A Conspiracy of Truths

by Alexandra Rowland

  “And other stonemen who own the other mountains,” grumbled the fog-spirit.

  “Perhaps,” said the sea-woman, and vanished with a splash.

  The next day the fog-spirit stuffed the pearl into his pouch with all the little scraps of fog he’d been able to find, and he went to meet with the stoneman. The stoneman brought them to a very old tree and said that the tree was to be the judge of their contests.

  “Hrmmmmmmmm,” said the tree.

  “I won’t have it be said that I didn’t choose a fair judge,” said the stoneman, very proud. “I chose fairly, you see, because I am not at all afraid of you.”

  “Yes, I see,” said the fog-spirit.

  “First, show me the pearl, so I can be sure that you are playing fairly too.”

  The fog-spirit lifted the flap of his little bag and showed the pearl, and the stoneman nodded.

  “We will go to the top of the mountain and run down to the tree. Agreed?”

  “I suppose,” said the fog-spirit. The stoneman laughed and sprinted away up the mountain, and the fog-spirit took his little scraps of fog and blew into them again, so he flew—whoosh!—up after the stoneman, just like a dandelion puff.

  The stoneman had been waiting for a long while by the time the fog-spirit made it to the peak. “Are you ready?” he said.

  “I suppose,” said the fog-spirit.

  The stoneman dashed away down the mountain, and the fog-spirit followed, trying not to cry.

  By the time he made it back down to the tree, the stoneman was agog. “You’re so slow! It took you ages!”

  “I didn’t need to rush,” said the fog-spirit, hiding a sniffle.

  “Very wise,” said the tree. “Rushing grows weak roots.”

  “The next contest, the next contest!” said the stoneman.

  “First,” said the tree, “a rest. The sun is pleasant today, and the shade is cool. And the fog-spirit hasn’t caught his breath yet.”

  The stoneman grumbled, but he sat in the shade by the tree’s roots and uncorked a bottle of something.

  “Hrrrmmmm?” said the tree. “What’s that? It smells wonderful.”

  “Mead,” said the stoneman. “Would you like some?”

  The tree agreed, and the stoneman poured a little out on the tree’s roots. “Don’t be impolite,” said the tree. “Oughtn’t you offer some to the fog-spirit?”

  “I—yes, of course!” the stoneman stammered, a little taken aback. “I’ll give him a whole bottle if he wants, my best vintage, too!”

  The fog-spirit blushed and fidgeted his hands and shook his head. “A mere thimbleful would suffice,” he said, after he’d taken a few minutes to collect himself. “It seems right we should all have a drink.”

  “Yes, of course, yes,” said the stoneman, who was not collected at all. He took a hearty swig from the bottle, and splashed a little more on the roots of the tree, and then looked down at the fog-spirit and frowned. The fog-spirit whisked out his little pouch and weaved a scrap of fog into a cup, and the stoneman carefully trickled mead into it.

  “A fine vintage indeed,” said the fog-spirit. “Come, let’s drink again.” And they did.

  “A very fine vintage, hrmmmmmmmm,” said the tree. “Perhaps just one more round.” And so it was.

  The fog-spirit and the stoneman were both a little wobbly by the time the tree said, “Hrrrrmmmmm, the next challenge. You must weave. Whoever’s cloth is the finest shall be the winner.”

  Well, the fog-spirit had been planning on weaving a cloth of fog scraps, but when he settled down at his loom, he found that his little pouch of scraps was entirely empty. He cried out in horror and dismay, but neither the tree nor the stoneman could hear him over the sound of the stoneman’s shuttle already clicking back and forth and the beater thumping down and the heddles rattling as they rose and fell.

  The fog-spirit cast about frantically and cursed his senses for being so drowsy and slow with the mead—ah! His eyes landed on the bottle. With a huge effort he tipped it over, and it sloshed into a deep-gold puddle by his little loom.

  He pulled the heady vapors into a long strand, and he made it into something much like fog, though it was slicker and silkier and the color of sunlight glistening in stagnant brown forest ponds, and he began to weave it into cloth. The mead-fog was slippery and difficult to work, and it twisted and squirmed, nothing like the friendly, downy softness of his usual fog.

