The Witchwood Crown

  Etan had been waiting with as much patience as he could muster to tell him about the book he had found in Prince John Josua’s effects. “Yes, my lord. While you were gone, Lord Chancellor Pasevalles asked me if I would go to look at some books of the late Prince John Josua’s. Princess Idela wondered if we might want them for the library.”

  “That was kind of her,” said Tiamak. “But I thought we had all of John Josua’s books.”

  “Apparently not, my lord. She has at least one chest you haven’t seen before. Of that I am sure, because of what I found there.”

  As Etan described the discovery of A Treatise on the Aetheric Whispers and what he knew of its author, Fortis the Recluse, Tiamak listened with an unusual, remote expression. Etan could not help wondering if he had got things wrong somehow, if the book was not, in fact, the infamous object he had been so certain about.

  “. . . And so I have it now, my lord, hidden in the engineers’ drawing room,” he concluded, “though I do not like to leave it there. I have gone back to examine Prince John Josua’s possessions again, and although I did not find anything that made me fearful like the Treatise, I must confess there are several other volumes that I didn’t recognize, and many of which I cannot even identify the language in which they’re written. Did I do wrong?”

  Tiamak was silent for a while and Etan grew ever more certain that he had made some mistake.

  “Have you told anyone else about this book?” the little man finally asked. “Did you say anything of it to Princess Idela?”

  “No. I did not want her worried. I meant to tell Lord Pasevalles, but we were interrupted.”

  Tiamak nodded. “I would like to see it. I have heard of it, although I have heard very little. I did not know that the church considered it such a dreadful thing.”

  “It has been on the proscribed list for two centuries, my lord.” Etan made the sign of the Holy Tree. “Even having it . . . I fear that I endanger my soul.”

  To Etan’s great relief, Tiamak did not laugh or even smile. “You have clearly been under much strain of late. I can see it in your face, Brother.”

  “It frightens me,” he confessed. “Just knowing it is in the castle frightens me, but it is worse having possession of it myself.”

  Tiamak nodded. “I understand, but of course I cannot tell you whether you are right to fear. It was very difficult for me, in my old life, to get much news of the things other scholars did. I only heard what my friends in the League of the Scroll told me and what I could learn from the few wise folk I could find in Kwanitupul. I do not know if the Church is right or wrong to be so concerned with the bishop’s book, but as I said, I would certainly like to see it. Can you bring it to me later tonight?”

  “I’m afraid I will not be free until after evening prayers at the cathedral, my lord.”

  Now Tiamak did smile. “Until this evening, then. In the meantime, I must help my wife do what we can for this poor woman, and then I have business with the king and queen.”

  Etan sensed that he had been released, or even dismissed, but he could not help lingering. “One more question, Lord Tiamak?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Did you see the Norns that attacked the royal company? The ones the northerners call White Foxes? Are they as fearsome as legend makes them?”

  “I did not see them this time, no. He Who Always Steps On Sand was watching out for me that evening, and I was far from the fighting. But I have seen them before—seen them in this very castle, in the last days of the Storm King’s War. I do not know about the book you found, Brother Etan, and its apparently black history, but I can promise you that the stories about the Norns are true—they are fierce, they are clever, and they hate us. Yes, the White Foxes are to be feared. May the heavens grant we never see them in our lands again.”

  Suddenly wishing he had not asked, Etan made the sign of the Tree again before he went out.

  “I’m sorry everything is still in such a muddle,” Jeremias said. “It’s been very . . . things have been . . .”

  “Things have been a muddle for all of us,” Simon told him. “Don’t worry.”

  “It’s just that . . .” Jeremias broke off, his eye caught by Miriamele, who was being helped out of her dress behind a screen by two of her ladies in waiting. She saw him and gave him a look, which made him redden.

  “Master of the Bedchamber is a title of honor, Jeremias,” she said, her gown halfway down her shoulders. She wore only a shift underneath. “You don’t actually have to stay with us.”

