Eolair could feel the sadness as well as the anger of those gathered around him in this odd, open room made of trees. The Sithi were few, and although their long lives seemed nearly endless by human standards they could die like any other creatures. Also, they bore children only rarely, so each death further diminished the tribe.
“I am sorry to hear about Sijandi,” the count said at last. “I did not know him, but I know of him from King Simon’s stories. Still, I can promise you without hesitation that neither Simon nor Miriamele had anything to do with such a horror, nor know anything about it. I have to believe it is our old enemies the Norns who have the most to gain, as well as the best chance of doing such a thing.”
“Have you not listened, mortal?” Yeja’aro leaped to his feet. By what Eolair had seen of the Sithi, Khendraja’aro’s nephew was practically trembling with rage, dangerous as an angry young god, his hair like a holy flame. “These murderers were mortals—mortals like you! We would have smelled the Hikeda’ya’s touch on any of these crimes. We have never stopped watching them, especially in the Forbidden Hills—”
“Silence!” said Khendraja’aro, and for once his anger was not directed at the intruders. “You are to remain quiet, Yeja’aro. You speak too often without thinking first.”
The younger Sitha dropped back into a crouch, his golden-skinned face studiously empty once more.
This curious exchange finished, Aditu now resumed where her brother had left off. “The disappearance of Sijandi frightened us all,” she explained. “And sharpened the argument about whether we should remain in Jao é-Tinukai’i, a place we all knew was no longer secret. Most disturbingly, because it had been discovered during the war by the Hikeda’ya, it led to the death of our beloved Amerasu, the mother of the Zida’ya.”
The Sithi all made the same fluid hand gesture of sorrow. Eolair knew about the attack and Amerasu’s death because young Simon had been present, still a captive. What a blow that must have been, Eolair thought, to lose the wisdom of so many years in one treacherous blow—a blow directed by Queen Utuk’ku, Amerasu’s own great-grandparent!
“What are they talking about?” Morgan demanded of Eolair. “I don’t know all these names!”
“I’ll explain later,” he said quietly. “Until then, listen and learn as best you can, my prince. This is a history older than mankind.”
“Then, just a short year ago, while they were camped far to the west of this place,” Aditu went on, “our mother Likimeya and S’hue Khendraja’aro and their company were attacked by a troop of mortals.”
“Are you sure it was not merely a group of panicked huntsmen?” Eolair asked. “There are many false rumors about the Sithi that pass for truth among mortals—”
“Impossible,” said Khendraja’aro.
“Our uncle is correct, I fear,” Aditu told the count. “Eighty mortals, more or less, waited for a Zida’ya hunting party of a dozen. They attacked without warning, arrows flying. They chose daytime, clearly knowing the advantage we would have over them in darkness.”
Khendraja’aro pointed at Eolair. The Sitha’s ravaged face made every word terrible. “Know this, Hernystirman. Those killers were prepared for us—taught by someone who knew our ways and skills. The Erkynlanders lay in ambush on a trail we use but seldom, so they must have waited a long time. They had disguised their scent as well. Then they attacked without warning. We lost half our company in the first volley. Does this sound like a chance encounter?”
“No, I agree it does not.” Eolair suddenly felt every one of his many years. The Sithi were right: this was no mere misunderstanding, to be softened by diplomacy and careful words. In fact, it was a puzzle he could not solve here and now, and perhaps never would. Who could have done such a thing? And why, except for this very reason—to sour the friendship between the Sithi and the mortal rulers of the High Throne? “My king and queen are innocent, I promise you, but still I grieve to hear your tale.”
“Grieve?” Khendraja’aro made a gesture as dismissive as the slice of a knife. “You do not know grief, mortal. The mistress of our house—our queen, as you would have it—was cut down before my eyes. My kinsmen died all around me. I alone escaped, carrying Likimeya’s arrow-pierced body across my shoulders, watering the uncaring earth with her blood and my own.”
