A Conspiracy of Truths

by Alexandra Rowland

  So I stirred a little bit and whispered. Ylfing gasped and stroked the hair out of my face, wiped his tears off my skin. “Chant, Chant, are you all right? Can you speak?”

  “The woman,” I rasped. “The woman of dark robes and dark skin. She must be sent away.”

  “What?” Ylfing said. “Consanza?”

  “She will secure your glory, O Queen,” I whispered, faintly now. “You may win the battles, but to ensure your realm’s prosperity . . .” Another feeble, whistling, shuddering breath. “Send her to the south. Send her to carry your words. She is destined to serve you, O Queen.”

  “What is he saying?” Taishineya Tarmos demanded.

  “Ambassador . . . ,” I said. “To . . . the land of endless forest.”

  “Echaree! You have to send Consanza to Echaree as the Nuryeven ambassador,” Ylfing said, voice shaking. “To secure the prosperity of your realm.”

  “Lose two battles, hide my army in a ravine . . . and send that woman away as ambassador. And this will be the key to winning?”

  “That’s what he said.” Ylfing sniffled and started pulling the befouled blankets off me. Strong boy, he didn’t even flinch or gag in the slightest. No sign whatsoever of distaste, just swift businesslike movements.

  Taishineya Tarmos, on the other hand, clapped her hand over her mouth and almost threw up. “Disgusting!”

  “Like I’m going to let him lie in his own filth!” Ylfing snapped. “His heart may be beating still, his lungs may be working, but he is dead. Because of you.”

  Hush, Ylfing, I thought. Hush. Not the time. But then, when have I ever taken the time to curb myself from running my mouth? And nothing bad had ever come to me—I’d lived this many decades, and I probably have at least a couple left in me. It’s a system that hasn’t done me too much harm. I mean, they only nearly executed me for witchcraft, espionage, and brazen impertinence.

  I would not be roused, or so they thought, so Ylfing stripped me bare, and Taishineya Tarmos threw some towels at him, carefully not looking lest she choke again. Ylfing wrapped me up tenderly and called for some of the servants to help carry me up to my cell so that Taishineya’s floor could be scrubbed and she could have her room back.

  I think she must have left; I don’t think she could stomach setting foot in that room again.

  Ylfing had a brazier brought to my cell, and it was piled high with sticks and twigs until the room was toasty warm, and he bathed me carefully—he truly is a jewel amongst apprentices. My heart was moved, I tell you. I knew he was going to be angry at me later, but what could I do? He’s not a good actor; he’s far too honest. He would have given the whole game away. He wouldn’t have cried over me, if he’d known.

  He kept crying, actually, as he wiped me down with warm water and dressed me in a new long tunic and smallclothes. “I guess it’s good I have practice,” he murmured to me at one point, and I nearly jumped out of my skin—thought he’d seen through my act, but no. It was something else: “When I was very young, my grandmother . . . Well, she lost her wits too, after she took sick one summer. Couldn’t move or feed herself, couldn’t clean herself. Couldn’t speak, and her face went droopy on one side. We all took turns with her. I hated it then. Hated it. Not—not because it was disgusting, but because she had been so wonderful before she went sick. She used to be soft and clean-smelling, like hay and meadow flowers in the springtime, and her hands were always warm, even in winter. I used to go play out in the cold and the snow, and then I’d run into her house, and she’d lay her hands on my cheeks when they were wind-chapped, and it was just like the sunshine on my face. I hated it because I lost her even though she was sitting right there. I hate this, too,” he whispered. That same tone of guilt and abegnation as when he’d confessed about being homesick. “I know it’s stupid, but I hope you’ll get better, and I also hope that if you don’t get better, you’ll die quickly. I wish you’d told me more of what to do. How to be a Chant. I wish you’d told me whether . . .” He sniffled. “Whether you’d want to suffer or not, trapped in your mind.” He tried to look into my eyes then. It was rather difficult to make them go unfocused, so I added some drool. Poor boy. I put him through a lot.

  Only a few days, I thought at him. Only until we cross the border and we’re safely away.

