The Witchwood Crown
“Perhaps,” said Inahwen, but with no answering cheer. “But this I can swear to you, dear Count—Hugh has not been the same since he took up with her. He was always flighty, always changeable. You remember that, surely?”
“I do indeed. There were many times in his boyhood I wished I could take him across my knee.”
“I wish you had. I wish someone had. But now . . . I don’t know, Eolair. He has changed, and it frightens me. The way he looks now, always as though he has some delicious secret! It is as though she has convinced him of something, something that makes him think he is beyond danger. Surely you can see that! Everything he did today, everything he arranged, was meant to snub the High Throne in some way or other. That was not the Hugh I watched grow. That child might have been spoiled, perhaps, headstrong . . .” She frowned and fell silent. A moment later the maid came in, unsteadily bearing a large jug.
“Found it, Mistress,” she said.
“Do you hear that?” Inahwen tried to smile. “Mistress. Not even ‘Highness’ any more.”
The maid looked stricken. “My apologies, Highness, I . . .”
“Put it down, child.” Inahwen waved her to set the jug on the low table. “Now take yourself to bed. The count and I have almost finished our talk. He can let himself out.”
The maid nodded and set down her burden before scurrying toward the stairs.
Eolair waited until the door closed on the landing. “Is there anything else I should know? Or can do?” He reached out and touched the back of Inahwen’s hand. “I would see you happier.”
“Speak to the gods, then. Only their plans matter, not ours.”
He looked at her fondly, at the lines on her once-smooth face that told the story of the miseries and the passing moments of happiness. Not enough moments of happiness.
Not enough for either of us, he thought. And certainly not enough that the two of us shared. During the great war against the Storm King, both of them had lost someone who could never be replaced, Inahwen her royal husband and Eolair King Lluth’s daughter Maegwin. Eolair had not realized how much he cared for brave, bedeviled Maegwin until she was gone. Was he making the same error now with Inahwen?
There is so little comfort in this world, he thought. Have I been foolish to let duty guide me always?
“Lady . . .” he began, but she was already shaking her head.
“I can guess a little of what you’re thinking, my brave Count. There is no use in it. We are what we are, and our roads ran side by side for only a short while. But you will always be dear to me, Eolair.”
“And you to me, Highness.” He finished his second cup of mead, and felt it in his legs as he stood to return to the great hall. “I will think carefully about the things you’ve said, and I will do some asking of my own. And rest assured, Queen Miriamele and King Seoman will know your fears.” He bent and kissed her hand with careful attention. “May the gods take good care of you.”
“Of all of us, dear Eolair.” She finally smiled, but it was a half-hearted thing. “It is so strange to see you with your hair all gray! I cannot even think how I must look to you. Yes, may the gods watch over us closely, because we are all in need of the gods’ good care.”
5
Awake
She blinked. Tzoja always blinked when she stepped out of the great Nakkiga Gates, and her eyes always watered. Freezing winter had imprisoned her under the mountain for months: even the cloud-smothered white ember that was the northern sun dazzled her to blindness.
She signaled to her escort to wait until she could see properly. The household guards halted at a carefully calculated distance, demonstrating both her high status as a magister’s property and their own mute indignation at having to protect a mortal, any mortal, even their lord’s most valued concubine.
When her full sight returned, Tzoja led the four silent Hikeda’ya guards down the cracked, discolored stairs onto the Field of Banners, anciently a place of triumphant celebration, currently the home of the so-called Animal Market. The air outside the mountain was painfully fresh and cold, but rich with smells from the nearby Sacred Grove, pine and lemony birch and honey-sweet daphne. Even the reek of the fermented fish, sold from jugs all over the market, was almost welcome, because it reminded her of her old, simple life in Rimmersgard before the Norns took her. And as always, simply being out in the light and air, even surrounded on all sides by her fellow slaves and their corpse-pale overseers, Tzoja was thinking about freedom. Even though she had conceded long ago that it would never happen, she still dreamed about escape.
