“He will not shame her. He will mourn her, you fool, and then he will bury her. We have time enough to think about what Unver has done. Put up your swords. If you want to bury someone, you have two corpses right here.”
“You do not know what you are doing,” Gezdahn said, but after staring at Fremur for a moment he slid his blade back into the sheath. Fremur felt as if his own face must be shining, he felt so hot beneath his skin.
“No. But neither do you. Nor do any of the rest of us.” A vision had come to him even as he had drawn his sword—the fires of the stone dweller settlement biting at the sky, and Unver looming above it all like some great hunting bird sent down from Heaven to scourge the people’s enemies. “Do you not see? The gods have spoken to us today. The Sky Piercer has given us a great message and we must understand it before we act.”
And although he saw nothing but anger from his brother’s friends, he saw something else on the faces of many gathered there—not merely confusion and horror, but also a kind of awe. Even old Burtan the shaman seemed chastened, as though he had witnessed, not just something horrible, but something that was important as well. Fremur was glad to see the old man understood. The others might understand in time. Some never would, perhaps. That was what happened, his father had once told him, when the gods spoke to men.
40
Watching Like God
There once was a woman who lived in the sky,
Lived in the sky, lived in the sky . . .
Something small but surprisingly heavy was bouncing on Morgan’s chest, an evil fairy by the sound of its piping voice.
There once was a woman who lived in the sky,
And her name was Grandmother Sun.
He groaned and tried to push it off, but it clung like a burr.
She rode upon a cloudy horse
A cloudy horse, a cloudy horse
She rode upon a cloudy horse
And her name was Grandmother Sun!
“God’s hell,” he said, “what are you?”
“You said a cursing word against God,” the fairy pointed out with obvious relish. “I’m going to tell Archbishop Gervis, and he’ll mixcommunicate you.”
“Go away. Sleeping.”
“You have to get up, because you’re going away today, Morgan. And I’m angry at you because you didn’t come and say goodbye.”
He opened one eye. The light in his room was not sufficient to illuminate the shape perched atop him, but he had already identified the noxious spirit as his sister. “How could I come and say goodbye when I haven’t left yet?”
“You were going to. You were going to go away without even coming to say goodbye.”
He rolled Lillia off his chest and then draped an arm across her, pinning her down. “I came to your room last night to do that because I thought we were leaving early, but you weren’t there. How is that my fault?”
“Because I had a bad dream. I went and got in bed with Auntie Rhoner.” His younger sister had learned several years ago that her grandmother’s friend was named “Countess Rhona,” but as with many other matters, Lillia showed no interest in changing her ways to please others. Morgan had a stubborn streak of his own, but he was a mere journeyman of self-interest compared to his little sister’s mastery of the craft.
“And I was supposed to know that? Besides, I don’t think Auntie Rhoner would have wanted me climbing into bed with her too, Lil.”
“No, because you’re too big. And you smell bad.”
“Liar.”
“You do. You smell like Brother Olov.” He had tutored the children for a year, until his habit of pilfering small objects for drinking money became too hard to overlook, and he was returned to St. Sutrin’s Abbey. During his tutoring days he had hidden jugs of wine in unlikely places around the residence so he could sneak out for a drink between lessons.
Morgan rolled over, turning his back on his young sister. “Go away, Pigling. I’m trying to sleep.”
“Get up! It’s time to get up and you have to say goodbye to me.”
“Goodbye.”
“No, proper. You have to get up and say it proper. Otherwise it doesn’t work.”
“What doesn’t work?”
“I said a special prayer this morning. It was a special one so that God would remember you were going away and He would promise you’d come back safe.”
Morgan grunted. “Did He?”
“Did He what?”
“Did God promise you?”
“I don’t know. Don’t be mean!” She wasn’t just half-cross, the way she usually was when he was pretending to be difficult—or actually being difficult, which also happened fairly frequently. Morgan thought she sounded quite upset, close to tears.
He groaned again and rolled onto his back, still pinning her as best he could so she didn’t climb back on top of him. His young sister had a habit of straddling his chest and pretending he was a horse—a very frolicsome horse, to judge by her jouncing rides—but that felt worse than usual this morning, with his stomach still full of the previous night’s cheap wine. In fact, Morgan hadn’t stayed out terribly late or drunk terribly much, because he had thought the company would be leaving at dawn; when he had returned to the residence after supper he had learned about Count Eolair and their delayed departure. But he still didn’t want Lillia thumping on his belly, hobbledy-hoy.
“I suppose when I’m gone, Your Bouncy Highness will have to put that pony out to pasture and get a real horse.” His jest was met with silence. He looked over to where she lay, now nestled against his rib cage. Tears were spilling over and running down her cheeks. “Why are you crying, Pigling?”
“You know why! You know.”
“Because I’m going away.”
“Yes. Again! After you just came back!”
“It’s not my idea.”
“I don’t care if you never grow to a man. I don’t want you to go.”
“Grow to a man?”
“That’s what Auntie Rhoner said. ‘He has to go out into the world and learn to be a man.’ That’s what she said.”
