To Green Angel Tower, Volume 2

  “Do you have water here? Is there food?”

  He felt the blind man struggle to sit up. “Who’s there? You can’t take it! It sings for me. For me!” Guthwulf grabbed at something, and Simon felt a cold metal edge drag painfully along his forearm. He swore and lifted the arm to his mouth, tasting blood.

  Bright-Nail. It seemed impossibly strange. This fever-ridden blind man has Bright-Nail.

  For a moment he considered simply pulling it from Guthwulf’s weakened grasp. After all, how could this madman’s need outweigh that of entire nations? But even more troubling than the idea of stealing the sword from a sick man who had saved his life was the fact that Simon was lost without light somewhere in the tunnels beneath the Hayholt. Unless for some incomprehensible reason the blind earl kept a torch or lantern, without Guthwulf’s knowledge of this maze he might wander forever in the shadows. What good would Bright-Nail be then?

  “Guthwulf, do you have a torch? Flint and steel?”

  The earl was murmuring again. Nothing Simon could understand seemed useful. He turned away and began to search the cavern by touch, wincing and groaning at the pain each movement caused.

  Guthwulf’s nesting place was small, scarcely a dozen paces wide—if Simon had been on his feet and pacing—in either direction. He felt what seemed to be moss growing in the cracks of the stone beneath him. He broke some off and smelled it: it did not seem to be the same plant that had sustained him in Asu‘a’s ruined halls. He put a little on his tongue, then spat it out again. It tasted even more foul than the other. Still, his stomach hurt so much that he knew he would be trying it again soon.

  Except for the various rags strewn about the uneven stone floor, Guthwulf seemed to have few possessions. Simon found a knife with half its blade snapped off. When he reached to tuck it into his belt, he suddenly realized he did not have one, nor any other clothes.

  Naked and lost in dark. Nothing left of Simon but Simon.

  He had been splashed by the dragon’s blood, but afterward, he had still been Simon. He had seen Jao é-Tinukai‘i, had fought in a great battle, had been kissed by a princess—but he was still the same kitchen boy, more or less. Now everything had been taken from him, but he still had what he had begun with.

  Simon laughed, a dry, hoarse sound. There was a sort of freedom in having so little. If he lived to the next hour, it would be a triumph. He had escaped the wheel. What more could anyone do to him?

  He put the broken knife against the wall so he could find it again, then continued his search. He encountered several objects he could see no purpose for, oddly shaped stones that felt too intricate to be natural, bits of broken pottery and splintered wood, even the skeletons of some small animals, but it was only as he reached the far side of the cavern that he found something truly useful.

  His numb, stiffened fingers touched something wet. He snatched his hand away, then slowly reached out again. It was a stone bowl half full of water. On the ground beside it, as wonderful as any miracle from the Book of Aedon, was what felt like a lump of stale bread.

  Simon had the bread to his mouth before he remembered Guthwulf. He hesitated, his stomach raging, then tore a piece loose and dipped it in the water and put it in his mouth. He ate two more small pieces the same way, then held the bowl carefully in his aching, trembling hand and crawled to where Guthwulf lay. Simon dipped his fingers in the water and let some dribble into the earl’s mouth; he heard the blind man swallow thirstily. Next he took a morsel of bread and moistened it, then fed it to his ward. Guthwulf did not close his mouth, and seemed unable to chew or swallow it. After a moment, Simon retrieved it and ate it himself. He felt exhaustion creeping over him.

  “Later,” he told Guthwulf. “Later you will eat. You will be well again, and so will I. Then we will leave here.”

  Then I will take Bright-Nail to the tower. That is what I took back my life to do.

  “The witchwood is in flames, the garden is burning....” The earl squirmed and twisted. Simon moved the bowl away, terrified it might be spilled. Guthwulf groaned. “Ruakha, ruakha Asu‘a!”

  Even from a short distance away, Simon could feel his raging heat.

  The man lay on the ground, his face pressed against the stone. His clothes and skin were so dirty it was hard to see him. “That’s everything, master. I swear it!”

  “Get up.” Pryrates kicked him in the ribs, but not hard enough to break anything. “I can scarcely understand you.”

