4
In the Storm
In his dream she stood over him. He could not see her, but could feel her presence, straight and cold as a sword’s blade. He could feel her perilous anger, too, but it did not seem to be aimed at him—or at least he prayed that was so.
The winds are too strong, she said. They blow my words back at me, or carry them into darkness to be swallowed and forgotten.
Morgan knew he was dreaming and desperately wanted to wake, but it felt as though something pressed him, held him down in sleep, helpless as a swaddled child.
You must tell them. You must tell them for me. The winds are too strong.
He had felt this angry presence before, but in his dream he could not put a face to it, perceived only swirling shadows and splashes of light, like a shattered church window, the mournful saints in fragments, mournful eyes, weeping, moaning mouths.
Who are you? He did not say it, but the presence seemed to catch his thought.
You know me, mortal child. You know me. First Grandmother knew your grandsire. I feel the touch of her on you—and something else . . . the taste of the Dreaming Sea . . .
And then he woke, bereft and alone once more—lost, lost, lost in the endless Aldheorte. He did not weep this time because he no longer had the strength, but he wished he could. Anything to wash such bleak strangeness out of his head. He could not bear to think about it. He knew the forest was trying to drive him mad.
Hot, wearying days and chilly nights crawled by, each as hopeless as the last. Morgan found himself daydreaming of wine, of brandy, even of weak beer, anything wet that would draw a curtain over his miserable thoughts. He brooded over the memories of every pitcher or tankard that had been spilled in his presence. He wanted something other than water to drink so fiercely that he would gladly have licked the filthy floor of the Quarely Maid just to get what had dripped or splashed on it. His hunger had gone away, but only because it was replaced by a miserable flux that gripped his hollow guts and emptied them again and again, long past the time when there was anything to empty. His head seemed to smolder like a hot coal.
Hell is no wine, he thought. Hell is a dry mouth and a burning head.
After the sun had risen and set a few times, the unholy craving began to diminish, but he still felt ill, and ached as if he had been beaten. Still, Morgan forced himself to keep walking, trying to hold to a straight line southward, but although he did not find himself back at his beginning as he had the first time, each exhausting day ended the same way, with Morgan still in deep forest.
He thought often about discarding everything he carried that had no use or purpose but which pulled on him—his sword, his mother’s Book of the Aedon, the ridiculous irons that Snenneq had presented to him. And the heavy armor? What use was armor against despair? What use against starvation and the stealing of his wits? But although he took off his weighty shirt of chain mail, he could not bring himself to discard it, so he wore it draped over his shoulders and pretended to himself he might want it again. A last, a still sensible part of him knew that if he began to discard all that seemed useless he would not stop; eventually he would be naked but for a few rags, eating leaves and grass and drinking dew, like a broken-minded hermit. He would leave nothing behind when he died but his skeleton, and even those who found him would never know who he had been.
The naked prince. Prince of Bones. Morgan the Pointless, last of his line.
Something kept him from surrendering, and after another day or two the wild, unreasoning craving for strong drink at last faded to a dull ache, a small but constant regret. Hunger and despair were now his greatest enemies. As he stumbled along the forest tracks that animals had made, or cleared undergrowth with his sword, he had to force himself to keep going. If I’m still moving, I’m not dying, he told himself, though he was not completely certain that was true. And over and over as he staggered on through the long days, he thought of what his grandfather had often said—“You don’t know you’re in a story until someone tells it to you afterward.”
Was he in such a story? And was it only a story of his death? Perhaps something unforeseen might still change things. Perhaps some of the Erkynguard had survived and would come looking for him. Perhaps his grandparents would send searchers.
Yes, perhaps, a sour voice whispered. And perhaps the trees will dance and the mountains will sing.
He was still sleeping on the wide boughs of large trees, oaks or ash, for fear of what might walk the forest floor at night, and he had learned to wake up long enough to adjust his position while remembering that he was high above the ground. The wide-eyed watchers, the treetop whisperers who had surrounded him the first night were still often present, but in smaller numbers now, so that he seldom heard them, and only very infrequently saw the moony gleam of their eyes. It felt as though they too, whatever they might be, were beginning to give up on him.
