“I can’t do it,” he said, and held the horn out to Eolair.
“If you can’t, I doubt I can either, Highness—not with these weary lungs of mine.” The count shook his head. “If the horn has something of the Sithi’s making in it, your claim to it is at least as great as mine. It passed from Camaris to your grandparents. Try once more.”
It was strange for Morgan to think of having any claim on such a thing, especially by the mere accident of birth into the royal family. But of course, that was why he was expected to be king someday, was it not? By the accident of his birth? By the accident of surviving his father? The thought made him feel empty. He lifted the horn to his lips and blew mightily, blew until his cheeks ached, but no sound came.
“Once more, then we will return,” said Eolair. “If we cannot make it sound, still we can find other ways to announce our presence. There is no shame. Please, Highness, just try once more.”
Morgan wanted to argue because he knew that there was shame in failure. As someone who knew he had been sent to these empty, dark woods simply because he had been caught breaking rules, he knew that as well as anyone. But here in the ancient forest it suddenly seemed like something that had happened far away and long ago. He felt the weight of the horn in his hand, the substance of it, and looked at the last gleam of the setting sun burning between the trunks like a distant fire.
Snenneq’s knuckle bones said that I won’t get what I expect, he suddenly remembered. What will I do then, if I don’t become king? A strange anger filled him, not the sort that scalded his heart when he didn’t get his way, but another sort of feeling, a deeper rage at blind, foolish fate. But why? he wondered. Why does it have to be that way? Why does anything have to be that way, just because others say that it is?
Without even realizing, he lifted the horn to his lips, holding it with both hands like an upended wine goblet, but instead of letting the fiery taste of happiness run down his throat and fill it up, this time it was his job to do the filling—to fill this heavy thing with his own breath. To bring it to life. What if this is the only important thing I ever do?
And as he thought this, Morgan for the first time felt the famous horn as something more than an ancient artifact, a piece of lost history. He closed his eyes and the twilit forest vanished.
There was only Morgan and Ti-tuno, then. For an instant he thought he could feel what the horn’s creator had felt, the nameless Sitha who had long ago carved the runes and polished the curving surface until it gleamed. In that instant he could even sense how the horn’s triumphant music was not summoned from somewhere else, but crouched inside it like a dragon hiding in a cavern, all that fiery power coiled but awake and waiting. Somehow, even if only for the space of these few heartbeats, the horn became part of him and he, not just the air inside him, became part of the horn as well.
He blew. This time, he heard something immediately, a rattle that became a groan. His lungs and the horn became one thing, a passage of fire from his body into the horn and then out into the silent forest, a single note that grew from a moan to a stuttering howl to a deeply sounding roar, like the bellow of a huge beast. The sound climbed into the air of the forest clearing and hung there for so long that Morgan almost forgot it was he who was making it. Then it fell away, leaving only faint echoes.
Despite having been the one to urge him to try one last time, Count Eolair looked surprised—almost stunned. “You did it, Highness,” he said in a voice so soft it was almost a reverent whisper.
His heart pounding with exultation, Morgan winded the horn once more, as much to feel the sensation again as anything else. Ti-tuno’s call rolled out through the darkening woods, deep and throaty and astonishingly loud, the cry of some creature God had made and then forgotten. But the Sithi did not come.
Morgan still felt a sense of triumph, but though he blew two more times, nothing answered the blasts but echoes.
The prince and the count got back on their horses and returned through the forest, through an evening now alive with cricket song, back to the cookfires and the company of other mortal men.
43
Into Deeper Shadows
“Why are you here, mortal?” demanded the halfblood slave, looking her full in the face. “Here in the storerooms, we heard no mention of your coming.”