As she made her way down the untidy rows of mortal vendors and mortal buyers, she stopped to look at some gloves offered for barter on a crumbled stone table while the woman who had made them squatted beside it to stay out of the wind. In the early years of her captivity, one of Tzoja’s fancies had been to keep hidden a set of cold-weather clothes in case the chance for escape ever actually came. A warm, sturdy pair of fur-lined gloves like this would be much better than the ones she had hidden away, along with the gold coins and clothes and other useful things. But Tzoja could no longer convince herself that she would leave the mountain even if she were given the chance; Nezeru’s birth had changed all that.
She set the gloves back on the stone. The Clan Enduya household guards fell in around her once more. The crouching woman did not even look up.
The Animal Market had gained its name because nearly all the buyers and sellers were mortals, and that was how the Hikeda’ya thought of Tzoja’s kind. The market sprang to life each year during the Wind-Child’s Moon and came back once each moon during the warm season. Mortal serfs and slaves from the outermost Hikeda’ya lands came to trade goods with their own kind, both those who lived in the mountain itself and those who sheltered in the new settlements outside it, a tumbledown collection of shelters tossed up in recent years on the bones of Nakkiga-That-Was, the long-deserted Hikeda’ya ruins outside the mountain’s gates.
Most of those who came to the market were overseers buying cheap blankets, clothes, and food for both mortal and changeling workers. A few of the more fortunate mortals like Tzoja herself, mostly body slaves and other pets of the Hikeda’ya nobility, came looking for luxuries—scents, drinks, and foodstuffs more suited to their human tastes than what was given to them by their masters. But although most of the goods were meant only for mortal slaves and the poorest Hikeda’ya—no Norn of any standing would be seen mingling with the human herd—Tzoja was still constantly reminded that she now lived among the fairies.
Mingling with the hundreds and hundreds of mortals (and the smaller contingent of armed Norn guards keeping watch over the market) were a large number of the only slaves the Norns considered lower than mortal men and women—the changeling Tinukeda’ya in all their weird variety. There were carry-men, of course, manlike beasts of burden almost as tall as wild giants, with immense, muscular shoulders and tiny, empty-faced heads that showed no alteration of expression even when they stumbled under their monstrous loads. But Tinukeda’ya came in many other shapes as well, from the small, scuttling hairy things that worked on the highest mountainside farms in other parts of the Nornfells to the slender, mournful-faced delvers, who, despite their spindly appearance, could not just dig faster than either humans or Norns but also shape stone with the delicate ease of a man carving soft wood. Tzoja watched a pair of these delvers with bleak amusement as they bargained almost silently with a gem-seller: the owl-eyed creatures’ flinching hurry to be out of the sun and back into soothing darkness was the exact opposite of her own desires. But body shape alone meant nothing, not here: her Norn captors themselves, although more manlike than any of the changelings, were as different from Tzoja as a wildcat from a rabbit.
She should have been used to it by now. How long can you live in such a place and still feel that you are caught in a terrible dream? But it was an empty question, because she knew the answer was forever
. Or at least until she died.
Tzoja did her best to banish such dire thoughts so she could enjoy her scant time in the sun, but it was not easy. Pointless as it was, she knew that the dream of escape would never completely leave her—she had spent too many years under the open skies ever to be able to surrender. Still, all she had to do was look around to be reminded of how hopeless such thoughts were. The slave folk never looked up at the Norn guards, and barely raised their voices above a whisper even when they were bargaining with other mortals. Back in Rimmersgard, where she had lived so many years in such ignorant happiness with Valada Roskva, the Rimmersgard matriarch and healer who had given her a home, the noise of the entire market would have been suitably respectable from a crowd gathered for a funeral. Even so, inside the mountain that was now and forever her home, so many mortal voices at once would be considered an unbearable, traitorous clamor, and would be quelled by swift violence. So the slaves barely whispered even out here, beneath open skies.
