The giant growled, the sound so low that it made Nezeru’s heart bounce behind her ribs, but it did not otherwise move.
“Down!” cried Makho.
The creature groaned and clawed at its neck, but after a moment sank slowly to its knees, massive, black-nailed hands flexing in frustration.
“He is Goh Gam Gar, oldest of his kind,” said Akhenabi. “He is your new companion—although I doubt he will be your friend. Now go, and bring back the blood of a dragon. The Queen of the World awaits your success.”
15
Atop the Holy Tree
It was a warm day out and a hard climb up hundreds of narrow steps, but Lord Chancellor Pasevalles considered it well worth the trouble.
I am like a cat, he thought with quiet amusement. Always happiest when I can perch in some high place and look down on everything else.
He stepped out onto the top of the Tower of the Holy Tree, and his troubled mind was immediately soothed by the cool air swirling in from the Kynslagh. He put his back to the morning sun and peered down from the western side of the tower, but other than an assortment of castle livestock grazing on the green and castle-folk going about their assorted employments there was little to see. He wondered what those curiously foreshortened men and women would think if they knew they were being watched from on high. Then another thought came to him: Is this what God sees from his high heaven? No wonder He cares so little for us. We are scuttling things.
After a while the sun slipped behind some clouds. Shrouded from the glare, his sweat from the climb now dried, Pasevalles began to walk the rectangular tower-top, something he did whenever he could find the chance, in search of that catlike feeling of peace. Holy Tree Tower had been built in the years after the Storm King’s War, when the Hayholt’s two tallest structures had both become useless. Hjeldin’s Tower—the squat, brooding cylinder of stone he looked down on now—had been sealed up at the order of the king and queen, and Green Angel Tower, which had soared far above everything else, had collapsed in the final hours of the struggle. A castle without a tower was like a rich man without eyes, a target for thieves and bandits, and so a new tower had been constructed against the wall of the Inner Keep, a high place where sentries could stand and look over the innermost lands of the king’s and queen’s protection—the heart of the High Ward.
Pasevalles gazed at the secretive mass of Hjeldin’s Tower, its premises forbidden to all for many years. Then he continued along the tower battlements until he could look down on the spot where mighty Green Angel Tower had once stretched to the sky. What a thing it must have been, he thought, to have stood atop it—twice this height or more!—and looked out across the world. No cat, no matter how ambitious, could be displeased with such a perch!
Even the rubble of Green Angel Tower was long gone, hauled off to rebuild the ruined parts of the castle after the last, dreadful battle; all that had remained for many years were the faint marks of its foundations. Now even those were gone, the ground filled and leveled, and foundations laid for a new hall that would become the royal library. Lord Tiamak thought a monument to learning would be a fitting use for the place where the Storm King had almost managed to tear open the world and turn it inside out, but Pasevalles was not so sure.
Learning itself cannot stop destruction or repair its ravages, he thought, suddenly caught up in old sorrows. It can only make certain that you understand how much you have truly lost.
He straightened, stretched. Those were not the kind of thoughts he wished to have now. He had carefully, deliberately put those bad days in the past and turned his back on them. He had work to do now—a kingdom to care for.
He heard footsteps and voices. The sentries, whom he had sent off to find themselves a drink and a late morning meal, were climbing the stairs back to their posts. Pasevalles took a long breath and tasted rain coming. The king and queen would be back in a few weeks and there was much to do.
Still, he regretted having to descend the stairs, not because of the wearying journey, but because he hated leaving the quiet and isolation of the heights. He had not realized before how lonely it was to rule a kingdom, as he had been doing in the royal couple’s absence. And it was lonelier still when you were surrounded by the voices and faces of all the people that wanted something from you.
“God give you good day, Lord Chancellor!” said the first sentry onto the tower top. His beard was shiny with butter, and crumbs were caught in the sleeves of his hauberk. “Did you have yourself a breath of fresh air?” The second one climbed up behind the first, then they both turned toward him and clutched their pikes in formal salute.
