The Witchwood Crown

  Tiamak found it easiest to walk behind Aengas’s litter: the shoulders of its four brawny bearers all but filled the narrow corridors beneath the guardhouse. “I know nothing much beyond what I’ve already related,” Tiamak said. “He is a kitchen worker from Crannhyr who has been here in the Hayholt for many years—long before Hugh took the throne in Hernystir. My wife attended to him back in Feyever when he fell into a fit. His name is Riggan.”

  “That means ‘headstrong,’” said Aengas. “It may have been only a nickname, but he has certainly lived up to it.”

  It was a small enough jest, but Tiamak was not in the mood to be amused. In fact, almost nothing about the task pleased him, although he supposed it was a good thing to have something else to think on for a little while beside the endlessly puzzling, frequently terrifying Treatise on the Aetheric Voices.

  “Just ahead, masters,” said the shuffling jailer, a man almost as large as Lord Aengas and only slightly more nimble. “Don’t know why we’re still keeping him. They should have had him doing the rope dance. Murdering poor old Lord Eolair . . .”

  “The count survived and was able to ride out on his horse the next day, for which we are all grateful,” said Tiamak. “In any case, I’m told this man is quite mad.”

  “Mad? Could be. But we could do with a few less mad ones like him. You don’t put a collar on a mad dog, and you don’t keep a fellow like this alive.”

  Tiamak frowned at this easy conclusion. “If he had been hanged already, then we could not come to question him.”

  “Well, then, I’m sure you know best, my lords,” said the jailer. “Still, what can you learn from a madman?”

  What indeed? Tiamak wondered. After all, his wife Thelía had spoken to the fellow at length while the royal company traveled across the Frostmarch, but she had still been shocked to learn of Riggan’s attempt on the lord steward’s life. Tiamak himself thought it was doubtful this aged scullion could be a spy for the Hernystiri throne, let alone an assassin directed all the way from the Taig, but after the murderous attack on the Sitha envoy and now another against Count Eolair, he could understand why Simon was taking nothing for granted.

  • • •

  The prisoner was a small man, not much bigger than Tiamak himself, though stockier. He had been badly shaved by his jailers, which gave his head a crooked appearance, and was also bruised from the struggle in which he had been captured, but he did not seem to have been too badly harmed.

  When Aengas questioned him his responses sounded reasonable, though Tiamak could not understand the words. “What does he say?”

  “Much, but with little sense. ‘How can I face her when we are all finally set free? I failed her! She summoned me!’ and other complaints of that nature. In short, someone summoned him, but he failed to attend them.”

  “‘How can I face her’ . . . ?” Tiamak shook his head. “Who does he mean?”

  Aengas laughed. “I speak Hernystiri, my friend, not the language of madness, whatever some may say about me.”

  Tiamak turned to the prisoner. “Riggan, I am Lord Tiamak. Can you understand me? I want to talk to you about what happened. Who summoned you?”

  He shook his head violently, but when he spoke again his voice was mild.

  “He says only that he has failed her,” Aengas translated.

  “Her, her—and this is not the first time he has spoken of ‘her.’” Tiamak frowned. “He told someone else it was the Morriga who spoke to him. Ask him if he still believes that.”

  “The Morriga?” Aengas was clearly surprised. “The Crow Mother?”

  “Yes, he spoke of her when my wife tended him. Please, ask him.”

  Riggan listened to Aengas’ questions with worried interest, then gave a long reply, at one point raising his hands over his head and gesturing to the roof of his cramped cell.

  “He says she has three faces—the Summoner, the Silence, and the Mother of Tears.” Aengas paused. The jailer had leaned in to hear better, so he glared at the man until he stepped back again. “I am impressed by the madman’s knowledge of old tales,” Aengas continued, “but it all seems straightforward to me. He has foul dreams and thinks his dreams are true. And it is not unusual for people to believe the gods speak to them, whether the Morriga or Brynioch himself—King Lluth’s own daughter suffered from a madness like this, I have heard it told.”