What good is freedom that cannot be used? she wondered. Is the poor gift of life worth so much?
But of course it was not her own life that held her in thrall. And because she had given birth to that beloved life, Tzoja knew she was doomed to live and die among a people stranger to her than the beasts of the field, and would never know real peace.
Even Tzoja’s Hikeda’ya lord and lover Viyeki, who was unlike his kindred in so many other ways, and who had been more considerate of her than any other of his kind would ever have been, did not understand Tzoja’s restlessness. The magister seemed to consider it an endearing but inexplicable mortal oddity, as a child might laugh at a dog chasing its tail, seeing only the low comedy and not the horrible futility. And Viyeki was by far the best of them.
• • •
It took a long time to walk up and down the crooked rows, and snow was beginning to flurry before she had finished, but Tzoja was determined to stay in the light as long as possible. The market was large—the site had once been the Norns’ Field of Banners, a broad ceremonial ground in front of the mountain gates, last used for its intended purpose centuries past, when most of the north had been ruled by the Hikeda’ya. The Rimmersmen who had come to Osten Ard out of the lost west had changed that beyond all recognition, long ages before Tzoja had been born. The thick-bearded warriors had conquered all the way down through Erkynland, killing Norns and their Sithi kin in great numbers, and killing countless mortals as well. After the Northmen came, her mistress Roskva had taught her, the Sithi had deserted their old cities and fled to the forests, while the Norns had withdrawn here, to their mountain capital and last stronghold, swearing never to give it up, to fight until the last Hikeda’ya was dead. After living two decades amidst these fierce immortals, she did not doubt they would do just that.
And what if war does come again? she could not help wondering. Whose side will I be on? My own people’s? Or my daughter’s?
The guards were giving her hard looks now. It was clear they thought it time to go back to the mountain, but Tzoja knew the weather might turn again and the deep snows return, which would mean no more outdoor markets for several moons. She ignored their looks and continued to walk up and down the rows all the way to the market’s outermost reaches, bartering Builders’ Order scrip for hazelnuts and cloudberries, dried turnips, parsnips, and wild celery, even a selection of dried river fish, mostly perch and pike, all of them things that reminded her of her days in Roskva’s order, of her happy time as a free woman, now so long ago. At last, as the sun dropped toward the western peaks and the Dragon Guard began to close the market, she reluctantly signaled to her escorts that she was ready to return.
If I had a basket big enough, I would take back a piece of the sun. Then I think I could put up with anything.
She wouldn’t even need much of it to take with her, she told herself: her life in the mountain would last barely a fraction of her master’s, though he was her elder by centuries. She often wondered if any of the immortals would remember her after she was gone, any more than they might recall a single fallen leaf.
But what of Nezeru? Will my daughter, who may live almost as long as her father, still remember me when hundreds of years have passed? And what of Viyeki? Will a great lord like him recall that he once loved a mortal? Why stumble on when the end will be the same—darkness and silence?
The sun had dipped. The outer city and marketplace were growing so cold that her own vaporous breath obscured her sight. She shivered. It was past time to return, and she dared not make Viyeki unhappy with her. Not even her death was hers to choose, because she had given a hostage to Fate—her only child.
Back inside, then, to the quiet, endless halls of stone. Back to the incomprehensible rituals, the masked faces, and the constant knowledge that even after giving birth to a praised young warrior, Tzoja herself was still considered scarcely more than a beast.
Ah, beautiful, brave Nezeru, my child, she thought. Though you cannot understand me, and though you despise my mortal weaknesses, I love you still. For you I will go on living in the dark.
Did she love Viyeki, her daughter’s father, too? Was there something more in her feelings for her many-centuried master—her owner—than mere gratitude to someone who had allowed her freedoms that few of her fellow slaves enjoyed? Who had shown her real kindness, and even what seemed like tenderness, as unusual as that was among the Hikeda’ya?