“I did,” Pasevalles said, smiling. “Enjoy the view, men. You do not know it, but you have a better job than mine.”
As he stepped into the stairwell, he saw the two sentries exchange puzzled looks.
• • •
Pasevalles had climbed many more steps by the time he reached the residence hall of the Inner Bailey and the bedchamber where he had installed the wounded Sitha. He was given no time to rest, though: instead of the sentry who should have been standing guard at the door, two frightened chambermaids huddled there, faces pale as cooked fish, and he could hear men shouting beyond the door. He drew his knife and hurried forward.
“What has happened?” he demanded.
One of the maids said, “Oh, my lord, she is awake—and angry!”
He sprang past her and threw open the door to discover the even more surprising spectacle of Brother Etan and an armored Erkynguard wrestling with a naked woman. “What is the meaning of this?” Pasevalles shouted.
Brother Etan had several long scratches on his face, and blood dripped from his chin. “She woke and attacked me!” He struggled to keep the Sitha’s long nails from scoring him again. “Help us, your Lordship! By my vow, she is ungodly strong!”
The guardsman had his arms around the woman’s slender waist and was doing his best to hold her down on the bed while she slapped at his helmeted head. Etan had managed to catch one of her arms, so Pasevalles threw himself forward and caught the other. The monk was right—the woman, who had seemed nearly dead only a couple of days earlier, was astonishingly strong, and the sweat that coated her limbs made it difficult to find and hold a grip. At last Pasevalles pushed her arm down onto the mattress and lay atop it, but he could still feel her pulling and twisting beneath him like some powerful serpent of the far southern swamps.
“Lady!” he cried. “Lady! You are among friends! Stop fighting us! We will not hurt you!”
He turned his head sideways to see her better, and was nearly rewarded with the loss of his nose as she bit at him savagely, her teeth snapping shut only a thumb’s width from his face. “Redeemer save us, is she mad?” he shouted.
“Does it matter?” croaked Etan. The collar of his robe had been pushed halfway over his face so that he seemed to have shrunk to the size of a child. “Mad, sane, either way she is fierce. Call more guards!”
But the Sitha, as though Pasevalles’ words had traveled to her slowly, over a long distance, at last began to calm. He risked another look and saw her head sag back and her astounding golden eyes roll up beneath the lids. She went limp then, and for a moment all four of them, three good sized men and one slender woman, lay on the bed, struggling for air together.
Pasevalles felt something wet, and rolled a little to the side to see what it was. “By the Aedon, this is blood! Everywhere! Etan, is this all yours?”
The monk groaned. “It feels like it, Lord Steward, but I fear it’s hers. She has reopened the wounds I stitched closed. May God help us, we must close them or she will bleed to death.”
Pasevalles loosened his grip on her arm to see whether she would resume her struggle, but her pale golden face and limbs had gone slack. He sat up. “Get something to tie her down,” he told the guard. “Not rope, something softer. The ties from those curtains.” He watched t
he guardsman hesitate in front of the window, taking off his helmet to peer at the window fittings like a cow ordered to jump a tall fence. “God curse it, man, don’t stare!” Pasevalles cried. “Rip them down!”
The soldier returned with an expression of deep unease on his perspiring face and a curtain tie in each hand. Pasevalles snatched them from him and, although she was no longer resisting, tied the Sitha’s ankles to the footboard of the bed, pulling the makeshift ropes tight before knotting them. Brother Etan tilted the upper half of her body onto its side so he could examine her bleeding wounds. She seemed quite insensible now, but Pasevalles was not going to rely on this strange creature, who only looked like a mortal woman, to remain passive for very long, so he sent the bemused guard for ties from the chamber’s other set of curtains, then used one to bind her wrists together before dismissing the guard back to his post. The large man all but ran from the room, giving one last wide-eyed look before closing the door.
