Eolair sat back, rubbing his eyes. It was hard to read by candlelight these days, even if he held the parchment so close it nearly caught fire, but he did not want anyone else reading Inahwen’s words to him—not even Aelin.
But here is the heart of the matter, my dear friend. It is not this alone that frightens me, although it does frighten me very much, nor even the reports that they have found some old scrying-stone of the Sithi and use it to beg favor from their grisly mistress. What is worst of all is the report that Tylleth has brought King Hugh himself down into this once-buried place, and that he joins her there in this ancient, dreadful worship.
I have no power in this court. Whatever loyalty Hugh once felt toward me is long gone, buried beneath the scorn of his betrothed and her courtiers. He is openly rude to me, cruel and cutting in front of all his subjects, although I give him no cause. Even were I to denounce these dreadful practices outright, I would be dismissed as a mad old woman, and anything I said would only be taken as proof that my wits have fled. You may be thinking that yourself, but I swear to you everything I say is true, and all that is hearsay comes to me from trustworthy sources, or is confirmed by many reports.
Please, Eolair, my friend and once-lover, I beg you to come back to the Taig. Bring Queen Miriamele and King Simon with you if you can. Only you and they can uproot this terrible madness before it rises up from the deeps like a noxious disease and overwhelms the Hernystir we both love.
Whatever you do, write to me back as quickly as you can, and send messages only through the most trusted sources, as I have trusted your own kinsman, Aelin. But please, do not dismiss what I say. Come to see for yourself. See the shared glances, the whispered secrets, and smell the foulness in the air. The unpleasantness that you saw here with King Simon and Queen Miriamele has only become worse, and now that I know the reason, I cannot sleep for fear of what is to come.
Despite the frightened words, her signature was as steady as Eolair had ever seen it.
He read the letter again, his stomach roiling within him. He did not want to believe it, of course—he did not want to believe any of it—but he knew Inahwen too well to doubt that she believed it herself, and her every word had the sound of someone still carefully testing her own reason, aware that what she said would sound impossible. Most would have scoffed, Eolair knew, but he had seen too many incredible things to dismiss Inahwen’s fears. But it was a damnable time to ask him to come back to Hernysadharc, let alone bring the high queen and king, when they had all been away from Erkynland for months upon months.
Still, he knew he could not simply ignore Inahwen’s need. He wondered whether Simon and Miriamele would allow him to postpone his own return to the Hayholt, if only for a fortnight or two, so that he could ride to Hernysadharc with Aelin and try to make some sense of what was going on there.
Eolair sighed and called his servant to pour him another cup of wine. It was past time for him to sleep, but he sensed it would not come easily this night. As he waited for the young man to finish pouring, a grim bit of poetry he had often heard in childhood seeped up from his memory, unbidden and unwanted—a song about the Morriga, the Mother of Crows.
I see the world of the dead
The world that is coming
Her world, all laid beneath her feet
Summer will have no flowers
Cows will give no milk
Women will lose all their modesty
And men all their valor
Fruitless forests
And empty seas
Great storms will rage
Around empty fortresses
Battles will be waged everywhere
And treacherous princelings
Will drape a shroud of sorrows
Over the world
Every man will be a betrayer
Every son a thief
The count sat up another hour waiting for Aelin to return, but decided at last that the young man was likely having too good a time with his fellows to rush back and sit with an aging great-uncle. At last Eolair went to his bed, oddly grateful for the distraction of his aching bones.
After their night on the moonlit hilltop and Snenneq’s confusing ritual with the knuckle bones, not to mention the vaguely disheartening idea it had given Morgan about losing what he most expected, he had soured a little on the company of the trolls and had resumed spending time with his older friends.
“Have you heard the news?” he said as he pushed into their tent. “Count Eolair’s nephew was attacked on the road by a giant! A real Hüne!”
The others looked up at him, Astrian already smiling as if at some jest, Olveris sharpening his sword, Porto bleary, as if just now roused from sleep, although it was long past the change of the evening watch. “Of course we have heard, Your Highness,” Astrian said. “I thought by your excitement you brought something new—perhaps something from your grandfather’s cupboard to soothe our throats, which are dry as Nascadu.”
“And you think that is nothing?” Morgan shook his head in disgust. “A living giant! We are almost in Erkynland!”
“Erkynlanders are just as dull as the Rimmersgard folk. Why should I begrudge them a few giants of their own, to enliven their dreary days? And in truth, it is as well for the giant’s sake it was not me he waylaid.” Astrian patted his sheathed sword. “I would have poked a few holes in the beast and then we would have found out if it was truly as large as Sir Aelin claims.”
Olveris smiled a sour smile at Astrian’s boast and continued scraping stone against steel, but Porto sat up straight. “You are foolish to say such things,” the old knight declared. “You do not know. Until you face one, you cannot know.”
Olveris groaned and set his sword down. “Now it will be the giants of Nakkiga again. Porto killed dozens, he says.”
“I have pretended to no such thing, sir, but I have faced a giant.” The old knight was trying to retain his good temper, but only just managing. “Why must you always follow Astrian’s lead in this dance, Olveris? Must all you Nabban-men scoff at what you do not know?”
