted Morgan just to watch. He was beginning to recognize some of her most frequent playmates, and he was certain now that the adult he had named Stripe must be ReeRee’s mother. Stripe was the busiest Chikri, as far as he could tell, stuffing her cheeks with tidbits of food until they bulged, then sharing with ReeRee and some of the other young ones. Stripe had at first regarded Morgan with extreme distrust, and would chik warnings at ReeRee every time she approached him, but the little Chikri would not be dissuaded, and at last Stripe grudgingly accepted him, going so far as to drop nuts or other treats in front of him from time to time, as though he were just another young one who could not be trusted to feed himself properly.
The males of the troop ranged far above and beyond the rest, taking picket duty, alerting the others with loud, rasping chirps and squeals when danger appeared on the horizon. Lynxes seemed to be the greatest threats to ReeRee’s kin, although the tuft-eared cats were slow climbers compared to the Chikri. But on the ground they were just as fast and much larger than their prey. Morgan and the rest of the troop had watched in dismay once as a lynx cornered and then killed one of the young members of the troop. The other Chikri had screeched and thrown down nut husks and sticks, but the cat had only ducked its head between its shoulders until it was close enough to spring. It landed with one paw on its prey’s back, crushed the little Chikri’s neck between its jaws in an instant, then carried the limp body off into the underbrush, as unconcerned as a tax collector he had seen one time, from the window of his grandfather’s carriage, carrying off a poor family’s goods.
It was only afterward that Morgan realized that he was not a Chikri, that he was many times larger than the cat and was carrying a sword as well. He had probably been too far away to help in any case, but the knowledge that he had watched and done nothing filled him with shame long afterward.
Morgan had moved his scabbard onto his back so it would not interfere with climbing. The belt, now a makeshift harness, chafed uncomfortably, but he was still unwilling to give up his father’s sword. It felt like one of the few things that tethered him to his old life, as if without it he might become a tree-creature in fact as well as by current circumstance.
Bored, frustrated, and hungry for something beside nuts and leaves, Morgan went out of his way from time to time to climb down out of the trees and catch a rabbit, then, like a human being, make a fire to cook and eat it while the Chikri watched him from the branches. The death and consumption of a creature not hugely different from themselves did not seem to alarm them as much as he would have guessed: the troop watched with wide, curious eyes and sniffed the rising smoke, as though this were only another strange thing the giant Chikri did, like standing up on a branch to piss or tying himself to a tree trunk before he slept. But it was important to Morgan. He was still a man. He might be lost, friendless except for a few forest creatures, hardly a prince at all—but he was not an animal yet.
* * *
• • •
He was sitting on one of the lower branches, a little more than twice his own height from the ground which, after many long days in the trees and more time on the branches than on the ground, felt like almost no height at all. Nearby, Stripe was grooming a recalcitrant young Chikri, giving it so much “elbow,” as his grandfather liked to say, that Morgan almost feared she’d scrub the poor little thing’s whiskers off. ReeRee crouched on the ground below him eating a mushroom she had found growing on a log, her small, nimble hands turning the white wheel of the cap from one side to the other as she bit pieces from it. Morgan was hungry, as usual, but he had learned the hard way that he could not eat everything the Chikri could. The last bits of mushroom he had tried, an offering from Stripe, had made him so sick he had spent the rest of the evening vomiting down into the bushes below, even though he had only nibbled at a very small piece.
One of the male Chikri stood on a branch high above, leaning out into the wind like a sailor atop a mast. The sun had all but disappeared behind the trees off in what Morgan would have called the west in the old world of certainties; the little creature’s reddish fur caught the light, glinting like a living flame. The troop had fed well that day while covering a great deal of ground on their mysterious, seemingly northward pilgrimage across the forest, and soon it would be time to sleep. Morgan felt a strange contentment, but a moment later he realized that he did not want that feeling, that even a moment’s simple happiness filled him with unease.
I’m turning into one of them.
He looked down at ReeRee, reminding himself that if he was ever going to be a person again he would have to leave her and her troop behind. As he did, a movement along the ground caught his eye. He stared, unable at first to make out what had caught his attention. He was about to look away when he saw it again, an odd linear flickering along the edge of the log where ReeRee sat.