Even Rowson’s bluster was stilled by Eolair’s hard tone. Miriamele guessed that some of the count’s unhappiness came from the terrible timing, this new threat that had pulled him away from the country of his birth and of his heart, Hernystir.
“What then are we to do?” Duke Osric asked. “Even if everything you fear is true, Lord Steward, how are we to act on such vague warnings? If the fairies come against us in the open we can fight them, but unless that happens they can hide inside their mountain until doomsday, and we cannot reach them, as Isgrimnur found out all those years ago.”
Eolair looked to the king and queen. Simon was lost in thought, so Miriamele nodded and said, “We do not plan to act on anything yet, except to acknowledge that we need to know more, and that these are troubling signs. Certainly with most of the trouble so far confined to the north, it seems too early to call for more soldiers, although it would be wise to make certain those soldiers will be ready when we need them.” She paused, considering. “Tiamak—and Binabik, too, if he will be so kind while he is our guest—should do their best to discover more about this Black Rimmersman Jarnulf. Perhaps more importantly, they will see if they can find the meaning of his words about ‘witchwood crown.’ We know too well what witchwood is—the Norns use it in their swords and armor—but we have never heard of any ‘crown’ made from it. Still, whatever it might be, if Utuk’ku wants it, it almost certainly means nothing good for us. And that must be all for now, I think, because the rest of us have much to do simply dealing with the problems that already beset us, especially since the king and I have been absent from the Hayholt for long months.” She turned to Simon. “Is there anything else to be said?”
Simon started. “Sorry, my love. I was just thinking about Geloë and Morgenes. God in His heaven, what I would not give to have those two wise ones with us now—” He trailed off.
“We do not know these people, my king,” Archbishop Gervis said after waiting a long moment for Simon to finish.
“No,” he said, and Miriamele could hear the sadness in Simon’s voice that he did not let his face show. “No, you don’t.”
He felt things deep in his bones, her husband.
27
Noontide at The Quarely Maid
It was a relief for Morgan to be back in his favorite place again, the seat of his empire, the secure heart of his principality; still, and for reasons that he couldn’t quite understand, he was not enjoying it the way he had imagined he would.
The window by the door was open. It was a matter for the philosophers whether the stink of the hot day was drifting into the tavern or the stink of the tavern was drifting out. All Morgan knew was that it was hideously warm, and that after months on the road, mostly in open wilderness, the odor of civilization was hard to ignore. The street outside was still littered with the remnants of yesterday’s procession, when he had ridden in with his grandparents and the rest of the royal company. The people had cheered for him, but not in the same way they cheered for the king and queen.
I’ll wager they’re already telling tales about me, he thought. Saying that I hid in the camp back on the Frostmarch while others fought the Norns—even my old grandfather fought! As if I didn’t try to join the soldiers. Grandmother even posted a guard to keep me from helping.
“If you are feeling glum, Highness,” Sir Astrian remarked, “—as the sour look on your face suggests—then I recommend you dedicate yourself to a life of service to others, thus redeeming yourself. And another stoup of ale for all would be a fine first step in your new life.”
“I wouldn’t mind a little more ale, either,” said Sir Porto. “But it hardly seems proper to send the prince after it.” He frowned and considered. “Olveris, you go.”
Sir Olveris only raised one eyebrow and stared at Porto down his long, thin nose.
“Since no one here has the initiative to do what must be done,” said Astrian, “I will essay the labor that the rest of you shirk.” He turned toward the far side of the room, where the taverner was berating the potboy. “Hatcher! Another pot for the prince’s table!”
The landlord looked at him for a moment, appearing something less than delighted, then returned to saying things about the potboy’s ancestry that seemed clearly fanciful even to Morgan in his only slightly inebriated state.
“Is he going to bring some?” Porto asked at last.
“To deny service to the heir-apparent is to flout the High Ward itself,” said Astrian. “Society itself would founder and Erkynland would soon be overrun by barbarian hordes. And barbarian hordes are notably unwilling to pay tavern owners for ale that they can take more easily by force of arms. Of course Hatcher will bring some.”
