One long afternoon in eastern Utanyeat, as the snow stung his face and he wandered far away in thought, he suddenly wondered: Was I wrong? Did she care for me all that time? It was a horrifying thought, because it suddenly turned the world he knew on its head and gave vastly different meaning to everything that had transpired between them since Maegwin had become a woman
Have I been blind? But if that were so, why should she act so backwardly to me? Have I not always treated her with respect and kindness?
After turning the idea over in his head for a long hour, he put it away again. It was too uncomfortable to consider any longer here in the middle of nowhere, with months or more between now and when he could see her again.
And she had sent him away in anger, had she not?
The wind picked restlessly at the unsettled snow.
He rode past Ach Samrath on a morning when the storm had abated somewhat, stopping his horse on a rise above the ancient battlefield where Prince Sinnach and ten thousand of his Hernystirmen had been destroyed by Fingil of Rimmersgard and the treachery of the Thrithings-lord Niyunort. As on the few other occasions he had visited this site, Eolair felt a shiver climb through him as he looked down at the great, flat field, but this time it was not prompted by the grisly past. With the freezing wind on his face and the cold, blank face of the north staring down at him, he suddenly realized that by the time this new and greater war had ended—whether on a battlefield or beneath a remorseless tide of black winter—it might be in a frenzy of death that would make Ach Samrath seem a petty dispute.
He rode on, his anger turning to ice inside him. Who had set this great thing in motion? Who had set this evil wheel to turning? Had it been Elias, or his pet serpent Pryrates? If so, there should be a special Hell prepared for them. Eolair only hoped he would be around to see them sent there—maybe on the end of Prester John’s Bright-Nail, if the subterranean dwarrows spoke rightly.
As Eolair came to the edge of Aldheorte, he reverted once more to night riding. The storm’s teeth seemed a little duller here in Elias’ realm, only a dozen leagues from the outskirts of Erchester, and he also thought it safer not to count on the infrequency of meeting other travelers any longer—here, that infrequent other traveler was likely to be one of the High King’s Erkynguard.
Beneath the shadow of the great wood, the silent, snow-blanketed farmlands seemed to wait apprehensively for whatever might come next, as though this storm were only the precursor of some darker deed. Eolair knew that these were his own feelings, but also felt strongly that they were not his alone: a sense of dread hung over Erkynland, filling the air like a terrible, will-sapping fog. The few lone farmers and woodsmen whose wagons he saw on the road did not respond to his greetings except to make the sign of the Tree as they passed him on the moonless roads, as though Eolair might be some demon or walking dead man. But their torches revealed that it was their own faces that had gone slack and pale as the masks of corpses, as though the fearful winds and constant snow had leached the very life from them.
He approached Thisterborg. The great hill stood only a few leagues from Erchester’s gates, and was the closest he would come to the Hayholt—from which, on certain of the blackest nights, he could almost feel Elias’ sleepless malice burning like a torch in a high tower. It was only the High King, he reminded himself, a mortal man whom he had once respected, although never liked. Whatever mad plans Elias had made, whatever dreadful bargains, he was still only a man.
Thisterborg’s peak seemed to flicker as the count drew nearer, as though high on the hillcrest great watchfires burned. Eolair wondered if Elias had made it a guard post, but could think of no reason why. Did the High King fear some invasion from the ancient forest, the Aldheorte? It mattered little, in any case. Eolair was firmly resolved to circle Thisterborg on the far side from Erchester, and felt no urge whatsoever to investigate the mysterious lights. The black hill had an evil reputation that extended back far beyond the days of even Elias’ father, King John. Stories about Thisterborg were many, none of them pleasant to hear. In such days as these, Eolair wished he could avoid coming any closer than a league or so, but the forest—another dubious place to be at night—and the walls of Erchester prevented such a judiciously wide swing.
He had just started around the north of the hill, his mount picking its way through the ever-thickening trees of Aldheorte’s fringe, when he felt a wave of fear sweep over him that was unlike anything he had ever experienced. His heart hammered and a chill sweat broke out on his face, then turned almost immediately to fragile ice; Eolair felt like a fieldmouse that, too late for escape, suddenly perceived the stooping hawk. He had to restrain himself from digging in his spurs and riding madly in whatever direction he was already facing. He whirled, looking wildly for whatever might be the cause of such dreadful terror, but could see nothing.