Pasevalles would have preferred to tie both the Sitha’s arms separately, as he had done with her legs, but he did not want to interfere with Brother Etan, who was stanching the blood still seeping from her wounds. He sat on the floor and held her bound wrists instead. “What do you think?”
“Think? I think I know nothing about the Fair Folk, Lord Steward. She has lost much blood.” The monk shook his head. “As have I! But she had lost far more before she came here, and she survived that.”
Her nakedness was disconcerting—in repose she looked much like an ordinary, slender young woman. Pasevalles was about to reach down and pull the coverlet up over her lower body when the Sitha-woman’s eyes fluttered open again. For a moment, they seemed to rove unfixed, then they narrowed. She tried to fling herself off the bed again, but was hindered by her bound ankles and only succeeded in bucking off Etan, who tumbled onto the floor on the far side of the bed and cracked his head against the stone flags so loudly that Pasevalles could hear it. Meanwhile, it was all Pasevalles could do to hold onto the curtain tie knotted around her wrists. She cried out in what he guessed was her Sithi tongue, but the stream of rapid, fluid sound meant nothing to him.
“Lady!” he cried again, as Etan slowly crawled back onto the bed, a red lump already showing itself above his eye, “Lady, stop! We will not hurt you! You have been wounded, and you must not fight us!”
It took a moment, but he saw something like understanding pass over her, and her features softened, but she still fought against the restraints.
“Where . . . where are they?” she said in perfectly understandable Westerling. “Where are my things?”
“Things? Lady, stop fighting, we mean you nothing ill. Do you mean your saddle bags? We brought them with you. Here! Brother Etan, they are in the corner. Bring them to her!”
The monk half ran, half stumbled to the corner, holding his head as though it might come off if he let go. He found the white leather bags and carried them to her. She snatched them away and began to paw through them despite her wrists being tied together. Pasevalles had gone through the bags himself when she had first been brought here, and knew that other than a few small tools, a roll of very strong twine wound from fine hairs, and a carved wooden bowl, they did not contain much. He also could not avoid the sight of her nakedness without looking away altogether, and although Brother Etan had done just that, Pasevalles felt a kind of fascination.
The Sitha was slender, long-backed and narrow-hipped, but firm muscles moved beneath her smooth, evenly golden skin, and Pasevalles knew as well as anyone could what strength was in them. Her tangled hair was silvery, wet with perspiration and blood. Her face, subtly different from a mortal’s, tilted oddly at cheek, forehead, and chin so that it seemed almost feline. She might have been some heathen goddess of the hunt, running unclothed beneath the moon at the front of a savage pack. Had she been a mortal woman, he would have guessed her to be less than two dozen summers old.
He was staring at her small breasts, Pasevalles realized. He felt a sudden clutch of confusion and looked away.
“It is not here!” the Sitha suddenly wailed. “Is this all you found? Where is Spidersilk? Have you seen him?” Some blood was dribbling anew from the wound in her chest, and Etan was trying to stanch it with a cloth.
“Spidersilk? Who is that? You were alone when we found you. We thought you dead,” said Pasevalles.
“My horse! Where is he?”
“We found no horse. The bags were hung willy-nilly, half-hidden in a bush. Doubtless the horse ran and they caught there.”
She swayed, then dropped the bags as suddenly as if they had caught fire. She looked at Pasevalles and her eyes again were unfixed and confused. He could see that she was now struggling to remain upright. “Was there . . . did . . . was there aught else?”
“No, my lady. But we will search again, if you tell me only what you have lost.”
She sank back onto the bed and drew one forearm over her eyes, as if she no longer wished to see what surrounded her. “No . . . I must go there . . .”
“You are in no fit shape for that.” Pasevalles waved to Etan to resume binding her wounds. He reached out himself and pulled the coverlet up from the floor and draped it across her lower limbs, then pulled it up to her collarbone, and felt a kind of relief when he had done so. Her damp skin seemed to glow like honey in the bright noon light that blazed through the uncurtained windows.