  He rose to his haunches, whiskered mouth quivering in fear. “That’s all, master. They run away. Down watercourse.”

  “I know that, fool.”

  The alchemist had given his soldiers no directions since they had returned from their fruitless search, and now they stood uneasily. Inch’s remains had been removed from the chains that turned Pryrates’ tower top; they lay in an untidy heap beside the sluice. It was obvious that most of the guardsmen wished they had been allowed to cover such of the overseer as had been recovered, but since they had received no order from Pryrates, they were studiously looking anywhere else.

  “And you do not know who these people were?”

  “‘Twas the blind man, master. Some have seen him, but none ever catched him. He takes things sometime.”

  A blind man living in the caverns. Pryrates smiled. He had a reasonably good idea who that might be. “And the other? One of the foundrymen being punished, I take it?”

  “That it was, master. But Inch called him something else.”

  “Something else? What?”

  The man paused, his face a mask of terror. “Can’t remember,” he whispered.

  Pryrates leaned down until his hairless face was only a handbreadth from the man’s nose. “I can make you remember.”

  The forge man froze like a serpent-tranced frog. A small whimper escaped his throat. “I be trying, master,” he squeaked, then: “‘Kitchen Boy’! Doctor Inch called him ‘Kitchen Boy’!”

  Pryrates straightened up. The man slumped, his chest heaving.

  “A kitchen boy,” the priest mused. “Could it be?” Suddenly he laughed, a rasping scrape of sound. “Perfect. Of course it would be.” He turned to the soldiers. “There is nothing else for us to do here. And the king has need of us.”

  Inch’s henchman stared at the alchemist’s back. His lips moved as he worked up the nerve to speak. “Master?”

  Pryrates turned slowly. “What?”

  “Now ... now that Doctor Inch be dead ... well, who do you wish to ... to take charge here? Here in king’s forge?”

  The priest looked sourly at the grizzled, ash-blackened man. “Sort that out yourselves.” He gestured at the waiting soldiers, marking out half of the score of men. “You lot will stay here. Do not bother protecting Inch’s cronies—I should not have left him in charge of this place so long. I want you only to make sure that wheel stays in the water. Too many important things are driven by it to risk a second occurrence of a folly like this. Remember: if that wheel stops turning again, I will make you very, very sorry.”

  The designated guards took up positions along the edge of the watercourse; the rest of the soldiers filed out of the forge. Pryrates’ stopped in the doorway to look back. Under the impassive gaze of the guardsmen, Inch’s chief henchman was quickly being surrounded by a tightening ring of grim forge workers. Pryrates laughed quietly and let the door crunch shut.

  Josua sat up, startled. The wind was howling fiercely, and the shape in the tent’s door loomed giant-size.

  “Who is there?”

  Isgrimnur, who had been nodding during the long silence, snorted in surprise and fumbled for Kvalnir’s hilt.

  “I cannot stand it any longer.” Sir Camaris swayed in the doorway like a tree in a strong wind. “God save me, God save me ... I hear it even in my waking hours now. In the darkness it is all there is.”

  “What are you talking about?” Josua rose and went to the tent flap. “You are not well, Camaris. Come, sit down here beside the fire. This is no weather to be
out wandering.”

  Camaris shook off his hand. “I must go. It is time. I can hear the song so clearly. It is time.”

  “Time for what? Go where? Isgrimnur, come help me.”

  The duke struggled to his feet, wheezing at the pain of stiff muscles and still-tender ribs. He took Camaris by the arm and found the muscles tight as wet knots.

  He is terrified! By the Ransomer, what has done this to him?

  “Come, sit.” Josua urged him toward a stool. “Tell us what ails you.”

  The old knight abruptly pulled away and took a few staggering steps backward out into the snow. Thorn’s long scabbard bumped against his leg. “They are calling, each to each. They need. The blade will go where it will go. It is time.”

  Josua followed him out onto the hillside. Isgrimnur, puzzled and worried, limped after, pulling his cloak tight against the wind. The Kynslagh lay below, a dark expanse beyond the blanketing white. “I cannot understand you, Camaris,” the prince called over the wind. “What is it the time for?”