“When we were in the north,” said Olveris, “I kept hoping Astrian would freeze. I was curious to see if, when he finally thawed, he’d just continue on with whatever he’d been saying.”
“Listen to you, Olveris.” Astrian gave him a look of disgust. “Everything I say glitters with wisdom—the more I speak, the brighter the day for everyone. You, you speak ten words in two years and none of them are worth waiting for.”
Morgan was only half listening; something was gnawing at him, like a mouse in the wall of a house.
It’s those damned trolls, he thought. Before Snenneq dragged me up onto that mountain in the middle of the night, I was splendid. Everything was splendid. Now, I feel like I was in love and the girl ran off with another man.
“What troubles you, Highness?” said Astrian. “Honesty compels me to say that you have the face of a constipated martyr.”
Morgan did not want to be poked just now, although most times he welcomed it. But something had changed and he felt he had to puzzle out what it was. It was ruining his appreciation of a day’s drinking, for one thing. “Nothing. Nothing troubles me.”
“Bravely said and bravely lied, my prince. Come, you must tell us. What more sympathetic ears could you find than mine and Olveris’s, although his are rather high, and he will be forced to bend down to hear you.”
“What of me?” Porto sounded as querulous as a child in need of a nap. “Are my ears not sympathetic?”
“Only the Lord God himself could guess what those great flaps are meant for,” said Astrian. “Listening? No, more likely to capture the wind and sail to Harcha.”
“I grow my hair long to hide them,” said Porto sadly. “It’s true, they are large.”
“Large? You might as well call the great, rolling ocean ‘slightly wet.’ You might as well call a lion a stray cat!”
Hatcher, the taverner, appeared, bowing to Morgan. He held a filthy cloth in his hands and wrung it continually in his fingers as he spoke, like a pious man telling his station beads.
“I beg your pardon, Highness,” he said. “As always, I welcome your custom here at The Quarely Maid—”
“As you should,” Astrian said. “What other middling low establishment—forgive me, I am being frank—can claim such an exclusive clientele? Now go away and bring us that ale.”
“Here, now.” Hatcher was a husky, hairy man, but at the moment he looked as though he might weep. “No call for that. What’s that you’re sitting on? A bench, and a good one. And what do you call this?” He leaned forward and rapped his knuckle against the wood. “A table. The first place in Badger Street or anywhere near Market Square with a real, true table, this is. I’m not asking His Highness to sit on the floor. I’m not asking him to balance his bowl on his lap. This is quality, this place of mine.”
Morgan looked at the rest of the drinkers, who were seated around trestles made of planks balanced on barrelheads. The rest of the drinkers looked back, pleased by any diversion, as always. “Quality,” Morgan repeated.
“Yes, Your Highness. And, begging your pardon, my prince, but you’ll notice that every leg on this table is the same length. No broken, tipping-over trash in here.”
“Except P
orto,” said Astrian.
Morgan could not help laughing. The old man sat up—it was true, he had been leaning a bit precariously—and tried to look indignant.
“But all this quality is costing me,” said Hatcher, determined not to be distracted. “So we come to a delicate matter, Your Highness, if I may be so bold.”
“As if we could stop you,” said Astrian. “You are clearly determined to bore us all until we must find another wayside oasis in which to soothe our nerves.”
“Don’t joke, Sir Astrian. You’ve been good to me—the prince has been good to me—and his custom is always welcome here. Speaking of quality, the Lady Strange herself came in just the other night.”
“Liza? Ah, I miss the girl,” said Astrian. “What is she doing these days? Have those red bumps gone away?”
“Just so,” said the publican, ignoring him. “Liza Strange herself, and you know she’s quality, too. Won’t even bed a man who doesn’t have an income and a house.” Hatcher appeared to have muddled himself a bit, and stopped to get his bearings. “Anyroad, as I said, I’m grateful for your custom, Highness,” he told Morgan, “but there is the matter, begging your pardon, of some unpaid bills.”