  Jeremias turned an even deeper shade of pink. “I beg your pardon, Majesty.”

  “Yes, it truly has been a long day,” Simon said, wondering why Jeremias would not take the hint. “Everyone is tired.”

  “I just wanted to thank you. For including me in the Inner Council.”

  Simon waved his hand. “You have always been a good friend, Jeremias, and you saved my life on the Frostmarch Road. I intend to give you more honor—and responsiblities, too, never fear. But I notice you didn’t say much.”

  The Lord Chamberlain shrugged and would not look up at him. At times, he seemed little more than the awkward youth of Simon’s own childhood, somehow transported into the thickening body of a middle-aged man. “What would I have to say? I keep track of food and linens. I don’t know anything about making war.”

  “Please, Jeremias,” said Miriamele, her voice a little impatient. “Nobody is going to make war, at least we hope not. We simply have to be prepared for what may happen. Just like you with your linens and food.”

  Jeremias was looking at the floor, but squared his shoulders. “Still, you have been good to me, Simon. You both have.”

  Simon could tell he wanted to say something else, but the king had been listening to people all day long and he was dizzy with talk. “You’re my friend and always will be, Jem. Now, would you please accompany the queen’s ladies to the outer room? We’d like to go to bed.”

  Jeremias looked stricken. “Of course! I’m sorry, it’s late. I wasn’t thinking.”

  “The servants can go too,” Simon said. “Miri and I would like a little time to talk alone.”

  “Of course, Majesties.” He straightened, whatever was troubling him put aside by the reminder of his duties. Simon hated treating Jeremias like just another underling, but he had reached the point where he was about ready to pick the lord chamberlain up by the scruff and drag him, along with the ladies-in-waiting, the servants, and the squires, straight out of the bedchamber.

  When the little caravan had at last departed, Simon pulled off his clothes and climbed under the coverlet. Miriamele put her jewelry back into the box and sat down to brush her hair.

  “What do you think all that was about?” he asked.

  “What? Jeremias?”

  “I was beginning to wonder if he was ever going to leave. I thought he was going to insist on putting my slippers on.” He scowled. “I hate it when he acts like that, like a faithful hound. He’s known me since we were both grasshoppers.”

  “You’ve treated him well, Simon. A chandler’s apprentice who became Lord Chamberlain of the High Throne—he doesn’t have much to complain about.”

  Simon knew her tone. “In other words, stop worrying so much.”

  She caught his eye in the mirror and showed him a weary smile. “Precisely.”

  Simon sat higher against the headboard so he could watch her more easily. “I suppose you’re right. It’s not like we don’t have enough to deal with. You heard what Tiamak said about the Sitha woman.”

  “He and Thelía and that nice Brother Etan have done all that could be done, Simon. Don’t take every trouble on yourself.”

  “But why did they send someone after all this time? And what are we going to do?”

  “What can we do?” Miriamele asked. “She is dying. We must try to find out who sh
ot her, I suppose, although it was probably poachers.”

  “With poisoned arrows?” Simon shook his head. “Beside, that’s not what I mean. What are we going to do about her? She’ll die if we don’t get her back to her people.”

  Miriamele rose from her mirror and came and sat at the end of the bed. “Even if we knew how to find Jiriki and the rest, we don’t know that they could do anything for her. She’s dying, Simon. Any mortal would have been dead before we returned. When the Sithi don’t hear from her, they will send another envoy, or a message.”

  “But we can’t just wait!” Simon would have been shocked at her callousness, but long experience had taught him that a tired Miriamele was a rather heartless Miriamele. He took a breath and started again. “We can’t afford to wait, Miri. Do you think it’s just chance that the Sithi were sending her to us now, after years of nothing, at the very moment when the Norns are stirring again—when they’re crossing our borders and that silver-faced bitch, their queen, is hunting for something called the Witchwood Crown?”

  “We may be putting too much trust in that bizarre message.”

  “But why go to the trouble of sending us any message at all?”