  “Look!” The old man threw up an arm, pointing into the murk of storm clouds. “Do you not see?”

  Isgrimnur, like Josua, looked upward to the sky. A dull spot of ember-red burned there. “The Conqueror Star?” he asked.

  “They feel it. It is time.” Camaris took another retreating step, wobbling as though he might at any moment tumble backward down the hill. “God grant me strength, I can resist it no longer.”

  Josua caught the duke’s eye, silently asking his help. Isgrimnur walked forward and he and the prince again grasped Camaris’ arms. “Come in from the cold,” Josua begged.

  Sir Camaris yanked himself free—his strength never ceased to astonish Isgrimnur—and for a moment his hand strayed to Thorn’s silver-wrapped hilt.

  “Camaris!” Isgrimnur was shocked. “You would draw blade against us!? Your friends!?”

  The old man stared at him for a moment, his eyes curiously unfocused. Then, slowly, the duke saw his tension ease. “God help me, it is the sword. It sings to me. It knows where it wants to go. Inside.” He gestured limply toward the dark bulk of the Hayholt.

  “And we will take you there—and the sword, too.” Josua was calm. “But there is the simple matter of breaching the walls that we must deal with first.”

  “There are other ways,” said Camaris, but his wild energy had faded. He allowed himself to be led into Josua’s tent.

  Camaris downed the cup that Josua had filled for him in a single gulp, then drained a second serving. This worried Isgrimnur almost as much as the strange things the old knight had said: Camaris was reknowned as a moderate man. Still, by his haunted look, the old knight now seemed to welcome anything that might bring him relief from the agony Thorn caused him.

  Camaris would say nothing more, although Josua pressed him for information in what Isgrimnur thought was an exceedingly solicitious yet awkward manner. Ever since the night on the ship, Isgrimnur had seen Josua’s attitude to the old knight change, as though even the old man’s presence made him dreadfully uncomfortable. Isgrimnur wondered, not for the first time, what terrible thing Camaris had told him.

  After a while, the prince gave up and returned to the discussion interrupted by the knight’s appearance.

  “We know now that there are indeed forces still within the castle walls, Isgrimnur—considerable forces of men, mercenaries as well as the Erkynguard.” Josua frowned. “My brother shows more patience than I would have suspected. Not even a sally while we were landing.”

  “Patience ... or perhaps Elias has some worse fate planned for us.” The duke tugged at his beard. “For that matter, Josua, we do not even know that your brother is still alive. Erchester is all but deserted, and the few people we have managed to find there wouldn’t know if Fingil himself had come back from the grave and was sitting on the Dragonbone Chair.”

  “Perhaps.” The prince sounded doubtful. “But I cannot rid myself of the feeling that I would know if Elias were dead. In any case, even if Pryrates rules him, or has even taken the throne himself, we are still faced with the Storm King and the Scroll League’s angry star.”

  Isgrimnur nodded. “Someone is in there, right enough. Someone knows our plans. And they took your father’s sword.”

  Josua’s mood darkened. “That was a blow. Still, when I saw that Swertclif was unguarded, I had little hope left we would find it there.”

  “We always knew we would have to go inside the Hayholt to get that fairy-sword, Sorrow.” Isgrimnur pulled at his beard again and made a noise of disgust. War was difficult enough without these magical complexities. “I suppose we can go in for two as easily as one.”

  “If it is even inside the walls,” Josua pointed out. “That hole in the side of my father’s cairn looked a hurried thing to me—not what I would have expected from Pryrates or my brother, who need hide their works from no one.”

  “But who else would do it?”

  “We still do not know what happened to my niece and Simon and the troll.”

  Isgrimnur grunted. “I doubt that Miriamele or young Simon would have taken the blade and just disappeared. Where are they? They both know what Bright-Nail is worth to us.”

  Camaris’ sudden outcry made the duke flinch.

  “All the swords! God’s Nails, I can feel them, all three! They sing to each other—and to me.” He sighed. “Oh, Josua, how I wish I could silence them!”

  The prince turned. “Can you truly feel Bright-Nail?”