Morgan sighed. “Oh, for God’s bloody sake, just send them to Lord Jeremias the royal chamberlain. He’ll make it all right.”
“But that’s just the thing,” said Hatcher. “Before you left for the north, the lord chamberlain sent me a letter, a very stiff letter, and said the household wouldn’t no longer be responsible for your tavern bills. That’s what he said. And that I should stop dunning him. That you would take care of it yourself from now on.”
A minor annoyance was swiftly becoming a rather large source of alarm. “It’s a mistake,” Morgan said. “I’m sure it’s a mistake. Write to him again.”
“Three times already. The last time was the time he answered.” Hatcher looked quite cruelly caught between the urge to toady and the urge not to lose his establishment. “And the thing of it is, Highness, what you owe—” He bent forward and put his bearded face close to Morgan’s ear. “Two gold pieces already, and a handful of silver. And that is without the door that came off last Decander. I had to replace that, hinges and all.”
“So what you’re saying is that I’m not welcome here?” Morgan asked, doing his best to put the chill of outraged nobility in his voice.
“Oh, by all the saints, no!” Hatcher, having taken his brave stand, quickly retreated. “But you see, Highness, I can’t keep extending credit forever. It doesn’t signify, you see that. And now that you’re back, well, I thought we should have this talk. So that I don’t have to take other measures.”
“Other measures?” Astrian leaned over the table. “Are you threatening us, potsman?”
Morgan saw the genuine fear in Hatcher’s face and intervened. “Enough, Astrian. Nobody is threatening anyone.” Except my mood, he thought, because a chance to drink himself into a better frame of mind had now been kicked to pieces. He stood up. This dark building smelling of hops and sweat suddenly felt like the last place he wanted to be. “You will have your money, Hatcher. I swear on my honor as a prince of Erkynland.”
“There,” said the publican, smiling and wiping sweat from his square, red face. “There. As nicely and courteously said as anyone could want. Your companions could take a lesson from you, Your Highness. That’s how the nobility behaves, honest and open-handed.” His eyes narrowed just a bit. “Might I ask when, if it’s not too impolite, sire? Because I owe money to the brewer myself, you see, and he’s been making noises that I have to say I don’t like much.”
“I’ll let you know, Hatcher. Come on, you lot.” Morgan stood and waited for his friends to get up. Porto had a bit of a sway, like a tall tree with shallow roots. Astrian and Olveris seemed almost completely sober, but Morgan knew that wasn’t so. They both built slowly to drunkenness; sometimes it wasn’t possible to tell until Astrian lost his temper or Olveris fell asleep sitting up, which he did almost as regularly as old Porto. In fact, Morgan wasn’t certain either of them was ever completely sober.
Now what will I do today? He had hoped to avoid thinking of such things, had wanted only to drift quietly and forget the trip to Elvritshalla, the humiliation of being kept out of the fight with the Norns, and that strange night on the mountain beneath the mocking moon. What will I do ever again? At the moment, he could think of nothing that appealed, nothing that would change his grim, strange mood.
Why did those terrible trolls take me up on top of that cliff? I haven’t had a peaceful or happy moment since.
He almost wished he had fallen.
Lady Thelía, Brother Etan could not help thinking, was both the most ladylike and the most unladylike noblewoman he had ever encountered. In some ways she was the ideal lady: she never lost her temper in public, as far as he could tell, and she dealt with everyone, whether maid or Lord Constable, with the same evenhandedness. But unlike most of the women in the court, Lady Thelía also had no problem getting her hands dirty. She was completely undisturbed by blood or anything else that was a natural part of life, and she seemed to revel in situations that would send most of her peers running or fainting.
Of course, in one sense those sort of ladies were not her peers at all: Lady Thelía came from a fairly ordinary merchant family, one that had not even tried to purchase a title, despite more than middling success and a better than modest villa in the hills of Nabban. And before she met and married Tiamak, himself among the most unlikely lords in all of Aedondom, she had been a nun.
