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 uncomfort
able. 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 starlings.”
“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 he 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. …”
“Curse you, Cadrach, will you explain!”
As if this outburst had somehow pushed Yis-fidri past what he could bear, the dwarrow got up and moved away rapidly, going to join his whispering fellow on the other side of the cavern.
Cadrach wiped at his eyes and nose with his dirty sleeve. “I told you of my capture by Pryrates,” he said to Miriamele.
“You did.” And she in turn had told Binabik and others on Sesuad’ra, so she felt no need to retell the tale now.
“I told you that after I had betrayed the booksellers, Pryrates threw me out, thinking I was dead.”
She nodded.
“That was not true—or at least it did not happen then.” He took a breath. “He set me to spy on Morgenes and others I had known from my days as a Scrollbearer.”
“And you did it?”
“If you think I
hesitated, my lady, you do not know how fiercely a drunkard and coward can cling to his life—or how terrified of Pryrates’ anger I was. You see, I knew him. I knew that the injuries he had done to my flesh in his tower were nothing set against what he could do if he truly wished to make me suffer.”
“So you spied for him?! Spied on Morgenes?”
Cadrach shook his head. “I tried—by the Tree, how I tried! But Morgenes was no fool. He knew that I had fallen into dreadful straits, and that the red priest knew both of us from elder days. He gave me food and a night’s lodging, but he was suspicious. He made sure there was nothing for me to find in either his chambers or his discourse that would be useful to someone like Pryrates.” Cadrach shook his head. “If anything, my efforts only taught Morgenes that he had less time than he had hoped.”
“So you failed?” Miriamele could not see where this was leading, but a deep dread was spreading through her.
“Yes. And I was terrified. When I went back to Hjeldin’s Tower, Pryrates was angry. But he did not kill me, or do something worse, as I feared. Instead he asked me more questions about Du Svardenvyrd. I think by then he had already been touched by the Storm King and was beginning to bargain with him.” Cadrach’s look turned contemptuous. “As if any mortal could successfully bargain with one such as that! I doubt Pryrates has even yet realized what has come through the door he opened.”
“We will talk of what thing Pryrates has done later,” said Binabik. “You are telling us now of things you have been doing.”
The monk stared at him. “They are less separate than you think,” he said at last. “Pryrates asked me many questions, but for one who had read Du Svardenvyrd—indeed, for one who knew Nisses’ book so well that the memory of its words still haunts my thoughts daily—it was easy enough to see the direction behind his questions. Somehow he had been reached by the Storm King, and now Pryrates was eager to know about the three Great Swords.”
“So Pryrates does know about the swords.” Miriamele took a shaky breath. “I suppose he was the one who took Bright-Nail from the mound, then.”