“Ha!” Snenneq now added thigh-slapping to his backward maneuvers. “You see, you too can make jests almost as well as mine.” He shook his head. “No, as good as mine. Almost.”
“Snenneq-henimaa! Not so talk now!” Qina’s firm tone surprised Morgan, who sometimes forgot she was only child-small, not an actual child. “Let Morgan Prince reach the top before you make more words.”
Snenneq frowned, but turned around and resumed climbing, this time with what was clearly intended as quiet dignity.
A time passed in silence but for Morgan’s noises of discomfort. Finally Little Snenneq called back, “We are now where we should be, and the time is still fresh—but we must hurry!”
Morgan did his best to pick up the pace, and at last, with an assist from Qina in the form of her small shoulder pushing against his hindquarters, he half-climbed, half-fell forward onto the hill’s wide crest, nothing before or above him now but a sky bespattered with stars, and at its center, like a great wheel with which to steer the ship of the firmament, the pale, full moon. Morgan fell to his knees in relief, then quickly adjusted his position until he was not poking himself with his own spikes.
“Is that it?” he asked when he had regained his breath. Even with his scarf around his head his ears were so cold it was hard to keep his voice calm. “You brought me up here to look at the moon? I’ve seen the moon. We have the same moon in Erkynland, you know.” He was so tired he almost felt like crying—not that he would have, especially in front of these small near-strangers.
Qina sat down beside him and Little Snenneq settled in on the other side, so that they all looked out together across the snow-shrouded foothills. To Morgan’s right, the dark Dimmerskog stretched away like the rumpled pelt of an immense animal, the tips of its trees silvered by moonlight.
“It is fine to see all this, is it not?” asked Snenneq. “Others are wishing they could see so far, but only those who have climbed high can have this seeing.”
Morgan huddled deeper in his cloak. “Nobody is wishing they could see so far, because nobody with any sense wants to be sitting on top of a mountain at night, freezing.”
“Is so bad, for true?” asked Qina softly. “What you see, Highness Morgan?”
He swallowed a snappish reply. He had to admit that the moon looked astoundingly large from this vantage, and felt close enough to touch. All of creation seemed laid before him like one of the paintings on the chapel wall back home in the Hayholt. “No, it’s not so bad, I suppose,” he said. “But I still didn’t need to climb so high just to see it.”
“But you did, yes, with certainty,” said Little Snenneq. “Not just to understand what others wish they could see, others who cannot climb so high as princes, but also because of what tonight is being.”
Again Morgan bit back cross words. Something about the trolls was so different that he could not treat them as he did his other friends, whom he mocked and was mocked by in turn. Well, except for Porto, he thought, who never mocks me. This reminded him that the old soldier was still waiting for them down below, on the cold hillside. Whatever the trolls had planned, it would be cruel to the poor old fellow to drag it out any longer by arguing. “Very well. Tell me what is tonight being, Snenneq.” He laughed despite his chattering teeth. “I mean, what is tonight?”
“Sedda’s Token,” the troll said promptly. “That is what we Qanuc name it. Sedda is being the moon, and if you see the biggest great-belly moon of springtime—what you call ‘full moon’—from the top of a high, high place before it starts its journey down into the dark again, Sedda will give to you a token of the truth.”
Morgan looked at him for a long moment. “Your pardon, but I didn’t understand a word you just said.”
“Here on this night, in this high place, we will cast the bones. You know how a Qanuc Singing Man casts the bones, do you not? Surely your grandfather has told you, after his long traveling with Qina’s father, Binabik.”
The idea sounded dimly familiar, but Morgan could not bear another long explanation with the cold scraping at his ears and nose and fingertips. “Yes,” he said. “Casting the bones. Of course.”
“Good.” Snenneq produced a leather-wrapped bundle from of his heavy jacket, then brushed away the snow that lay before him on the rocky summit to make a bare patch. He tumbled several small, pale objects from the pouch into his hand. “The moon has a full belly and we are in a high place. We shall ask Sedda for a token for you.”