  When the tree called time, the fog-spirit removed his cloth from his loom, a length of shimmering pale gold that ran through his hands like water when he touched it, but floated in the air when he let it billow.

  The stoneman had woven a piece of linen, fine though it was, sheer enough for a bride’s wedding sleeves and soft enough to swaddle a baby. It was an excellent piece of cloth, but when the fog-spirit unrolled his mead-fog cloth over the roots of the tree, they all fell silent until the only sound was the chirping of the birds in the tree’s branches.

  “Hrmmmmmmm,” said the tree, marveling. “As uncontested as your victory in the race, stoneman, the weaving contest is an uncontested victory for the fog-spirit.”

  “Yes,” said the stoneman, staring wide-eyed at the mead-cloth. “What will our third contest be?”

  “Perhaps fishing,” squeaked the fog-spirit.

  “Hrrmmmmmm,” said the tree. “I will decide. Tomorrow morning. We mustn’t rush this kind of decision.”

  The next morning the tree said, “I have been thinking about the contest, hrrrrrm, and I have pondered that fishing is not very fair. The fog-spirit is very small, no bigger than a fish himself, and the stoneman is very large, as large as I am, hrrrrmm. It is not a fair contest. I have decided we will do something else.”

  The fog-spirit was very alarmed, and he thought of the sea-woman, but then he saw that the stoneman was also alarmed, and that helped a little.

  “I will ask you riddles,” said the tree. The stoneman and the fog-spirit both fidgeted, for neither of them was particularly good at riddling. The tree said:

  “A veil in the morning,

  it creeps along at gloaming.”

  (“Usually,” Ylfing said, dropping his storyteller voice, “when you’re telling this story to children, you pause here and let them try to guess the answer, and whatever they say, you reply, ‘Which is just what the stoneman said’ or ‘Just what the fog-spirit guessed,’ and if it’s right you continue on, and if it’s wrong you say that the tree said no, and you let them keep guessing until they get it right, and you give them hints if they can’t think of it, and you keep track secretly of how many riddles you have awarded to which character, because of course the fog-spirit has to win in the end. But um. Well. I’ll just have to tell you the answers.”)

  “Fog,” said the fog-spirit.

  “Yes. Next:

  Turns the sword, turns the spear.

  Does not see and cannot hear.

  Falls unharmed, lands unbroken,

  Holds its secrets all unspoken.”

  “Stone,” said the stoneman.

  “Yes. Next: A dozen arms, a hundred hands, a thousand fingers, hidden feet.”

  The two were silent for a long time, until the fog-spirit tentatively offered, “Tree?”

  “Runs fast and forever until it lies still

  One mouthful could save; one mouthful could kill.”

  “Water,” said the stoneman.

  “A magic bowl of many colors, dry and wet by turns.”

  “Sky,” said the fog-spirit.

  “Fair lady of flowers stepping fresh from the thaw,

  Pointed ahead and gasped when she saw,

  ‘The end! My end!’ But she could not retreat.

  ‘Why must you end me each time that we meet?’ ”

  “Summer,” said the stoneman.

  “Ancient men, white-haired, garbed in green, and silent, the ocean laps at their feet.”

  “Mountains,” said the fog-spirit.

  “The beast untamed ravages village and wilde
rness. At home, it curls tame in its bed, it eats from your hand, it fends off the wolves of winter.”

  “Fire,” said the stoneman.

  “A box, a cave, a house, a field

  The cool smell of dirt that’s freshly been tilled.

  Hands, voice, smells, and heart

  Without these it dies, but remains when we part.”

  “Home,” said the fog-spirit.

  (“Of course you can go on as long as you like,” Ylfing said. “Or cut it shorter if the children get bored, or if they’re very small. And it doesn’t have to be these riddles. Any will do.”)

  “Hrmmmm,” said the tree. “It seems the fog-spirit has won.”

  The stoneman harrumphed, but it was beneath his dignity to be a poor loser, and the fog-spirit had shown himself the finer riddle-guesser. “I will grant you your homestead,” he said.

  “And no rent!” cried the fog-spirit. “The tree must witness.”

  The stoneman grumbled again. “No rent for this year,” he said. “And next year, we will compete again.”

