Eolair raised his eyes. His heart began to beat even more swiftly.
Through the dimming fog, a thin black shadow appeared atop the castle wall, rising into view as smoothly as though lifted by an unseen hand. It was man-sized, Eolair decided, but the mist subtly distorted its shape, so that one moment it seemed larger, the next smaller and thinner than any living thing. It looked down on them, black-cloaked, face invisible beneath a large hood—but Eolair did not need to see its face to know that it was the source of the high, stone-edged voice. For long moments it only stood in the swirling mist atop the wall, embroidering upon Likimeya’s song. Finally, as if by some prior agreement, they both fell still at the same moment.
Likimeya broke the silence, calling out something in the Sithi tongue. The black apparition answered, its words ringing like shards of jagged flint, and yet Eolair could hear that the words they spoke were much the same, the differences mainly in rhythm and the greater harshness of the robed creature’s speech. The conversation seemed interminable.
There was a movement behind him. Eolair flinched; his horse startled, kicking snow. Sky-haired Zinjadu, the lore-mistress, had brought her own mount to where the mortals stood.
“They speak of the Pact of Sesuad’ra.” Her eyes were fixed on Likimeya and her opposite. “They speak of old heartbreaks and the mourning songs yet to be sung.”
“Why so much talk?” asked Isorn raggedly. “The waiting is dreadful.”
“It is our way.” Zinjadu’s lips tightened; her thin face seemed carved in pale golden stone. “Although it was not respected when Amerasu was slain.”
She offered nothing more. Eolair could do nothing but wait in uneasy fear and, ultimately, a kind of horrible boredom as challenge and response were offered.
Finally the thing on the wall turned its attention away from Likimeya for a moment; its eyes lit on the count and his few scores of Hernystirmen. With a movement almost as broad as a traveling player’s, the black-robed one flung back its hood, revealing a sleet-white face and thin hair just as colorless which rose in the wind, floating like the strands of some sea-plant.
“Shu’do-tkzayha!” the Norn said in a tone almost of exultation. “Mortals! They will yet be the death of your family, Likimeya Moon-Eyes!” He, if it was a he, spoke the Westerling tongue with the harsh precision of a gamekeeper imitating a rabbit’s death squeal. “Are you so weak that you summoned this rabble to aid you? It is hardly Sinnach’s great army!”
“You have usurped a mortal’s castle,” said Likimeya coldly. Beside her Jiriki still sat his horse stiffly, his sharped-boned face empty of any recognizable emotion; Eolair wondered again how anyone could ever feel they knew the Sithi. “And your master and mistress have entered into the disputes of mortals. You have little to crow about.”
The Norn laughed, a noise like fingernails on slate. “We use them, yes. They are the rats that have dug into the walls of our house—we might skin them for gloves, but we do not invite them in to sup at our table! That is your weakness, as it was Amerasu Ship-Born’s.”
“Do not speak of her!” Jiriki cried. “Your mouth is too foul to hold her name, Akhenabi!”
The thing on the wall smiled, a folding of white. “Ah, little Jiriki. I have heard tales of you and your adventuring—or should I say meddling. You should have come to live in the north, in our cold land. Then you would have grown strong. This tolerance for mortals is a terrible weakness. It is one reason why your family has grown dissolute while mine has grown ever sterner, ever more capable of doing what needs to be done.” The Norn turned and lifted his head, directing his words now to Eolair and the nervously whispering Hernystiri. “Mortal men! You risk more than your lives fighting beside these immortals. You risk your souls as well!”
Eolair could hear the rustle of frightened speech behind him. He spurred his horse forward a few paces and raised his sword. “Your threats are empty!” he shouted. “Do your worst! Our souls are our own!”
“Count Eolair!” Maegwin called. “No! It is Scadach, the Hole in Heaven! Go no closer!”
Akhenabi leaned down, fixing the count with black-bead eyes. “The captain of the mortals, are you? So, little man, if you do not fear for your sake, or for your troop, what of the mortals still prisoned within these walls?”
“What are you saying?!” Eolair shouted.