  The old knight nodded. “It is a voice. I cannot explain, but I hear it—and so does Thorn.”

  “But do you know where it is?”

  Camaris shook his head. “No. It—the part that calls to me—is not in a place. But they wish to come together inside the walls. There is need. The time is growing short.”

  Josua grimaced. “It sounds as though Binabik and the others were right. Hours are marching by: if the swords are any use to us, we must find them and discover that use soon.”

  Madness, thought Isgrimnur. Our lives, our land, ruled by madness out of old tales. What would Prester John have thought, who worked so hard to drive the fairy-folk out of his kingdom and to push the shadows away?

  “We cannot fly over those walls, Josua,” he pointed out. “We’ve won a victory in Nabban and sailed north in such a short time that folk will talk of it for years. But we cannot fly an army into the Hayholt like a flock of star lings.”

  “There are other ways ...” Camaris whispered. Josua looked at him sharply, but before he could discover whether this was more singing-sword maundering or something useful, another shape appeared in the tent doorway, accompanied by a blast of chill air and a few snowflakes.

  “Your pardon, Prince Josua.” It was Sludig, in mail and helm. He nodded to Isgrimnur. “My lord.”

  “What is it?”

  “We were riding the far side of Swertclif, as you asked. Searching.”

  “And you found something?” Josua stood, his face carefully expressionless.

  “Not found something. Heard something.” Sludig was obviously exhausted, as though he had ridden far and fast. “Horns in the far distance. From the north.”

  “From the north? How far away?”

  “It is hard to say, Prince Josua.” Sludig spread his hands, as though he could find the words by touch. “They were not like any horns I have heard. But they were very faint.”

  “Thank you, Sludig. Are there sentries on Swertclif?”

  “On the near side, Highness, out of sight of the castle.”

  “I do not care if anyone sees them,” the prince said. “I am more concerned about who might be coming down on us from the north. If you and your men are tired, ask Hotvig to take some of his grasslanders and ride down the far side toward the skirts of Aldheorte. Tell them to return immediately if they see something coming.”

  “I will, Prince Josua.” Sludig went out.

  Josua turned to Isgrimnur. “What do you think? Is the Storm King going to play the same hand h
e produced at Naglimund?”

  “Perhaps. But you had castle walls, there. Here we have nothing before us but open land, and nothing behind us but the Kynslagh.”

  “Yes, but we have several thousand men here, too. And no innocents to worry over. If my brother’s chief ally thinks he will find us as easy a nut to crack as before, he will be disappointed.”

  Isgrimnur stared at the fierce-eyed prince, then at Camaris, who held his head in his hands and stared at the tabletop.

  Is Josua right? Or are we the last raveled end of John’s empire, waiting for a final pull before it falls into threads?

  “I suppose we’d better go and talk to a few of the captains.” The duke got up and held his hands close to the brazier, trying to dispel some of the chill. “Better we tell them something’s coming than they hear it by rumor.” He made a noise of disgust. “Looks like we don’t get much sleep.”

  Miriamele stared at Cadrach. She, who had heard him lie so many times, could not free herself of the horrifying certainty that this time he was telling the truth.

  Or the truth as he sees it, anyway, she tried to comfort herself.

  She looked at Binabik, who had narrowed his eyes in concentration, then returned to Cadrach’s bleak face. “Doomed? Do you mean some danger beside that we already face?”

  He met her stare. “Doomed beyond hope. And I have played no little part in it.”

  “What is it you are saying?” demanded Binabik.

  The dwarrow Yis-fidri seemed to want little to do with this volatile and frightening conversation; he hesitated, fingers flexing.

  “What I am saying, troll, is that all the scurrying about in caverns that we do here matters little. Whether we escape the White Foxes outside, whether your Prince Josua knocks down the walls, whether God Himself sends lightning down from Heaven to blast Elias to ash ... none of it matters.”

  Miriamele felt her guts twist at the certainty in his voice. “Tell us what you mean.”

  The monk’s hard face crumpled. “Aedon’s mercy! Everything you have thought about me is true, Miriamele. Everything.” A tear ran down his cheek. “God help me—although He has no reason to—I have done such foul things....”