“Why?”
“Because you are in need of guidance, I am thinking. Qina and her father agree.”
Morgan bristled a little at the idea, but reminded himself that cold didn’t care who thought what, and asked instead, “Why would this Sedda bother with someone who isn’t a troll?”
“Because she is the Mother of All People, who wants only to keep her children safe.”
While Snenneq began a whispered prayer in his own throaty tongue, Morgan thought briefly and a bit sourly about his own mother, whose desires seemed a great deal more complicated than those of Sedda the Moon-Mother. After some moments, Snenneq tossed the bones as if they were a handful of dice, then squinted with keen interest at the way they fell. “Patience, my prince friend. Two more times must I cast them,” he said.
When he had finished, Snenneq slowly gathered up the little bones and tipped them back into the leather pouch. “The Black Crevice and Clouds in the Pass, those were the first two. But the third was one I have not seen to fall before—I wonder if Qina’s father has even cast it, though he taught it to me. Unnatural Birth, it is called.”
Morgan was shivering again, despite the presence of small, solid people squeezed against him on either side. “Oh, that’s charming. Are your bones calling me a bastard?”
The troll shook his head. “That is not what the words are meaning—or do you joke again? No, by what I have learned, they signify that something you expect, something you have long expected, will not come to you. Or will come, perhaps, but in much different form than you had been thinking.” He frowned and weighed the sack of bones in his palm. “I think I should be speaking with Qina’s father about this, because even I, clever as I certainly am, perhaps do not understand everything about this.”
“Clever you am, yes,” said Qina. “And full of humble.”
Morgan heard the deep fondness beneath the gentle mockery and almost envied Snenneq such a forgiving love, but he was distracted by wondering what this whole adventure had been about. This was exactly why Father Nulles warned against fortune-telling, of course, that it was not only foreign and sinful, but never accurate. Because if the troll’s words were true, something he had long expected would not come to him—and that could only mean the kingdom.
A prince and heir who does not become king, he thought. Like my father, who died young. “Are we finished, then?” he asked out loud, doing his best to keep his voice level. “Because I am so cold you may have to carry me down in a casket if we stay up here much longer.”
The trolls were quiet on the long way back down to where Porto was waiting. That was fine with Morgan, who had nothing to say and no urge to hear anything more until he had poured a sufficiency of wine into his belly to thaw his frozen heart.
Despite his weariness and a great deal of drink, as well as the comfort of Baron Narvi’s own bed, it took Simon a long time to fall asleep in the middle of the great hall with so many of his courtiers and servants sleeping around him. It had been long since he had slept like this, surrounded by many others, hearing so many taking breath, murmuring, even talking in the depths of dreams. As he lay in the dark clutching Binabik’s talisman, the sounds they made plunged him back into memories of his youth, when he had slept piled in with the other scullions like so many loaves rising in the vast Hayholt kitchen.
• • •
Simon supposed that thinking of the past had somehow led him there, because soon he found himself r
oaming through the dark corridors and shaded grounds of that selfsame Hayholt, the great castle where he had grown up. To his surprise, the silent girl Leleth that he and Miriamele had known so long ago was with him, as if she and he had both been drawn to this lost place by some powerful call. He wanted to ask her what brought her back to the Hayholt, where she had once been Miriamele’s handmaiden before the evil days descended on the castle, but the girl would not stay for him no matter how he called. Always she hurried just ahead, her skirts swaying as she moved in and out of shadows like a leaf caught on the breeze.