The creature in the black robe turned and lifted both arms. A moment later two more figures clambered up into view beside him. Although they also wore heavy cloaks, their clumsy movements marked them as something other than the spider-graceful Norns.
“Here are some of your brethren!” trumpeted Akhenabi. “They are our guests. Would you see them die for the sake of your immortal allies as well?” The two figures stood silently, slumped and hopeless. The faces in the wind-lashed hoods were clearly those of men, not Gardenborn.
Eolair felt himself fill with helpless rage. “Let them go!”
The Norn laughed again, pleased. “Oh, no, little mortal. Our guests are enjoying themselves too much. Would you like to see them show their joy? Perhaps they will dance.” He lifted his hand and made a florid gesture. The two figures began slowly to revolve. Horribly, they lifted their arms in a parody of a courtly dance, swaying from side to side, stumbling together in front of the grinning Norn. They locked arms for a moment, teetering precariously along the edge of the high wall, then pulled apart and resumed their solitary posturing.
Through the tears of fury that misted his eyes, Eolair saw Jiriki spur his horse a few ells nearer the wall. The Sitha lifted a bow; then, in a movement so swift as to be almost invisible, he withdrew an arrow from the quiver on his saddle, nocked it, and drew the bow until it trembled in a wide arc. Atop the wall, the Norn Akhenabi’s grin widened. He made a wriggling movement, almost a shiver; a moment later he had disappeared, leaving only the two shambling shapes in hideous lockstep.
Jiriki let his arrow fly. It struck one of the two dancers in the foot, jerking back the leg and overbalancing both the one struck and the one to whom he clung. They flailed briefly at the air, then toppled off the wall, dropping twenty ells to hit with a terrible smacking noise on the snow-covered rocks beneath. Several of the Hernystiri shouted and groaned.
“Blood of Rhynn!” Eolair screamed. “What have you done?!”
Jiriki rode forward, scanning the now empty wall cautiously. When he reached the huddled bodies, he dismounted and kneeled, then waved Eolair forward.
“Why did you do that, Jiriki?” the count demanded. His throat felt as tight as if someone’s fingers were curled around it. “The Norn was gone.” He stared down at the twisted, dark-robed figures. The hands and fingers protruding from their robes were splayed as though they still grabbed at a safety they would never find. “Did you think to spare them torture? What if we drove out the Norns—is there no chance we could rescue them?”
Jiriki said nothing, but reached down with surprising gentleness and turned over the nearest of the bodies, tugging a little to pull it free of the partner with which it was entwined. He folded back the hood.
“Brynioch!” Eolair choked. “Brynioch of the Skies preserve us!”
The face had no eyes, only black holes. The skin was waxy, and in places had burst from the force of the fall, but it was clear that this corpse was not fresh.
“Whoever he was, he has been dead since Naglimund’s defeat,” Jiriki said softly. “I do not think there are any living prisoners within the walls.”
Count Eolair felt his gorge rising and turned away “But they … moved …!”
“One of the Red Hand is lord here,” Jiriki said. “That is now confirmed, for no others have the strength to do this. Their power is a part of their master’s.”
“But why?” Eolair said. He looked at the humped corpses, then turned his gaze outward, toward the massing of men and Sithi in the snow. “Why would they do this?”
Jiriki shook his head, his own hair as white and fluttering as that of the creature that had mocked them fr
om the wall. “I cannot say. But Naglimund will not fall without a full tithing of horrors, that is certain.”
Eolair looked at Maegwin and Isorn waiting fearfully for him to return. “And there is no turning back.”
“No. I fear the final days have begun,” said Jiriki. “For good or ill.”
Duke Isgrimnur knew that he should be paying close attention to everything that was going on around him, to the people of Metessa, to the arrangements and manpower in the baronial hall. Metessa was the easternmost of Nabban’s major outer states, and might be the place where Josua’s challenge stood or fell. Success here could hinge on the smallest detail, so Isgrimnur had plenty to occupy him—but it was difficult to attend to his duties while the little boy followed him around like a shadow.