At last he slapped his horse’s flank and rode a short distance farther into the shielding trees. Whatever had caused him to feel this way, it seemed a product of the unprotected snows rather than the shadowy forest.
The storm was much less fierce here, as it had been since he had entered Aldheorte’s lee: but for a sprinkling of snow, the sky was clear. A vast yellow moon hung in the eastern sky, turning all the landscape to a sickly shade of bone. The Count of Nad Mullach looked up at the looming bulk of Thisterborg, wondering if that could be the source of his sudden fright, but could see or hear nothing extraordinary. A part of him wondered if he had not been riding too long alone with his morbid thoughts, but that part was easily ignored. Eolair was a Hernystirman. Hernystiri remembered.
A thin sound, an unidentifiable but persistent scraping, began to make itself heard. He looked down from secretive Thisterborg and turned his gaze westward across the snows, toward the direction from which he had come. Something was moving slowly across the white plain.
The chill of fear grew deeper, spreading through him like a prickling frost. As his horse moved uncomfortably, Eolair put a trembling hand on its neck; the beast, as if it perceived his own terror, suddenly became very still. Their twin plumes of breath were the only moving things in the shadow of the trees.
The scraping grew louder. Eolair could now see the shapes moving closer over the snows, a mass of luminous white followed by a lump of blackness. Then, with the stark unreality of a nightmare, the gleaming shapes came clear.
It was a team of white goats, shaggy pelts glowing as though with captured moonlight. Their eyes were red as embers, and their heads seemed somehow gravely wrong: when he thought of it afterward he could never say why, except that the shapes of their hairless muzzles seemed to suggest some kind of unpleasant intelligence. The goats, nine in all, drew behind them a great black sled; it was the sound of the runners crunching through the snow that he had heard. Seated on the sled was a hooded figure that even across a distance of some hundred cubits seemed too large. Several other, smaller black-robed figures marched solemnly alongside, hoods tilted downward like monks in meditation.
An almost uncontrollable horror ran up Eolair’s spine. His horse had turned to stone beneath him, as if fright had stopped its heart and left it dead upon its feet. The ghastly procession scraped past, agonizingly slow, silent but for the noise of the sled. Just as the robed figures were about to vanish into the darkness of Thisterborg’s lowest slopes, one of the hooded shapes turned, showing Eolair what he fancied was a flash of skeletal white face, black holes that might have been eyes. The part of his shrieking thoughts that was still coherent thanked the gods of his and all other peoples for the shadows of the forest’s fringe. The hooded eyes turned away at last. The sled and its escort vanished into the snowy woods of Thisterborg.
Eolair stood a long time, allowing himself to tremble, but did not move from the spot until he was sure it was safe. His teeth had been so tightly clenched that his jaws ached. He felt as though he had been stripped raw and tumbled down a long black hole. When he dared to move at last, he threw himself onto his horse’s neck and galloped a
way into the east as swiftly as he could. His mount, eager as he, needed no spurs, no crop. They whirled away in a cloud of snow.
As Eolair fled Thisterborg and its mysteries, running eastward beneath the mocking moon, he knew that everything he had feared was true, and that there were things in the world that were worse even than his fears.
Ingen Jegger stood beneath the spreading arms of a black hemlock, unmindful of the bitter wind or the frost growing in his close-cropped beard. But for the impatient life in his pale blue eyes, he might have been a luckless traveler, frozen to death waiting for a morning’s warmth that came too late.
The huge white hound crouching in the snow at his feet stirred, then made an inquiring sound like the scrape of rusty hinges.
“Hungry, Niku’a?” A look almost of fondness ran across Ingen’s taut features. “Quiet. Soon, you will have your fill.”
Motionless, Ingen watched and listened, sifting the night like a whiskered beast of prey. The moon crept from one gap in the overhanging trees to another. The forest, but for the wind, was silent.
“Ah.” Satisfied, he took a few steps and shook the snow from his cloak. “Now, Niku’a. Call your brothers and sisters. Howl up the Stormspike pack! It is time for the last chase.”