  He bundled me into my cot, and he sat on the floor next to it, stroking my hair and leaning his head on the mattress next to me. He sang a few Hrefni songs—lullabies, they must have been, and he told me a sweet, familiar story that I’d heard a hundred times before.

  THE FIFTEENTH TALE:

  How the Jarlsmoot Came to Be

  You know, a long time ago when there were still stonemen living up in the mountains, there was a fog-spirit who got into all sorts of mischief. He was little all over, with little hands and a little face, and little, little feet. And he lived in a little burrow in the side of the mountain with a view of the land tumbling down to the fjord and the big, big sea. He was so high up he could see almost all the way to the ice fields in the north, where it’s so cold that the snow never melts.

  The little fog-spirit was out gathering berries one day when a stoneman came stomping down the mountain—thump, thump, thump! Crash went his right foot, straight through the berry bushes, and smash went his left foot, straight through the roof of the fog-spirit’s burrow, and crash went his right foot again, and so on. The fog-spirit cried out in dismay, but he was so little and the stoneman was so big that his voice was quite lost in all the crashing and smashing.

  The fog-spirit picked through the ruins of his little house. It was quite a mess. The only thing he could rescue from the rubble was his little belt pouch, where he kept spare scraps of fog. He stomped his little foot, and he crossed his little arms, and he pouted his little mouth. “That stoneman!” he said. “Someone should teach him to look where he’s going!”

  The little fog-spirit sat down in the ruins of his house and had a good cry, and then he dried his face and he tied his belt pouch around his little waist, and he went flying off to find someone who could help him. But the stonemen were bigger than anything else on the mountain, and stronger, too, and none of the other spirits would help him, and none of the animals, either.

  Finally, the fog-spirit had asked everyone on the mountain for help, and he’d gone down into the green valley and asked there, too, and then out to the rocky shore—not even the scuttling crabs wanted anything to do with the stonemen. So the fog-spirit sat on a pebble by the water and had another good cry, until one of the sea-women heard him and came to see what was the matter.

  She was terribly beautiful, with long, wet, twisty green curls woven with seaweed and shells, and she was chubby all over like a seal, the better to keep the cold out when she swam in the dark, cold parts of the sea, and she had big, big eyes like a seal too, and a seal’s tail instead of legs. All the sea-women look like this, you know.

  The fog-spirit thought she had a very kindly face, and so he told her all his troubles, from the beginning to the end.

  “Well!” said the sea-woman. “I’ve never seen one of these stonemen before, but I can’t say I think much of them, if they’re all like that. What are you going to do about it?”

  “I don’t know,” said the fog-spirit. “No one will help me, and all I have to my name is this purse of scraps.”

  “Well!” said the sea-woman. “You could go build another home.”

  “Only to have it crushed by the stonemen!” cried the fog-spirit.

  “Well!” said the sea-woman. “You could go somewhere they don’t go.”

  “There is nowhere!” cried the fog-spirit.

  “Well!” said the sea-woman, getting a little testy. “You could go talk to the stonemen and ask them nicely to leave your house alone.”

  “Do you think that would work?” asked the fog-spirit.

  “I don’t see why not,” said the sea-woman, and slipped beneath the waves. Remember, though, the sea-woman had never seen a stoneman, and she didn’t know
anything about them.

  The fog-spirit wandered up the mountain to where his house had been, and he followed the stoneman’s footprints for miles and miles until he came to the stoneman’s big, big house. The fog-spirit crawled through the crack under the door and found himself in a big, big room, with a big, big fire in a big, big hearth, and a big, big stonewoman sitting at a big, big table. “Excuse me!” said the fog-spirit. “I’m sorry for barging in like this, but—well, I suppose it’s fair, considering what happened to my house!”

  But he was so little and the stonewoman was so big that she didn’t hear him. She was sucking the roast marrow out of some bones. So the fog-spirit took out the scraps of fog from his pouch and braided them together into a little sail, and he held it above his head and blew into it and whoosh! Off he went, just like a puff from a dandelion! He floated up onto the table by the stonewoman’s plate and he jumped up and down and shouted to get her attention until she noticed him.