“Here,” the duke said after he had almost trod upon the child for the dozenth time, “what are you up to? Don’t you have somewhere to be? Where’s your mother?”
The pale-haired, thin-faced little boy looked up at him, showing no fear of the large, bearded stranger. “My mother told me to stay away from the prince and you other knights. I did not agree.”
The child was unnervingly well-spoken for his years, the duke reflected, and his Westerling was almost as good as Isgrimnur’s own. It was odd to see how Prester John’s Warinsten language had spread so thoroughly in only a couple of generations. But if things fell apart, as they seemed to be doing, would not the common tongue, like everything else, soon slip away? Empires were like seawalls, he thought sadly, even those which embodied the best of hopes. The tide of chaos beat at them and beat at them, and as soon as no one was shoring up the stones any more …
Isgrimnur shook his head, then growled at the youngling a little more sternly than he intended. “Well, if your mother told you to stay away from the knights, what are you doing here? This is men’s business tonight.”
The boy deliberately raised himself until the top of his head reached the duke’s bottom rib. “I will be a man some day. I am tired of living with the women. My mother is afraid I will run away to fight in war, but that is just what I will do.”
There was something so unintentionally comic in his fierce determination that Isgrimnur smiled despite himself. “What’s your name, lad?”
“Pasevalles, Sir Foreign Knight. My father is Brindalles, Baron Seriddan’s brother.”
“A knight is not the only thing in the world to be. And war is not a game. It is a terrible thing, little Pasevalles.”
“I know that,” said the boy readily. “But sometimes there is no choice, my father says, and there must be men who will fight.”
The duke thought of Princess Miriamele in the ghant nest, and of his own beloved wife standing with an ax before Elvritshalla, ready to defend it to her death before Isorn persuaded her at last to let it go and flee with the rest of the family. “Women also fight.”
“But women cannot be knights. And I am going to be a knight.”
“Well, I suppose since I am not your father, I cannot send you back to your chambers. And I certainly can’t seem to be rid of you. You might as well come with me and tell me a little about the place.”
Pleased, Pasevalles bounced up and down a few times like a puppy. Then, just as suddenly, he stopped and fixed Isgrimnur with a suspicious glance. “Are you an enemy?” he asked sharply. “Because if you are, Sir Foreign Knight, I cannot show you things that might hurt my uncle.”
Isgrimnur’s grin was sour. “In these days, young fellow, it’s hard to say who is enemy to who. But I can promise you that my liege-lord Prince Josua intends no harm to any who live in Metessa.”
Pasevalles considered this for a moment. “I will trust you,” he said at last. “I think you tell the truth. But if you do not, then you are no knight, who would lie to a young child.”
Isgrimnur’s grin widened. Young child! This mannikin could give Count Eolair lessons in politicking. “Tell me nothing that would help your uncle’s enemies, and I will try not to ask anything that would put your honor in danger.”
“That is fair,” said the boy gravely. “That is knightly.”
Metessa was more than just another Nabbanai hedge-barony. Situated beside the outermost edges of the Thrithings, it was a wide and prosperous piece of country, hilly and wide-meadowed. Even after the unseasonal snows, the rolling terrain gleamed greenly. One of the Stefflod’s branches wound through the grasslands, a ribbon of silver foil bright even beneath the dull gray skies. Sheep and a few cows dotted the hillsides.
Chasu Metessa, the baronial keep, had stood atop one of the highest hills since the days of the later Imperators, looking down on these valleys full of small farms and freeholdings just as Isgrimnur did now.
He turned from the window to find Pasevalles pacing impatiently. The boy said: “Come and see the armor.”
“That sounds like the kind of thing I shouldn’t see.”
“No, it’s old armor.” He was disgusted by Isgrimnur’s obtuseness. “Very old.”
The Rimmersman allowed himself to be tugged along. The child’s energy seemed without bound.
If Isorn had been this demanding, he thought wryly, I would likely have taken him out to the Frostmarch and left him, like they did in the old days when they had one mouth too many to feed.