Morgan stirred at his side again. Eolair knew they were walking a very narrow path now, with disaster close on either side. Once more he grabbed Morgan’s upper arm and gave a warning squeeze, then said, “I hear everything you have said, and it pierces my heart, Protector Khendraja’aro. Do not forget, unlike all but a few other mortals, I have met Likimeya. I know her wisdom and her strength. But why are you so certain that these were Erkynlanders? Did you hear them speak?”
“Hah.” Khendraja’aro’s laugh was pure scorn. “They did not even shout to one another as they killed us. More proof this was an ambush, pure and simple.”
“But in the past the Sithi have had conflict with many mortal races—the Nabbanai of the Imperium, and closer in time the Rimmersmen when they came out of the West. Why are you so certain this attacking band was from Erkynland?”
“Because I found something,” the protector said. “On the leader of our attackers, whom I killed before the rest retreated, dragging his body away.”
“I will get it, Uncle!” said Yeja’aro, then rose and loped from the tree-hall. He returned a few moments later with a leather sack in his hands, which he passed to Khendraja’aro, who took the bag and turned it upside down. A cataract of gold coins slid out, clinking and chiming as it puddled on the ground before his booted feet. “See for yourself,” he said.
Eolair stepped forward with Morgan close behind him. The count picked up a handful of them, felt their heaviness, saw the sharpness of their edges. “Gold thrones,” he said.
“Not just that,” said Jiriki, the first time he had spoken in some while. “Look closely.”
Eolair lifted one up to the light that streamed through the spiderweb walls. “Bagba bite me,” he murmured. “It’s the Lady and the ‘Lock.”
Each new-minted coin had portraits stamped on both sides—Queen Miriamele on one, her husband King Simon Snowlock on the other. This particular issue of gold Thrones had been made in Erkynland under the careful rules of the High Ward, the first of them minted only a few years earlier. The count looked helplessly from Jiriki to Aditu, who could only stare back, then turned at last to Protector Khendraja’aro. “I cannot explain this,” Eolair said. “But that does not mean there is no explanation.”
“No matter. We do not want explanations,” said Khendraja’aro. “Nor anything else your kind can offer. We want you gone from our woods and our ways, mortal. Since you so value their kind, Jiriki, you may be the one to lead them from our lands. And you, mortals, will leave the horn Ti-tuno, which has returned to its makers. That is all.”
Morgan had not wanted to go on this journey into the wilderness, not at all; but as time had passed he had begun to feel differently. He had been proud to discover that he could sound the ancient Sithi horn when even noble Count Eolair could not; later he had been excited because he, of all people, had drawn out the Sithi with it. That pleasure made it all the more galling now that not only were the Hand of the Throne and the heir-apparent being ignored and dismissed by the immortals, but evil-tempered Protector Khendraja’aro had even kept the horn.
As Jiriki led them back through the forest toward the Erkynguard camp, toward Porto and the trolls and the waiting soldiers, Morgan’s anger grew. Not only had the Sithi first frightened him, then snubbed him, they had all but made his entire journey pointless. Several weeks riding and sleeping out of doors and many nights’ merriment back home missed, and his only reward was to be treated like a beggar by the glorious immortals he had heard so much about.
Back at home they will say the whole trip was wasted, he thought bitterly. And no doubt my grandparents wil
l blame me, since they would never blame their magical Sithi friends or their old comrade Count Eolair. But who are the Sithi, after all is said? They live in the forest without houses, as poor as trappers or charcoal burners.
Morgan looked over at Jiriki and his certainty suffered a little. The Sitha moved like a true wild creature, his strides long, even, and completely silent, while Morgan and Eolair clattered and rustled with each step as they struggled to keep up.
As they followed Jiriki, the afternoon passed its crest and began to fail. The forest air that had sparkled with dust motes bright as tiny stars now grew more opaque, and as the sun dropped lower the first mists rising from the earth gave the Aldheorte the look of a streambed seen through moving water. Morgan paid little attention, though: He was full of angry thoughts, with a heaviness in his chest that felt like grief, though no one had died.
