The Witchwood Crown

She said it loudly enough that the Hand of the High Throne looked over to them, his expression carefully empty. “Did you call me, Majesty?”

  “You have been riding beside us for a while, good Count,” she said. “I can see you are waiting for us to stop talking.”

  “I do not want to trouble Your Majesties or interrupt your conversation.”

  “Call it saving us from ourselves, then,” said the king. “Miri and I are both out of sorts. Come, ride here beside us and tell us what’s on your mind.”

  Eolair looked at Miri, who nodded. “Very well, then,” he said. “I have had a messenger from Hernysadharc just now. Pasevalles’ dispatch came after we had left, so Hugh sent it on by fast rider.”

  “Very kind of him,” said Simon flatly.

  Eolair was the last man in Osten Ard to miss something simply because it was unspoken. “Majesties, I still do not know what King Hugh was thinking to keep you waiting at the gate,” he said. “I apologize again on behalf of all my countrymen for such strange, discourteous behavior. Queen Inahwen was surprised and shamed that the king kept you waiting so long outside the walls. She told me so.”

  Simon waved his hand. “Inahwen is kind—she always was. I am not too troubled. Men are men, whether king or kitchen worker, as I should know better than anyone. Hugh may be a bit overexcited by his own grandeur, as well as by the prospect of marriage. As for Lady Tylleth . . .” Simon had just noticed the halves of the broken seal that bound the folded papers in Eolair’s hand. “Well, enough of her for now. What does Lord Chancellor Pasevalles have to say?”

  “Do you not want to read it yourself, Majesty?”

  “I know you too well to think you would have broken that seal if the letter was not addressed to you, good Eolair, and I also know you will have read it carefully and probably more than once, because you are someone who ‘never has time for clean hands,’ as my old taskmistress Rachel the Dragon used to say. So please, tell us what is on Pasevalles’ mind, or at least the things we need to know.”

  Miriamele nodded. When they were young, and the fact of their sudden power was like a waking dream, Simon had tried to be all things to all people, unable to refuse a favor or to turn his back on a cry of need. Miriamele, raised in her father’s courts in Meremund and then the Hayholt, had already known that a monarch who could not stand aloof sometimes was a miserable monarch indeed. It had taken years, and the elevation of several old, trusted friends to the most important positions in court, but her too-kind husband had finally learned he could not be all things to all people.

  Eolair undid the flattened roll and, as Miriamele had expected, immediately found the first thing he wished to discuss, several pages in: He prepared for any and all of his duties, no matter how small, with the anguished care of a general outnumbered and at bay.

  “After much talk about the dedication of the new chapter house and the work on the library—as well as a few other matters I will save for later, like the League’s complaint about Yissola’s latest outrages, as they deem them—the Lord Chancellor gets to the business at hand.” Eolair’s rueful smile pulled his strong, weathered features into a droll face, and Miriamele remembered when she had thought him perhaps the most handsome man in all of Osten Ard. “I do wish our friend Pasevalles could be persuaded to put the most important business at the beginning of the letter, but he still writes like a child of a provincial court, full of flowery greetings and formal phrases even in a dispatch.” Eolair’s eyes widened a little. “Forgive me, Majesties. I did not mean to sound as if I was criticizing the Lord Chancellor. He is an able man and a fine administrator . . .”

  Simon laughed. “You need not worry—we know you admire him.”

  “Indeed. Your Majesties are lucky to have him, and he will take good care of the Hayholt and Erkynland in your absence.”

  “But you were not so certain of that when we made the decision to travel to Rimmersgard, were you?” Simon said. “Come, I am teasing you, old friend. I know you were only doing your duty. It is a difficult thing to take away the king and queen from their court for so long. But we should get back to the business of Pasevalles’s letter.”

  “Let me just read this to you,” said Eolair, moving the heavy parchment until he found an appropriate distance from his eyes. “But, my gracious lords and lady, I fear the news from your great southern duchy of Nabban is not so good . . .” he began.

  • • •

  “He can be a bit wordy, our Pasevalles, can’t he?” Simon remarked when Eolair had finished.