His lack of courtesy was both insulting and infuriating, but Tzoja did not dare let herself be goaded into making a scene. Just the proper amount of anger was what she needed, no more, no less: the Hikeda’ya were highly sensitive to precedence and position. “How do you dare speak so to me, you low creature?” She hoped her features showed the cold fury she felt, but not her even stronger fear. “Do you not see my household sigil? Mortal or not, I am an important concubine of the High Magister of Builders, Lord Viyeki himself! I gave him a child who, despite being a halfblood like yourself, is an honored member of the Order of Sacrifice—a Queen’s Talon, no less!”
Her inquisitor flinched just the tiniest bit, an infinitesimal tightening of his skin as if anticipating a blow, something Tzoja would never have noticed before living in Nakkiga. Now, she knew, it meant that her gambit had succeeded, at least in part.
“I beg your indulgence, Mistress,” he said in a more guarded tone. “But I have been told that certain lowborn creatures have been making free with the Queen’s pantry. I am only doing what I am bound to do.”
“Mistaking me for a slave even lower than yourself, you mean?” Tzoja now felt herself on familiar ground again, since she had faced this sort of thing on many more legitimate errands. She made a sign with her fist against her throat that meant, I will swallow my righteous fury for the moment. “Still,” she said, “since I work hard, as you do, to protect that which belongs to the Great Mother of All and to preserve the memory of the Lost Garden, I will not mention you to my lord if you quickly comply with my wishes. I need enough food for a few days’ journey.”
The slave, who could not have been much older than Tzoja herself but whose Norn blood, as it did for her own daughter Nezeru, gave him the look of a much more ancient creature, made a strong gesture of apology. “Again, I ask for your mercy, Mistress, but why do you need such a quantity? Your master’s clan household has already had its allotment.” Starvation had been a familiar companion to the Hikeda’ya in the years after the War of Return’s failure. This menial had doubtless been harshly schooled in taking his guardian’s role seriously.
“Fool of a slave!” she said, making her face as disapproving as she could. “Do you think yourself a temple priest teaching an ignorant child to recite the Prayer for the Queen’s Strength? Or is the mortal blood in you so powerful that it stupefies the rest? Where is it written in the Hamakha Dictates that you may ask questions of a High Magister’s concubine? Do you demand the details of what my husband and master wishes to do with the food as well? If so, I think the Queen’s Teeth might take an interest in your interest.”
The blow was well-aimed. The slave’s face crumpled in poorly hidden fear. “No, Mistress! Please, do not misunderstand me. Usually we are informed of any such need ahead of time.”
“My husband has recently left on a mission given to him by our great queen herself. He left me detailed instructions on what I was to do during his absence. You say you were not informed, but I wonder if it is possible instead that you have lost his orders?” She paused for effect. “Again, I offer to call for the Queen’s Teeth, or even the nearest guards, and we will quickly find a straight path through this crooked passage.”
Surrender. “No, please, Mistress. I am certain the fault was ours.” The slave had the deep black eyes of his Norn blood, but the sallowness of his skin had been lightened by fear until he was almost as white as a pureblooded Hikeda’ya. “Make yourself free and do what you must.” He turned to where several of the less bold kitchen slaves cowered in the background. “We all pray for your husband’s safe return.”
“An
d the triumphant fulfillment of the queen’s wishes, of course,” Tzoja said.
“Of course, Mistress.”
It was secretly satisfying to make rude halfbloods like this one swallow their own words, but Tzoja knew that at this point someone in her position should either walk away from this undignified discussion or call the guards so that such argumentative slaves could be punished. But there might still be some small advantage she could exploit that would fall within the bounds of accepted behavior. “I am too angry now to look for myself. Here is what I have written down of my husband’s orders.” She held out the page on which she had made her list. “Bring me these things.”
“Of course, Mistress,” said the slave. His now-downcast eyes promised that there would be no further questions. “But none of us can read.”
“Then I will read them to you, and you will make haste to find them all.”