“Why did we leave the horn?” he demanded suddenly. “My grandparents gave that horn to us! It belonged to Sir Camaris, and he wasn’t any Sithi!”
“It was made by them in the first place, long, long ago,” said Eolair, frowning as he struggled over a log that blocked their path. “It was simple courtesy to let them have it again, Highness. And in any case, Ti-tuno is the least of our problems.”
“I would apologize for my uncle,” Jiriki said, “but I think there is blame enough for all, including an ample share for my sister and myself. Even Seoman and Miriamele did not understand what they sought when they tried to make a new peace with my people. We do not change so easily, nor so lightly, and neither do the mortals who fear and hate us. Years of care and much attention were needed, and both were lacking. Now it is likely too late.”
“Too late?” Eolair asked. “Why?”
“When Khendraja’aro and our mother were attacked by the mortals we had favored, our clan—the House of Year Dancing—lost favor among the rest of the Zida’ya. Khendraja’aro, as eldest of the clan, declared himself the house’s protector until the threat was finished. All the clans still work together in . . . well, in certain important ways, let us say, but our old shared home, Jao é-Tinukai’i, is now gone. It’s name means ‘Boat on the Ocean of Trees,’ as I think my sister told you. Our clans have now dispersed into many Little Boats instead. By our ancient traditions, it was the right thing to do.”
“What I fear—” Count Eolair began, but Morgan was tired of listening to other people talk.
“Why do all you Sithi let your uncle tell you what to do?” he demanded of Jiriki’s back. “How do we know that whatever-his-name—Khendararo, Khenjadaro—didn’t do all this himself and blame it on mortals?”
“Prince Morgan!” The count seemed shocked by this, but Morgan didn’t care. Hadn’t the old man even considered it? After all, Eolair was the diplomat, supposedly wise in the world’s ways.
“Well, he was the only one who came back to tell the story, wasn’t he? And now he’s in power, when it used to be the queen.” Morgan thought it seemed quite obvious. “All he’d need is a purse full of new gold pieces so he could claim that these supposed attackers were carrying them.”
“I apologize for the prince,” Eolair said to Jiriki, which only made Morgan angrier. “We came a long way for this meeting, and of course we are disappointed . . .”
The Sitha waved his hand. “Peace, Count. We Zida’ya are not complete strangers to deceit—in fact, if you know the story of Ineluki’s murder of his own father, you know we are no strangers to treachery among our own people either. But I think Prince Morgan speaks before he understands us well enough to judge us.”
“Perhaps.” Morgan was not in the mood to be conciliatory, however highly his grandfather and grandmother thought of the fairy-folk. “Or perhaps we’ve been hoping for help that was never going to come to us from these Sithi anyway.”
“Help?” said Jiriki. “You said something of this before, but I thought you spoke of breaching the distance that yawns between our peoples. What do you mean? What has happened, and why is this the first you have mentioned it?”
“Because your protector, as you call him, did not give me a chance to speak of it,” Eolair said, then told him of the attack on the royal progress along the North Road, and of the message they had found when the battle had ended.
“Witchwood Crown?” Jiriki said. “That is a very old phrase indeed.”
“What does it mean?” asked Eolair. “Is it some weapon or object of power like the swords we sought in the Storm King’s War?”
Jiriki made a gesture with clutching fingers, as though he tried to grasp something invisible. “I wish my sister were here. Aditu is a better student of the elder days than I am and would know more about such things. But ‘witchwood crown’—kei-jáyha in our tongue—has more than one meaning. The most common, at least in elder days, signified all the groves of witchwood trees that were planted when our people first came to the new lands.”
“New lands?” said Eolair.
“This place—Osten Ard, as you mortals call it. ‘New’ because we came here after we fled our old home, the Garden.”
“Are there many groves?” the count asked. “Are they important?”
“Most of the witchwood trees are dead now,” said Jiriki, and even for Morgan, unused to Sithi ways, there was no mistaking the bitterness in his voice. “Even our sacred groves in Jao é-Tinukai’i failed at last, not long after the Storm King was defeated. The living trees that remain are all in Nakkiga with the Hikeda’ya, so Utuk’ku seeking to capture that witchwood crown makes little sense.”
