Young Simon rose. “I beg your pardon, Prince Josua. Don’t forget the Sithi.”
“Nothing is promised, Seoman,” said the Sitha woman Aditu. “Nothing can be.”
Isgrimnur was a little taken aback. She had sat so quietly during the debate that he had forgotten she was here. He wondered if it had been wise to talk so openly before her. What did Josua and the rest truly know about the immortals, anyway?
“And perhaps the Sithi will join with us,” Josua amended, “although as Aditu has told us, she does not know what is happening in Hernystir, or what exactly her folk plan to do next.” The prince closed his eyes for a long moment.
“Added to these possibilities,” he said at last, “is the need to recover the other two Great Swords, and also what we have learned here today about the Conqueror Star—which is little, I must say frankly, except that it may have some bearing on things.” He turned to Geloë. “Obviously, if you learn more I ask to hear it at once.”
The witch woman nodded.
“I wish that we could stay here.” Josua looked quickly at Vorzheva, but she would not meet his eyes. “I would like nothing better than to see my child born here in something like safety. I would love to see all our settlers make of this ancient place a new and living city, a refuge for all who sought one. But we cannot stay. We are nearly out of food as it is, and more outcasts and war victims are arriving every day. And if we stay longer, we invite my brother sending a more formidable army than Fengbald’s. It is also my sense that the time for a defensive game is past. So, we will move on.
“Of our two alternatives, I must, after much thought, choose Nabban. We are not strong enough to confront Elias directly now, and I fear that Erkynland is so much reduced that we might find it hard to raise an army there. Also, if we failed, we would have nowhere to run but back across the empty lands to this place. I cannot guess how many would die just trying to flee a failed battle, let alone in the battle itself between Elias’ troops and our ragtag army.
“So it will be Nabban. We will go far before Benigaris can bring an army to bear, and in that time Camaris may lure many to our banner. If we are lucky enough to force Benigaris and his mother out, Camaris will also have the ships of Nabban to put at our service, making it easier for us to move against my brother.”
He raised his arms, silencing the gathering as whispers began to fill the room. “But this much of the Scroll League’s warnings about the Conqueror Star will I take to heart. I would rather not ride out in winter, especially since it has long seemed the tool of the Storm King, but I think that the sooner we can make our way from Nabban to Erkynland, the better. If the star is a herald of empire’s fall, still it need not be our herald as well: we will try to reach the Hayholt before it appears. We will hope that this mildness in the weather will hold, and we will leave this place in a fortnight. That is my decision.” He lowered his hand to the tabletop. “Now go, all of you, and get some sleep. There is no point in further arguing. We leave this place for Nabban.”
Voices were raised as some of those gathered began to call out questions. “Enough!” Josua cried. “Go and leave me in peace!”
As he helped herd the others out, Isgrimnur looked back. Josua was slumped in his chair, rubbing his temples with his fingers. Beside him Vorzheva sat and stared straight ahead, as though her husband were a thousand miles away.
Pryrates emerged from the stairwell into the bellchamber. The high-arching windows were open to the elements, and the winds that swirled around Green Angel Tower fluttered his red robe. He stopped, his boot heels clicking once more on the stone tiles before silence fell.
“You sent for me, Your Highness?” he asked at last.
Elias was staring out across the jumble of the Hayholt’s roofs, looking toward the east. The sun had dropped below the western rim of the world and the sky was full of heavy black clouds. The entire land had fallen into shadow.
“Fengbald is dead,” the king said. “He has failed. Josua has beaten him.”
Pryrates was startled. “How could you know!?”
The High King whirled. “What do you mean, priest? A half-dozen Erkynguardsmen arrived this morning, the remnants of Fengbald’s army. They told me many surprising tales. But you sound as though you knew already.”
“No, Highness,” the alchemist said hastily. “I was just surprised that I was not informed immediately when the guardsmen arrived. It is usually the king’s counselor’s task …”
“… To sift through the news and decide what his master is allowed to hear,” Elias finished for him. The king’s eyes glittered. His smile was not pleasant. “I have many sources of information, Pryrates. Never forget that.”