• • •
It was a long walk back from the order’s storehouse to House Enduya, Magister Viyeki’s clan compound. Tzoja had to pass several dangerous points, including the rear gate of the Order-house of Echoes, the queen’s trusted communicants, and it felt like an even longer and more perilous journey because she was forced to walk slowly, carrying the two heavy sacks. She thought she must look a bit like Old Longbeard, the blue-hooded figure of Rimmersgard legend who brought gifts of food on Midwinter’s Eve. Longbeard, though, rode a great gray horse; Tzoja had to bear her burdens alone, carried only by her own aching legs.
Another month from now and she would have been able to choose from many nicer things to eat, but spring and summer came late and stayed only briefly in the Nornfells, so most of what she had taken from the kitchens was the same sort of provender on which they had been living since the previous autumn—hard-baked bread, equally hard cheese, and of course a great deal of the dried fungus called “winterbread,” which the Norns prepared in dozens of different ways, although Tzoja had not found one yet that she truly liked. As she trudged along, bowed beneath the weight of the sacks, it was hard not to reminisce over the food of her childhood, hot stews, berries ripe from the vine, bread so light that even the oldest of her neighbors could chew it despite having lost their teeth. It was one way that she would never be a Norn, no matter how long she lived under stony Stormspike.
She hesitated when she reached a crossing, six different featureless tunnels that came together like a crooked star. It was easy at any time to get lost in the great stone hive that was Nakkiga, with no sky overhead to orient herself, but what made it worse now was that she was not, despite her lie to the kitchen slaves, engaged in any kind of lawful activity. She was a resident of House Enduya, and could legitimately take food only from its great kitchens, which of course she dared not do—at least not in large quantities—because word would quickly make its way back to her master’s wife Khimabu, the ruling lady of the clan household. Tzoja would be in even greater danger if it was discovered she had been to the Order of Builders’ storerooms, of course, but Tzoja was counting on the terror of making a wrongful accusation against a noble to keep them quiet until she had finished her preparations and could flee Viyeki’s house. Because if she didn’t, she knew that Khimabu would have her killed: she had all but taunted Tzoja with it at their last meeting.
It was always hard to find her way through the deep darknesses of Nakkiga, even inside her own household. Even after so many years living within the mountain, her eyes had not become accustomed to the way the Norns lived, to the tiny, flickering oil lamps that lit most of the passages, especially away from the main thoroughfares, but which barely gave enough light for a mortal to see her hand before her face. Often Tzoja snuck into her husband’s private garden just to stand for a moment in sunshine, however far it might have fallen from its original source and how many reflective surfaces may have redirected and diminished it along its way. After so many years here under the mountain Tzoja had come to hate the darkness, hate it like a living enemy.
After a moment’s fearful consideration at the six-way crossing, she chose the passage that seemed most familiar, knowing that if she picked the wrong one she might end up somewhere she didn’t belong, carrying bags of stolen food. Beloved concubine of a powerful man or not, she would immediately be imprisoned, which would be as good as a death sentence, since Khimabu could reach her anywhere in Nakkiga. That was why Tzoja had spent the last days preparing her escape to a hiding place that Khimabu would not know, a place that nobody but Viyeki himself would think to look for her. And, if the gods were willing, tonight she would take the rest of the goods and clothing she had so carefully obtained and hide herself there until her beloved returned.
To her relief, she saw she had chosen the correct corridor: the passageway led her to the wide and busy Avenue of the Fallen, which ran behind many of the great houses whose estates fronted on Great Garden Passage. Several times she passed other travelers who looked curiously at a mortal woman staggering under the burden of two enormous sacks, but each time Tzoja did her best to take on the bent, long-suffering attitude of a mere slave, and here, for once, her mortal shape and features helped her. Since the end of the Storm King’s War and its terrible losses for the Hikeda’ya, the nobility had begun using mortals for many tasks that had once been done only by their own kind. Also, as with Tzoja herself, the nobles had discovered that mortal women were fertile in a way their own wives and concubines were not. Leaders like Magister Viyeki had worked hard to overturn some of the oldest taboos, to permit not just the legitimate birth of halfblood children, who in the past had nearly always been executed along with their mortal mothers, but to broaden their acceptance in places that had always been barred to them. Even so, the rise of Viyeki’s own daughter Nezeru to the exalted role of Queen’s Talon, especially at so young an age, had astonished many in Nakkiga, not least of whom had been Tzoja herself.