“But you said the words had other meanings as well,” said Eolair.
Jiriki hesitated, and Morgan wondered whether he was hiding something. “We used to bury some of our dead with a crown made of witchwood branches on their caskets or upon their brows. Because of that, it is also the name of a move in the game of shent.”
Eolair was struggling to keep up with Jiriki’s effortless pace, but Morgan could see he was clearly interested. “A move? A piece of strategy, do you mean? Could that be the meaning in the message we received?”
Jiriki seemed intent on the path before them. Morgan had decided he did not trust him at all, and was now certain the immortal was hiding something from them.
“Again,” the Sitha said at last, “I doubt it could be anything to do with Utuk’ku’s goal. In the game of shent, Witchwood Crown is a means to gain by surrendering. And I cannot think the queen of the Hikeda’ya intends surrender.”
“So there is nothing else to be done about the message we received?” Eolair asked. “The Norns’ plans remain a mystery and your people cannot help us? Will not help us?” Morgan thought the old count sounded quite pathetic, like a man begging for money from a wealthy relative. “What will we do if the Norns seek war again?”
“You don’t need to ask him,” Morgan said. “My grandparents will decide what is to be done.”
Jiriki turned toward him, his severe features even more alien in the sharply angled, late-afternoon light. Gaps in the trees overhead displayed the spreading scarlet of sunset in the sky, but to Morgan’s dismay it was once more in completely the opposite direction from what he thought was west. He was struck suddenly by how far he was from everything he knew, and had to fight against a pang of fearful homesickness.
“If so, Prince Morgan, your grandparents will not only have to make their own decisions,” Jiriki answered calmly, “but implement them as well. The Zida’ya can do nothing because we do not agree among ourselves.” He turned to the lord steward. “Count Eolair, we have almost reached our parting, and I must speak of something else while we can.”
“I am listening.”
“My sister and I sent the envoy Tanahaya to you, but it was completely against Khendraja’aro’s wishes and he would have forbidden it if he could. What happened to her is terrible, but a graver problem disturbs me now. As we discussed, Tanahaya carried one of our Witnesses, and so did
Sijandi before he was lost. Both those mirrors are now missing. But why would mere Erkynlandish bandits steal such seemingly unimportant trinkets unless they knew their real worth?”
“What is their worth, Jiriki?” the count asked. “I know you use them to speak to each other. Is there something more? Can they be used as weapons?”
“Here is where our tongue and yours diverge, I fear.” Shadows were filling the forest now; in his dark, plain clothes, Jiriki seemed only a pale, floating half-face. “Can a Witness be a weapon? Not as such. But they are vastly powerful, for all that, and like the precious witchwood, they are vanishing out of the world. We use them to know each other’s minds across distance, and because of that, across time. But in the hands of other, less careful users, they can become portals into and out of unknown places. Dangerous places. This child’s grandfather once innocently looked into mine and found himself face to face with the Norn Queen herself.”
This child. Morgan hunched his shoulders, struggling to keep his temper. This child . . . !
“But why would anyone steal such a thing, Jiriki?” the count asked. “As you said, how could mere bandits know what they were?”
“I was hoping you might have some idea. Perhaps a rumor among mortals about Sithi objects being sold, anything that might suggest the attackers had an ordinary reason for taking them, like mere greed. But more and more I fear that those who attacked Sijandi and Tanahaya—and even those who attacked our mother and uncle—might actually have been seeking their mirrors, not just their lives.” Jiriki abruptly halted sudden and silent as a cat. “Look, we are near to the place where you summoned us. You will be with your own people soon.”
Morgan saw that they had indeed returned to the same part of the forest where he had blown the horn and summoned the Sithi, and at much the same time of day, with the sun sinking behind an unseen horizon and the blue of the sky deepening where it showed through the trees..
“So there is nothing we can do to convince your people to help us?” the count asked. “More importantly, to help your old friends, Simon and Miriamele?”