He followed Leleth down a long, covered passage that was a bit like the old tunnel between the stables and the outer keeps, but somehow was also a tree-canopied path through the woods around Da’ai Chikiza, the fairy city that had been swallowed by Aldheorte Forest centuries before Simon had been born. He and Miriamele and Binabik had floated through its dappled green tangle on a boat Valada Geloë had given them. Leleth had not been with them on that real journey, since she had been attacked by savage Norn hounds while fleeing the Hayholt, had nearly died from her wounds, and had never found her voice again. When Simon and the others left Geloë, who had given them all shelter and counsel, the little girl had stayed behind with the wise woman. In later days, Simon had sometimes seen Leleth again in dreams, both the waking and sleeping sort, so it was not too surprising to encounter her now, in this strange place full of shadows and half-ghosts. And only in dreams had Simon ever heard her voice, as he heard it again now.
“Beware the children,” she called back to him. “They are being called.”
“What children?” he asked, or thought he did, but his dream was full of voices and he was not sure if he had truly spoken. “What children?”
Leleth stepped through a gaping archway that Simon was sure had not been there a moment before, a dark space between two trees. All that remained was her voice.
“The children.” It floated to him as though from the depths of a forgotten well. “They are dead.” But even as those words chilled him, he thought he might be mistaken, that she might have called something else from the darkness—“the children are death,” or “the children all dread.” “Leleth, where are you?” he cried. “What are you saying?” But the darkness between the trees was empty and silent.
Still moving in dreamy half-flight, as though only his eyes and ears were alive and connected to his teeming, confused thoughts, he followed her into the empty, dark place even as a part of him saw where he was going and tried desperately to stop him
It’s a cave, he thought. It’s a hole. There’s a monster inside it. It’s a grave.
Indeed, somehow he knew that what had at first seemed only a shadow between two tree trunks was something quite different—a passage lined with crumbling earth. Just when his terror became so great that he could not imagine going any farther, a line glowed into existence before him, a vertical stripe of light like a single sunbeam arrowing down to earth. His fear suddenly lessened, he found himself moving toward it, and as he did the light spread side to side, like great, radiant butterfly wings, but for one clot of black near the bottom.
A part of him understood that the glowing butterfly was made by doors opening in a dark room, allowing light to pour in, but at first it illuminated nothing. Then he saw that the clot of blackness was something standing in that light. After a moment Simon recognized it as a child’s shape—a familiar child’s shape.
“John Josua?” He moved closer. The boy stood motionless in the open doorway, arms spread to hold the doors open. Sleeping figures lay everywhere before the child’s feet, and Simon was confused. Somehow he had found his way back to the old dormitory where the scullions slept. But what was John Josua doing here? He had never been a kitchen-worker like his father. In fact, it was strange that he could be a child at the same time that Simon himself was somehow a child. Had time itself been tipped sideways?
“Son?” He took a few steps closer, but John Josua seemed deep in thought. Simon did not look down—he was afraid to take his eyes off his son—but stepped as carefully as he could over the sleeping figures that lay between them. Some of the sleepers stirred and groaned, but none of them awoke.
Now he noticed another puzzle: for some reason, the floor of the great kitchen was covered with grass. It even seemed to be growing on top of the sleepers.
“Johnno? John Josua?” Simon drew nearer, and now could see the boy’s head well enough to recognize the unforgettable swirl of his cowlick. He thought he would collapse under the weight of terror and joy. What had brought him back? And was he to be Simon’s son again, or was Simon now to be his? John Josua had died, but Simon hadn’t. Who was oldest?
The children are waking up, Leleth’s voice called from somewhere, faint as a soft breeze through an unmown field. They are being summoned back. Beware . . . !
Some of the sleepers stirred, moving restlessly under the thick blanket of green that now covered them. Simon took one more step until he was close enough to touch the child-shape, and reached out to cup John Josua’s chin in his hands, to look his lost son in the face.
But when he turned to his father, the child’s eyes were black, the empty black of nothingness, of the end of all things.
Simon tried to scream, but couldn’t. Suddenly the boy, his son, began to vanish, draining away into the ground like dark water from a leaking cistern. Only as Simon clutched at the vanishing essence did he finally discover his voice, crying his only child’s name over and over even as John Josua became nothingness.