Is it the fifth or the sixth day? Morgan wondered as he followed the course of a nearly empty streambed. The seventh? That fact that he didn’t know frightened him, and he did his best to go back over everything that had happened, but the bitter sameness of the days defeated him.
He had eaten every scrap and crumb that had been in his purse, and although the flux was gone, the pain in his stomach was even more overwhelming. He had found elder berries and hawthorn berries, which eased the pangs a little, and in one small, sunny forest clearing he had stumbled across a sun-bright fizz of dandelions and devoured them all, flowers and leaves. He was chewing the last one now, and though it did not taste much like the sort of food he had begun to think of in every waking moment after the flux finally deserted him—red, juicy beef, hot loaves of bread, puddings, pies, and fragrant cheeses— it quieted his ravenous hunger a little. But Aldheorte’s forest cover was too thick to rely on finding many sun-loving dandelions, and eventually the berry season would end too. He had found nothing like a walnut or chestnut tree, although he had been looking. His knowledge of how to feed himself was as exhausted as the rest of him.
What did my grandfather eat when he was lost in the woods—these same woods? Not for the first time Morgan wished he had listened more closely. But who could ever have dreamed the same thing might happen to him?
You don’t know you’re in a story until someone tells it to you afterward.
He sang a little song to himself, “Morgan died with an empty gut, his mouth wide open and his eyes tight shut.”
He was far too hungry to laugh. Is that Your idea, my Lord God? Do you mean to humble me, bit by bit, until I renounce my stubbornness and say my grandparents were right? Well, then, I was wrong. I was a fool. Lead me to the forest’s edge, or a crofter’s hut. Send me a dying deer, or better yet, a bow and some arrows so that I can kill my own food.
But God, the Almighty Father of the World, did not seem to be listening, or if He heard, He was not yet ready to forgive His errant child Morgan. He swallowed his curses. If he ever needed God’s forgiveness, it was now. Just thinking about what real hunger would feel like terrified him. He could find water on the dewy grass, but soon the autumn would come, then the winter . . .
Winter! He had astonished himself. Already he was thinking about the chance of not getting out of the Aldheorte before winter. But I will never live so long.
Something finally changed in the late afternoon of what might have been the seventh or even the eighth day, but it was not the sort of change Morgan would have wished. The sky began to darken beyond the high forest canopy. The trees started to sway, especially the topmost branches. A summer storm seemed to be coming in.
He had little beyond his cloak to keep him dry, and knew that being wet and cold in the wild would likely be a death sentence, so he began to search for a place where he could sit out a bad storm. He did not want to be near a tree, because any fool knew that trees attracted lightning—especially oak trees, which carried the shape of the thunderbolts in their very limbs. As the darkness grew and the winds strengthened, he almost forgot his hunger in his growing fear of being caught in the tempest. Though the sun hung high in the sky behind the clouds, the forest had already gone as dark as evening and the trees were writhing and thrashing above him. Drops of rain fell like stones, and although even after days wandering lost he was sure the month could be no later than Tiyagar-month, it felt cold as winter.
Morgan headed upslope, searching for a drier spot to wait out the storm. Already the rains were beginning to soak his wool cloak, making it even heavier than the mail shirt. As the loamy forest soil turned to mud, his boots kept sticking, slowing him down, as though evil children ran behind him, snatching at his feet. Once he pulled his foot entirely out of one boot, and then had to sit down in the muck with rain beating on his head and use both hands to drag it out. All the time the sky grew darker and the voice of the wind grew more shrill.
At last he reached a group of ash trees on a rocky slope, ancient sentries guarding a limestone outcrop as big as a church. This miniature mountain jutted at an angle from the forested hillside, and Morgan found a crevice in the base of it not much bigger than himself. At last he could escape the rain, though the space was too small to light a fire and the deadfall wood that lay along the slope was already soaking wet. He dropped his armor shirt to one side, then took off his cloak and sat on it. His knees close under his chin, he watched the muddy earth leap in wet gouts as the rain beat down. He stayed that way, shivering, his thoughts numbed with misery, until the true dark came and he could no longer see anything farther away than the dim shape of his own feet.
