“The greatest enemy we have.” The prince sipped his wine, swaying as the ship pitched again. “An enemy we must defeat, no matter the cost.”
The cabin door swung open. Camaris steadied himself, then entered, his scabbard scraping the doorframe. The old knight’s cloak drizzled water on the floor.
“What did Nin Reisu say?” Josua asked as he poured wine for Camaris. “Will Emettin’s Jewel hold together for one more night?”
The old man drained his cup and stared at the lees.
“Camaris?” Josua moved toward him. “What did Nin Reisu say?”
After a moment, the knight looked up. “I cannot sleep.”
The prince shared a worried look with Isgrimnur. “I do not understand.”
“I have been up on deck.”
Isgrimnur thought that was obvious from the water puddling on the floor. The old knight seemed even more fearfully distracted than was usual. “What’s wrong, Camaris?”
“I cannot sleep. This sword is in my dreams.” He pawed fitfully at Thorn’s hilt. “I hear it … singing to me.” Camaris tugged it a short way out of the scabbard, a length of pure darkness. “I carried this sword for years.” He struggled for words. “I … felt it sometimes, especially in battle. But never this way. I think … I think it is alive.”
Josua looked at the blade with more than a little distrust. “Perhaps you should not carry it, Camaris. You will be forced to take it up soon enough. Put it somewhere safe.”
“No.” The old man shook his head. His voice was heavy. “No, I dare not. There are things to learn. We do not know how to use these Great Swords against our enemy. As you said, the time is fast coming. Perhaps I can understand the song it sings. Perhaps …”
The prince lifted his hand as if to dispute him, then let it fall. “You must do as you think best. You are Thorn’s master.”
Camaris looked up solemnly. “Am I? I thought so, once.”
“Come, have some more wine,” Isgrimnur urged him. He tried to rise from his stool but decided against it. The battles with the kilpa had set back his recovery. Wincing, he signaled to Josua to refill the old man’s cup. “It is hard not to feel haunted when the wind howls and the sea flings us about like dice in a cup.”
“Isgrimnur is right.” Josua smiled. “Here, drink up.” The room lurched once more, and wine splashed onto his wrist. “Come, while there is more in the cup than on the floor.”
Camaris was silent for long moments. “I must speak to you, Josua,” he said abruptly. “Something weighs upon my soul.”
Puzzled, the prince waited.
The knight’s face seemed almost gray as he turned to the duke. “Please, Isgrimnur, I must talk with Josua alone.”
“I am your friend, Camaris,” said the duke. “If anyone is to blame for bringing you here, it’s me. If something is plaguing you, I want to help.”
“This is a shame that burns. I would not tell Josua, but that he needs to hear it. Even as I lie sleepless for fear of what the sword will do, God punishes me for my secret sin. I pray that if I make this right, He will give me the strength to understand Thorn and its brother swords. But please do not force me to bare this shame to you as well.” Camaris looked truly old, his features slack, his eyes wandering. “Please. I beg you.”
Confused and more than a little frightened, Isgrimnur nodded. “As you wish, Camaris. Of course.”
Isgrimnur was debating whether he should wait in the narrow passageway any longer when the cabin door opened and Camaris emerged. The old knight brushed past, hunched beneath the low ceiling. Before Isgrimnur could get more than half his question out, Camaris was gone down the passageway, thumping from wall to wall as Emettin’s Jewel heaved in the storm’s grip.
Isgrimnur knocked at the cabin door. When the prince did not answer, he carefully pushed it open. The prince was staring at the lamp, his blasted expression that of a man who has seen his own death.
“Josua?”
The prince’s hand rose as though tugged by a string. He seemed entirely leeched of spirit. His voice was flat, terrible. “Go away, Isgrimnur. Let me be alone.”
The duke hesitated, but Josua’s face decided him. Whatever had happened in the cabin, there was nothing he could give the prince at this moment but solitude.
“Send for me when you want me.” Isgrimnur backed out of the room. Josua did not look up or speak, but continued to watch the lamp as though it were the only thing that might lead him out of ultimate darkness.