  “What on earth are you?” she said, much surprised.

  “I am the fog-spirit!” said the fog-spirit. “And your husband—or whoever—stomped my little house flat!”

  “I see,” she said. “So what are you here for? Oughtn’t you be building another house?”

  “Not if he’s going to come along and stomp it flat again! People should watch where they’re going! He could have killed me! Squished me flat, just like my little house!”

  “He only walks on the land we own,” she said, cracking another bone and sucking the marrow. “So it’s your own fault, really, for trespassing.”

  “Fine,” said the fog-spirit, crossing his little arms. “Where does your land end?”

  “We own all the mountain, and all the valley, and the rocky shore, and the mountain across the water, and the mountain on the other side of the valley. A very modest homestead.”

  “Modest!” said the fog-spirit. “That’s practically the entire world!”

  “Really, you should have been paying us rent if you’ve been living on our land all these years,” said the stonewoman. But then she looked the fog-spirit up and down and laughed. “I suppose for a homestead your size, you’d pay us a single grain of wheat once a year and we’d consider that great wealth.”

  The fog-spirit was hopping mad by now. He didn’t like being laughed at, and he wasn’t unusually little, it was the stonewoman who was unusually big! So he said, “I will buy it from you, my little plot of land, and I will pile up stones all around the border, and all your husband or whoever has to do is step over the little plot.”

  “And how little is this plot?” She spread out her napkin on the table and gestured to it. “How many napkins, little fog-spirit?”

  He paced around the cloth and measured it out with his footsteps, and finally he looked up and said, “Four of these.”

  The stonewoman laughed and laughed, loud enough that the fog-spirit had to clap his hands over his little ears, loud enough that the rafters shook and dust came trickling down. “What madness! Expecting my husband to go out of his way to avoid a scrap of land that small? Madness! What could you possibly give us that would be worth the inconvenience?”

  “I’ll find something,” said the little fog-spirit. “I haven’t anywhere else to go.”

  “You have nothing we would want,” said the stonewoman.

  “Fine!” shouted the little spirit. “Then I’ll win it from you!”

  “Will you, now?” said the stonewoman. “In what kind of contest?”

  “Whatever you like. Whatever your husband likes,” said the little fog-spirit, stomping his little foot. “Name anything!”

  The stonewoman rolled her eyes. “If you insist,” she said, “but what if you lose?”

  “I won’t!” said the fog-spirit. “But if I do . . . If I do, then I’ll just have to build my house somewhere else. Maybe in a briar thicket.”

  “You’ll have to pay us rent, if you live on our land,” said the stonewoman. “And you haven’t anything of value anyway.”

  “I—I have a pearl!” said the fog-spirit. “A pearl from the sea-woman! It’s as big as my head, and it’s kept in a very safe secret place. I use it as a looking glass, it’s so fine. If I lose, you can have it.”

  “I have pearls aplenty,” said the stonewoman, yawning.

  “But this one is magical!” said the fog-spirit. “Let it be three matches, and if your husband wins, he can have my pearl as the first rent payment.”

  “I’ll discuss it with him,” said the stonewoman. “Come back in a few days.”

  Now, what the fog-spirit didn’t know was that the stonewoman was terribly interested in this so-called magical pearl from the sea-woman. They owned the mountain across the fjord, but they had a terrible rough time getting to it, because the sea-people’s enchantments would call up a storm whenever the stoneman set his foot into his boat. The stonewoman suspected that the sea-woman’s enchanted pearl would be able to tame the waves, you see.

  But of course the fog-spirit didn’t have such a pearl. So he went down to the edge of the water again, and he cried and cried until the sea-woman came back to see what was the matter with him, and he told her all his troubles. She was quite surprised that he’d taken her advice after all and had gone to see the stoneman, and she laughed in his face when he told her about how he’d blurted out that lie about the pearl.

  “Foolish little spirit, you can’t enchant pearls, everyone knows this.”