The priest bowed stiffly. “If I have offended you, my king, I beg your forgiveness.”
Elias contemplated him for a moment, then turned back to the window. “I should have known better than to send that braggart Fengbald. I should have known he would muck it up. Blood and damnation!” He slapped his palms on the stone sill. “If only I could have sent Guthwulf.”
“The Earl of Utanyeat proved himself a traitor, Highness,” Pryrates observed mildly.
“Traitor or not, he was the finest soldier I have ever seen. He would have ground up my brother and his peasant army like pig meat.” The king bent and picked up a loose stone, holding it before his eyes for a moment before flinging it out the window. He watched its fall in silence before speaking again. “Now Josua will move against me. I know him. He has always wanted to take the throne from me. He never forgave my being firstborn, but he was too clever to say so aloud. He is subtle, my brother. Quiet but poisonous, like an adder.” The king’s pale face was drawn and haggard, but he seemed nevertheless full of an awful vitality. His fingers curled and uncurled spasmodically. “He will not find me unready, will he, Pryrates?”
The alchemist allowed a smile to curl his own thin lips. “No, my lord, he will not.”
“I have friends, now—powerful friends.” The king’s hand dropped to the double hilt of Sorrow, sheathed at his waist. “And there are things afoot that Josua could never dream of if he lived for centuries. Things he will never guess until it is too late.” He drew the sword from its scabbard. The mottled gray blade seemed a living thing, something pulled against its will from beneath a rock. As Elias held it before him, the wind lifted his cloak, spreading it above him like wings; for a moment, the blotchy twilight made him a pinioned thing, a demon out of dark ages past. “He and all he leads will die, Pryrates,” the king hissed. “They do not know who they meddle with.”
Pryrates regarded him with genuine uneasiness. “Your brother does not know, my king. But you will show him.”
Elias turned and brandished the sword at the eastern horizon. In the distance, a flicker of lightning played across the turbulent darkness.
“Come, then!” he shouted. “Come, all of you! There is death enough to be shared! No one will take the Dragonbone Chair from me. No one can!”
As if in answer, there came a dim rumble of thunder.
25
The Semblance of Heaven
They rode down out of the north on black horses—steeds raised in cold darkness, surefooted in deep night, unafraid of icy wind or high mountain passes. The riders were three, two women and one man, all Cloud Children, and their deaths were already being sung by the Lightless Ones, since there was little chance they would ever return to Nakkiga. They were the Talons of Utuk’ku.
As they departed Stormspike, they rode through the ruins of the old city, Nakkiga-that-was, sparing hardly a glance to the tumbled relics of an age when their people had still lived beneath the sun. By night they passed through the villages of the Black Rimmersmen. There they met no one, since the inhabitants of those settlements, like all the mortals in that ill-fated land, knew better than to stir our of doors once twilight had fallen.
Despite the speed and vigor of their mounts, the three riders were many nights crossing the Frostmarch. Except for those sleepers in remote settle
ments who suffered unexpectedly bad dreams, or the rare travelers who noticed an added chill to the already freezing wind, the riders went unperceived. They continued on in silence and shadow until they reached Naglimund.
They stopped there to rest their horses—even the cruel discipline of the Stormspike stables could not prevent a living animal from tiring eventually—and to confer with those of their kind who now made Josua of Erknyland’s desolated castle their home. The leader of Utuk’ku’s Talons—although she was only first-among-equals—paid uncomfortable homage to the castle’s shrouded master, one of the Red Hand. He sat in his gray winding sheets peeping ember-red at every crease, on the smoldering wreckage of what had once been Josua’s princely throne of state. She was respectful, although she did nothing more than that which was necessary. Even to the Norns, hardened through the long centuries, blasted by their cold exile, the Storm King’s minions were unsettling. Like their master, they had gone beyond—they had tasted Unbeing and then returned; they were as different from their still-living brethren as a star was from a starfish. The Norns did not like the Red Hand, did not like the singed emptiness of them—each one of the five was little more than a hole in the stuff of reality, a hole filled by hatred—but as long as their mistress made Ineluki’s war her own, they had little choice but to bow before the Storm King’s chief servants.