“I am trying to understand.” Miriamele’s head ached. “Tell me again about the swords.”
She had been with the dwarrows for several days, as far as she could tell: it was hard to know for certain here in the rocky fastness below the Hayholt. The shy earth-dwellers had continued to treat her well, but still refused to free her. Miriamele had argued, pleaded—even raged for a long hour, demanding to be released, threatening, cursing. As her anger spent itself, the dwarrows had murmured among themselves worriedly. They seemed so shocked and unsettled by her fury that she had almost felt ashamed of herself, but the embarrassment passed as quickly as the anger.
After all, she had decided, I did not ask to be brought here. They say their reasons are good—then let their reasons make them feel better. I shouldn’t have to.
She was convinced of, if not reconciled to, the reasons for her captivity. The dwarrows seemed to sleep very little if at all, and only a few of them at a time ever left the wide cavern. Whether they were telling her the entire truth or not, she did not doubt that there was something out there that frightened the slender, wide-eyed creatures very badly.
“The swords,” said Yis-fidri. “Very well, I will try better to explain. You saw that we knew the arrow, even though we did not make it?”
“Yes.” They had certainly seemed to know something significant was in the saddlebags, although it was possible they could have made up the story on the spot after finding it.
“We did not make the arrow, but it was crafted by one who learned from us. The three Great Swords are of our making, and we are bound to them.”
“You made the three swords?” This was what had confused her. It did not match what she had been told. “I knew that your people made Minneyar for King Elvrit of Rimmsersgard—but not that they forged the other two as well. Jarnauga said that the sword Sorrow was made by Ineluki himself.”
“Speak not his name!” Several of the other dwarrows looked up and chimed a few unsettled words which Yis-fidri answered before turning back to Miriamele. “Speak not his name. He is closer than he has been in centuries. Do not call his attention!”
It’s like being in a whole cave full of Strangyeards, thought Miriamele. They seem afraid of everything. Still, Binabik had said much the same thing. “Very well. I won’t say … his name. But that story is not what I was told. A learned man said that … he … made it himself in the forges of Asu’a.”
The dwarrow sighed. “Indeed. We were the smiths of Asu’a—or at least some of our people were … some who had not fled our Zida’ya masters, but who were still Navigator’s Children for all that, still as like to us as two chunks of ore from the same vein. They all died when the castle fell.” Yis-fidri chanted a brief lament in the dwarrow tongue; his wife Yis-hadra echoed him. “He used the Hammer that Shapes to forge it—our Hammer—and the Words of Making that we taught to him. It might as well have been our own High Smith’s hand that crafted it. In that terrible instant, wheresoever we were, scattered across the world’s face … we felt Sorrow’s making. The pain of it is with us still.” He fell silent for a long time. “That the Zida’ya allowed such a thing,” he said at last, “is one of the reasons we have turned away from them. We were so sorely diminished by that one act that we have ever since been crippled.”
“And Thorn?”
Yis-fidri nodded his heavy head. “The mortal smiths of Nabban tried to work the star-stone. They could not. Certain of our people were sought out and brought secretly to the Imperator’s palace. T
hese kin of ours were thought by most mortals to be only strange folk who watched the oceans and kept the ships safe from harm, but a small number knew that the old lore of Making and Shaping ran deep in all the Tinukeda’ya, even those who had chosen to remain with the sea.”
“Tinukeda’ya?” It took a moment to sink in. “But that’s what Gan Itai … those are Niskies!”
“We are all Ocean Children,” said the dwarrow gravely. “Some decided to stay near the sea which forever separates us from the Garden of our birth. Others chose more hidden and secretive ways, like the earth’s dark places and the task of shaping stone. You see, unlike our cousins the Zida’ya and Hikeda’ya, we Children of the Navigator can shape ourselves just as we shape other things.”
Miriamele was dumbfounded. “You’re … you and the Niskies are the same?” Now she understood the phantom of recognition that had troubled her upon first seeing Yis-fidri. There was something in his bones, in his way of moving, that reminded her of Gan Itai. But they looked so different!
