The Witchwood Crown
Morgan was not in the mood to be amused. The hard words he had heard from the king still echoed in his thoughts. “No, I’m not going. The last thing I want to do is hear how the Erkynguard protected me from danger when the Norns attacked. I would have fought! It’s not my fault I was forbidden to come out by the queen.”
“It’s not your fault,” Astrian said. “Nor are you the only one who missed out. I was on the mountainside, but only dodged a few arrows. I never even saw any of the fairies.”
“But you’ve been in fights and battles a-plenty. Nobody’s going to think you’re a coward.”
“Nobody thinks you’re a coward, Highness,” Porto said.
“Hah! Everybody does. The nobles at court and the people in Erchester. Did you hear them when we rode in? Half of them were calling me Tosspot and Prince More-Wine. I heard them.”
“And the other half were cheering you,” Astrian said. “It is a known truth that the people are fickle, my prince. They are like children who do not know what they want. Offer them milk, they cry. Take the milk away, they cry even harder.”
“Or piss all over you,” said Olveris.
“Just so.” Astrian poured Morgan another cup. “Go on, take this and warm your blood enough to come with us. You’ll enjoy the evening.”
“No.” Morgan pushed himself upright, then got to his feet, although not without a few adjustments; he did not actually feel very well, and hadn’t all morning. Waking up with an aching head was not as appealing a sign of maturity as it had been a year earlier, when he had first begun drinking steadily with Astrian and the others. “I’m going to find something else to do. I wish you well, gentlemen. I hope Kenrick’s Perdruin is as fine as everyone has said.”
He got up and started toward the door as steadily as he could, then remembered the royal guards who would be waiting for him in front of the inn. He turned back across the tavern toward the back door and the privy yard.
“Our young prince is troubled these days,” he heard old Porto say as he passed near his friends’ table. Sir Astrian’s reply was lost in the noises of a drunken argument outside as Morgan pushed the door open, but he did hear the others laugh.
Morgan realized long before he reached the residence that the last thing he wanted to do was go to bed, but he had left himself with very little chance for company or diversion. Most of the Erkynguard were either at the Red Drake banquet or on duty. The keep’s several guardrooms were empty except for a few old veterans nursing their bones in front of the fire, and he already owed money to the participants of the one dice game he found going on at the Nearulagh Gate guardhouse.
As a strategist, I’m a complete failure, he thought to himself. Trying to avoid my grandparents, I have maneuvered myself into a night of boredom and loneliness.
Even as he crossed into the castle’s Middle Bailey he could hear the festivities down at the town hall in Erchester. From the shouts and laughter and off-key songs floating on the wind, Sir Zakiel’s comrades in arms were swiftly working their way through the claret. Most of the Hayholt must be with them, Morgan thought, because they certainly were not to be seen anywhere here. All around him the shops and houses were shuttered for the night.
Morgan was still in the grip of a prickly anger that even the cool evening had not soothed, and for some reason the silence of the nighttime castle was nettling him more than the sounds of distant merriment from Main Row. For the third or fourth time since entering the Hayholt he considered returning to Erchester, not to attend the banquet at the town hall but to go in search of some less public entertainments, but though he knew the gate guards would be perfectly happy to let him out again despite the late hour, he also knew word of it would eventually get back to his grandparents.
A memory from his childhood poked at him as he made his way through the quiet, narrow streets, of an evening like this when everybody seemed to be somewhere else, a night when Morgan had found himself all alone—a Midsummer’s Eve in the time just before his father had fallen ill and died. Young Morgan, seven years old, had been recovering from warmwater fever after spending more than a sennight in bed. His mother was ill with the same complaint, but where Morgan’s only bedside companion was an old nurse named Cloda, Princess Idela, in her own chambers, was surrounded by ladies-in-waiting and attended by frequent visitors.
