Fengbald did not reply, but appeared to be in conversation with someone standing near him.
“If you would attack us, think of this,” Geloë called. “This place, Sesuad’ra, is one of the Sithi’s most sacred spots. I do not think they would like it spoiled by your coming. If you try to force your way in, you may find that they make a more terrible enemy than you can guess.”
Simon was sure, or at least thought he was sure, that the witch woman’s speech was an idle threat, but he found himself wishing again that Jiriki had come. Was this what a condemned man felt as he sat looking through the window slit at his gallows a-building? Simon felt a dull certainty that he and Josua and the rest could not win. Fengbald’s army seemed a great infection upon the snowy plain beyond the lake, a plague that would destroy them all.
“I see,” Fengbald shouted suddenly, “that you have not only gone mad yourself, Josua, but that you have surrounded yourself with other mad folk as well. So be it! Tell the old woman to hurry and call out to her forest spirits—perhaps the trees will come and rescue you. I have lost patience!” Fengbald waved his hand and a flurry of arrows spat out from the men along the shoreline. They all fell short of the barricade and skittered along the ice. Josua and the others clambered down into the undergrowth surrounding the pile of logs, disappearing once more from Simon’s view.
At another cry from Fengbald, something that looked like a huge barge moved slowly out onto the ice. This war-engine was pulled by stout dray horses who were themselves covered in padded armor, and as it scraped along the ice it made a continual shrieking noise. From the dreadful sound, it might have been a market cart full of damned souls. The bed of the sledge was piled high with bulging sacks.
Simon could not help shaking his head, impressed despite his sudden fear. Someone in Fengbald’s camp had been planning well.
As the great sledge moved out across the ice, the meager swarm of arrows coming back from the defenders—they had few to begin with, and Josua had warned them repeatedly against waste—bounced ineffectually from its steel-shod sides, or stuck harmlessly in the armor of the horses that drew it until they began to resemble some fabulous species of long-legged porcupines. Where the sledge passed, its crosswise runners scraped the ice raw. From holes in the mountain of sacks, a wide shower of sand dribbled down the sledge’s sloping bed and spattered across the frozen surface of the lake. Fengbald’s soldiers, following the sledge in a wide column, found much firmer footing than Josua and the defenders had ever suspected they might.
“Aedon curse them!” Simon felt his heart sink within his breast. Fengbald’s army, a pulsing column like a stream of ants, moved forward across the moat.
One of the trolls, eyes wide, said something Simon could only partially understand.
“Shummuk. ” For the first time Simon felt real fear coiling inside him like a serpent, crushing hope. He must keep to the plan, although all now seemed doubtful. “Wait. We will wait.”
Far from Sesuad’ra, and yet somehow strangely near, there was a movement in the heart of the ancient forest Aldheorte. In a deep grove that was touched only lightly by the snows that had blanketed the woods for many months, a horseman rode out from between two standing stones and turned his impatient mount around and around at the center of the clearing.
“Come out!” he cried. The tongue he spoke was the oldest in Osten Ard. His armor was blue and yellow and silver-gray, polished until it gleamed. “Come through the Gate of Winds!”
Other riders and their mounts began to make their way out between the tall stones until the dell was foggy with the clouds of their breath.
The first rider reined up his horse before the assembled throng. He lifted a sword before him, lifted it as though it might pierce the clouds. His hair, bound only by a band of blue cloth, had once been lavender. Now it was as white as the snow clinging to the tree branches.
“Follow me, and follow Indreju, sword of my grandfather,” Jiriki cried. “We go to the aid of friends. For the first time in five centuries, the Zida’ya will ride.”
The others lifted their weapons, shaking them at the sky. A strange song began to build, deep as the booming of marsh bitterns, wild as a wolf cry, until all were singing and the glade shook with the force of it.
“Away, Houses of the Dawn!” Jiriki’s thin face was fierce, his eyes alight, burning like coals. “Away, come away! And let our enemies tremble! The Zida’ya ride again!”
Jiriki and the rest—his mother Likimeya on her tall black horse, Yizashi of the gray spear, bold Cheka‘iso Amber-Locks, even Jiriki’s green-clad uncle Khendraja’aro with his longbow—all spurred their horses out of the clearing with a great shout and a singing. So great was the tumult of their going that the trees seemed to bend away before them and the wind, as if abashed, was momentarily silent in their wake.