In the night the storm strengthened, the ash trees creaking, branches snapping. The rain blew almost sideways, so that he had to force himself deeper into the small crevice to stay dry. He wondered what had happened to the tree-murmurers he had heard and seen. Did such creatures have a nest or burrow they could go to? What did squirrels or birds do in storms like this? Did they simply cling to branches, or did they have dry, safe places to hide? It was something he had never thought much about, but it seemed important now.
If I can’t light a fire by tomorrow, I think I will go mad.
Porto and an Erkynguard sergeant named Levias were watching over a small troop of Erkynguards as they brought back levies of food from the nearby shire seat at Leaworth to the camp where the soldiers waited for Count Eolair and the prince to return from their mission to the Sithi. The levy had taken longer than expected, because the local baron had protested every requisition, and had even angrily stated that he would inform the High Throne of the outrage being practiced upon him until the Erkynguard quartermaster produced the order signed by Duke Osric and countersigned by the king.
“If that baron ever has to feed a real army instead of just this little traveling company,” Levias suggested to Porto, “he’ll likely have a fit and fall down dead.” Porto had laughed in agreement.
Sergeant Levias was a friendly sort, a round-faced, stocky man about a decade past the end of youth. Porto liked the man’s company and was also enjoying the day and the sunshine. After passing nearly a month in the saddle since they’d left the Hayholt, Porto was comfortable riding again, despite the occasional ache in his old bones. He was concerned about Morgan, of course, after the prince and Eolair had been gone so many days in the forest, but that was in God’s hands, not his own. He could only wait with the rest of the Erkynguard and hope for the best.
As they followed the course of the river on their way back from Leaworth, going slow because the carts were laden with grain and beer and other useful things, they saw the first smoke drifting on the southern horizon, a dark plume above the grassy hillocks that stood between them and the camp. At first Porto thought nothing of it—what was a military camp without fires?—but after a moment Levias saw it too.
“That’s wrong, that is,” the sergeant said, but he didn’t look very worried. “Too much smoke, too dark. One of the wagons must have caught fire.”
“God help us,” said one of the foot soldiers from under his milkmaid’s yoke, “let’s hope it’s not the cook wagons. I need my supper. This is hard work.”
“Do not throw the Lord’s name about,” Levias told him. “Your complaining stomach is nothing to Him.”
“So the priest told me too, back home.” The guardsman, a young fellow named Ordwine, had proved to be fond of his own voice. “But when I let out a great fart, it seems God changed his mind, because the priest threw me out of His church!”
Porto laughed in spite of himself, but Levias only gave the young soldier a disgusted look. “You will learn to fear the Lord one day. I only hope that it does not come too late.”
Instead of continuing what was obviously raillery of long standing with his superior, young Ordwine stared into the distance, his eyes suddenly wide. “Look, now, Sergeant. The smoke is getting thicker.”
Porto turned even as Levias did. The black cloud was like a thunderhead. The rest of the guardsman had stopped to look, and even the drovers brought their wagons to a halt, faces gone suddenly pale as suet.
A part of the dark cloud broke loose from its base and came hurrying toward them across the uneven meadow. For a moment Porto was frozen with fear, cast back in an instant to the Norn lands and the terrible magic of the White Foxes that had brought cookfires to life, collapsed great stones, and even moved mountains. But what was speeding toward them was no rogue cloud of smoke, he saw a moment later, but horses—Erkynguard horses running in terror, eyes rolling, hooves flashing in the late afternoon glare, many still wearing their blankets emblazoned with the Twin Dragons of the royal house.
“By the Aedon, what happens here?” said Levias, forgetting his own rule against using holy names in vain. “Has the whole camp caught fire? Ordwine, you and the rest get after those horses before they escape. See if you can calm them and get them harnessed—once they escape into the grasslands we’ll never catch them.” He turned to Porto. “Keep with me, Sir Porto. Something is amiss!”
Afterward, Porto could remember little of the scene they saw as they galloped toward the smoke, except that for a brief instant he could have almost believed that the green, peaceful grassland had opened up and vomited forth demons from Hell. The Erkynguard camp was beset by men in armor, perhaps a hundred ragged but well-armed Thrithings-men on swift horses. The Erkynguardsmen were fighting back from behind wagons but they were much outnumbered, and many of the wagons had already been set ablaze by the attackers’ fiery arrows. The fast-moving nomads seemed to range on all sides, so that many soldiers who thought they were hidden from danger by a wagon or tent died with arrows in their backs.
