Page 13 of The Witchwood Crown


  They were rarer than ever now, since witchwood itself was ever more scarce. Nezeru had heard whispers that the groves were lifeless places now, that only a few of the trees still grew, and that these had been moved for safety’s sake to a garden inside the royal palace. Some of the whispers even said that these last trees were dying, too. Nezeru thought that such a loss would be almost a greater tragedy than the ancient dispossession of her race from the Garden or the evils that mortals had done to them in these new lands. The People still survived, and if they were strong, the Hikeda’ya might last until the world itself was unmade, but with the witchwood gone there would never be another sacred blade smithied; the great, damaged gates of Nakkiga would never be properly rebuilt. Old witchwood could not be forged anew. When it was broken the spells were unbound and it became no different than any other object of the weary, mortal earth.

  • • •

  By the second day on the mortals’ ship, Nezeru began to see islands, some little more than clumps of rock that barely pierced the sea swells, others large enough to have vegetation of their own. One cold, windswept atoll was even decorated with wooded hills and a settlement of thatched houses near the shore.

  “What people live here, in such a place?” she asked Makho as they passed it, but the chieftain ignored her.

  “Qosei, we call them.” The Singer Saomeji was very close to her, almost beside her ear, and this time she had not heard him approach. “They are much like the trolls in the eastern mountains or the mortals of the south, the swamp dwellers.”

  She wondered why the Singer seemed so eager to speak to her. Did he have some interest in her beyond their comradeship—beyond the Queen’s sacred mission? She was grateful that he was another halfblood and thus had no right to force her to couple with him as Makho and the others did.

  “Yes, they are like the trolls and the savages of the Wran,” said Kemme, a scarred, hard-eyed veteran of the battles for Asu’a and the Nakkiga Gate. “They bleed, they die. And someday they and all the rest of the mortals will be scraped from the Queen’s lands.” He turned and strode away up the deck. The mortal crew hurried to get out of his way. Nezeru made to follow him, but Saomeji moved with graceful precision to block her path. “We have some time still before we reach the Island of the Bones.”

  “The sooner we can perform our task for the Mother of All, the happier I will be,” she said, but for once she was interested in what he said. This was the first time she had heard anything of the nature of their mission, and the name of the island was unfamiliar to her.

  Saomeji still had not moved. “If you would learn more of the Qosei or anything else of this place in the world, I would be pleased to share my knowledge with you.”

  “You are kind,” she replied, “but I am sure such learning would be beyond me.” Her father had always told her that the followers of Akhenabi, Lord of Song, were as deadly and secret as adders, subtle beyond the understanding of the other orders. Everyone in Nakkiga knew that the Order of Song was the Queen’s favorite, its spellwielders and loremasters more valued even than the ancient Order of Celebrants or Nezeru’s own huge and powerful Order of Sacrifice, but Nezeru could not imagine exchanging the warrior’s way just for power. She had fought too hard in the first place to become, not just a Sacrifice but also the first of her kind to be named a Queen’s Talon. Who would exchange such honor for a life of shadows, and ugly secrets? “I am trained only for a single task,” she told him, making her voice firm, “—to kill the queen’s enemies.”

  Saomeji may have guessed at her thoughts. “Do not scorn my knowledge, Sacrifice. A sword is no use without a hand to hold it, and a hand no use without the thoughts that guide it. My blood is no more pure than yours, and yet I have risen high already.”

  “My presence here shows that I am not scorned by my own order, either. Still, I thank you, Singer, for enlightening me about the natives.” She inclined her head in the smallest acceptable acknowledgment, then slipped past him.

  • • •

  On the fourth day under sail, far out in the stone-gray sea, they reached the largest island they had yet seen. It was topped by a great mountain, the peak a broken cone dusted with snow. A half-dozen or so smaller hills clung to its sides like weary children, all of them blanketed at their bases in mist. Nezeru saw few tall trees, but everywhere that the land had not been cleared it was covered with green grass and thick undergrowth. A sizable settlement stood on the nearest plateau, several dozen sod-roofed houses surrounded by tiny earthbound clouds that became sheep as Nezeru’s ship drew closer, with herds of deer roaming farther up the slopes.

  Dozens of small, brown-skinned people came down to the water’s edge to watch as their ship anchored in the bay, and although the faces were more reserved than joyful, the men, women, and children watched the Hikeda’ya come ashore without fear. The islanders were small, though not as small as the mortals of the Trollfells, but as if to make up for the sameness of the landscape they were nearly all dressed in colorful clothing of woven wool and hide.

  As Makho and the ship’s captain walked into the village the crowd followed them into the center of the cluster of sod houses. When they stopped, an old man in a suit of bead-decorated hides walked slowly out of the largest hut. In one hand he held a scepter made from an antler, in the other a curved bone knife, its surface acrawl with carvings. As he approached, the old man waved these implements in the air and began to speak in a guttural tongue that was like nothing Nezeru had heard.

  The ship’s captain translated for them. “The elder welcomes you. He says it is an honor to meet the Knowing One’s people. They have prepared a feast in your honor. Tonight you will stay in his lodge and then climb Goaddi tomorrow.”