  “But the essence is clear enough,” said Miriamele. “Duke Saluceris is struggling more than ever with his brother, and Drusis as always is champing at the bit to push the boundaries of Nabban farther out into the Thrithings. And the rest of Nabban, also as usual, is waiting to see which of them wins the contest, as though it were no greater matter than a horse race.”

  “Drusis claims that he wants only to protect Nabbanai settlers from raids by the Thrithings-men,” said Eolair. “But that is the substance of the discord, yes, Your Majesty. I will summarize the rest of Pasevalles’ points. He believes the desire to push out into the grasslands is too strong among the houses of Nabban’s Dominiate, and in the country as a whole, for Duke Saluceris to openly forbid his brother these aggressive actions, and he is also not certain that the duke could survive an open struggle with Drusis in any case.”

  “Does he truly mean ‘survive’?” asked Miriamele, alarmed for the first time. “Surely these are mere disagreements. The Benidrivine House is the house of Camaris the Hero himself, and Saluceris is the lawful duke of Nabban, not just by their own laws, but under our Ward. By the love of the saints, Simon and I crowned Saluceris ourselves in the Sancellan Aedonitis, in front of God and all Nabban!”

  “All true,” said Eolair. “And I do not imagine Drusis would move directly against his brother and flout so much law and custom. But assassination, if it could not be directly laid at Drusis’s door, would still make him the next duke, since Saluceris’ son is still a child. I hate to say so, but as Your Majesties know, murder has long been a favored method of gaining power in the south.”

  Simon made a frustrated noise. “Well, this is a puzzle and no mistake. But what can Miri and I do? It would be heavy-handed to send troops to Saluceris when he has not asked for such a thing.” He looked around at the column of armored men marching behind them and the vanguard of mounted knights. “Not that we have any troops to spare just now, with the planting season hard upon us. Maybe Duke Osric is right when he says we need a larger standing force . . .”

  After the king had paused long enough that it was clear he had finished his thought, Count Eolair gracefully took charge of the conversation once more. “Let me be clear, Majesties. Lord Pasevalles does not ask you for a solution at this moment, but merely wishes you to know what the news from Nabban tells him, so that any change will not come as a complete surprise.”

  “In other words,” said Miriamele, “he wishes us to share his worry and his helplessness.”

  Eolair frowned just the smallest bit. “I’m afraid that is often a loyal subject’s duty in such cases, my queen.”

  Miri knew she was being unduly cross, but the sun and the spring scents she had hoped to enjoy were fading beneath all these fretful shadows of statecraft.

  “You look as though you are thinking hard, my clever wife,” said Simon. “You have been in Nabban far more than I have and your family is still powerful there. What should we do?”

  Miriamele shook her head. “Clearly my Nabbanai kin are busy adding fuel to the fire, almost certainly for their own purposes, and I would not trust my cousin Dallo Ingadaris even to hold my reins for fear he would steal my horse. But there are still many other Ingadarines I trust. I’ll write to them and see how things appear from where they sit, and whether the fight between brothers is as dangerous as Pasevalles suspects.”

  “We’ve already
heard enough of this Drusis to think ill of him,” Simon said. “He’s an arrogant, troublesome fellow, no doubt. But surely one man cannot provoke an entire nation into war by himself.”

  “It seems unlikely,” said Eolair. “But stranger things have happened. In any case, as Your Majesties pointed out, we cannot send troops when they have not been requested—the Nabbanai would rightly resent it. And this is only one letter. Pasevalles is from Nabban himself, so perhaps he feels its storms more strongly than the rest of us would. But when we return—well, perhaps greater attention to Nabban would not go amiss. They are a numerous and often quarrelsome people. I beg the queen’s pardon if I offend.”

  After a moment’s silence, Miriamele said, “Offend? No, Eolair, I say it often enough myself. But we’ve barely begun this journey and already I see troubles growing everywhere.” The sun, though its beams still sparkled on patches of snow and the sky was empty of clouds, seemed to have grown dimmer. “I wish we were home.”