She said something in her own tongue that he could not understand; her voice had become heavy and slow as syrup. She opened her mouth to speak again, but instead her head rolled to one side and her eyes closed.
Pasevalles stared. “Is she . . .?”
“She still lives, God be praised,” said Etan. “But she has cruelly tired herself—and me, too, I must say, not to mention nearly breaking my skull. I will bind the wounds again.”
“When you’ve finished, I will watch her for a while in case she wakes,” Pasevalles says. “You must rest. But first, I will beg a favor of you. It is something I was to do myself, but I have not the heart.”
Brother Etan looked as though he would have preferred to be released without more duties, but he only nodded and, from somewhere in his deep weariness, pulled up a smile. “Of course, Lord Steward.”
The monk was a patient old soul in a young body. Pasevalles decided he would remember that. “You have my gratitude, Brother. You must go and wash yourself first, though—tend your wounds and put on something less blood-spattered, too. The lady to whom I am sending you, you will not have to fight with.” He laughed, despite his own great weariness. “Or at least, not the kind of fight we have just had. But she may be less than sweet when she finds I have sent you in my place.”
“As long as she keeps her nails to herself,” said Etan, “I will thank God and be content.” He began wearily gathering up his medicaments, which had been scattered widely about the chamber, but stopped to ask, “What of the Sitha lady’s possessions, from her saddle bag?”
“I will gather up those,” Pasevalles said. “You have done enough here, Brother.”
His knock echoed for a while. Brother Etan waited, then knocked again. At last, a pretty young woman opened the door.
“Her Highness is expecting you,” she said, but she looked as if he was anything but what had actually been expected.
Etan followed her in. The retiring room was handsomely appointed, draped from high ceilings to floor in tapestries depicting the famous tale of Sir Tallistro of Perdruin; it was many times the size of Etan’s own cell in the monk’s dormitory at St. Sutrin’s. Princess Idela sat in a tall chair beneath one of the windows with her sewing on her lap. The sun touched her red hair and made it seem almost a fiery halo.
“Your Highness,” Etan said, getting down on his knees and touching his shaved head nearly to the floor. “Your pardon, but Lord Pasevalles said that you sought advice on some books belonging to the late prince, your husband. I am Brother
Etan.”
“Very kind of you, Brother. I know you—I have seen you about the palace.” But she did not look entirely pleased by the chance to meet him. “And how is our lord chancellor? Not ill, I trust?”
“No, Princess. Only weary from a long day’s labors and with still more duties before him. But he was anxious to send help to you as soon as possible, even if he could not come himself.”
“Lord Pasevalles is too kind.” Her tone suggested otherwise. “Will you have some wine, Brother?”
Etan hesitated. “Ordinarily I would thank you but decline, my lady. Today, I think, I will take up your kindly offer. The Lord will forgive me, I hope.”
She signaled to one of her ladies. “Then be seated, please.” As Etan turned to look for a suitable chair, the princess saw the raw, red marks on his cheek for the first time. “Merciful Elysia! Surely those are fresh wounds on your face! Are you badly hurt, Brother? What happened?”
He reached his hand up to his scratches. In the strangeness of being sent to the mother of the heir, he had forgotten them. “Oh! Nothing of import, Your Highness. An ill woman I was treating became confused and violent.”
She gave him a shrewd look, perhaps guessing that Pasevalles’ absence might have something to do with the patient in question. “I’ll have one of my ladies tend those, by your leave.”
“Oh, they are truly nothing to worry about.”
“Still.” She signaled to a dark-haired woman, who put down her sewing and left the room. “Begga is skilled in healing—she trained with a northern valada-woman. Ah, here is the wine.”
As the young woman brought in the tray, cups, and ewer, then filled them, Etan watched the princess. Poised and upright in her dark green gown, Idela had beautifully smooth, pale skin, and delicate hands and wrists to go with her slender, pretty face. A sprinkling of freckles on her nose and bosom had been obscured by powder, but the heat of the day rendered the disguise less effective.