• • •
He was surrounded by lights, flickering, unsteady lights. The torches were all around him and more were coming, like fiery birds hastening to a shared meal. So bright! He blinked, and realized he was holding something in his hands. He looked and saw his fingers were clutching a scrap of white fabric.
“Simon!” It was Miriamele from somewhere behind him. The light was in his eyes, and he was confused, aching. John Josua! He had held him, had if only for a sliver of an instant touched his dead son again, and here was proof . . . ! “Simon,” his wife cried, “wake up!”
She stood before him now, her familiar face the only ordinary thing in a mob of strangers. He was surrounded, and for a startled moment he felt like a beast at bay, crowded by the hunters who would take his life. Then he saw that one of them was a woman, her arms around a boy of no more than six or seven years, a slender child with something of John Josua’s leanness but darker hair. The child was crying and his nightshirt was in tatters. Simon realized with growing horror that the child’s gown was made of the same material as the torn scrap in his hand.
“What . . . ?” Simon looked around, saw Tiamak and a few others he recognized, found Miri again. “What happened here?”
His wife took his arm and led him away from the great double doors, back into the depths of the hall. “You had a dream, husband, a very bad dream.”
“John Josua . . . I thought he was John Josua, come back. Leleth tried . . .” Simon could not remember all that had happened, but he was certain it was important. “It’s the children. Leleth tried to tell me . . .”
“Leleth is more than two score and ten years gone,” Miri said, and although she sounded angry, Simon could hear something else in her voice, too, something like fear, almost terror. “Never mind her. You scared that poor child to death. He was only coming into the hall to see if there was any food left from supper.”
“Oh, sweet Usires,” Simon said, his gut suddenly icy cold. “What did I do? Did I hurt him?”
“Just tore his nightclothes. He said you called him ‘son.’ That’s how I knew.” She helped him to lie back down on Baron Narvi’s well-stuffed bed. “A bad dream. I am more angry with Binabik for giving you that thing than I am with you.”
Simon shook his head. Part of him was relieved it hadn’t been real, but part of him was not willing to let go. “It wasn’t all a dream. I don’t
think it was. I think . . . what did Leleth say? The children are dead. I think that’s what it was. Or was it, the children are summoned . . . ?”
“Sssshhhh.” Miri put her hand against his lips. The fingers were cool and soothing, but her voice was less so. “No more talk, husband. You have frightened everyone quite enough.”
“I will not sleep,” he said. “How can I? That was no mere dream—”
“It was one of the baron’s little grand-nephews,” said the queen. “How could it have been anything else? Our John Josua is gone—by the Aedon’s sweet mother, you know that, Simon! John Josua is in Heaven with Usires and God’s angels. Why would he be roaming the earth? You know he is at rest.” She reached for his hand, pried open his fingers. “Give that to me.”
She took the talisman of feathers and flowers that Binabik had made him and threw it to the floor, then ground it beneath her heel, the small bones crunching like twigs. “I will burn it in the morning,” she said.
Simon wanted to argue, but he felt as though he had fallen asleep in one country and awakened in another. “But I saw our son!”
“Demons can take familiar shapes. Enough. Go back to sleep.”
Simon let his head fall back against the pallet and tried to concentrate on Miri’s fingers stroking his brow. He could feel her fear and wondered why she was so frightened. Just a dream, she says. He was already feeling muddled in the dark behind his closed eyelids. She’s right. What else could it be . . . ?
When he fell back into sleep, Simon did not dream again, or if he did, there was no trace of it in his memory when he woke.
20
His Bright Gem
The swarm of chittering, biting things seemed to have no ending. Nezeru cut them down like a slave mowing barley, but new Furi’a kept scrambling toward her across the tiny corpses of their fellows.
She had called out to Makho and her other companions a dozen times, even to the Singer Saomeji, but if any of them answered she could not hear it above the thin screeching of the goblins. The creatures seemed to be everywhere, boiling out of the ground like maggots from a rotting animal carcass, as if beneath its hard skin of snow and ice the earth itself was all putrefaction.