They also found themselves distanced from their own brethren. Since the Talons were death-sung, the Hikeda’ya of Naglimund treated them with reverent silence and boarded them in a cold chamber far from the rest of the tribe. The three Talons did not stay long in the wind-haunted castle.
From there they rode over the Stile, through the ruins of Da’ai Chikiza, and then westward through the Aldheorte, where the travelers made a wide circle around the borders of Jao é-Tinukai’i. Utuk’ku and her ally had already had their confrontation with the Dawn Children and received its full benefit: this task was one that required secrecy. Although at times the forest seemed actively to resist them with paths that abruptly vanished and tree limbs so close-knit they made the filtered light of the stars seem different and confusing, still the trio rode on, heading inexorably southeast. They were the Norn Queen’s chosen: they were not so easily put off their quarry.
At last they reached the forest’s edge. They were close now to that which they sought. Like Ingen Jegger before them, they had come down from the north bearing death for Utuk’ku’s enemies, but unlike the Queen’s Huntsman, who had met defeat the first time he had turned his hand against the Zida’ya, these three were immortals. There would be no hurry. There would be no mistakes.
They turned their horses toward Sesuad’ra.
“Ah, by the good God, I feel a weight lifted from my shoulders.” Josua took a deep breath. “It is something fine to be moving at last.”
Isgrimnur smiled. “Even if all do not agree,” he said. “Yes. It’s good.”
Josua and the Duke of Elvritshalla were sitting their horses by the gate stones that marked the hilltop’s edge, watching the citizens of New Gadrinsett decamp in a most disorderly fashion. The parade wound past them down the old Sithi road, spiraling around the bulk of the Stone of Farewell until it vanished from sight. As many sheep and cows seemed to be setting out as people, an army of unhelpful animals bleating, lowing, bumping along, causing chaos among the overloaded citizenry. Some of the settlers had built crude wagons and had piled their possessions high on them, which added to the strange air of festival.
Josua frowned. “As an army, we look more like a town fair being moved.”
Hotvig, who had just ridden up with Freosel the Falshireman, laughed. “This is how our clans always look when they travel. The only difference is that most of these are your stone-dwellers. You will become accustomed.”
Freosel was watching the process critically. “We need all cattle and sheep we can get, Highness. Many mouths that need feeding.” He awkwardly urged his horse forward a few paces—he was still not used to riding. “Ha, there!” he shouted. “Give that wagon some room!”
Isgrimnur thought that Josua was right: it did look like a traveling fair, although this company showed something less than the cheerfulness that usually attended such things. There were children crying—although not all the children were displeased to be traveling, by any means—as well as a steady undercurrent of bickering and complaint from the citizens of New Gadrinsett. Few among them had wanted to leave this place of relative safety: the idea of somehow forcing Elias from his throne was remote to them, and almost all the settlers would have preferred to stay on Sesuad’ra while others dealt with the grim realities of war—but it was also clear that staying in this remote place after Josua had taken all the men-at-arms away was no real alternative. So, angry but unwilling to risk more suffering without the protection of the prince’s makeshift army, the inhabitants of New Gadrinsett were following Josua toward Nabban.
