Thus nobody, least of all Baron Narvi himself, had expected the king and queen to stop and take shelter at his modest castle just south of the forest, above a steep river gorge where the Vestvenn River hurried down toward the distant sea. But the beginning of Avrel had brought harsh weather instead of sunshine, and although everybody in the royal party was now aching to get back to the Hayholt—they had been traveling since Jonever and the turn of the year—nobody wanted to risk trying to cross the wilderness of the eastern Frostmarch in the middle of a snowstorm.
Narvi, his lady wife, and his retainers were thrilled to entertain the royal couple, if somewhat ashamed of the meager fare they could offer, but as at Blarbrekk Castle, Jeremias supplemented the local supplies with stores from the High Throne’s traveling household, ensuring everybody had plenty to eat and drink. Radfisk Foss was too poor a house to keep its own jugglers and musicians, so the landlords were delighted that the king and queen had brought entertainment of their own, including tumblers—one of whom could also juggle knives—and of course, a harper. Rinan found himself with the most eager audience he had met since leaving Erkynland. As the evening went along and the wine flowed, the young bard performed not just Erkynlandish songs but new ones he had learned in Hernystir and Rimmersgard during the journey. The queen even joined him, lending her unpolished but sweet voice to “She Is Ever Fair,” earning herself and the harper a round of enthusiastic applause.
“Those shining lads and lasses will grow wan with age and care
But She walks on through all the years, and She is ever fair . . .”
At last, shortly before midnight, the baron and baroness excused themselves. “You have given us both honor and delight, Your Majesties,” said Narvi, “but we are not used to such hours. Can we not persuade you to take our bed? It is not what you are used to, but it is the best in the house.”
“Nonsense,” said Simon, his tongue just the smallest bit fuzzy with drink. “You have treated us admirably, my good lord. Our men-at-arms are comfortable in the stables, and we shall sleep in the hall here.”
Miriamele smiled and thanked them too, but she looked as though she might have preferred to take Narvi up on his offer of the best bed. Eolair, who seldom woke in the morning without some new aches apparently acquired in sleep, understood the queen’s reluctance, but it was a pleasure to see Simon in a good mood, which was exactly what the wine and music and the roaring fire had given him.
Soon enough, King Simon, the trolls, and some of the others began trading old, largely true stories of the Storm King’s War. The king much preferred that sort of tale, Eolair knew, especially those that painted Simon himself not as a hero but as the mooncalf boy he had once been. His pleasure in his own youthful foolishness seemed to grow with each cup of wine. “I was nothing when we started out—do you remember, Miri? I was a kitchen boy, green as grass. A kitchen boy!”
“Yes, Simon,” said Miriamele, with a tiny smile for Binabik. “I think that is reasonably well known to all.”
“But you were a kitchen boy of considerable braveness,” said Binabik, “—like it or not. Not many would do the things you did, I am thinking.” Sisqi murmured something to him and Binabik nodded. “My wife reminds me that you risked your life for me many times, even in our home on Mintahoq, when my own people had condemned me.”
Simon made a face. “Tired of talking about me. Where’s Morgan? Tell him about Isgrimnur. Tell him how Isgrimnur met me, first time. Tied over the back of a horse with my arse in the air!” He laughed. “There’s glory, for you! There’s glory.” He peered around again. “Morgan should be hearing what a picture his grandfather made, riding upside down on Sludig’s saddle . . .” He frowned. “But I don’t see him.”
“He has gone out,” Miriamele said. “Marching around in the snow with Qina and her young man. Don’t you remember?”
“Little Snenneq and Qina are at taking him to see some thing,” said Binabik. “Mysterious, they were making it.”
“Which is why I made him take guards,” said the queen. “Do you truly not remember this, husband?”
“Gone out in this weather? To see what?” Simon finished his cup and bumped it against the table until one of the servants poured him some more. “What is better than hearing about how his grandfather was carried around the Frostmarch, draped over a saddle like a Hyrka bride!” He tried to demonstrate the position, but overtipped and would have fallen off the bench had not Sir Kenrick caught his arm.