  Makho was expressionless. “No. Tell him we wish to see the bones now.”

  A little taken aback, the captain translated this to the elder and the other villagers. The old man waved his staff again, this time using it to point toward the towering peak above them.

  “He says the shrine is high on Goaddi and it is almost evening. The paths are too dangerous in darkness. Also, you may frighten the guardians of the shrine by arriving unexpectedly.”

  “It does not matter,” said Makho. “This is what our queen has ordered. Her words are our law. If we cannot reach this place tonight, we will spend the night on the mountain and continue in the morning.”

  Nezeru did not know whose bones Makho spoke of, or what value there was in seeing them, but as she examined the strange, small folk surrounding them and the exultant, endlessly varied greens of the island’s vegetation, she felt an unexpected pride. Who would have dreamed that a mere halfblood child could travel so far from Nakkiga and see such things? If she had not followed her heart into the Order of Sacrifice she would now be piling stone on dull stone as part of her father’s Order of Builders, or perhaps have become a second wife for one his underlings. What would High Magister Viyeki think now, after trying so hard to keep her from submitting to the Order of Sacrifice, if he could see his daughter serving the Mother of the People here at the farthest edge of the world? Surely he would be ashamed at his own timidity. Surely he would have to admit that his daughter had chosen well.

  • • •

  Led by islander guides, they climbed most of the way to the top of the mountain before darkness fell. The villagers who led them were surprised to see the strangers making such fast time, but of course they knew nothing of the training all Queen’s Talons received; the nights and days of endless hardship that built upon their natural hardiness and made each of them, even the Whisperer and the Singer, fit and fierce as beasts. When it was too dark to continue, or at least too dark for the mortal guides, Makho commanded them to make camp for the night.

  As she made a comfortable place for herself against a hummock of grassy ground in a spot shielded from the worst of the wind, Makho appeared. “I have been looking for you.” But he barely looked at h
er. “I will couple with you tonight. Await me.”

  He did as he had promised, coming to her when the moon was high. Nezeru did not feel flattered but neither could she complain: one of the burdens of her mixed blood was that she was available to pureblood men, because it was the duty of all Hikeda’ya to help the race grow so that they would become numerous enough to destroy the queen’s enemies and bring harmony to a world badly in need of it. It was even more necessary because pure-blooded women had not made many children with halfblood males—although not, some of the noblemen complained, for lack of trying.

  Makho made her take off all her clothing before he mounted her. Nezeru did not feel cold, and she certainly was not encumbered by modesty, but she wished he had not ordered it so. A part of her feared being watched by one of the others, especially Saomeji, although she could not say precisely why. If there had been any enjoyment for her in the act it would have been soured by that discomfort, but in any case, enjoyment was never in view.

  Her mother Tzoja had once called this intimate connection of two people “lovemaking,” which Nezeru thought as soft and silly a mortal idea as she had ever heard—as soft and silly as her mother herself could be. Tzoja had also tried to comfort Nezeru after she had been disciplined by her father, even when Nezeru herself tried to shrug off the embraces and the pointless apologies. There was nothing of love in what she did with Makho, Nezeru knew, only duty, but that was more than enough. The Hikeda’ya were few now. Their mortal enemies were many and bred like pink frogs, spawning in their thousands every year: soon the world would be full of them and the People and even the Garden itself would be forgotten as if neither had ever existed.

  Certainly there was nothing unduly affectionate in Makho’s treatment of her. His coupling, like his body, was as hard and smooth as witchwood. When he finished it was in utter silence, and when he rolled off her, it was as though Nezeru herself had suddenly disappeared, even as she lay in the moon’s blue-white light with his fluids and her own sweat drying on her skin. But she felt she had the right to ask him at least one question.

  “What bones?”

  He looked at her. His voice told her he had all but forgotten her presence already. “Bones?”

  “You told the mortals we came to see the bones.”

  Makho turned away from her. “The queen sent us to find the bones of Hakatri.”

  For a moment she could not say why the name sounded so familiar. Then, suddenly and shockingly, it came to her. “Hakatri? Do you truly mean the brother of Ineluki the Storm King?”

  “Is there another?” This time Makho’s scorn was unhidden, and he would answer no more questions.

  8

  A Meeting on Lantern Bridge

  The last days of Marris-month blew by on cold Frostmarch winds as the royal progress made its way north across the plains of Rimmersgard toward Elvritshalla. The journey seemed inchingly slow to Morgan, since the great procession stopped at the landholdings of some of the most powerful nobles and also in some of the larger cities, like high, windy Naarved. Each time they did, his grandparents explained the reasons for the visit, anxious for Morgan to learn their statecraft; but each stop seemed so much like all the rest, full of speeches and dull ceremonies, that he lost track. The broad, unfamiliar landscapes and wide sky that had first engrossed him became ordinary and dull as the journey dragged on and on. Even the fair faces of young Rimmersgard women began to lose interest for him. As Marris passed and Avrel blew in, Morgan spent more and more time lost in his own brooding thoughts.