On that night, with his health mostly returned, the prince had found himself bored and in a bad temper, so he waited until Cloda had fallen asleep in a chair beside the bed, then dressed and made his way to his mother’s rooms. She had been horrified to see him, certain that although he had just gone through the same fever, he would make himself ill all over again, and so Idela had made her ladies send him away. At a loss, Morgan wandered through the residence, desperate for distraction. Because he had been in bed so long, he did not remember it was Midsummer’s Eve, and was puzzled and even a little worried to find everybody gone.
At last, he had left the residence and made his way across the innermost keep to his father’s chambers in the Old Granary Tower—a bit less of a tower than the name indicated, really more of a roundhouse built against the wall of the Inner Keep and had turned out to be too damp to use as an actual granary. Prince John Josua kept the door firmly locked, and Morgan often had to bang on it over and over until his father finally heard him and came down, distracted and irritated. In truth, despite what he had told Porto, there had only been one time his father truly had not recognized him, and in his last year John Josua had always seemed so impatient to get back to his studies that Morgan had truly felt he might as well be some faceless servant.
But on that night, in that strange, seemingly uninhabited version of the Hayholt, his father never came, though Morgan thumped on the heavy timbers until his knuckles were sore. At last, more out of annoyance than anything else, he had yanked on the door and—to his astonishment—it swung open.
With no sign of guards and no response to any of his calls, Morgan was caught between excitement at what was suddenly being presented to him after so many years of curiosity and the knowledge that his father—who never let anyone into his private chambers in the tower—would certainly disapprove. But something about the oddness of the evening and his enforced and overlong bed rest had made him feel more adventurous than usual, and so he had climbed the tower stairs by the flickering light of the torches ensconced at each landing, all the way to his father’s chambers at the top.
That door was also unlocked, which somehow confirmed in Morgan’s mind the idea that he was meant by some superior power to keep exploring, so he slipped inside. A lantern was burning on one of the tables, as though his father had only just stepped out. After so many years of wondering what his father did up there, it had turned out to be a bit disappointing. Except for its great size, the chamber did not look much different than his father’s retiring room back in the residence. Several tables and benches stood around the room, and every surface was piled high with heavy old books and musty, ancient scrolls. And almost all of them seemed to be in use, propped open to a certain page or partly unrolled and then weighted by a smooth stone or another heavy book.
None of the volumes seemed to be the kind that interested Morgan, like tales of knightly adventure or histories of war and other exciting subjects, and very few were even in a language he could read, so after a certain amount of perfunctory exploration he went out again. If there was nothing worth looking at in his father’s chambers, it was clearly not in his best interest to be caught and punished for the incursion.
On the ground floor he had paused, distracted slightly by a certain clamminess to the air, unusual for summer, and also by the presence of an odor he could not identify but seemed quite unlike anything he had smelled outside or on the upper floors. To his surprise, he now saw another set of stairs that led down below the ground floor. He had missed them when he came in, because they were tucked behind the stone spiral of the stairs he had just descen
ded. A kind of wooden frame had been set across them, not to keep people out, Morgan guessed, so much as to prevent someone’s stumbling into the dark stairwell by accident. He leaned over and breathed deeply. What came to him was not just damp, he realized, but something stranger, something that smelled . . . old. He did not know precisely what that meant, but his curiosity had been seized and he was just about to lift the wooden slats out of the way when the main tower door grated open, and he looked up in surprise to see his father’s tall, angular form looming in the doorway.
Prince John Josua had made a strange spectacle, swaying unsteadily, eyes wide with shock. “Morgan?” he had said, and his words were slurred. “By God, boy, is that you? What are you doing here?” A scattering of rose petals were strewen in John Josua’s disordered, dark hair and on his shoulders, and Morgan remembered that it was Midsummer’s Eve, that the castle was doubtless so quiet because most of the inhabitants were out celebrating at the bonfires along the Hayclif.
Before Morgan could say anything, John Josua saw that the boy was leaning with his hands on the wooden gateway laid over the descending stairs. Before Morgan could speak, John Josua’s eyes narrowed, and his expression changed. “What are you doing? You are never to come in here, and you are never, never to go anywhere near those stairs! You could fall and be killed!”