  “Every year?” said the tree. “Hrmmmm, surely you can afford to be kinder than that. The fog-spirit is quite busy with his work, and you have your own business to attend to. Let it be every other year.”

  And so they agreed, and every other year, the fog-spirit and the stoneman met by the tree and exchanged gifts and measured their skills against each other. And some years the fog-spirit lost, but the stoneman, with his big stone brain, had very little time to bother with small things, and he never remembered to collect his rent.

  Over time, other stonemen and other spirits joined in. When humans came to that place, the stonemen left for the far northern ice fields. But those humans were the Hrefni, and they maintained the contests every other year to honor the spirits of the land. In time, the contest became the manner of choosing the leader of all the villages, the jarl. And that is how the Jarlsmoot came to be.

  I just lay there as he talked, obviously, and didn’t say anything. It was fine. I was fine.

  Ylfing cared for me constantly for the next few days while he and Consanza’s family packed and prepared to set out—he fed me soup and gruel and soft-boiled eggs with new bread smeared with butter. I stayed as catatonic as I could—the damn child was with me almost every moment of the day, and he simply would not leave me be! I’d been thinking that I would be left to my own devices in isolation, as I had been for months, but no. Apparently, when you’re a severe invalid, you get company for every waking moment.

  He brought visitors to me from time to time, and talked like he could fill up my silence with words and bring me back to myself. Nine-Fingers deigned to play cards with him a few times, and he yammered on at great length about the games he used to play as a child in Hrefnesholt. Taishineya Tarmos did not visit.

  He brought Consanza to see me. That was the worst. The two of them sat there gossiping, as they must have done when they were alone by themselves, before everything happened. Except that Consanza kept shooting me these looks out of the corner of her eye. “Does he know where he is?” she asked. “Does he know who he is?”

  Ylfing’s aggressively chipper mask slipped a little, and I caught a glimpse of a haunting sorrow before he yanked the wall back up. “I don’t know,” he said airily.

  “Chant?” Consanza said, leaning forward and resting her elbows on her knees. “You in there, grandfather?” Nothing, obviously. She had a very strange look on her face, and she straightened her back and rummaged through her pockets—a new pipe, I saw, and a new tobacco pouch, and what I assumed was new tobacco, too. I thought her hands might be trembling a little as she packed in the leaf and lit it. “That’s disturbing,” she said, quiet and intense. “The way his eyes are so dead. The way he looks at you but he’s not looking at you.” She shivered and cradled the pipe close to her mouth with both hands, as if she was shielding herself. “Is he going to get any better?”

  Ylfing’s mask flagged again, briefly. “I don’t know.”

  “Where are you going to take him?”

  Another flicker, this one longer. “I don’t know.”

  “But you’re leaving with us, aren’t you?”

  He nodded, sniffled.

  “Ylfing . . .”

  And I had to watch as he buried his face in his hands and wept. Consanza got up, set her pipe on her chair, and wrapped her arms around him. She had proper robes again, with sleeves so voluminous they engulfed Ylfing like wings. He put his head on her shoulder and sobbed, and she hushed him, and stroked his hair, and rocked him a little back and forth. “Sweet boy, sweet boy,” she called him. “You’re so young for this.”

  “It all happened so fast,” Ylfing gasped, between wrenching, racking sobs. “He was fine one day, and then I had to watch him choose to die, I had to watch him burn himself out just so that we’d be able to leave, and now—now I have to stay with him.”

  She tucked his head under her chin and tightened her arms around him. “Sweet boy. He’s family, isn’t he?” Ylfing nodded, sniffled wetly. “You have to take care of yourself, too, sweet boy. Remember that, all right? It’s okay to get out for a while and have time to yourself. It doesn’t make you a bad person. It makes you a good person, actually, because then you won’t run out of energy and you’ll be able to continue taking good care of him. Right?”

  Ylfing gulped a few breaths, nodded again.

  “Now, I hear I’m being appointed the Nuryeven ambassador to Echaree, which isn’t really what I planned for my life. Some glamour, I suppose, but too much actual work.”

  “You’re going to be really good at it,” Ylfing said, as if his heart was breaking. “It’s an appointment from the gods, and you’re going to be amazing at it. I’m going to miss you—so much.”