Niku’a leaped up, quivering with excitement. As if it had understood Ingen’s every word, the great hound trotted out into the middle of the clearing before settling back on its haunches and lifting its snout to the sky. Powerful throat muscles convulsed, and a coughing howl shattered the night. Even as the first echoes died, Niku’a’s strident voice burst out again, hacking and baying. The very branches of the trees trembled.
They waited, Ingen’s gloved hand resting on the dog’s wide head. Time passed. Niku’a’s cloudy white eyes gleamed as the moon slid along between the trees. At last, as night’s coldest hour crept in, the faint cries of hounds came sweeping down the wind.
The belling rose until it filled the forest. A host of white shapes appeared from the darkness, filtering into the clearing like four-legged ghosts. The Stormspike hounds wove in and out among the tree roots, narrow, sharklike heads questing and sniffing. Starlight gleamed on muzzles smeared with blood and spittle. Niku’a went among them, nipping, snarling, until at last the whole pack crouched or lay in the snow around Ingen Jegger, red tongues lolling.
The Queen’s Huntsman calmly looked over his strange congregation, then picked his snarling, dog-faced helm from the ground.
“Too long have you been roaming free,” he hissed, “harrying the forest fringes, stealing babies like kennel cubs, running down foolish travelers for the joy of the chase. Now your master has come back. Now you must do what you were bred to do.” The milky eyes followed him as he moved to his horse, which waited with supernatural patience beneath the hemlock. “But this time I will lead, not you. It is a strange chase, and Ingen alone has been taught the scent.” He pulled himself up into the saddle. “Run silently.” He lowered the helmet onto his head, so that hound looked at hounds. “We take death to the Queen’s enemies.”
A low growling rose from the dogs as they rose and came together, sliding against one another, snapping at each other’s faces and tails in fierce anticipation. Ingen spurred his horse forward, then turned. “Follow!” he cried. “Follow to death and blood!”
He passed swiftly from the clearing. The pack ran after, voiceless now, silent and white as snowfall.
Huddled deep in his cloak, Isgrimnur sat in the bow of the small boat and watched stubby Sinetris rowing and sniffling. The duke wore a fixed expression of grim preoccupation, in part because he found the boatman’s company extremely unrewarding, but mostly because he himself hated boats, especially small boats like the one on which he was now trapped. Sinetris had spoken truthfully about one thing, anyway: this was no time to be on the water. A great storm was flailing the entire length of the coast. The choppy water of Firannos Bay constantly threatened to swamp them, and Sinetris had not stopped moaning since their hull had first touched the water a week before, some thirty leagues northward.
The duke had to admit that Sinetris was a talented boatman, if only in the defense of his own life. The Nabban-man had handled his craft well under terrible conditions. If only he would stop sniveling! Isgrimnur was no happier about the conditions for their journey than Sinetris was, but he would be damned to the blackest circle of Hell before he made a fool out of himself by showing it.
“How far to Kwanitupul?” he shouted over the noise of wind and waves.
“Half a day, master monk,” Sinetris called back, eyes red and streaming. “We will stop soon to sleep, then we can be there by midday tomorrow.”
“Sleep!” Isgrimnur roared. “Are you mad? It is not even dark yet! Besides, you will only try to sneak away again, and this time I will not be so merciful. If you cease your self-pitying nonsense and work, you can sleep in a bed tonight!”
“Please, holy brother!” Sinetris almost shrieked. “Do not force me to row in darkness! We will run onto the rocks. Our only beds will be down among the kilpa!”
“Don’t hand that superstitious nonsense to me. I’m paying you well and I am in a hurry. If you are too weak or sore, let me take those paddles for a while.”
The oarsman, wet and cold, still managed a convincing look of wounded pride. “You! You would have us under the water in a moment! No, you cruel monk, if Sinetris must die, let it be with his oars in his hand, as befits a Firannos boatman. If Sinetris must be torn from his home and the bosom of his family and sacrificed to the whims of a monster in the robes of a priest, if he must die…let it be as a guild-man!”
Isgrimnur groaned. “Let it be with his mouth closed, for a change. And keep paddling.”
“Rowing,” Sinetris replied frostily, then burst into tears once more.