  “Perhaps this Jarnalf thought he would be captured.”

  “Jarnulf, wasn’t it?” Simon put his hands behind his head and watched his wife looking at herself in the glass. “No, that doesn’t make sense, either. And don’t you see, Miri, even if the Sithi hadn’t sent this messenger or whatever she is, it would still be time to try to reach out to them. Jiriki may know what’s happening with the Norns, but if he doesn’t, he should be told all that we’ve heard.” He sighed. “And I want to see him again so badly.”

  “His sister, you mean.”

  “Aditu? Yes, her, too.”

  “Yes, her, too.” His wife was suddenly distant. “It must be nice to live forever like the Sithi,” she said, staring into the mirror. “To stay young and lovely while everyone else is getting old.”

  Simon laughed. “Would you really like that? To stay the young girl I first met while I grew old, old, old beside you? While everyone else around us grew old too? I like your wrinkles and your gray hairs, wife. They remind me of the life we’ve had together.”

  She put her hairbrush down with exaggerated care, as if what she truly wanted to do was throw it at him. “So you are telling me that if Aditu were here now, slinking around with her flimsy garb and her charming, mysterious ways, you wouldn’t be following her like a dog smelling raw meat?”

  “What is this? Are you jealous? Of Aditu? Dearest, I haven’t seen her for years and years! Not to mention that there was never anything between us. Oh, and that she’s at least a couple of centuries older than either of us.” He tried to be amused, but it was more difficult than he expected. “I thought you cared for Jiriki and Aditu as I did, Miri.”

  “You lived with them. I didn’t.” Miriamele sighed. “Oh, I don’t know. I do care about them. I was as excited as you when I thought things would change between their people and ours. But they’ve always been secretive. They prefer to stay hidden, to stay out of our affairs.”

  “The Sithi prefer to remain hidden because our people kept trying to kill them, my dear. I hoped—we both hoped—we could change that. But even more important, they know the Norns far better than we do. Now, come to bed. I want to talk to you about something else.”

  “I’m very tired, Simon.”

  “Not that. But here—climb in beside me. You’ll catch cold, sitting out like that in your nightdress.” He held the coverlet up for her and she slid close, so that he could feel the cool of her skin through the thin cloth she wore.

  “I’m here. What did you want to talk about?”

  Simon took a breath. “I think we should take the Sitha woman back to her people in Aldheorte Forest. And I think I should go with her. It’s time for us to talk to Jiriki and the rest of the Sithi—to find out why they have been silent so long.”

  Miriamele stiffened against his side. “Absolutely not.”

  “But why? Miri, you saw those creatures we fought—that giant! What if we must go to war against the Norns again? I would not think of doing it without advice from the Sithi. And I don’t think we can stand by and simply let their envoy die, either. Not when her own people may be able to heal her.”

  The queen spoke quietly but she was not happy. “Some of that makes sense, and I need to think about it. But whatever happens, you are not going, Simon. Between that trip to Meremund and then traveling to Elvritshalla for poor Isgrimnur, our people here have scarcely seen you in the last half-year. You tell me there could be a war, but then the first thing you propose is to go charging off across the countryside again like you did when you were young, on some noble, jolly quest to find the Sithi?”

  “You are bending my words until I don’t even recognize them.” He hated when she talked to him as if all he wanted to do was be young and without responsibilities again. Of course, there was a secret part of him that sometimes wished for just that—but who did not have such a peevish, childlike voice inside them, urging them to throw off the coils of maturity? “And I am not speaking as the boy you once met, or even as your husband. I am speaking as the king of all the High Ward.”

  “And I am speaking as the queen. And the queen says that the king cannot afford to go sailing off on an adventure in the midst of all that we have to deal with. Did you forget Hernystir and the tales of Hugh’s devil-worship? Did you not hear Pasevalles tell us Nabban is a boiling cauldron that could spill over at any moment?”