  “Perhaps, but his answer seemed longer. What else did he say?”

  “I heard something about, ‘Behind her are older ones, older still, old as the rain, old as the stone.’ That must be the gods.”

  The madman’s words made Tiamak itch, although he did not know why. “I am still uncertain. Ask him to name these old ones.”

  Aengas gave Tiamak an odd look, but spoke to the prisoner again. Riggan, agitated, waved his hands in the air and let loose a burble of Hernystiri; Tiamak recognized a single word—duircha, or “darkness”—and his heart stumbled a little.

  “He does not know their names, but he says their shadows are the light of other worlds, and that the stars are their eyes.” The factor’s wide face now creased in a frown of unease. “Tiamak, my swamp-paddling friend, where could this creature have learned such things? Could he once have been a priest or scholar? But if so, what was he doing working in the Hayholt’s kitchens?”

  “A king and several high and holy knights have labored in those kitchens,” Tiamak said. “Do not underestimate the place.” But he did not feel as light-hearted as his words made him sound. “Surely that cannot be all he said, Aengas. I heard the word ‘darkness.’ What was that?”

  “Ah, yes,” Aengas said. “It troubled me too. He said something like, I do not know why they speak to me or who they are, but their silent voices are the true names of darkness—” He suddenly looked not just disturbed but startled. “But hold—why does that sound familiar, dear man?”

  “Because you were reading it only yesterday or the day before.” Tiamak’s heart seemed to grow cold in his chest. “‘The true name of Darkness is made of these silent voices,’ were the exact words. Do you remember them now?”

  Aengas’s broad face turned a paler shade, and despite the dank air of the cell, a sheen of sweat appeared on his brow. “‘The true name of Darkness . . .’ Gods, yes, I remember it now—‘and Darkness itself is wound all through these whisperless whispers, and even a godly man may lose his wits and even his immortal soul when they call him.’ I wish at this moment I were a more religious man, Tiamak, because I could use such comfort. Those are the words of Fortis the Recluse.”

  “Yes.” Tiamak spoke almost in a whisper, as if someone beside the slack-faced warder might be listening. “Straight from the pages of the Treatise. Ask the prisoner if he can read, Aengas.”

  Riggan shook his head in shame. “He says he cannot,” Aengas reported.

  “And I believe him. Ask him if he knows the name of Bishop Fortis.”

  Again the prisoner shook his head, then spoke in a rush of words, looking more fearful by the moment. “He does not know it, and he says he is a man who loves the gods and does not wish to be burned. He did only what he was told, he said.”

  “And who told him?” Tiamak asked.

  “He says it was the Morriga,” said Aengas after listening to the reply. “But he says the lady of three faces whispered in his dreams for many moons, until he knew it was a true summons. He says he is not the only person who can hear her, for the whispers are grown very loud of late.” Aengas took a deep breath and let it out with a shudder. “Do you know, I suddenly find myself disliking the smell and dampness of this place, friend Tiamak. I would like to leave.” He gave his bearers a command; they bent to hoist the litter.

  Tiamak nodded his agreement, but he knew that what they had heard here could not be so easily left behind.

  Pasevalles had finished his business for King Simon, as well as some boring but impo
rtant letters of his own, but it was still more than an hour until the bells in Holy Tree Tower called him to the midday meal. He decided to take advantage of this unexpected freedom to spend some time reading in his private room at the top of the residence where no one would disturb him. But he had only made it to the top of the third floor landing before he was reminded that his secret hiding-hole was no longer entirely secret.

  “Lord Pasevalles! I thought I might find you here.”

  He was tired, distracted, and worried, not at all in the mood to dally with Idela in conversation or otherwise, but he put on a smile as she made her way up the long staircase. “And find me you did, my lady,” he said as she reached him. “Your Highness is a Hound of Love, who always runs down her quarry.”