It was past midnight when the first stilt-houses of Kwanitupul came into view Sinetris, whose complaining had faded at last to a low, self-pitying murmur, nosed the boat into the great network of canals. Isgrimnur, who had briefly fallen asleep, rubbed his eyes and craned his head, looking around Kwanitupul’s ramshackle warehouses and inns were all dusted with a thin coating of snow.
If I doubted that the world had gone topsy-turvy, Isgrimnur thought bemusedly, here is all the proof I need; a Rimmersman taking a leaky boat to sea in a storm, and snow in the southland—in high summer. Can any doubt the world has run mad?
Madness. He remembered the hideous death of the lector and felt his stomach gurgle. Madness—or something else? It was a strange coincidence that Pryrates and Benigaris should both be in the house of Mother Church on such a dreadful night. Only a stroke of rare luck had brought Isgrimnur to Dinivan in time to hear the priest’s last words, and perhaps to salvage something from this grim pass.
He had escaped from the Sancellan Aedonitis only moments before Benigaris, Duke of Nabban, had ordered his guardsmen to bar all doors. Isgrimnur could not have afforded capture—even if he had not been immediately recognized, his story would not have held up long. Hlafmansa Eve, the night of the lector’s murder, had been a bad night to be an unfamiliar guest at the Sancellan.
“Do you know of a place here called Pelippa’s Bowl?” he asked aloud. “I think it is an inn or a hostel.”
“I have never heard of the place, master monk,” Sinetris said gravely. “It sounds like a low establishment, one in which Sinetris would not be seen.” Now that they had reached the relatively still waters of the canals, the boatman had reassumed much of his dignity. Isgrimnur decided he liked him better when he sniveled.
“By the Tree, we will never find it at night. Take me to some inn you know, then I must get something under my belt.”
Sinetris steered the little craft down a series of crisscrossing canals to the city’s tavern distinct. Things seemed quite lively here despite the late hour, the boardwalks lined with garish cloth lanterns that swung in the wind, the alleyways full of drunken revelers.
“This is a fine inn, holy brother,” Sinetris said as they
glided to a stop at the dock stairs of a well-lit establishment. “There is wine to be had, and food.” Sinetris, feeling bold now that their journey had ended safely, gave Isgrimnur a chummy, gap-toothed smile. “And women, too.” His smile grew uncertain as he surveyed Isgrimnur’s face. “—Or boys, if that is more to your liking.”
The duke forced a great hiss of air between his teeth. He reached into his cloak and pulled out a gold Imperator, then placed it gently on the rowing bench beside Sinetris’ skinny leg. Isgrimnur next moved to the bottommost stair. “There is your thievish payment, as I promised. Now, I have a suggestion for how you might spend your evening.”
Sinetris looked up wanly. “Yes?”
Isgrimnur drew down his eyebrows in a horrible frown. “Spend it doing your very best to make sure that I do not see you again. Because if I do,” he lifted his hairy fist, “I will roll your eyeballs around in your pointy head. Understood?”
Sinetris dropped his oar-blades and backed water hastily, so that Isgrimnur had to quickly swing his other foot up onto the stairs. “So this is how you monks treat Sinetris after all his favors!?” the boatman said indignantly, puffing up his thin chest like a courting pigeon. “No wonder the church is in bad repute! You…bearded barbarian!” He splashed off into the darkened canal.
Isgrimnur laughed harshly, then stumped up the stairs to the inn.
After several fitful nights in the grasslands—nights in which he had been forced to keep a careful watch on the treacherous Sinetris, who had several times tried to slip away and leave Isgrimnur stranded on the bleak, wind-swept coast of Firannos Bay—the Duke of Elvritshalla took his sleep in full measure. He remained in bed until the sun was high in the sky, then broke his fast with a manly portion of bread and honey accompanied by a stoup of ale. It was nearly noontide before he obtained directions to Pelippa’s Bowl from the innkeeper and was out on the rainy canals once more. His boatman this time was a Wrannaman, who despite the bitter wind wore only a loincloth and a broad-brimmed hat with a red, drizzle-soaked feather drooping from the band. The boatman’s sullen silence was a pleasant change from the ceaseless carping of Sinetris. Isgrimnur settled back to fondle his new-sprouted beard and enjoy the sodden sights of Kwanitupul, a city he had not visited for many years.