  He kept his mouth closed a long time, waiting until he no longer felt like grinding his teeth together in frustration. “Then what should we do, Miriamele? I won’t simply wait for this woman to die and hope that Jiriki sends someone else.”

  She turned her back to him, but stayed close enough to benefit from the heat of his body. “Send Eolair if you must send someone. He is Hand of the Throne. Such duties are his, and he knows the Sithi almost as well as we do.”

  “Eolair is so worried about Hernystir he can barely keep his mind on what is in front of him.”

  “All the more reason to send him. Give him something important to occupy him until we know better whether Hugh is truly becoming a problem. Send Eolair, or send someone else. But you are not going, Simon.”

  He lay silently for a while, thinking.

  “Miri?”

  She didn’t answer immediately. “What?”

  “Are you angry at me?”

  “For suggesting you should go riding off to find the Sithi when there are a hundred things here that require your attention? Why should I be?”

  “You’re angry.”

  She rolled over, put her head upon his chest. “Yes, a bit. It will pass, though. It always does.”

  28

  Cradle Songs of Red Pig Lagoon

  It was a long walk across the camp to the edge of the meadow where Unver and his stepfather kept their wagons, but several days had passed since Fremur had last seen the tall man. Everybody else was spreading the news, but he wondered if Unver had heard anything at all.

  Fremur did not like walking, but when his horse had eventually wandered back after the raid on the stone-dweller settlement his brother Odrig had claimed it, saying, “Any man who cannot keep his horse does not deserve one.”

  Everyone in the Crane Clan seemed to know about this, so there was no shortage of mockery as Fremur trudged between the wagons and out toward Birch Meadow. He kept his head down and bit his lip to prevent himself from shouting back. Odrig himself had made it clear that he approved of the insults: “Until you grow a man’s tough skin, you are useless to me or anyone else,” he had said only the previous night. “You are like a warrior made of cheese.” Odrig’s way of toughening a man’s skin seemed to be frequent beatings and humiliation in front of the other clansfolk.

  Fremur did not th
ink the skin of his body had toughened much since childhood, but there were times when he felt certain his heart had shrunken and hardened like wet leather left in the sun. He often thought of himself that way, as if his insides were a rawhide knot, something that would only grow tighter the harder it was pulled. He sensed something like that in Unver as well, although whatever was drawn tight inside Unver was under much greater strain, like the huge ropes used to tug the standing stones at the Clan Ground back upright after an earth tremor had felled them. The ropes had creaked with every pull against the stones’ unimaginable weight, until it seemed like the great cords and the muscles of the men who pulled on them were at war with the earth itself. Unver was like that, but his cords never slackened. The other men of the Crane Clan disliked him but they feared him too, his height and long arms and his hard, blank face, as unchanging as one of those stones, standing against all wind and weather.

  He is too fierce, and he does not bend his neck to my brother. Someday Odrig will kill him or drive him out of the clan.

  Nobody in the clan, except perhaps for the tall man’s stepfather Zhakar, could even remember Unver’s real name. When he had first come to the clan as a gangly boy, someone had asked him who he was. “Unver,” he had replied, staring at Odrig and the other boys like a bear surrounded by baying dogs—it meant “nobody”— and that was what the clan had called him ever since. Even Fremur’s sister Kulva still called him that, and she was one of the few folk who treated the tall man with kindness. To the rest, he was only a strange, unfriendly clansman who lived with his drunken stepfather on the outskirts of the camp—a good horseman and fierce fighter, but otherwise to be avoided.

  As Fremur reached the edge of the meadow he saw old Zhakar sitting on the steps of his wagon, sharpening a knife with long, screeching strokes. Fremur wanted nothing to do with the sour old man, so he took a path through the trees, around behind Zhakar’s ill-maintained wagon and into the grove of birches where, as expected, he found Unver, who was using stones to smooth the wood of his unfinished wagon while his big, dark horse Deofol nipped listlessly at the grass. The green was thick on the plains at this time of the year, and all the horses were growing fat. It was a time of celebration, at least for most of the clan.