Pasevalles led him through a warren of hallways, past more than a few of the keep’s inhabitants, who looked at Isgrimnur with alarm, to a corner tower that seemed a fairly late addition to the ancient hill fortress. After they had climbed far more stairs than were good for Isgrimnur’s aching back, they reached a cluttered room near the top. The ceiling had not been recently swept—a canopy of cobwebs hung down almost to head height—and a heavy patina of dust covered the floor and all the crude furnishings, but Isgrimnur was nevertheless impressed with what he saw.
A series of wooden armor-stands ranged the room like silent guardsmen. Unlike the rest of the objects in the circular chamber, they were comparatively clean. On every stand hung a set of armor—but not modern armor, as Pasevalles had so crossly pointed out: the helmets and breastplates and curious metal-strip skirts were of a type that Isgrimnur had seen before only in very old paintings in the Sancellan Mahistrevis.
“This is armor from the Imperium!” he said, impressed. “Or damn clever copies.”
Pasevalles drew himself up to his full height. “They are not copies! They are real. My father has been keeping them for years. My grandfather bought them in the great city.”
“In Nabban,” Isgrimnur mused. He walked along the rows, examining the various costumes, his warrior’s eye seeing which were flawed in design, which simply missing pieces from the original arrangement. The metal the old Imperatorial craftsmen had used was heavier than that now used, but the armor was splendidly made. He leaned close to examine a helm with a twining sea-dragon crest. To get a better look, he puffed away a fine layer of dust.
“These have not been polished in some time,” he said absently.
“My father has been ill.” Little Pasevalles’ voice was suddenly querulous. “I try to keep them clean, but they are too tall for me to reach and too heavy for me to lift down.”
Isgrimnur looked around the room, thinking. The uninhabited armor suits seemed like watchers at a Raed, waiting for some decision. There were still many things for him to do. Surely he had spent enough time with this boy? He walked to the tower window and peered out into the gray western sky.
“We will not eat for some hour or so yet,” he said at last, “and your uncle and Prince Josua will not be speaking of the other important things that must be discussed until afterward. Go and get your father’s cleaning things—at least a whisking broom to get the dust off. You and I can make short work of this.”
The boy looked up, eyes wide. “Truly?”
“Truly. I am in no hurry to go back down all those stairs, in any case.” The boy was still staring. “Bless me, child, go on. And bring a lamp or two. It’ll be dark soon.”
The boy sped out of the room and down th
e narrow stairwell like a hare. Isgrimnur shook his head.
The banqueting hall of Chasu Metessa had a fireplace along each wall, and was warm and bright despite the chilliness of the season. The courtiers, landed folk from all over the valley, seemed to be dressed in their finest: many of the women wore long shimmery dresses and hats almost as weirdly inventive as those to be seen at the Sancellan Mahistrevis itself. Still, Isgrimnur noted the air of worry that hung like a fog in the huge, high-raftered chamber. The ladies talked swiftly and brightly and laughed at tiny things. The men were mostly quiet; what little they did say was spoken behind their hands.
A cask of Teligure wine had been breached at the start of things and its contents shared out around the room. Isgrimnur noticed that Josua, who was seated at the right of their host Baron Seriddan, had raised his goblet to his lips many times, but had not yet allowed the page beside him to refill it. The duke approved of Josua’s forbearance. The prince was not much of a drinker at the best of times, but since the chance of dislodging Benigaris from the ducal throne might rest on the knife-edge of tonight’s doings, it was doubly important that Josua’s wits be sharp and his tongue cautious.
As he surveyed the room, the duke was stopped short by a pale glimmer in the doorway, far across the room. Squinting, Isgrimnur suddenly smiled deep in his beard. It was the boy Pasevalles, who had doubtless once more escaped from his mother and her ladies. He had come, Isgrimnur had no doubt, to watch Real Knights at table.
He may just get an eyeful.
Baron Seriddan Metessis rose from his seat at the head of the table and lifted his goblet. Behind him a blue crane, symbol of the Metessan House, spread its long wings across a wall banner.