It’s clear she wasn’t raised to be a delicate bloom, Etan thought as she examined the Sitha woman, this time with her husband watching.
“She has not spoken for days, and as you see, her breathing remains rapid and shallow.” Thelía lifted the woman’s eyelid and examined the eyeball beneath with no more trepidation than if it were a coin or a stone. Anyone who had not spent several days in her company, as Brother Etan had in the last fortnight, would have thought her disinterested, even callous, but he had seen her deep frustration at not being able to help this stranger.
“I am very willing to believe she has been poisoned,” Tiamak said. He turned to Etan. “And nobody can find the arrowheads dug from the wounds?”
Etan shook his head. “No. They were here one day and gone another. I remember at first they were lying on a white cloth, smeared with blood. Lord Pasevalles does not know what happened to them, either.”
Tiamak nodded. “Can you describe them to me?”
“I can try.” The monk closed his eyes, trying to recall that day, when he had found the Sitha fighting an armed guard to a standstill with her bare hands. “What remained of the shafts was very, very dark, I think, as though they had been rubbed with ink.”
“Like Norn arrows. But I am not convinced by that. If you think of anything else, Brother, please don’t hesitate to tell me.” He turned to his wife. “Black arrows. Could they have come from the Norns, do you think?”
She made a face. “Don’t ask me about arrows. You know more of such things than I do—all those years in the swamp hunting for food. And what difference would it make?”
“Because it is uncommon to see black arrows in this part of the world except those used by the Norns,” the small man said. “But I think I have seen such black shafts rubbed with lampblack in the south, when I was growing up.”
“Are you saying that they might have been Wrannaman arrows?” Etan asked.
“No! Goodness, no, although there are clans who do use poison. But our arrows are much too small to make such holes as you say she had when she was brought in from the Kynswood, and our bows would never have penetrated her flesh so deeply—they are for close-up work, birds and snakes and other small animals. Those wounds were made with war arrows.”
Thelía had finished examining the patient’s wounds, which had largely healed, though the fever still w
ould not release her. “And poisoned, too, perhaps. Does any other tribe or people that you know use such things on their arrows?”
“Poison? I cannot speak for this Sitha’s own people or their cousins the Norns,” said Tiamak. “And that is a problem not easily overcome—we have so little knowledge of her race in their ordinary state of being. But there are others in the lands below Nabban where mortals once used poison on their arrows when they went to war—or when they carried out a killing and wished to make certain the victim did not survive. He frowned. “In fact, now that I think on it, there are clans in the Thrithings, especially in the Lake Thrithings, who used to make a poison just to smear on arrowheads. They called it Demon’s Helmet—you know it as wolfsbane. But I did not think it was still in use.”
Etan felt suddenly queasy. “If this is wolfsbane that has poisoned her, there is no cure!”
“We knew already that she was beyond our physicking,” said Lady Thelía.
“I am sad to say that my good wife is correct.” Tiamak shook his head. “But there might be some value in a very, very small amount of foxglove being given to her.”
“Foxglove? You mean that thing the children call Fairy Houses? But that is a poison, too.”
“As you know, Brother, many things are poisonous in one measure but helpful in another,” said Tiamak. “And in any case, I am sadly certain it will not cure her, but perhaps it will give her a bit more life and even bring her back enough that she can speak to us a little before the end.” He shrugged. “I can think of nothing else. Wife, can you?”
“No,” she said. “I will prepare the foxglove for you—I have a little in the herb garden.” So, after pulling the covers back over the pallid, motionless Sitha, Lady Thelía went out.
“My wife and her garden could kill me five times at a single breakfast, if she so chose,” said Tiamak with a smile that surprised Etan—it did not seem like a light matter. “It is a capital reason to be a good husband, did I not have enough reasons already.” He felt the Sitha woman’s forehead once more, then turned away. “And you said there was something else you wished to speak to me about, Brother?”