11
The Road Back
Miriamele slouched lower inside her cloak, trying to vanish. It seemed that every person who passed by slowed to look at her, the slender Wrannamen with their calm brown eyes and rigorously expressionless faces as well as the Perdruinese traders in their slightly shabby finery. All seemed to be pondering the appearance of this crop-haired girl in a stained monk’s habit, and it was making her very anxious. Why was Cadrach taking so long? Surely she should have known better by now than to let him go into an inn by himself.
When the monk appeared at last he wore an air of self-satisfaction, as though he had completed some immensely difficult task.
“It is down by Peat Barge Quay, as I should have remembered. A none-too-savory district.”
“You have been drinking wine.” Her tone was harsher than she wanted it to be, but she was cold and fretful.
“And how could I expect a publican to give me good directions if I bought nothing?” Cadrach was not to be so easily thrown off stride. He seemed to have rebounded from the despair that had filled him on the boat, although Miriamele could see where it was imperfectly hidden, where the deadly bleakness peered past the ragged edges of the jollity he had drawn over himself like a cloak.
“But we have no money!” she complained. “That’s why we have to walk all over this cursed town, trying to find a place you said you knew!”
“Hush, my lady. I made a small wager on a coin-flip and won—and just as well, too, since I’d no coin to match the bet. But all’s well now. In any case, it is traveling on foot through this city of canals that has confused me, but with the innkeeper’s instructions, we will have no more problems.”
No more problems. Miriamele had to laugh at that, if bitterly. They had been living like beggars for three weeks—parched on the boat for several days, then slogging through the coast towns of southeastern Nabban begging meals where they could and taking rides on farm wagons when they were lucky enough to get them. The largest portion of the time had been spent walking, walking, walking, until Miriamele felt that if she were to somehow remove her legs from her body they would continue pacing along without her. This kind of life was not unfamiliar to Cadrach, and he seemed to have returned to it complacently, but Miriamele was growing more than tired of it. She could never live in her father’s court again, but suddenly the stifling surroundings of Uncle Josua’s castle at Naglimund seemed a great deal more appealing than they had a few months before.
She turned to say something else sharp to Cadrach—she could smell the wine on his breath at an arm’s distance—and caught him by surprise, unguarded. He had let his buoyant expression slip; the hollowness in his once round cheeks and the shadows beneath his haunted eyes chastened Miriamele into a kind of irritated love.
“Well ... come on, then.” She took his arm. “But if you don’t find this place soon, I’m going to push you into the canal.”
Since they did not have the price of a boatman’s fare, it took the better part of the morning for Cadrach and Miriamele to make their way through the daunting maze of Kwanitupul’s wooden walkways to Peat Bog Quay. Every turn seemed to bring them to another dead en
d, another passage that ended in an abandoned boatyard or a locked door with rusty hinges or a rickety fence beyond which was only yet another of the ubiquitous waterways. Thwarted, they would retrace their steps, try another turning, and the maddening process would begin again. At last, with the noon sun whitening the cloudy sky, they stumbled around the comer of a long and very deteriorated warehouse and found themselves staring at a salt-rotted wooden sign that proclaimed the inn before which it hung as Pelippa’s Bowl. It was indeed, as Cadrach had warned, in a rather unsavory district.
While Cadrach searched for the door—the front of the building was an almost uniform wall of gray, weathered wood—Miriamele wandered out onto the inn’s front deck and stared down at a wreath of yellow and white flowers floating on the choppy canal near the wharf ladder.
“That’s a Soul’s Day wreath,” she said.
Cadrach, who had found the door, nodded.
“Which means it was more than four months ago that I left Naglimund,” she said slowly. The monk nodded again, then pulled the door open and beckoned. Miriamele felt a wild sorrow course through her. “And it was all for nothing! Because I was a headstrong fool!”
“Things would have gone no better, and perhaps worse, if you had stayed with your uncle,” Cadrach pointed out. “At least you are alive, my lady. Now, let us go and see if Soria Xorastra will remember an old, if fallen, friend.”