Morgan frowned and began to lever himself into a sitting position, which entailed disentangling himself from an unhappy seven-year-old. Rhona’s words angered him, much as he liked the Hernystiri noblewoman. Why did everyone think he was such a failure at manhood? He could fight with a sword, ride a horse, drink with the best of them, and he had also had his share of doings with women as well. At the same age his grandfather had been scouring bowls and pots in the castle kitchen. Was it Morgan’s fault that there was no Storm King to force him to war, no mad King Elias, no red priest Pryrates?
Thinking of the red priest, he suddenly remembered what he thought he had seen in the tower; it came swift and strong enough for Lillia to notice. “If you’re cold, get back under the blanket,” she said. “We’ll make a tent.”
“No, no tent, Pigling. I really do have to get up and get ready.” At least so he assumed. “What time is it?”
“Eleven of the clock.”
“Damnation!”
“You said another word against God!”
“I did not. Come on, off me, give me room to swing my legs.” He put his feet down on the cold floor, swallowed another and even more florid curse. “You’re sure it’s eleven? Not ten? Where’s Melkin?”
“He’s gone to make certain all your gear is ready. That’s what he said. He’s the one who told me what time it was.”
Which meant it was true. Melkin was not the most gifted squire, but he nearly always knew the time. His life’s great dream, he had once admitted to his lord, the prince, was to have a clock of his own to tend. Morgan could imagine nothing more boring in all the lands of Osten Ard than spending one’s days up a tower, tending a clock.
“Go and get me something to eat, will you?” he asked his sister. “I’ll wash a
nd put on some clean clothes. I’m supposed to go see Mother—oh, and Grandfather and Grandmother too before I leave, no doubt so they can tell me again what an idle devil I am, and how this ride into the empty wilderness in search of fairies is going to put me right.”
Lillia gave him a searching stare. “Are you really going to visit the real, true fairies?”
“I suppose.” It was much easier to sit up in bed when you hadn’t been drinking all night. He had almost forgotten that. “If we ever find them. But they’re not exactly fairies. You saw the woman upstairs, didn’t you? Did you think she was a real, true fairy?”
“I did, Morgan. Her eyes were like a cat. And she was so very, very thin!”
“Well, we’re taking her back to her people, so they can try to make her better.”
“She should pray to God. That’s what Father Nulles says. God can make her better. But fairies don’t pray to God. They don’t even believe in God.”
“Well, then God probably won’t cure her, so someone else will have to. You don’t want her to die, do you?”
Lillia’s eyes got big. “Oh, no! That would be too bad.”
“That’s why we’re taking her back to her people, see? To get her some fairy medicine. And speaking of magical things that make people feel better, what about some food?”
“Grandfather said if you wanted something to eat before your journey, you should have come down to eat when everyone else was having theirs.”
“Grandfather would say that, yes.” He scowled, then saw Lillia’s offended expression. “But I’m sure he didn’t mean nobody could go to the kitchen and see if anything was . . . lying about. Just going to waste, if you see what I mean.”
She gave him another disapproving look. “That would be stealing.”
Morgan sighed. “Someday, I am going to be the ruler of this place, and you will be a most important lady. All this will belong to us.”
She stared, sensing a trick of some kind. “So?”
“So if you find some food for me in the kitchen, it won’t be stealing. I’ll just be borrowing it from myself. You see that, don’t you?”
Her brow wrinkled, but at last she got up. “You won’t lock the door like you always do while I’m gone, will you?”
“No, but if you take too long, I’ll be downstairs having an audience with Grandfather and Grandmother. So hurry!”
Lillia looked at him carefully, not quite sure he was telling the truth, but at last she turned and headed for the door. “You promise, remember. Don’t lock the door.”
“I won’t. But hurry yourself, Pigling. I’m famished!”
For long moments after she had gone out, Morgan just sat on the edge of the bed enjoying the quiet, but something was tugging at his heart. He was going to miss his sister, he realized, and the thought gave his heart a painful squeeze. He hadn’t thought about it until now, but it was true. He was going to miss the castle and the city too, of course, miss his friends and his favorite haunts, and even his mother and his grandparents, no matter what they thought of him. But most of all, he was going to miss that small and difficult girl.
• • •
His mother Princess Idela was in her chambers with her circle of ladies, sewing and gossiping. Even before noon it was another hot day, and one of the younger chambermaids walked around them with a large fan, cooling them.
Morgan kneeled and took Idela’s cool hand, pressed it to his lips. “I give you good morning, Mother.”
“I am devastated,” she announced, although she did not truly sound as if it were so. “I do not know what to say, except that I will not rest until you’ve returned again, my dearest son.”
“It should not be too long. At least I hope not. Count Eolair said we should be back before the end of summer.”
“Oh, and what a terrible thing that was! To think someone would try to harm him. That poor old man! How is the dear count this morning?”
Morgan clenched his teeth, but smiled. “I don’t know, Mother. I have not been downstairs yet. I came to say goodbye to you first.”