“We would not fright a nest of scholars with this lot,” the prince said, “let alone my brother. Yet, I do not think the less of them—of any of us—for our rags and poor weaponry.” He smiled. “In truth, I think I know for the first time what my father felt. I have always treated my liege-men as well as I could, since that is what God would have me do, but I never felt the strong love that Prester John did for all his subjects.” Josua stroked his Vinyafod’s neck meditatively. “Would that the old man could have saved some of that love for both his sons as well. Still, I think I finally know what he felt when he rode out through the Nearulagh Gate and down into Erchester. He would have given his life for those people, as I would give mine for these.” The prince smiled again, shyly, as if embarrassed by what he had revealed. “I will bring this beloved rabble of mine safe through Nabban, Isgrimnur, whatever it takes. But when we get to Erkynland, we are putting the dice into the hands of God—and who knows what He will do with them?”
“Not a one of us,” Isgrimnur said. “And good deeds do not buy His favor, either. At least your Father Strangyeard said that to me the other night, that he thought it might be as much a sin to try to buy God’s love by good deeds as it is to do bad ones.”
A mule—one of the few such on all of Sesuad’ra—was balking at the rim of the road. His owner was pushing at the cart to which the mule was tethered, trying to urge him along from behind. The beast had gone stiff and spread-legged, silent but implacable. The owner moved forward and laid a switch across the mule’s back, but the creature only dropped back its ears and lifted its head, accepting the blows with mutely stubborn hostility. The owner’s curses filled the morning air, echoed by the people trapped behind his stalled cart.
Josua laughed and leaned closer to Isgrimnur. “If you would see what I look like to myself, gaze on that poor beast. If it were uphill, he would pull all day and never show a moment’s weariness. But now he has a long and dangerous downward track before him and a heavy cart behind him—no wonder he digs in his heels. He would wait until the Day of Weighing-Out if he could.” His grin faded and he turned to fix the duke with his gray eyes. “But I have interrupted you. Say again what Strangyeard told you.”
Isgrimnur stared at the mule and its drover. There was something both comic and pathetic about it, something that seemed to hint at more than it revealed. “The priest said that trying to buy God’s favor with good deeds was a sin. Well, first he apologized for having any thoughts at all—you know how he is, skittery mouse of a man—but said it anyway. That God owes us nothing, and we owe Him all, that we should do right things because they are right and that is closest to God, not because we will be rewarded like children given sweetmeats for sitting quietly.”
“Father Strangyeard is a mouse, yes,” said Josua. “But a mouse can be brave. Small as they are, though, they learn it is wiser not to challenge the cat. So it is with Strangyeard, I think. He knows who he is and where he belongs.” Josua’s eyes strayed upward from the futile flogging of the mule to the western hills that walled the valley. “I will think on what he said, though. Sometimes we do act
as God bids us out of fear or hope of reward. Yes, I will think on what he said.”
Isgrimnur suddenly wished he had kept his mouth closed.
That’s all Josua needs—another reason to fault himself Keep him moving, old man, not thinking. He is magical when he throws away his cares. He is a true prince, then. That is what will give us a chance of living to talk about such things over the fire someday.
“What do you say we move this idiot and his mule out of the road?” Isgrimnur suggested. “Otherwise, this place is going to be less like a town fair and more like the Battle of Nearulagh soon.”
“Yes, I think so.” Josua smiled again, sunny as the cold, bright morning. “But I don’t think it’s the idiot drover who will need convincing—and mules are no respecters of princes.”
“Yah, Nimsuk!” Binabik called. “Where is Sisqinanamook?”
The herder turned and raised his crook-spear in greeting. “She is by the boats, Singing Man. Checking for leaks so the rams’ feet don’t get wet!” He laughed, displaying an uneven mouthful of yellow teeth.
“And so you don’t have to swim, since you’d sink to the bottom like a rock,” Binabik grinned back. “They’d find you in the summer when the water went away, a little man of mud. Show some respect.”
“It’s too sunny,” Nimsuk replied. “Look at them frisk!” He pointed to the rams, who were indeed very lively, several of them playing at mock combat, something they almost never did.
“Just don’t let them kill each other,” Binabik said. “Enjoy your rest.” He bent and whispered into Qantaqa’s ear. The wolf leaped forward over the snow with the troll clinging to her hackles.