Levias spurred his horse toward the melée, but to Porto it was already clear that the battle was over. Perhaps half of the guardsmen in the camp were already dead and the rest surrounded, but very few of the attackers had been killed or even wounded.
He lay his head close against his horse’s neck and spurred after Sergeant Levias. “Turn back!” Porto shouted. “Turn back!”
“We have to help them!” Levias cried, his words barely audible above the shouts and screams.
“And who will help the prince?” Porto shouted, reining up. They were still far from the camp. Half the wagons were now blazing high and hot, and several others were beginning to burn. “Who will help the heir to the throne when we are dead?”
Levias slowed, then a moment later half a dozen of the whooping clansmen saw them and broke off from the main group. Levias pulled back hard on his reins, then turned his horse and sped back toward Porto, the Thrithings-men closing rapidly behind, their braided beards bouncing, their red mouths open in cries of battle-joy.
It is Hell indeed, Porto thought, turning his horse to flight.
Arrows were humming past them like hornets, and Porto knew that the Thrithings-horses were all but tireless and would catch them soon. He shouted to Levias to head toward the forest, their only chance for escape, but realized a moment later that they were far downstream from the ford and would have to cross the Ymstrecca in full flow.
An arrow flew past him close enough to bite at the skin of his neck. They crested a low, grassy hill and as they flew down the slope on the far side, suddenly more riders were on top of them, springing up as if from nowhere. For a moment Porto’s heart skipped and seemed to stop. But before he could even draw his blade, these new riders rushed past with loud cries, heading up the slope toward the trailing Thrithings-men, who had just arrived at the top of the rise, and Porto realized these new riders were the Erkynguards—Ordwine and the others that Levias had sent to catch some of the fleeing horses—and he breathlessly praised God. It was clear from the way they rode that these soldiers were not horsemen—most of them had been farm boys before joining the guard—but he had seldom been so glad to see anyone. Screaming with rage, almost with madness, Ordwine and the rest crashed into the trailing Thrithings-men. Porto could not leave them to fight alone, so he turned his mount in an abrupt, shuddering half-circle, then followed them up, determined to sell his death for a good price.
Men tumbled through the air as the two troops met and their horses reared or stumbled. Horses fell, crushing men beneath them. Axes and swords rang on shields or clashed blade on blade, or blade on flesh. Men screamed. Blood sprayed. In that little trough between two rolling greens swells an entire battle began and ended before the sun had set. Luckily for Porto, the battle went better for his side than the fight at the camp.
When it was over, the only survivors were Porto and Levias, both wounded but not too badly, and two of the Erkynguards—young Ordwine and a smaller, beardless soldier named Firman. None of the Thrithings-men who had chased them would see their clans again, but that could scarcely be called a victory.
When they made their way back toward the camp, the rest of the nomad army was gone and most of the fires had burned out, leaving only a few flames wavering here and there, like drunks staggering home from the tavern. The ground was littered with corpses, but the dead were almost all Erkynguardsmen and Thrithings-men: Porto saw no sign of the trolls among them.
Nobody spoke but Sergeant Levias, and his only words were a string of sickened, angry curses.
When the newcomers first came toward them out of the woods, distance made size confusing: Porto drew the sword he had only just sheathed and called out to Levias and the others to be ready. A moment later he saw that the leader was riding, not a shaggy Thrithings-horse but something smaller and stranger—a white wolf, in fact—and he lowered his blade. He hailed Binabik and his troll family with relief, but the guardsmen with him seemed less joyful. Many of the soldiers had regarded the Qanuc with superstitious fear from the moment the company had left Erchester, and if ever there had been a day of disastrous luck, this had been that day.
“I did not think to see you alive again,” Porto said as the trolls rode up.
Binabik swung down from his mount, then looked over the smoking remains of the camp. “We were being in and out of the forest all the day, looking by the chance that Prince and Eolair had been coming out somewhere different.” As he spoke, his wife, daughter, and the large troll named Little Snenneq looked around in grim silence.