“I think it may be time we all had some sleep,” said Miriamele.
At first the king seemed inclined to argue, but a closer look at his wife’s expression convinced him not to. “Very well,” he said. “What is wrong with a few amusing stories, though, I’d like to know?”
As the king and Miriamele made their way across the hall to the sleeping spot prepared for them, and the rest of the courtiers and guards began to disperse, Binabik approached the royal couple and took Simon’s elbow. The troll seemed to be holding something in his hand. Eolair was caught between curiosity and his wish to give the royal couple their privacy, but he could not shrug off his first impulse, which was to know all the High Throne’s business.
“I have something for you, friend Simon,” said Binabik. “Wear it close to you when you sleep.”
Miriamele stared at the thing in Binabik’s hand with obvious distaste. “What is it?”
“It is a talisman that I have been making. To help Simon find his dreams again—or to help the dreams find him.”
Her husband reached for it, but she pulled his hand back. “No. It’s ugly. It scares me.”
The king’s safety outweighing any kind of discretion, Eolair stepped forward for a closer look. The object nestled in Binabik’s leathery palm was a bundle of bones, dried flowers, and black feathers, tied together with thread.
“I mean no offense, Binabik,” said the count, “but I like this no more than the queen. Those are crow feathers, are they not? Remember, such things are sacred to Morriga, the Dark Mother. My people had to drive her worshippers out of our midst, and lately we have heard her evil name again in worrying circumstances.”
The troll gave him a serious look. “Not the same at all, I am thinking, and we stand this night in Rimmersgard, not Hernystir. Things are being different in the north. Among my people, the crow is the messenger of all who are beyond the sky, Count Eolair, not just one cruel goddess. This is to help Simon’s dreams find him once more.”
“I don’t care . . .” Miriamele began, but Simon pulled his hand from her grip and took the bundle of feathers and bones with exaggerated care, then stared at it with slightly cross-eyed intensity.
“I will wear it tonight,” he said. “If there are answers for us on the Dream Road, as there were in the past, then I want to know them.” He lifted his hand to forestall his wife and the lord steward. “No, no, don’t scold me. Binabik is my friend, and I trust him. His cleverness has saved me many a time.”
“Still, the queen is not wrong to fear, and neither is Count Eolair,” the troll said. “Nothing is being simple where the Dream Road is in the matter. Let me come to you when you wake so you can tell me if you begin your dreaming once more.”
Simon nodded and let his wife draw him away toward their makeshift bedchamber, a frame of screens at the far end of the hall. Miriamele looked decidedly unhappy, and Eolair could not entirely blame her. Too many old stories and portents were in the wind, in a way not seen since the days of the Storm King’s rise.
Yes, the new snow falls, but when it melts all that has been hidden comes back to the light, he thought. Does nothing ever truly change?
“If I may say so, Morgan—I mean, Highness,” Sir Porto began, wheezing clouds of vapor like smoke from a hayfield fire, “and I mean no disrespect to the king’s and queen’s honorable troll friends, but—”
The first wave of the storm had passed just after sunset. The
sky was clear but the hill path was almost obscured by fresh drifts. Morgan was laboring so hard to follow the two nimble trolls up the narrow, slippery way, and doing so by moonlight in addition to everything else, that he did not answer for some time. “What?” he said at last. “What? Out with it.”
“I think this is a foolish adventure, Prince Morgan.” The old knight seldom spoke so forcefully. “We are getting quite high up in the hills now. The guards have fallen a long distance behind us, and I am no longer the climber I was in my youth.”
“You’re doing well, though,” Morgan said, secretly glad for the chance to catch his own breath.
“You are kind, Highness, but that misses my point. I don’t know what these people from Yick-Nick plan for you, but I think we should go back.”