  She looked around quickly to make sure they were alone, then kissed him warmly upon the lips. “Since I am a woman as well as a hound, do you call me a she-hound, Lord Chancellor? It is true enough, I suppose—I am your bitch and will do as you command.”

  “Ssshh! My lady! Not so loud.” The princess had pushed up against him, and for a moment he worried she might jostle one or both of them off the landing and down the steep staircase. “Please, sweet Idela, if you wish to talk this way, let us at least go to my room, where we do not have to worry about offending the sensibilities of those who might hear us.”

  “As you say, Lord Chancellor. You command me, after all. I am merely your servant—your pet.” But her hand was fumbling at his buttons in a most un-servantlike way, and it was all he could do to gently detach her fingers from his jerkin.

  “Enough,” he said. “I am delighted to see you, dear princess, light of my heart. But not here. Let us go up.”

  “As you wish, although there is no one to see us. Even the chambermaids come up here but seldomly.” She stepped back. “Ah, and since I am your servant, you must chastise me, dear Pasevalles.”

  He was relieved to have calmed the situation. “Why?”

  “Because I forgot that I had something of yours.” She lifted the hand that until now she had kept at her side. “See? You dropped this at the bottom of the stairs. I have carried it all this way for you.”

  He took the folded letter from her. His fingers trembled. “You . . . found this?”

  “Yes. I saw you drop it from across the front hallway.”

  “But the seal is broken.” He looked from the wax to the letter written on fine Perdruinese parchment. “Did you read it?”

  For a moment, just a moment, something flickered in her eyes—guilt, perhaps. “No! It must have come open when you dropped it. I would not read something private of yours, beloved!”

  “You are not telling me the truth, Princess.”

  Again he saw a flash of unease. “Very well. No, I did not read it, but I could not help noticing that it was from Nabban. From Lord Drusis, the duke’s brother.” She put a finger against his lips. “Ssshhh, do not scold me. I would never tell anyone, but you may tell me. Are you trying to arrange peace between him and his brother? Is it something to help the queen with her mission?” She was smiling now. “You can share with me, beloved. You know I want only to help you do what is best for the kingdom. After all, it will all be my son’s kingdom someday.”

  “Yes, it will,” he said, and took a deep breath. “Wait—look there. Is that your father coming?”

  Surprised, she turned to look down to the chamber below. “I do not see him—”

  Pasevalles put both hands against her back and shoved hard. Idela’s arms flew up as if she were merely miming surprise. She struck first against the wall several steps below, then tumbled heels over head, rolling down the narrow, circular staircase until he could not see her anymore. He quickly made his way down the steps and found her lying some distance below, head hanging over the edge of a step, one arm bent awkwardly behind her, dress flung up, and legs splayed, precisely as if someone had dropped a child’s rag doll.

  He crouched beside her. The princess dowager had bloody scrapes on her face and hands and a red bubble at the corner of her mouth, now swelling outward, now shrinking back. When he leaned close he could hear the dry gasp of her breath, slow and ragged but fairly steady.

  Pasevalles shook his head and then stood. He pressed the sole of his boot down on the side of Princess Idela’s head, ignoring the way her eyes rolled beneath the half-closed lids, then twisted his foot until he heard the bones of her neck snap. He hid the letter from Nabban in the waistband of his hose, then began to call for help, shouting over and over until the stairwell echoed.

  The funny thing was, the king thought, that although almost everything else that had loomed so large in his childhood—trees and walls and people—had shrunk as Simon himself grew, the Hayholt actually seemed larger to him now than it had when he was young. Perhaps because I’ve seen so much of what’s underneath. Perhaps because I have more of an idea of the secrets it holds than almost anyone else does. It was hard to feel familiarity and comfort when you knew that the large but familiar house in which you’d grown was built over an entire separate castle, and a Sithi castle at that, unexplored for centuries and haunted by dangerous secrets.

  “Aren’t you going to tell us the rules, Grandfather?” demanded Lillia. “Or are you just going to stare at the ground?”

  He looked up, a little startled to find himself woolgathering. “Here, now. Don’t be sharp with the king, young lady, or I’ll have you in the dungeon before you know it.”