Porto nodded sadly. It had been almost a sennight since the Sithi had taken the prince and Eolair away and the whole camp had been unsettled by the lengthy absence. Only military discipline had kept them relatively calm.
“It will be just us waiting for them now,” Porto said. “We must pray those grasslanders do not return.”
“There are Thrithings-men and other grasslanders on the move in great numbers all around,” Binabik told him. “But mostly distant from this place, on the far downs.” He gestured toward the low hills along the southern horizon.
“Grasslanders are coming this way, you say?” Porto was terrified at the idea of having to fight again. The strength of desperation that had fueled him had ebbed back out of his body, and every weary muscle and every old bone he possessed seemed to be aching.
“Not this way.” Binabik crouched, running his fingers through the bent grass, eyes narrowed. “All heading toward the west they are, but also away from this spot. The Thrithings people are making a great clan gathering at the end of summer each year. Perhaps this attack was by some clans on their journeying to that gathering. Ah!” Binabik held up what at first looked like nothing so much as a gobbet of mud. He cleaned it with a handful of dewy grass. “Look,” he said. “A tatter of cloak, and it is of fine weave.”
Porto shook his head. “What good is that to us?”
“To wear, no goodness at all,” said Binabik with a crooked half-smile. “To see and think about, perhaps it is being more use. Look with closeness.”
“I can’t see close things so well,” Porto admitted.
“Then I will be telling you. This is a cloth of very clever stitching and make. No broadweave, as we Qanuc say of the garments we make during the summer, but fine work. I mean no impoliteness when I say these are not the garments of one of your soldiers, let alone the cook or his helpers. This is the cloak of a nobleman. Sisqi! Qina! Help me.”
Together the three trolls moved slowly outward from the spot where Binabik had found the piece of cloth, staying low to the ground, examining the muddy, torn turf. Porto and the guardsmen looked on in puzzled silence. Little Snenneq, still mounted on his huge, slow-cropping ram, wore an expression like a hungry child forced to sit through a long prayer before eating.
Sisqi stopped and called to Binabik.
He leaned close and then nodded. “And see—it was Count Eolair. He was here during the battling or just after. See how the mud has been trampled back over the bloody ground.”
“But then what of the prince?” asked Porto in sudden fear. “Sweet God and merciful Elysia, was Prince Morgan here too? Oh, God, is he dead?”
Binabik’s face was somber. “I pray to all my ancestors he is not. But you and your men go to there, Porto.” He pointed to the far end of the muddied battleground, where some of the men had fallen back from the original camp in their futile resistance. “We will do the searching here. Be looking at all the dead. I am praying none are Morgan or Eolair, but we must be knowing with certainty.”
Porto stood over the last of the dead Thrithings-men. This one was a thin fellow with long mustaches and the bloodless look of a drowned rodent. His guts were out, and they stank. After staring a moment, Porto turned away to collect himself. The sun had all but vanished in the west. He could see a thin haze of mist rising from the distant meadows.
“I am bringing perhaps hopeful news!” Binabik called, walking toward him. “But first, what have you found?”
Porto listed off the number of each side’s fallen. “All the Erkynguard are dead, Levias says, but those who went with us to Leaworth. They also killed the camp servants, mostly young boys.” A wash of pure hatred went through him. He had almost forgotten what it felt like, the helpless, burning heat. “But, praise God, none of the dead are Eolair or Prince Morgan.”
Binabik let out a deep breath. “I mourn the others, but the absence of the prince and Eolair is making the meaning of my own discovery more certain. Come see.”
He led Porto and the guardsmen back across the twilight battlefield. They had been among the dead long enough that Porto had begun to feel as though they walked in the afterlife—as though they were the ones who had died, and were waiting for their fellows to rise and join them in eternity.
Binabik took a brand from the fire Little Snenneq had built and began to walk along the edges of a torn but less brutalized section of meadow on the forest side of the camp. Porto, who was long-legged even beyond most men, towered over the troll and had to take small, almost mincing steps to avoid tripping over him.
“There, and again there, and again there.” Binabik was now leading him out from the camp toward the ford, gesturing at things Porto could only barely see, even with the torch held close. “Footprints that came from there.” He pointed toward the shadowy tree-wall of Aldheorte across the river. “Prints of two walkers, both in boots well-crafted. But before they reach this camp, there is being confusion—and here.” He pointed again. Porto could at least see that the ground was much disturbed. “One set turns back to the forest. The sky rained the night before last, do you remember? These are prints being made since that night, as with the others around us—or just after yesterday’s battling.”