  “Then whatever will I do?” the fog-spirit wailed. “I shall have to live in a briar thicket, and they may squish me flat when they find out I don’t have the pearl for them!”

  “Only if you lose,” said the sea-woman. “But look, I’ll do something for you if you go away from the shore and stop weeping and carrying on so.” And she poked through the pebbles on the rocky beach until she found one that was just about the size of the fog-spirit’s head, and she rubbed it between the palms of her hands until it was quite shiny and nearly round. Then she kissed it, and winked at it, and she rubbed a little earwax onto it and then washed it clean again. “There,” she said, and gave it to the fog-spirit. “Put that out in the moonlight for a couple of nights and that should be enough of a magical pearl to please anyone.”

  The fog-spirit thanked her sweetly and carried the pebble back to a little hollow between the roots of a great oak tree, and he used some leaves to build a little tent for himself, and he put the pebble just outside, where the moonlight was sure to fall on it. The next day, the pebble seemed to have gotten a little lighter, and it gleamed a little if you squinted at it. Then the day after that, the pebble was as white as milk, so white that when the sun shone on it, the whiteness hurt to look at. Then the day after that, the pebble was a beautiful silvery color, and it glowed faintly, just like the moons. The fog-spirit covered it up with leaves and hid it under the root of the oak tree, just in case.

  Then he went to meet with the stoneman and his wife.

  “We will have a contest,” said the stoneman to the fog-spirit. “And it will be in three parts.”

  “Yes,” said the fog-spirit.

  “Running,” said the stoneman. “Whoever can get from the top of the mountain to the water quicker.”

  “I see,” said the fog-spirit. “And weaving! Whoever can weave the finer cloth in a day.”

  “Naturally,” said the stoneman. “And for the third, we will have our judge decide, so it is impartial.” The stoneman liked to fancy himself a very fair-minded sort of person.

  “Nothing to it,” said the fog-spirit. “Shall we start tomorrow?”

  “If you like,” said the stoneman. “Good-bye.”

  The fog-spirit left in a tizzy, but he was so shaken up and nervous that he stopped outside the door of their house and rested against the wall. His little heart was going so fast!

  That was when he heard what the stoneman was saying to his wife: “Once we have the pearl, we can calm the waters whenever we like and row across the fjord. I rather think we could put in some ne
ts and scoop out all the sea folk—if we own the land on either side, then the fjord is naturally ours as well, and the sea-people aren’t paying rent.”

  “A wise insight, my husband!” said the stonewoman. “I don’t like the idea of those layabouts in our waters, eating our fish.”

  “Just so,” said the stoneman.

  Well, the fog-spirit knew something about what it was like to have one’s home wrenched away, so he flew down to the water and shouted for the sea-woman and heaved pebbles into the water until she came and asked him what was wrong now.

  And he told her all he had heard, and she got very solemn and nodded. “Well, if you say so, then I believe you. I wouldn’t like to be made to leave. Well! I suppose I’ll have to help you after all, then.”

  “You needn’t,” said the fog-spirit. “But you helped me with the pearl, so I wanted to help you in return, somehow, by warning you.”

  “You can help us best by winning your contests,” said the sea-woman. “That pearl isn’t magical at all, but it won’t stop these people once they’ve gotten an idea like that in their heads. What will you do about running?”

  “Lose!” cried the fog-spirit. “How can I win when his legs are so much longer than mine?”

  “Well, can you be sure of winning the other two?”

  The fog-spirit thought and thought about this—he was a good weaver, but perhaps the stoneman was better. And who knows what the third contest would be? The sea-woman sank down into the water until only her eyes and forehead were above the surface, and she waited.

  “I don’t know,” said the fog-spirit.

  She bobbed back up to speak. “Here is what you should do, then. Suggest a fishing contest. The stoneman loves to fish, but we will drive all the fish to your nets and you will win. As for the weaving, surely you must weave beautifully. I have seen the fogs you’ve laid out over the bay in autumn.”

  “Perhaps,” said the fog-spirit.

  “Then all is not yet lost. And, well, if you lose, there are other fjords and other mountains.”