  “We all feel that way, my love,” Simon told her. “At least, at times like this.”

  He Who Always Steps On Sand, why did you lead your child to such a strange place?

  The gods of Tiamak’s childhood in the Wran were nowhere near as powerful and ever-present as the deity his employers worshipped, but there were times he couldn’t help thinking that a little closer oversight from them might still be in order, especially on this royal progress into cold northern lands.

  He pulled his cloak tighter. He would never become used to drylander clothes, but he was inexpressibly glad to have the right sort of garments for these chilly northern lands instead of what he had worn in the first part of his life, seldom more than a breechclout and occasionally a pair of sandals. Even thinking about what it would be like to cross into frigid Rimmersgard in such near-nakedness made him shiver, although several of the riders nearest him had taken off their helmets to enjoy the early spring sunshine.

  Sunshine, he thought. Back in our swamp, no one would have called such thin gruel “sunshine.” It is not hot enough here to lure even a cold turtle out onto a rock.

  It was not that Tiamak missed his marshy home, exactly; even in Village Grove he had been an outsider, a strange young man who had learned to read and write and had gone to Ansis Pellipé in Perdruin to study—an actual city! But he missed the security he had felt as a child in the swamp, beneath the spreading branches and heavy leaves, when everything had been known and familiar. Now it seemed that the more years passed, the more strange the world became.

  Not too many years from now I will truly be old, he thought. Will the world be completely strange to me then?

  Tiamak had never been this far north before, that was part of it. Not only the cold air, but the very size of the sky seemed foreign, the broad expanse of blue so wide that he almost felt as though he stood atop some terrible high plateau instead of on a broad plain of streams and snow-dotted meadows. But the snow was finally vanishing with the warming days, Tiamak reminded himself; he should remember to say a prayer of thanks. At the same time last year, as his comrades never wearied of telling him, this part of Osten Ard had been hip deep in swirling, mounding snow, the skies gray as lead.

  So that is a good place to start with my gratitude, he told himself. Thank you, He Who Bends the Trees. Thank you for any sun at all and not too much snow!

  He might have felt differently, he suspected, had they not been called north by such a sad circumstance, the imminent death of Duke Isgrimnur of Elvritshalla. Had it been anything less, though, he would probably not have accompanied the king and queen. But Isgrimnur had been Tiamak’s friend as well. Along with Miriamele, who was then only a young girl, they had faced impossible, almost unbelievable odds together and survived. That alone would have obligated Tiamak to travel to this unsettling part of the world, but over the years his friendship with Isgrimnur had become something more, something completely unexpected. The sulfurous duke, big as a house, as he had first seemed to Tiamak, had proved to be as wise as he was loud and as subtle as he was brave. They had stayed in touch by letter, only a few per year stowed in the diplomatic posts that passed between Elvritshalla and the Hayholt, but enough to keep the friendship very much alive.

  And in fact, for most of that time it had been a three-part friendship, because Isgrimnur’s wife Gutrun had always carefully gone through her husband’s letters, adding in the words the duke had forgotten in haste, correcting the occasional woeful mistake of grammar (Isgrimnur was equally bad in his native Rimmerspakk, she had often told Tiamak) and adding her own comments full of useful news and funny stories about her husband. The news of Gutrun’s death several years ago had been one of the saddest days of Tiamak’s life. He had spent very little time in her actual company, but in her husband’s letters, peeping out from between his scrawled lines, she had made a home for herself in Tiamak’s heart.

  It was so hard to lose her, he thought. And now the duke. Why does She Who Waits To Take All Back wait so long? Why must the reaping wait until we have grown so used to the world, when the pain will be sharpest for both the dead and their survivors?

  Tiamak adjusted himself on the hard carriage seat. He had not become so much of a northerner now that he liked to ride a horse, nor was he large enough to comfortably ride one for long even if he wished. He had a donkey they kept for him in the stables back home, an unpleasant but reasonably steady creature named Scand, but there was no question of Tiamak riding the beast on this trip, where it would struggle every moment to keep up with the horses. Instead, the little man sat beside the driver atop the carriage meant for the king and queen—not that they had used it yet as anything more than a moving cabinet for their clothing and other belongings. Back at the Hayholt, Tiamak only rode Scand when he wished to be outside, and almost always in the company of young Princess Lillia and her pony. The royal granddaughter was nearly as pig-headed as the donkey, but Tiamak loved her in a way he would never have imagined possible, more even than he had loved his sisters’ children, as much as if she had been of his very own flesh.