  “Well, that’s the thing,” she said. “I’m taking my whole household with me to Echaree, and if you’re going to be traveling a ways with us anyway . . . I was going to ask you if you’d like to stay on as my assistant.” What? I thought, and had to stomp down any visible reaction on my face. That presumptuous bitch. I always knew she was going to try to steal him from me. “You can stay as long as you want—you’ve been a good help, and I daresay there’s going to be a disgusting amount of paperwork in Echaree.” She sighed. “And you know the language, don’t you?”

  “Some,” said Ylfing. “I’m not that great at it.” He wasn’t being modest. The Hrefni are always exactly accurate and honest in their assessment of their skills.

  “And you have some training in . . . how did Chant describe it? The way people are?”

  “I’m just an apprentice,” he said quietly. He hadn’t unburied his face from her shoulder.

  “But it would give you something to do while you’re waiting to see if he improves. And then I could pay you, so you’d have a little money when you left.”

  “Chant never needed money when we were traveling.”

  “Chant might not have, but Ylfing might. It’s a useful thing to have.” I mentally rolled my eyes. Look at that woman trying to foist the hallucination off on my apprentice. “You can come as part of my household. And . . . Would you like me to invite Ivo? He’s an excellent scribe, and I might be able to persuade Taishineya Tarmos to let me add him to the payroll. She can find another secretary, and he doesn’t seem like he enjoys working with her very much.”

  Ylfing paused. Don’t do it, I thought at him hard. Don’t do it. I’m going to make a miraculous recovery the second we step over the border. “No. He loves Nuryevet. He wouldn’t leave. And his whole family is here, his friends. . . .” He didn’t say the rest. He knew Ivo wouldn’t have come away if he’d asked. Ivo was not at all the Chanting sort.

  “I thought he might be a comfort to you,” Consanza said. “But . . . I noticed you haven’t seen him in a while.”

  “Busy,” Ylfing said. “That’s all. Just busy.”

  Consanza stroked the boy’s hair once more and guided him off her shoulder and into one of the chairs. I stared at th
e wall and drooled down my front. “The invitation for you and Chant stands. You have your freedom. You can leave whenever you like. But I’d love to have you with me, and so would my spouses and the children.”

  Ylfing nodded. “Can I think about it?”

  “Certainly. Her Majesty wants me on my way in the next couple days.”

  “I can decide by then. There’s nothing to pack.”

  She leaned down and kissed the top of his head. “Take some time for yourself before then, all right?”

  “I just don’t want to leave him on his own. . . .”

  No! I cried out mentally. Leave me on my own! Listen to the uppity twit!

  “Helena seems to like him, for some inexplicable reason. I could ask her if she’d be willing to sit with him for a few hours.”

  Helena wasn’t the worst option. But damn it, Ylfing, not every moment had to be supervised. I longed to stretch my legs, but I didn’t dare to show that much strength and initiative yet. If Ylfing helped me to my feet, I would stand, and if he led me I would shuffle along after him. But show enough impetus to do it myself? Not yet. Far too soon.

  Ylfing accepted Consanza’s invitation, as you already know. I didn’t mind—meant he didn’t have to do any of the planning, or lay in supplies and rations. All he had to do was gather up a bundle of some things we needed for ourselves, and show up with me at the carriage. Did more than that, as it turned out—he ended up leaving me alone for a few hours with Helena, who sat quietly with me and read a book aloud. I didn’t listen to her. Ylfing came back in the evening, his eyes puffy and red, carrying several paper parcels—woolen hats and mittens, thick socks, secondhand cloaks, and a pair of new fur-lined boots for me. These ones I’m wearing now, in fact. They’re the second-best pair of shoes I’ve ever owned, wonderfully soft. It’s like walking on morning fog, the kind that seeps up from the ground right when spring is beginning to stir within the earth. Second-best shoes ever. Maybe these won’t get nicked off me by street urchins, like those wonderful turn-toe boots I had in Map Sut.

  Ylfing sniffled as he was unwrapping all the things. Would have asked him about it but . . . well, I had the act to keep up. He told me anyway, as I knew he would.