“What a good son.” She turned, smiling to her circle. “Can anyone wonder I will miss him so?”
The ladies all nodded and murmured and smiled back at him. Some of the noblewomen who surrounded his mother were scarcely older than Morgan himself, but although many of them were pretty, they seemed oddly beyond his reach or even his understanding, as though they belonged to an alien race, like the Sitha woman he and Eolair were taking home.
“I am as you have raised me, Mother.”
“Ah, ah!” she said. “I cannot take the blame for everything. Some of your adventures have more to do with the rough company you keep than anything I taught you.”
He tried to smile. “Perhaps. In any case, the others will be waiting for me downstairs—we are to leave soon if we are to make Woodsall by dark.”
His mother shook her head. “Oh, I hate to think of you traveling in the Aldheorte, or even near it. That is a place of evil repute. Promise to say your prayers at morning and nightfall, no matter what happens, and keep the Holy Tree around your neck always. Promise!”
“I promise.”
“Good. Because even in these days of peace, the Devil is at work in the world. Here, I have a gift for you to take with you.” She bent and felt carefully through the items in her sewing basket until she found it. It was a Book of the Aedon, small but beautifully bound. “This was my own mother’s,” she said. “She gave it to me when she knew I would go away to Erchester to be married. She thought the city was a hive of sin, with robbers in every alley.”
“She wasn’t far wrong.”
His mother let out a most surprising giggle. “I was never allowed to find out. You don’t suppose a young bride-to-be like myself was permitted to roam the city, do you? Especially a duke’s daughter. Not without guards and chaperones, at least.” She sounded almost wistful. “It might have been exciting . . .” She recovered the thread of her thought. “In any case, you must keep this with you at all times. It was made by the monks of St. Yistrin’s and it will keep you safe. And you must promise me to read a little from it each day, when you have finished your riding. Promise!”
Morgan was beginning to lose track of all the things he was promising the women of his family. “Of course, Mother.” He took the book, then leaned forward. When she lifted her cheek to him, he kissed it. “Thank you. I will think of you whenever I see it.”
“Don’t just look at it! Read it!” She said it with a curiously powerful emphasis that he did not understand.
“As I said, of course. I will.” He straightened up. “I really must go.”
“Tell Count Eolair he must take good care of you. You are precious, and not just because you are the heir. You are precious to me.”
Morgan nodded, but he knew there was no threat in the world, not even a fire-breathing dragon or a company of Norns, that could ever make him tell Count Eolair to take good care of him because he was precious to his mother.
He bowed to the ladies, who smiled and said quiet, gracious things, then he kissed his mother’s hand once more and went out.
“Every morning, every night!” she called after him.
“I will!” he called back. When he finally reached the sanctuary of the hall he tucked the Book of Aedon into his shirt, under his jerkin. His grandmother’s holy book. Was there some kind of a conspiracy among the women to make him a proper man? Or to keep him from becoming one? Morgan couldn’t guess.
• • •
He found his grandfather in the throne hall, seated in his chair instead of on the royal throne, something Morgan always found confusing and irritating. What point was there to having a throne in the first place, let alone a legendary one made from the bones of an actual dragon, if you never used it?
When I am king, I will never sit in anything else. A dark thought flit
ted across Morgan’s mind. If it comes to be, that is. If the troll’s fortune-telling was mistaken.
Thinking of Snenneq brought back the night atop Hjeldin’s Tower. A part of him wanted to confess everything to his grandparents, the open hatch, the hairless specter in red, but it was all beginning to seem unreal, like a bad dream. Had he seen the phantom before he hit his head, or after he had stunned himself? And if he told the tale, he knew his grandfather would be even angrier. He would send men up the tower to open it up, and when they found nothing the Hayholt would be full of laughing tales of “Prince Morgan’s ghost.” In the light of day, he now felt more and more certain that the specter must only have been bad air from the long-sealed tower and the disorder of his own rattled brains. Still, a part of him wondered whether he should tell someone.
His grandfather was talking to Eolair, who sat beside him in the queen’s seat, a dispensation obviously given him because of the bandaged wound just beneath his collarbone. The great hall was otherwise empty except for a few guards in the shadows, a strange emptiness for a room that was usually as active as a small city.
“Ah, good, you’re here,” said the king when he saw him. “No, don’t kneel, lad, come here and join us.” He turned back to the count. “And Tiamak and his lady are certain?”
Eolair smiled wearily. He was a bit wan, but looked otherwise hale. “Yes, they are certain. No one of the blows was more than a cut. Bloody, but mostly harmless.”
“Harmless? Not from that puddle of blood I saw in the forehall. A child could swim in it. You are lucky it happened here, where your wounds could be tended.”
“Beg pardon, Majesty, Count Eolair,” said Morgan, “but I have heard only a little of what happened. I’m glad to see you well, though, my lord. Are you truly well enough to ride?”
“It was only a shallow wound, praise the gods. It startled me more than anything, and the struggling had already made me light-headed. Today’s and tomorrow’s travel will be on good royal roads. I will be well.”
“What madman did this to you?”