“We know about you, old broomstick,” Astrian said. “You would throw your sword in the air and take to your heels if you ever saw a living orxis.”
Porto turned imploring eyes toward Morgan. “He speaks nonsense, Highness, I swear it. He knows nothing of the north or the days when I followed Duke Isgrimnur. On the mountain of Nakkiga, as the White Foxes call it, my fellow soldiers and I slew a great, fierce giant. By the Wounds of Saint Honora, the beast killed three of my companions. How could I forget?”
“No one says you forgot.” Sir Astrian seated himself on a wooden chest and spread his bootheels wide on the tent’s earth floor, then leaned toward the old knight. “We say that you have made it up. Please take note of the distinction.”
“Enough, Astrian.” Having spent much time of late with the kindhearted trolls, Morgan found it a little harder to countenance the younger knights’ casual cruelties. “He is right—you do not know.” He turned to Porto. “Did you really fight one? Was it as big as Aelin says this one was?”
“I do not know, my prince.” Porto looked at his comrades with poorly hidden triumph on his face. “Because no man can think much about such things when one of those monsters stands before him, and if he says differently I call him a liar. I can only tell you the giant we fought was far, far bigger than me. I do not think I could have put my arms even halfway around its chest.”
“And it grows with every year that passes,” Astrian muttered, but he said it quietly and avoided Morgan’s eye.
“It could grow no larger than it looked to me that first moment,” Porto declared. “You would not believe how long its arms were, Prince Morgan. Like the trunks of grown birch trees, white and wide. But what I will never be able to forget—and I have tried, no matter what these two scapegraces might have you believe—is how it looked at me.
Its eyes were like a man’s. Yes, it had thought, I swear, and I think that was the worst of it.” He made the sign of the Tree and looked at Morgan almost plaintively. “Why should our loving God spend the gift of reason on such a monster?”
“Back home, they say the kilpa that lurk in southern oceans are sailors who drowned,” Olveris volunteered. It was so unusual of him to offer anything other than terse mockery that even Porto listened. “Mayhap the same is true for giants,” he added. “Perhaps they are sinners cursed to roam the wilderness.”
Morgan shuddered a little at the thought—to be so alone, so hated, but knowing you had once been a man! It was a horror he might even have enjoyed, like a particularly dreadful ghost tale, had Eolair’s nephew Aelin encountered his giant fifty leagues away or years in the past, instead of this very day and just a short ride from where they sat.
The wind rattled the sides of the tent. None of them jumped, but even Astrian’s grin looked a little forced as he said, “Ah! The monster is outside even now!”
“Stop,” Porto spoke with a firmness Morgan had seldom heard. “Do not speak of devils, man, because devils listen. And do not mock God’s monsters or He may show you your folly.”
“Perhaps we should talk of other things,” Morgan began, but Porto was telling his story again.
“It came upon us without noise—you cannot imagine that something so large can be so quiet.” Porto’s eyes were wide, as though he found himself back on the mountainside. “We did not guess it was there until it killed one of the other men and threw his headless body into the clearing where we stood. Then it came at us through the trees, pushing even the biggest trunks over and breaking the smaller ones like river reeds under its feet.” He paused, shaking his head slowly as if, even after so many years, mere words could not explain it. “The fear came over me—it was like I had been thrown into an icy river. I could scarcely stand upright, my knees shook so. And then it roared, that mouth full of yellow teeth, that great, gaping mouth . . .”
“Well?” Morgan said after a few moments. “What happened? You have never told me so much of this tale before.”
“Because nobody wanted to hear it,” said Porto, full of wounded dignity. “Some were too busy mocking me for a liar.” He glared at Astrian. “I would like to see you, Sir Dauntless, in such a moment. You may fear no human foe, but something so uncanny—it unmans you.”
Astrian appeared ready to say something, but Morgan caught his eye. The knight bowed his head to the prince instead, as if to say, “Very well, I will not interrupt this nonsense if it pleases Your Highness to hear it.”
“Did it wear armor, as they say the giants who fight for the White Foxes do?” Morgan asked.
“Not this one,” Porto said. “Sludig, the duke’s man, told me that most giants in the far north are wild, that only a few are kept always in the Norn Queen’s service because the great brutes are dangerous even to their masters. This one went naked like any beast. That was one reason that what I saw in its eyes, that fearful, manlike cleverness, still disturbs my memory. But I thought little of any of this at the time. It was too big, too sudden. This was our death standing before us, tall as a tree and growling like an angry bear, none of us doubted that.”
“How did you kill it?” Morgan had indeed heard Porto’s stories of fighting giants and Norns many times, but had seldom paid much attention. He had never believed all that Astrian said, that they were only the tales an old drunkard concocted to make himself seem a hero, but he had never entirely believed the most lurid of Porto’s recollections either. Now he was beginning to wonder, because everything Porto was saying had the feeling of real terror remembered.
“How? Luck,” the knight said. “And God’s grace. One of my comrades pierced its neck with a spear, another stabbed the creature in its leg near the cod, where the great vein of blood throbs. I struck it myself, but only in the back of the leg because I could reach nothing else. Still, that blow lamed it. We fought it a good while longer, but at last its blood was all out and it fell. My captain took its head.”