Morgan had tried to protest, but before he could say anything his father had grabbed him and yanked him away from the stairwell so forcefully that Morgan had lost his footing and tumbled to the floor. John Josua, all beard and hair and wild eyes like a madman in the street, had then yanked Morgan up onto to his feet.
“Never come in here again!” his father had shouted. He smelled of wine and bonfire smoke. “It is too perilous for a child! Where are the guards? I’ll have their heads for this. Is everybody around me a fool?”
Then, with no further words, he had carried Morgan to the front door of the roundhouse tower and set him down on the porch, then slammed the heavy door shut behind him.
The two of them never spoke of that night, and by the time Midsummer came again his father was gone and Morgan would never speak to him again about anything, at least not in this world.
• • •
He had almost forgotten where he was, wandering lost in memories toward the gate to the Inner Bailey, when someone spoke behind him.
“Look! Qina, it is our friend Morgan!”
He turned to see Little Snenneq and his betrothed hurrying after him across the commons. Snenneq had spread his arms wide. “We were about to go back to our beds, but here you are! Did Binabik, my father-in-law to-be, send you to find us?”
Morgan sighed. “No. I was just out walking.”
Snenneq smiled broadly. “I did not think your people ever did this, unless it was necessary for them.”
“Walking?”
“Going out of doors. Your people are seeming to hate it. It is the one thing I least understand. Qina has said the same, is that not right?”
“Perhaps because of smelling,” she suggested.
“Smelling?” As usual, Morgan had been with the trolls only a short time and already he was confused, but in his unhappy, half-drunken mood it did not charm him the way it usually did.
“Because your people throw their amaq and kukaq right outside their homes,” Snenneq explained.
“Yes,” Qina said, nodding. “Into the . . . land river.”
Morgan could only squint, completely lost. “Land river?”
Snenneq and Qina conferred briefly but vigorously in Qanuc. “In the street, she is meaning. The foulness is thrown into the street.”
Morgan shrugged. “It’s a city. That’s how it is in cities.”
Snenneq nodded. “And those who have wealth are making others to clean it away, so their own house does not have such the kukaq smell. But in other places, it is piling high!”
“I don’t really want to talk about . . . kukaq,” Morgan said. “I don’t really want to talk about anything. I was on my way back to the residence. To bed.”
“As we were, but this is a lucky meeting, I think.” Snenneq smiled his broad, yellow smile. One thing Morgan had to admit about trolls, they seemed to have all their teeth. “Because I had questions that I had hoped for answering.”
Morgan felt a strong need to silence his unhappy thoughts. “I will answer any questions if you have some kangkang. Do you?”
Snenneq showed the yellow grin again and pulled a drinking skin from inside his hooded jacket. Morgan took it and allowed himself a long but still cautious swallow. He had learned to drink the stuff, but it tasted like tar water, and too long a drought would send him to his knees, coughing and spluttering. However, it had the sovereign benefit of working swiftly; as he wiped his lips, he could already feel the warm kangkang glow in his stomach, working its way back up toward his head.
He sucked in a breath, felt the inside of his mouth tingling. “Questions?” he asked.
“Qina’s father Binabik has been very busy,” said Little Snenneq. “Not much time he has given to showing us your . . . what is the word? Village? Town?”
“City. Yes, Erchester is a city. Almost the biggest in all of Osten Ard, in fact.” Most of the time he might be heartily sick of what Erchester had to offer, but he did not want it compared unfavorably to some trollish campground in the freezing mountains.
“City. Just so.” Snenneq nodded. “And so we have questions. The first one is, why does everyone here go inside at night? Even in Mintahoq where the cold winds blow, people visit each other’s caves.”
Morgan didn’t have an easy answer for that. “Tonight, many of the guards and nobles are at a celebration in Erchester City. But the rest of the time . . . well, that’s just the way people do things here. Because the streets are dark. I mean, it’s not so much that they’re dangerous, especially not here in the castle, but people here don’t . . .”