“We are not the same any more. The act of shaping ourselves takes generations, and it changes more than just our outward seeming. But much does not change. The Dawn Children and Cloud Children are our cousins—but the sea-watchers are our sisters and brothers.”
Miriamele sat back, trying to grasp what she had been told. “So you and the Niskies are the same. And Niskies forged Thorn.” She shook her head. “You are saying, then, that you can feel all the Great Swords—even more strongly than you felt the White Arrow?” A sudden thought came to her. “Then you must know where Bright-Nail is—the sword that was called Minneyar!”
Yis-fidri smiled sadly. “Yes, although your King John hung it with many prayers and relics and other mortal magicks, perhaps in the hope of concealing its true nature. But you know your own arms and hands, Princess Miriamele, do you not? Would you know them any the less if they were still joined to you, but were clothed in some other mortal’s jacket and gloves?”
It was strange to think of her magnificent grandfather working so hard to hide Bright-Nail’s heritage. Was he ashamed of owning such a weapon? Why? “If you know these swords so well, can you tell me where Bright-Nail is now?”
“I cannot say, ‘it is such and such a place,’ no. But it is somewhere near. Somewhere within a few thousand paces.”
So it was either in the castle or the under-castle, Miriamele decided. That didn’t help much, but at least her father had not had it thrown in the ocean or carried off to Nascadu. “Did you come here because you knew the swords were here?”
“No. We were fleeing other things, routed from our city in the north. We knew already that two of the swords were here, but that meant little to us at that time: we fled away through our tunnels and they led us here. It was only as we drew close to Asu’a that we came to understand that other forces were also at work.”
“And so now you’re caught between the two and don’t know which way to run.” She said it with more than a little disapproval, but knew even so that what the dwarrows faced was much like her own situation. She, too, was driven by things bigger than herself. She had fled her father, trying to put the entire world between the two of them. Now she had risked her life and the lives of her friends to come back and find him, but feared what might happen if she succeeded. Miriamele pushed the useless thoughts away. “Forgive me, Yis-fidri. I’m tired of sitting for so long, that’s all.”
It had been good to rest the first day, despite her anger over her imprisonment, but now she was aching to be on her way, to move, to do something, whatever that might be. Otherwise, she was trapped with her thoughts. They made painful company.
“We are truly sorry, Miriamele. You may walk as much as you wish here. We have tried to give you all that you need.”
It was fortunate for them that she had the packs that held the remaining provisions, she reflected. If she had been forced to subsist on the dwarrows’ food—fungi and small, unpleasant burrowing creatures—she would be a much less congenial prisoner. “You cannot give me what I need as long as I am held captive,” she said. “Nothing can change that, no matter what you say.”
“It is too perilous.”
Miriamele bit back an angry reply. She had already tried that approach. She needed to think.
Yis-hadra scraped at a bit of the cavern wall with a curved, flat-ended tool. Miriamele could not quite tell what Yis-fidri’s wife was doing, but she seemed to be enjoying it: the dwarrow was singing quietly beneath her breath. The more Miriamele listened, the more the song fascinated her. It was scarcely louder than a whisper, but it had something in it of the power and complexity of Gan Itai’s kilpa-singing. Yis-hadra sang in rhythm with the movement of her long, graceful hands. Music and movement together made one singular thing. Miriamele sat beside her for some time, transfixed.
“Are you building something?” she asked during a lull in the song.
The dwarrow looked up. A smile stretched her odd face. “This s’h’rosa here—this piece of stone that runs through the other stone …” she indicated a darker streak, barely visible in the glow of the rose crystal. “It wishes to … come out. To be seen.”
Miriamele shook her head. “It wishes to be seen?”
Yis-hadra pursed her wide mouth thoughtfully. “I do not have your tongue well. It … needs? Needs to come out?”
Like gardeners, Miriamele thought bemusedly. Tending the stone.
Aloud, she said: “Do you carve things? All the ruins of Asu’a I’ve seen are covered with beautiful carvings. Did the dwarrows do that?”