At last she reached the deepward gate of House Enduya, the back door of the clan’s residence. It was guarded, of course, but she had prepared this ground earlier and felt more confident than she had in the royal kitchens.
“Greetings, Queensman Daigo,” she told one of the guards as she set down her sacks. “I return as I promised.”
Daigo, a sullen fellow that she had cheered a few times in the past with gifts of food she had saved for him, looked her up and down. “Haya, Mistress Tzoja,” he said. “You return.”
“And I have brought you something.” She reached into the bag and brought out a stone jar sealed with wax. “Cloudberries. Kept under cold water all winter. Take them to your servant and have her make something nice for you.” Cloudberries were picked in late summer, and were a delicacy even when they were plentiful. At this point in the circle of seasons, during Otter’s Moon when the new berries were not yet ripe, they were like jewels.
The other guard, whom Tzoja recognized but did not know, made a face. “A gift for Daigo but none for me?”
Tzoja blessed the fortunate star that had warned her this might happen. “What a surprise, Queensman—I have some for you, too!”
As she handed the jar to him, he gave her a look that was a bit less grateful than she would have expected, which made her skin tighten. Had she done something to make them suspicious? “Did you see anything interesting while you were out, Mistress?” the second guard asked. “They say that Lord Akhenabi himself was seen on the Glinting Passage.”
She hid a shudder—very few living things in Nakkiga frightened her more than the master of the Order of Song. The noises that echoed at night from his great mansion were heard by many, but spoken of by none.
“No,” she said to change the subject, “that honor was not mine. But several men from the Order of Sacrifice threatened and insulted me when I passed them. They called me a bricklayer’s bitch.”
“Bricklayer?” Daigo was frowning, but not, she suspected at the idea of a Sacrifice calling her someone’s bitch. “That’s what they said? Bricklayer?”
“I paid little mind,” she said. “Now forgive me, but I must get back to our apartments and continue my preparations.” She had told Daigo something earlier about preparing a meal for Khimabu. But if I truly did, she thought, I would make sure that the cloudberries and everything else were poisoned.
Daigo and his fellow guard were already arguing over which Sacrifices might have been insulting the Order of Builders, and in which soldiers’ tavern along the Glinting Passage they might be found later. She hoped she had not overdone it with her improvised tale—a fight between orders that drew the attention of the Queen’s Teeth would do her own plans no good whatsoever—but there was no doubt that between the supposed jibes from the Order of Sacrifice and the gift of cloudberries, the guards were well and truly distracted. She bowed to them both, although they hardly noticed, then shouldered her sacks again.
None of the servants she passed on her way through the clan-house seemed to pay much attention to her; she made it all the way to her own door without being challenged. But as she set her sacks down to withdraw the orichalcum key hanging on its chain around her neck, she saw that her door was already open.
Tzoja’s blood seemed to turn ice cold in her veins. She had not left the door so. She would never have left it so, and she specifically remembered locking it and then checking it again before she set out. Her heart beat so loudly she doubted she would hear anything else, but she leaned close to the door anyway, listening.
Male voices, quiet but forceful. More than one, and they were inside her room. If she had been innocent she might have walked in and demanded to know who they were, but carrying two heavy sacks full of contraband foodstuffs, she did not dare.
The voices grew louder. They were coming out.
Tzoja looked desperately from side to side. The sunken doorway of an unused apartment was a dozen steps away. The door would be locked, but the doorway would be deep enough to hide her when the strangers came out, as long as they turned back toward the main hallways. If they didn’t—well, no point in thinking about that or she would lose her strength and fall down right here before her own door.