“So you yourself did not kill a giant, precisely,” said Astrian, all air and philosophy. “In truth, you hamstrung the monster. Were you lying down when that happened, perhaps pretending to be dead? Or was it so much higher than you that, as with the prince’s little friend No-Neck the troll, you had to leap and leap to deal that deathly blow?”
But for once, Porto did not seem to mind the mockery, or even much notice it. “I make no claims to being a great hero like Tallistro. I fought because there was no other choice, except to die. But I do not apologize to you or anyone, Nabban-man. Few have faced those howling, hairy things and survived, fewer still have been in on the death of one.”
The very matter-of-fact way he said it convinced Morgan. The prince sat back, examining Porto as though he had never really seen him before. He was still tall and must have been a formidable size in his youth. And Morgan knew that he had indeed been where he claimed, because when they were in Elvritshalla, the king’s friend Jarl Sludig had told him at a gathering that he had caught sight of Porto in Morgan’s company; Sludig did not remember the knight’s name, but had recognized his long-boned face and frame from the days of the siege against the Norns. Morgan had even considered bringing Porto to meet the jarl, but the time in Elvritshalla had been hectic, with the Kopstade to explore and the sudden attentions of the trolls, and he had forgotten. Soon thereafter, they left Elvritshalla and Sludig behind. Morgan could not help feeling a twinge of regret now over his failure to bring the two men together.
“That truly is an astonishing tale, Sir Porto,” he said, “and I believe you. You have memories, brave memories, that most men would envy.”
“Thank you, Highness,” said the old man, and made a slightly creaky imitation of a bow. “But to speak honestly, I wish I were in truth the liar that Astrian and Olveris find such joy in describing. My memories of those days give me no pleasure and still bring me ugly dreams.”
The other two knights seemed to have run dry of insults. They all fell silent. The wind scrabbled at the tent cloth, and for that moment each man seemed to be thinking the same thing—of what might lurk outside in the darkness beyond those flimsy walls.
22
Death Songs
Makho deeply distrusted the mortal, but clearly he did not trust Nezeru much more. When the hand chieftain sent her out to scout the territory ahead, a role for which she had undergone careful training in the Order-house of Sacrifice, he sent Kemme with her.
Does he fear I will run away? Just thinking of it made her furious. Does he think I hold my oath to our queen so lightly that I would desert my people simply because he whipped me—because I am in disgrace? The weals on her back had mostly healed. They still ached fiercely in the cold, but that was as nothing compared to the pain of being thought untrustworthy. The fact that it was true—that she had already failed her hand-brothers twice—only made the pain worse.
“Why come so far south?” she asked Kemme as he followed her down a long, rocky slope, past drifts of snow and patches of yellow winter grass. “Not just deep into Rimmersgard, but almost to the edge of Erkynland?”
“Close your mouth, Blackbird. Do you know more than Makho?” He pushed his way through the long grasses, leaving a sinuous track like a snake. “The hare does not tell the fox where to hunt.”
She knew she should be quiet, but his dismissiveness made her skin prickle. “The mortal Jarnulf said we should cross the great road miles farther north, closer to the mortal city of Kaldskryke.”
“He did, did he? And how do we know what ambush he might be leading us to if we do not scout all this country?” Kemme’s face was full of unhidden anger. “Who are you? I was nobody—a Sacrifice from an indifferent family, stuck in a backwater league of our order under a lazy, self-serving commander. But my lord Makho remembered me—he asked for me to join him. Now I am a Queen’s Talon. Do you
think I care what you or some mortal have to say? Enough of your pointless questions, Blackbird.” In fact, this was the first time Nezeru had spoken in a very long time, but he made it seem as if she had been prattling ceaselessly.
The sky was lightening now, but they were still a good distance from their camp, which added to Nezeru’s unhappiness. She did not like these bare, open lands away from the forested hilltops, and she especially did not like moving so close to the mortal road. It was largely deserted this time of the year, with storms still coming down from the mountains and across the Frostmarch, but that was no proof against being seen by enemies. The only fast way to travel east to Urmsheim was to pass between the Dimmerskog Forest and great Drorshullven Lake. Jarnulf had suggested they cross the mortal road just past Kaldskryke, skirting the southern edge of the forest before heading east into the wilderness, but Makho had dismissed the idea, apparently leery of some trap. So now we are here, exposed, practically in daylight, almost begging to be seen, Nezeru thought. Was secrecy no longer a part of their task? Why had they not simply crossed the road nearer to the forest instead of risking the much more populated lands near Vestvennby?
She could think of no answer that made sense, and that troubled her.
• • •
After a long time on open ground Nezeru and Kemme started to climb up into the hills that bordered the road. She was reluctantly impressed by how swiftly and quietly he traveled. She knew he had fought at Asu’a during the failed War of Return, and had also defended the Nakkiga Gate against invading mortals. She did not underestimate his strength or his bravery. But his loyalty to Makho made it impossible for him to hear any question about strategy except as an attack on their chieftain.