They entered the inn through the dooryard, past the corroding hulks of a pair of fishing boats, and quickly received two unpleasant surprises. The first was that the inn itself was ill-kept and smelled distinctly of fish. The second was that Xorastra had been dead for three years, and her jut-jawed niece Charystra quickly proved to be quite a different sort of innkeeper than her predecessor.
She stared at their threadbare and travel-stained clothing. “I don’t like the look of you. Let me see your money.”
“Come, now,” Cadrach said as soothingly as he could. “Your aunt was a good friend of mine. If you let us have a bed for the night, we will have money to pay you by the morning—I am well known in this town.”
“My aunt was mad and worthless,” Charystra said, not without some satisfaction, “—and her stinking charities left me with nothing but this tumbledown barn.” She waved her hand at the low-ceilinged common room, which seemed more like a burrow belonging to some disheartened animal. “The day I let a monk and his doxy stay without paying is the day they take me back to Perdruin in a wooden box.”
Miriamele could not help looking forward to such a day, but she knew better than to let the innkeeper know it. “Things are not as they appear,” she said. “This man is my tutor. I am a nobleman’s child—Baron Seoman of Erkynland is my father. I was kidnapped, and my tutor here found me and saved me. My father will be very kind to anyone who helps with my return.” Beside her, Cadrach straightened up, pleased to be the hero of even a mythical rescue.
Charystra squinted. “I’ve heard more than a few wild stories lately.” She chewed at her lip. “One of them turned out to be true, but that doesn’t mean yours will.” Her expression turned sour. “I’ve got to make a living, whether your father is a baron or the High King at the Hayholt. Go out and get the money, if you say it’s so easy. Let your friends help you.”
Cadrach began once more to wheedle and flatter, now taking up the strands of story Miriamele had begun and weaving them into a richer tapestry, one in which Charystra would retire with bags of gold, a gift from the grateful father. Hearing the wild way in which the story grew beneath Cadrach’s manipulation, Miriamele almost began to feel sorry for the woman, whose practicality was obviously being strained by her greed, but just before Miriamele was about to ask him to give it up, she saw a large man coming slowly down the stairway into the commons room. Despite his clothes—he wore a cowled cloak much like Cadrach’s, belted with a rope—and a beard that was scarcely a finger’s breadth thick, he was so instantly familiar that for a moment Miriamele could not believe what she was seeing. As he came down into the light of the tallow lamps, the man also stopped, wide-eyed.
“Miriamele?” he said at last. His voice was thick and hesitant. “Princess?”
“Isgrimnur!” she shrieked. “Duke Isgrimnur!” Her heart seemed to expand within her breast until she thought she might choke. She ran across the cluttered room, dodging past the crooked-legged benches, then flung herself against his broad belly, weeping.
“Oh, you poor thing,” he said, squeezing her, crying himself. “Oh, my poor Miriamele.” He lifted her away for a moment, staring with reddened eyes. “Are you hurt? Are you well?” He caught sight of Cadrach and his eyes narrowed. “And there’s the rogue who stole you!”
Cadrach, who like Charystra had been staring openmouthed, flinched. Isgrimnur cast a large shadow.
“No, no,” Miriamele laughed through her tears. “Cadrach is my friend. He helped me. I ran away—don’t blame him.” She hugged him again, burying her face in his reassuring bulk. “Oh, Isgrimnur, I have been so unhappy. How is Uncle Josua? And Vorzheva, and Simon, and Binabik the troll?”
The duke shook his head. “I know little more than you do, I would guess.” He sighed, his breath trembling out. “This is a miracle. God has heard my prayers at last. Blessed, blessed. Come, sit down.” Isgrimnur turned to Charystra and waved his hand impatiently. “Well? Don’t just stand there, woman! Bring us some ale, and some food, too!”
Charystra, more than a little stunned, went lurching away.
“Wait!” Isgrimnur shouted. She turned to face him. “If you tell anyone about this,” he roared, “I’ll pull your roof down with my own hands.”
The innkeeper, beyond surprise or fear, nodded slackly and headed for the sanctuary of her kitchen.
Tiamak hurried along, although his lame leg allowed him scarcely more speed than what would have been a normal walking pace. His heart was thumping against his ribs, but he forced himself to keep the worry from his face.