  It was not solely his loyalty to Simon and Miriamele that made it so: Tiamak liked the heir Prince Morgan well enough, but there was something about the little girl that pulled and tugged at his heart, and when she called him “Uncle Timo” he was quite helpless. Even if there had been anything left for him back in the Wran, even if the elders there had begged him to come back and be their chief, Tiamak knew he might not have been able to leave the little girl behind. He wanted to watch Lillia grow, see that clever mind fill with more and more understanding, watch her learn to put that powerful ambition to some higher task than simply forcing her slave-uncle Tiamak to build complex waterwheels for her in the mud of Kynswood streams.

  But losing Isgrimnur or missing little Lillia were not the only sources of Tiamak’s discomfort. When the news came to the Hayholt about the duke, Tiamak had just begun his great work. Planning it had been the work of years, but instead of seeing it finally come to fruition he was here, a hundred leagues away from the castle and weeks from returning, knowing his work had all but stopped in his absence.

  And I am no longer young, he thought sadly. Who knows how much time I have to complete this sacred task?

  It was only a library, most people would say, a collection of books and scrolls, the kind of thing Isgrimnur himself might well have thought a strange waste of space and time, but it was to be the first true open library ever built in the northern lands, and to Tiamak, who as a child had wondered if he might ever own a real book, it meant the world. Conceived to honor Miriamele and Simon’s late son, Prince John Josua, the unfinished library was already precious to Tiamak, who had cared for that young man very much. John Josua had loved books and learning as much as the Wrannaman did, and he had ambitions to make it a great center of scholarship in the young prince’s name.

  But until we return from Rimmersgard, I can do nothing to aid the work except send the occasional let
ter to the master mason and pray for patience—

  A sudden gust from the faded blue mountains to the north pimpled Tiamak’s exposed skin, and although the wind had been blowing all day, the strength of this chill surprised him, pushing deep into his very substance, bones and innards. Without even thinking, he made circles of his forefingers and thumbs to repel bad luck, as he had done when he was a child.

  If I were back in Village Grove, he thought, I would be certain that She Who Waits To Take All Back had just breathed on my neck, reminding me that she has plans none of us know about.

  Which was true, of course, as it always was. He was letting sadness over Isgrimnur make him fretful, jumping at shadows, cringing from sharp breezes.

  While Tiamak was trying to gather back together his hopeful thoughts about the library, he heard someone come riding swiftly up behind him. He looked down from his high seat to see one of Eolair’s servants pacing the carriage on a tall, dark horse.

  “Your pardon, Lord Tiamak,” the rider said. “The Lord Steward bids me give you this. It came with the dispatches from Erkynland.”

  Tiamak looked it over as Eolair’s servant rode away, and his heart lightened a bit. He knew who it was from instantly because of the odd seal pressed into the red wax: instead of a heavy metal stamp or a signet ring, his wife Thelía always pressed a small dried flower into the melted wax. Because she had sent the letter several months back, in Feyever, she had chosen one of the first wildflowers that bloomed in Erkynland every year, a bright yellow bloom called sunlion or sometimes coltsfoot. He knew she would have picked it herself as she gathered herbs and simples in the castle gardens, and it should have warmed him just to see its sunbeam petals, still bright despite its long travels, but he was still feeling the effects of the chill that had surprised him a few moments earlier. He unfolded the letter and began reading, hoping for good news, or at least an absence of anything worrisome. Her opening words were in her usual, conversational tone—Thelía seemed interested only in sharing various workaday matters, a few decisions on the library materials she hoped he would be able to write back about, and a question about wild marjoram and what he knew of its use in his boyhood home in the Wran. But then he reached the final paragraph.