  Lillia and her friends duly pretended to be frightened, which made him smile. His granddaughter had rounded up several playmates, a pair of Rowson girls and two boys close to Lillia’s own age, young relations of Earl Osrics, both in the age between childhood and the serious business of manhood, impatient to be grown. He prayed they could retain their romantic beliefs about manhood for many years to come, that he would not be forced to send them to war.

  “Well?”

  “Sorry, Princess Lillia the Stern,” he said. “I was thinking about how I will marry you off someday to a fat and bossy prince who will eat all the sweets and leave you none.”

  “No, you won’t. Now tell us the rules. Why is this game called ‘Holly King’?”

  “Because that was the name of a Hernystiri king who long ago ruled here—ruled most of the north. And he was not an Aedonite, but a pagan!”

  “Then why did God let him rule in the Hayholt?”

  “Oh, eventually he lost. He’s not the king now, is he? And we’re not Hernystiri, are we? Now, enough questions, child. This is a hiding game, and we pretend we are Aedonite priests.”

  “We already know how to play hide and seek, Grandfather.”

  “Ah, but this is different. Priests do not betray each other.” And he explained how only one person was to hide at first, while everybody else would look, and if a player found the person who was hiding they had to climb into the hiding place with them. “Then, you see, the last person becomes the Holly King, and then he—yes, Lillia, or she—becomes the first to hide in the next game. Do you understand?”

  “But if the last person is the Holly King, why would he be the person who hides? I thought you said the Holly King was trying to catch the priests.”

  Simon sighed. “In truth, it is sometimes difficult trying to do things with you, Granddaughter.”

  • • •

  One of Osric’s young relations was the first to hide, and Simon, who knew the castle far better than any of the children, soon found him in the back of one of the residence’s ground-floor storerooms. He whispered to the boy to keep quiet, then sat down beside him to wait for the rest to discover their hiding place. Soon, the darkness and the warmth of close quarters made the king’s eyes begin to feel heavy.

  It makes no sense, he thought. When I dreamed, I would sometimes wake up many times in a night, my heart pounding like a war drum, and then I’d find it hard to get back to sleep. Some days I walked around
in a fog all day from the sleep I’d missed. But now, when for some reason my dreams have deserted me, I still feel the same way, weary and stupid. Bloody Tree, it really isn’t fair!

  It was strange to be playing children’s games once again. His own son John Josua had seldom indulged in such things, remaining apart from the castle’s other children, content to read or sometimes even just to sit by himself and think. Simon could remember him perched in a chair that was too large for him, staring solemnly out at the sky as though the firmament itself were a book and young Johnno could read what it said.

  He was startled out of his memories when the older Rowson girl found them and squeezed into the small storage room. She whispered excitedly with the boy, their voices like the murmur of wind in the eaves, but Simon was already floating back to earlier times—earlier, but not always happier times.

  What could we have done differently? he wondered, as he had so often over the years. Could Miri and I have protected our son better? But who can stop sickness? Who can beat back fever? The best healers and physicians in the land all did their best, Tiamak and so many more, but it was like standing on the bank and watching him drown just beyond our reach. The remembrance of John Josua’s last days, memories so cold and so sickening they felt like poison, now threatened to overwhelm him. He forced himself back to the present, to the sound of whispering children in the darkened storeroom. The second boy had found them, and was laughing with the other two. Simon shushed them. Didn’t they understand how the game was played? It was important to stay hidden as long as possible, until only one remained, one lone player, wondering where everyone else had gone.

  Alone. Now that he remembered the few times he had played, he also remembered that he had never liked the game of Holly King all that much. Because it was so lonely if you were the last to discover where the others were hidden, warm and safe and giggling quietly, secure in the company of others. So lonely . . .

  The other Rowson girl found them now, a little one named Elli-something. She was crying a little from having been on her own. In between sniffs and sobs, she asked, “Where’s Lillia?”