He Who Always Steps on Sand, he murmured to himself, let no one notice me! I am almost there!
Those who shared the narrow walkways with him seemed determined to hinder his progress. One burly drylander carrying a basket full of sandfish thumped into him and almost knocked him down, then turned to shout insulting names as Tiamak limped on. The little man ached to say something—Kwanitupul was a Wrannaman town, after all, no matter how many drylander traders built expensive stilt houses on the edge of Chamul Lagoon, or had their massive trading barges poled through the canals by sweating crews of Tiamak’s folk—but he dared not. There was no time to waste in quarrels, however justified.
He hurried through Pelippa’s Bowl’s common room, sparing barely a glance for the proprietress, despite Charystra’s strange expression. The innkeeper, clutching a board laid with bread and cheese and olives, was swaying at the foot of the stairs as though deciding whether to go up or not was an overwhelming strain.
Tiamak angled past her and hobbled up the narrow staircase, then onto the landing and the first warped, ill-hung door in the passageway. He pushed it open, his chest already filling with air to spill out his news, then stopped, surprised by the odd tableau before him.
Isgrimnur was sitting on the floor. In the comer stood a short, husky man, dressed as was the duke in the costume of a pilgrim Aedonite monk, his squarish face curiously closed. Old Camaris sat on the bed, his long legs crossed sailor-style. Beside him sat a young woman with yellow hair close-cropped. She, too, wore a monk’s robe, and her pretty, sharp-featured face was set in an expression of bemusement almost as complete as Charystra’s.
Tiamak closed his jaw with a snap, then opened it once more. “What?” he said.
“Ah!” Isgrimnur seemed immensely cheerful, almost giddy. “And this is Tiamak, a noble Wrannaman, a friend of Dinivan and Morgenes, The princess is here, Tiamak. Miriamele has come.”
Miriamele did not even look up, but continued to stare at the old man. “This is ... Camaris?”
“I know, I know,” Isgrimnur laugh
ed. “I couldn’t credit it myself, God strike me—but it is him! Alive, after all this time!” The duke’s face suddenly became serious. “But his wits are gone, Miriamele. He is like a child.”
Tiamak shook his head. “I ... I am glad, Isgrimnur. Glad that your friends are here.” He shook his head again. “I have news, too.”
“Not now.” Isgrimnur was beaming. “Later, little man. Tonight we celebrate.” He lifted his voice. “Charystra! Where are you, woman!?”
The inn’s proprietress had just begun to push the door open when Tiamak turned and shut it in her face. He heard a surprised grunt and the thud of a heavy bread loaf bounding down the stairway. “No,” Tiamak said. “This cannot wait, Isgrimnur.”
The duke frowned at him, thick brows beetling. “Well?”
“There are men searching for this inn. Nabbanai soldiers.”
Isgrimnur’s impatience suddenly dropped away. He turned his full attention to the little Wrannaman. “How do you know?”
“I saw them down by Market Hall. They were asking questions of the boatmen there, treating them very roughly. The leader of the soldiers seemed desperate to find this inn.”
“And did they find out?” Isgrimnur rose to his feet and walked across the room, taking up his sword Kvalnir from where it stood bundled in the comer.
Tiamak shrugged. “I knew I would not be able to go much faster than the soldiers, even though I am sure I know the city better than they do..Still, I wanted to delay them, so I stepped forward and told the soldiers that I would talk to the boatmen since they were all Wrannamen like me.” For the first time since beginning his recitation, Tiamak turned to look at the young woman. Her face had gone quite pale, but the dazed expression had vanished. She was listening carefully. “In our swamp-language I told the boatmen that these were bad men, that they should talk only to me, and only in our tongue. I told them that when the soldiers left, they should leave, too, and not come back to the Market Hall until later. After I had talked with them for a few moments longer, pretending to receive directions from them—in truth they were merely telling me that these drylanders acted like madmen!—I told the leader of the soldiers where he and his men could find Pelippa’s Bowl. Don’t scowl so, Duke Isgrimnur! I told them that it was on the other side of town from here, of course! But it was so strange: when I told that man, he shivered all over, as though knowing where this place was made him itch.”