Tzoja had no answer for that. She bade a grudging farewell to the sun, then turned back toward the tall, forbidding mountain gates, but in a small act of rebellion she made her Hikeda’ya guards carry the things she had chosen for herself.
Deep inside the mountain, Viyeki sey-Enduya, Queen’s High Magister of the Order of Builders, was reading in his garden, lingering over a poem by Shun’y’asu:
As the silence of birds just before dawn,
So the silence of the living heart
Just before death.
Then comes the light.
Silence, yes, Viyeki thought. Before death, it is indeed a rich gift. Afterward, though, it will be freely available even to the poorest of us.
Shun’y’asu’s poetry had been important to Viyeki’s master Yaarike, the former high magister of the Order of Builders. This volume had been the old noble’s favorite book—a gift to Viyeki from his own hand—and reading the words almost brought Yaarike sey-Kijana back to stand over him once more, austere but with moments of sudden humor, yet always full of secrets.
Viyeki, like most of his people, valued silence, but it was not what he loved best about his garden. The district of noble compounds on Nakkiga’s second tier was already quiet but for the occasional shuffle of servants’ feet or the muted clatter of a troop of armored guards on patrol: his house was already a refuge from noisy surroundings. It was not silence but solitude that Viyeki coveted.
By the standards of the city inside the mountain, the high magister’s garden was both luxurious and vast, as befitted the leader of one of the most important orders. A shaft led straight up from the chamber’s rocky roof, all the way through the mountain’s stony hide and out to the sky by way of an angled entrance in Nakkiga’s icy flanks that allowed sunlight to bounce down its polished sides and create a single bright column at the center of the garden chamber. At this season, melt water splashed continuously from a crevice in the garden wall into the rectangular pond, luring birds in from the outside sky. On a good day like today, as many as a half dozen mountain sparrows and a few black and white choughs might be splashing in the shallows, shaking out their feathers and calling back and forth in creaky voices barely louder than a whisper. Even the birds of Nakkiga seemed in perpetual mourning.
He heard another sound now, softer even than the birds’ gentle calls—an intake of breath. Viyeki, recognizing his secretary Yemon by that sound alone, carefully slipped the book of poetry he had been reading under his other book, the traditional magister’s copy of The Five
Fingers of the Queen’s Hand. Yemon seemed loyal to Viyeki, but he would have been a fool to seem anything else, and Shun’y’asu’s poems had long been forbidden by the palace. Although Viyeki’s copy of The Color of Water had been given to him by his master Yaarike, who was considered a great hero, it was still unwise for anyone to see Viyeki reading it, or any other book that the queen’s Hamakha Clan considered suspect.
Especially now. Especially today.
“I interrupt you, Master.” Yemon did not sound particularly apologetic, more as though he secretly hoped it were true.
Viyeki looked up, mirroring Yemon’s rigorously empty expression with his own. “Not at all. Tell me your errand.”
Small, stolid Yemon was an excellent secretary, clever and observant and without any close family of his own to distract him from duty. He was also ambitious, and almost certainly planned on replacing his master Viyeki someday (as was true of any but the dullest underlings in every royal order in Nakkiga). It would have been foolish for his master to expect anything else, but there was no need for Viyeki to hasten Yemon’s advancement by being caught with a copy of Shun’y’asu. He risked a brief downward glance to make sure the forbidden book was not visible.
“Your appointed time at the palace is at evening bell, Master,” Yemon reminded him, although they both knew Viyeki would sooner forget his own name than a summons from the Mother of the People. “Shall I have the litter ready in the hour before, or do you wish to leave the house sooner than that?”
“I will not need the litter. I will walk.”
He did not have to see him to know that Yemon had infinitesimally raised an eyebrow, as he always did when his master did something he thought oddly sentimental or foolish, a hair’s-breadth movement as telling as a hiss of contempt. “Indeed, High Magister. I will have the guards ready an hour before the bell.”