  Often, lulled into near-sleep by the monotony of the spare northern landscapes, he found himself thinking of his dead father, something he had done his best to avoid during the journey, though not all the memories were unhappy ones. A solitary evergreen in an empty waste, bent and shaped by the wind, reminded him of the carefully crafted shapes in the Hedge Garden back home, and that brought back to him the day when his father had lifted a much smaller Morgan up onto his shoulders so he could see those hedge animals more closely. From his new vantage they had all seemed more plant than beast, the eyes and mouths so carefully shaped from boxwood branches dissolving into mere whorls of green, but instead of disappointment, child-Morgan had felt exalted. The view from atop his father’s shoulders made him feel as though he had suddenly become a man, a tall man. Seeing not just the tops of the hedge animals, but over the garden wall into other parts of the Inner Bailey, had given him an exciting sensation of power and possibility.

  Someday I will be this big, he had thought. Someday I will be able to go anywhere.

  “Take me outside, Papa!” he had demanded. “Take me out. I want to see if I’m as tall as the castle walls!”

  His father had laughed, enjoying his excitement, and then carried him to the massive old Festival Oak at the garden’s far end to let him feel its centuried bark, so covered with cracks and bumps that the young Morgan could imagine it was a dragon’s armored skin.

  But that had been before Prince John Josua had lost interest in his wife and young son, before he had become so immersed in his old books and his writing that he scarcely joined Morgan and his mother even for meals. Even when he was with them in those later days, he had seemed always to be thinking about something or somewhere quite different.

  It was hard to mourn the way his grandparents did, with careful conversations and quiet ceremonies. Morgan felt his father had left him years before he died.

  Now that they had reached the hilltop, Simon and the rest of the mounted company could look down the river’s course and see almost the whole of the Drorshull Valley. Even several days into Avrel, snow was still piled so thickly that in many places everything but village and farmstead roofs were buried; even the church spires that marked out each settlement seemed to be standing on tiptoe.

  “Look,” said Morgan, pointing. “Is that it?”

  The royal progress had been following the course of the river for several chilly days, through cold rains and painful flights of gravelly sleet, but it seemed they had finally reached their destination—a huge, walled city at the far end of the valley, where the Gratuvask split into two channels. Set on the peak at its center was a keep surrounded by four stocky towers, each crowned with a steep, conical roof.

  “Elvritshalla,” Simon said. “Praise God, we’ve finally arrived. I haven’t seen the place for so long!”

  Even so early in the gray afternoon, the city smoldered with lights like a field of live coals. “What are those other lights, Grandfather?” Morgan asked. “The ones stretching over the river?”

  “That is the Lyktenspan—‘Lantern Bridge’ in Westerling,” the king explained. “The lanterns are hung along its whole length. Most of the time they are lit at sunset each evening and extinguished when the sun rises, but it looks like they’ve lit them early today—perhaps because of us!”

  “I would not be surprised,” Miriamele said. “We are the High Throne, after all. It is not as though we visit every sennight.”

  “It’s a very nice bridge,” Morgan said dutifully, but Simon thought it a poor compliment. He had loved the Lyktenspan since the first time he had seen it: the distant rows of lights always seemed to float above the river like something magical.

  “Did you know,” he told his grandson, “that there are times in winter when the lanterns burn for days straight, because the sun never rises?” He frowned at Morgan’s dubious look. “Don’t scoff, lad, it’s the truth. In summer it is the opposite—the sun stays in the sky for days.”

  Morgan was obviously doing his best to stay on his elders’ good sides, but his youthful pride, just as obviously, made him fear being the butt of some hoary old joke. “Is that really true, Grandmother?” he called to the queen.

  “Unlike some of the things your grandfather says, yes, it actually is. Duchess Gutrun used to speak of how the winter made her fret because it felt as though the sun had actually gone away for good. Bu
t do not ask me why such a thing should be.”

  “It is because the vault of the sky is curved, I think,” Simon said. “Something of that sort. Morgenes once explained it to me.”

  “Ask Lord Tiamak,” the queen suggested. “He doubtless has learned something from his many books that can explain it, Morgan.”

  “I will, Grandmother.” But the prince could not hide his lack of enthusiasm at the prospect of being lectured on the workings of the firmament, and Simon felt a prickle of irritation. What did it take to engage the lad? Morgan would inherit the rule of this land and most of the known world, yet he acted as though it were all some unwanted chore. It was hard for Simon not to blame Miri. She was always worrying about their grandson, trying to protect him from his own mistakes. He certainly understood why—how could he not, after the terrible loss she had suffered, they all had suffered?—but protecting the boy from the consequences of his mistakes seemed like the wrong idea.

  Yes, he lost his father. But I lost both my mother and father before I was born, and I had no loving grandparents, no younger sister, none of the things that Morgan has. I had blistered hands from hard work in the kitchen, and I had Rachel the Dragon pinching my ears. Would the boy trade his condition for mine?

  Simon took a breath. “It would not harm you to learn a bit more about the history of the nations under our High Throne . . .” he began, but Morgan saw his direction and changed the subject.