Morgan sucked in enough air to make a derisive noise. “Nobody forced you to come, Porto. Even Astrian and Olveris had the good sense to stay inside where it’s warm, and you can see how much my guards are worried about me, sitting on a rock down there somewhere. If you don’t like it, go join them.”
But even as he said it, Morgan was having his own second thoughts. He had supposed Snenneq and Qina simply meant to take him out walking, perhaps to look at another frozen lake—the young trolls had a strange love of being out of doors when more sensible people were sitting around a fire. Instead he found himself climbing up into the dark, slippery, stony hills for reasons they wouldn’t yet explain to him. If his grandmother and grandfather knew he was endangering himself this way, they would doubtless be furious again. But somehow, for that very reason, he was determined not to turn back, not to give up and go home like a child who could not keep up with his elders.
“But I can’t leave you,” the old knight said with breathless indignation. “You are my liege!”
“That didn’t stop the guards, did it? And I’m not your liege, anyway.” Morgan looked up the path and saw Snenneq and Qina high on the slope above him now, little more than moving shadows against the stars and the black sky. “My grandmother and grandfather are your lieges—I’m only the heir. And if I fall off this damnable mountain and die, then it’s even more certain I won’t be anyone’s liege.”
“Highness!” Porto was horrified, and made the Tree sign with vigor. “Do not say such things, even in jest!”
“Very well. But I am going on, so if you are too, it’s time to get on your feet.”
They did not make it much farther up the mountainside before Sir Porto, weary and light-headed, lost his balance yet again and this time nearly fell down the long, steep slope. Qina, who by this point had circled back and was walking behind him, caught the old man’s arm and steadied him until he could find a safe spot to sit down.
“It must be easier to be so small,” said Porto as he watched Little Snenneq trotting back down the path toward them. “Every time I stand up I want to fall backward down the hill.”
“This good place for old Porto Knight, I am thinking.” Qina herself seemed quite fresh, her breathing even and not particularly deep as she shrugged off her pack and pulled out a woolen blanket. She had to stand on tiptoe to wrap it around the tall old man, even though Porto was sitting on a low slab of rock. “Now you have warm until we come back.”
“But what will I tell the king and queen if something happens?” the old knight moaned.
“Nothing.” Morgan was taking the opportunity to suck air deep into his lungs and shake snow out of his boots. “All will go well. The trolls will show me what they wish to show me, then we’ll come back, and you and I will have a warming cup together. Or several, since I denied myself earlier.”
“Now we must move again,” said Snenneq, who seemed just as unwearied as Qina. The top of his head might only reach Morgan’s chest when they stood side by side, but they were roughly the same size around the middle, and though his legs were short, his arms were almost as long as the prince’s.
In fact he’s made for climbing, Morgan thought. Made for falling, me.
“Come, friend Morgan,” Snenneq said. “Follow us.”
“Remind me again why I came with you?” he asked.
“Because I said I would show wonders to you,” the troll told him.
“Ah. Yes. Of course.” He patted Sir Porto on his blanketed shoulder, and said with a confidence he did not wholly feel, “Be brave, old campaigner. We’ll be back very soon.”
• • •
“Morgan Prince!” called Snenneq from somewhere above. “Almost we have reached a stopping place.”
“Oh, praise the Aedon!” Morgan was feeling the cold badly now, and wishing he had drunk a great deal less water and a great deal more wine. “We’re at the stopping place?”
“No,” said Snenneq. “We are almost at a stopping place.”
They scrambled up another bank of loose rock and then picked their way along a scarp that looked so narrow—though it was wider across than his shoulders—that Morgan sat down and inched along it like a child learning to crawl. He could see the lights of Radfisk Foss far below them now, obscured by the trees at the base of the slope and looking quite unreachably distant.
“Here is not for lingering,” called Snenneq, despite the fact that he had just taken off his pack. “Our slowness makes me worry.”