“Ah! Because streets are covered in amaq!” said Snenneq, clearly pleased to have the answer at last. “Your people are not visiting after dark because they do not want to walk in the filth. With certainty. Now another questioning, if you are so kind.”
Morgan didn’t bother to correct him. Streets were just empty at night, that was all. “More kangkang,” he said instead. As the oily, burning liquid ran down his throat, he found himself growing less concerned with the ruin of his evening. Perhaps there were still ways it could be salvaged.
“Snenneq, ask Morgan Highness of the big basket,” urged Qina. “What it is?”
Morgan could only goggle until Snenneq pointed past the gate of the Inner Bailey, between the close-leaning buildings. Morgan squinted until he could make out what the troll was indicating: the gray bulk of Hjeldin’s Tower where it loomed above the rooftops, nestled against the keep’s northern wall.
“Basket?” asked Morgan. “Do you mean the tower?”
“Yes, tower!” said Snenneq. “We have baskets that shape at home in Yiqanuc. We use them to cook roots. Tower. Why does no one go in or out of it? We stood before it today, and the doors are all locked and chained.”
First the Granary, now this. It seemed to be a night for thinking about prohibited buildings, for some reason, and Morgan felt a superstitious pang. “That’s called Hjeldin’s Tower.” Kangkang was spreading through his limbs now, bright and warm as sunshine, or so it felt, and the pang quickly subsided. “Nobody goes in because it’s haunted.”
Snenneq shook his head. “I do not know this word.”
“Someone tries to kill it?” volunteered Qina, but she didn’t sound too certain.
Morgan puzzled for a moment, then smiled. “Not hunted—haunted. When ghosts and evil spirits and demons are somewhere, that’s called haunted.”
Snenneq made a gesture with his closed fist. “Kikkasut! But if demons live there, why do your people let it remain like an honored uncle? Each day we are here I s
ee people pulling down other stone buildings and making new ones.”
“Demons don’t live there anymore.” Morgan was quite certain of that now, although as a child, he (along with many of the castle’s other residents) had been less sure. The prince and his playmates had often dared each other to mount the stairs and touch the tower’s great oak doors, or climb on the guardhouse that protected them. He could still remember the terrifying thrill of approaching that frightening, forbidden place. Now, it gave him the beginning of an idea. “Do you not know about Pryrates? I’d have thought Qina’s father would have told you all about him. By all the saints, the others here never stop talking about the Red Priest.” He snorted. “You’d think he still lived there. Some fools think he does.” He reached out for the skin of kangkang and had another healthy gulp.
“We are knowing the name Pryrates, yes,” said Snenneq, making the fist gesture again. “He was a priest who did terrible things in the Storm King’s war, for the queen’s father Elias when he was being king.”
“Yes, but he wasn’t just some boring priest,” Morgan said. “He commanded demons. He was the one who tried to bring back the Storm King.”
“Then why his . . . tower . . . now standing?” Qina asked.
“Yes,” said Snenneq, “this is puzzling me, too. On Mintahoq, if a man does such things, we would be burning the inside of his cave to clean it, then fill it with dirt and rocks, but that is because a mountain cannot be broken up and pulled down.”
Morgan held out his hand for the skin, then realized he was still holding it. He set out through the gate in the general direction of the tower’s squat shadow, waving for the trolls to follow him. “They used to talk about it so much I stopped listening. Who wants to hear old things all the time? But I think my grandparents said there were tunnels all down in the ground underneath the castle. Underneath our feet now, even!” That reminded him of something—a clammy smell, flower petals, wide, angry eyes—but he pushed it away again. “And there were things inside the tower too, dangerous things . . .” He trailed off, uncertain now whether he was repeating things his elders had told him, or merely the exciting stories he had traded with other children. “Poison, and . . . and other bad things. So they chained the doors and boarded over the windows. Where the top opens they poured in rocks to fill the upper story, so nobody could get in.”