Yis-hadra made an indecipherable gesture with curled fingers. “We prepared some of the walls, then the Zida’ya created pictures there. But in other places, we gave care to the stone ourselves, helping it … become. When Asu’a was built, Zida’ya and Tinukeda’ya still worked side by side.” Her tone was mournful. “Together we made wonderful things.”
“Yes. I saw some of them.” She looked around. “Where is Yis-fidri? I need to talk to him.”
Yis-hadra appeared embarrassed. “Is it I have said something bad? I cannot speak your tongue as I can the tongue of the mortals of Hernystir. Yis-fidri speaks more well than I.”
“No.” Miriamele smiled. “Nothing bad at all. But he and I were talking about something, and I want to talk to him more.”
“Ah. He will come back in a little time. He has left this place.”
“Then I’ll just watch you work, if you don’t mind.”
Yis-hadra returned the smile. “No. I will tell you something about the stone, if you like. Stones have stories. We know the stories. Sometimes I think we know their stories better than our own.”
Miriamele sat down with her back against the wall. Yis-hadra continued with her task, and as she did so, she talked. Miriamele had never thought much about rocks and stone, but as she listened to the dwarrow’s low, musical voice, she saw for the first time that they were in a way living things, like plants and animals—or at least they were to Yis-hadra’s kind. The stones moved, but that movement took eons. They changed, but no living thing, not even the Sithi, walked alive beneath the sky long enough to see that change. The dwarrow-folk studied and cultivated, and even in a way loved, the bones of the earth. They admired the beauty of glittering gems and shining metals, but they also valued the layered patience of sandstone and the boldness of volcanic glass. Every one of them had its own tale, but it took a certain kind of vision and wisdom to understand the slow stories that stones told. Yis-fidri’s wife, with her huge eyes and careful fingers, knew them well. Miriamele found herself oddly touched by this strange creature, and for a while, listening to Yis-hadra’s slow, joyful speech, she forgot even her own unhappiness.
Tiamak felt a hand close around his arm.
“Is that you?” Father Strangyeard’s voice sounded querulous.
“It is me.”
“We shouldn’t either of us be out on deck,” the archivist said. “Sludig will be angry.”
“Sludig would be right,
” Tiamak said. “The kilpa are all around us.” But still he did not move. The closed quarters of the ship’s cabin had been making it hard to think, and the ideas that were moving at the edge of his mind seemed too important to lose just because of a fear of the sea-creatures—however worthy of fear they might be.
“My sight is not good,” Strangyeard said, peering worriedly into the darkness. He held his hand beside his good eye to shield against the strong winds. “I should probably not be walking the deck at night. But I was … worried for you, you were gone so long.”
“I know.” Tiamak patted the older man’s hand where it lay on the weathered rail. “I am thinking about the things I told you earlier—the idea I had when Camaris fought Benigaris.” He stopped, noticing for the first time the ship’s odd movement. “Are we anchored?” he asked at last.
“We are. The Hayefur is not lit at Wentmouth, and Josua feared to come too close to the rocks in darkness. He sent word with the signal-lamp.” The archivist shivered. “It makes it worse, though, having to sit still. Those nasty gray things …”
“Then let us go down. I think the rains are returning, in any case.” Tiamak turned from the rail. “We will warm some of your wine—a drylander custom I have come to appreciate—and think more about the swords.” He took the priest’s elbow and led him toward the cabin door.
“Surely this is better,” Strangyeard said. He braced himself against the wall as the ship dipped into a trough between the waves, then handed the sloshing cup to the Wrannaman. “I had better cover the coals. It would be terrible if the brazier tipped over. Goodness! I hope everyone else is being careful, too.”
“I think Sludig is allowing few others to have braziers, or even lanterns, except on deck.” Tiamak took a sip of the wine and smacked his lips. “Ah. Good. No, we are the privileged ones because we have things to read and time is short.”
The archivist lowered himself to the pallet on the floor, pitching gently with the motion of the ship. “So I suppose we should be back at our work again.” He drank from his own cup. “Forgive me, Tiamak, but does it not seem futile to you sometimes? Hanging all our hopes on three swords, two of which are not even ours?” He stared into his wine.