“Yes, well, I’m not all that happy myself,” said Morgan. He was quite disinterested in the whole adventure now. If it had not been for the full moon, the four of them would have been climbing these perilous heights in darkness. He had been finding the company of Astrian and Olveris a bit flat of late—the knights seemed to be doing nothing more than waiting for the journey to end—but he was beginning to think it was not such a good idea to let the trolls call the dance either. “Snenneq, why are we here? In fact, where are we going?”
“It is not just a where,” Little Snenneq said. “It is having more importance for when.”
“Oh, God save me from mad trolls!” Morgan sat down on the broad ledge. “That is enough. We’ll go back now.”
“True it is only being a little more far,” said Qina. “Do not be feared, Highness Prince.”
“Prince Morgan. No, just ‘Morgan.’ Simpler. What is only a little more far?”
“The top,” Snenneq explained. “But first you must be putting these on.” He pulled an oilskinned bundle out of his pack and began to unwrap it. He set a pair of climbing irons before Morgan, then took the other for himself. Qina had already donned hers in what seemed less than a moment; it made Morgan feel dizzied. “Go to,” Snenneq urged him. “You are remembering how, yes? But this time not for ice-sliding, only climbing.” The troll laughed so loud he blew snow from the fur around his hood. “What did you call it—skatting? Skating? We will not be doing that tonight, I think.” He paused, waiting for a response, grinning widely. At last he said, in a slightly injured tone, “That was a fine joke, you must admit.”
“Do Singing Men have to be good at jokes?” Morgan asked, swearing silently as he knotted his cold fingers in a rawhide thong by accident.
“A Singing Man must be skilled in all things,” Snenneq said with high seriousness. “Herding and hunting, making and finding, leaving and coming back again. He must travel so quietly the rabbits do not hear him pass. He must speak the languages of people and of animals and of storms—”
“He must speak when the moon is climbed too high,” said Qina with a stern look.
“By the Mountain’s Daughter, she is right!” Snenneq said. “You have kept me too long in conversing, Morgan Prince. Now we must go swiftly. Do not worry, Qina and myself will see you there safely.”
“But where is there?” Morgan asked, getting cautiously onto his feet. At least this time the odd weight and protrusion of the climbing spikes felt almost familiar.
“I will tell you as we climb,” Snenneq said. “Come.”
If Morgan had feared some deathly scramble up a sheet of solid ice, he nee
d not have feared. The path became steeper, and the spikes on his feet did help him not to slide, but even though they seemed to be climbing an endless slope he never felt he was in serious danger of a fall. Dying from a burst heart, though, seemed a definite possibility.
“Now hear me, Morgan Prince,” Snenneq told him, slowing down just enough that Morgan could hear him if he worked hard to stay close. “Here is something I wish to be saying about your unhappiness.”
“My . . . unhappiness? What unhappiness?”
Snenneq waved his hand. “I will one day be Singing Man of Mintahoq. Such things are clear to me as icy mountain water. Now, have you seen my ram that I ride? Big, is he not? He is called Falku, which in Qanuc speech means the tasty white fat. Not because I would eat him, but because he has much of it. Biggest of the rams, he always was.”
Already Morgan had lost the troll’s point, but he only had the strength to groan, which did not slow Snenneq at all. As far as Morgan knew, his only current unhappiness was that of being stuck in the breathless heights of the mountain with two tiny mad people who liked to climb icy slopes.
“But because my ram was biggest,” Snenneq continued, now actually turned around so he could face Morgan and climb backward as he talked, “all the others must test their strength against him. Always, he was fighting. On his horns are the marks of many battles. So it always must be, I am thinking—the one who stands tallest cannot live the life of the small ones. Do you see some meaning there?”
Morgan had been scowling in discomfort so long his mouth was almost frozen into that shape. “The only meaning . . . I see . . . is that you . . . are meaning to kill me.” He paused, trying to make sense of the troll’s words. “Do you mean to say you hate me because I’m taller than you?”