Porto tried to consider all these ideas. “After the battle? What does that mean? And what do the two sets of tracks mean?”
Levias, who had been listening silently, said, “It means one of them turned back to the forest.”
Binabik nodded. “Good seeing, Sergeant. I too think it so.”
“It was Prince Morgan who went to the forest,” Snenneq said.
Binabik again nodded. “That too I am hoping now. If the prince and Eolair were coming from the forest and saw the battle, Eolair I am thinking would have made the prince run to safety, the only safety that was there for his seeking, in the great forest. But the piece of cloak and no blood there, and no body of the count, tells me—what, Snenneq?”
“That someone took the Count of Eolair prisoner,” Snenneq said immediately.
“Yes,” Binabik said, nodding. “So we will all pray to our ancestors and gods they are both being still alive—Prince Morgan in the forest, Eolair with his captors.” He stood and put his hands to his mouth, then called, “Vaqana, hinik aia!”
It seemed no time at all before the wolf appeared, tongue dangling and eyes intent, clearly enjoying the smell of blood and burned flesh more than the humans did. The troll bent and put his mouth near the beast’s ear; it looked to Porto as if they were conversing quietly. The idea, though strange, did not seem impossible—the leader of the trolls had shown several times that the wolf understood him even better than a horse did its rider.
Now Binabik climbed onto Vaqana’s back and seized the ruff of fur at its neck, then called something to his wife Sisqi. The wolf leaped off so quickly that grass flew into the air behind him, carrying Binabik back toward the scene of the original attack.
“Where does he go?” asked Sergeant Levias. “Does he desert us?”
“The trolls are not that sort,” said Porto.
“My husband says of something he heard,” Sisqi explained. “He hurries to see, and tells us to follow with carefulness.”
Levias exchanged a look with the other two Erkynguards, and they stayed close together as they rode eastward along the Ymstrecca’s bank. Bodies lay scattered across the meadow like the tumbled statuary of a lost race. He heard a cry and looked up, squinting in the evening darkness until he could make out the distant conjoined shape of Binabik and his wolf hurrying back toward them.
“Come to me!” Binabik cried as drew nearer. “With swiftness!”
As the others approached, he turned the wolf away from the river and led them back across the grass, just beyond the last sad tangle of dead Erkynlandish soldiers. “Here, you see?” he said. “A large force of Thrithings horses were passing here—look, here is a shoe-marking from one.” He pointed at a muddy half-circle. “They lead away west and south, toward the place that is being called Spirit Hills, where the grassland people have their gathering.”
“I don’t understand,” Porto said.
“Are you suggesting we should try to attack them, with our paltry numbers?” Levias asked.
“I am suggesting only that you cannot understand until I am left to finish,” said Binabik with an edge of severity. “There is more to see.”
They followed him again, this time east along the periphery of the bloodied battleground, until they found another, smaller confusion of hoofprints, this one leading away in much the same direction, but in a slightly wider angle.
“What do you say, daughter?” he asked the smallest of the trolls.
She got down on one knee to touch the grass. “Men who took Eolair Count,” she said.
“Just so,” said Binabik. When he saw the look on Porto and the Erkynguardsmen, he grimaced. “The more small troop—the men who took Eolair—have passed this way. It is my guessing that they did not wish to come with much closeness to the ones who attacked our camping place, but they follow toward the same direction. Spirit Hills.”
“You think the ones who took Eolair might be another clan or something like?” asked Levias. He seemed to be viewing the trolls a little more respectfully now.
“It is being possible. Not all grasslanders are being the same—not all are even being part of the horse-clans.”
“Then we must follow them,” said Levias. “Perhaps we can wait until they sleep and steal back Count Eolair.”
“But what about the prince?” Porto said in dismay. “What about Prince Morgan? Didn’t you say he’d gone back into the forest? We can’t just leave him to the bears and wolves!”
“And that is being exactly the puzzle we must solve.” In the light from Ordwine’s torch, Binabik looked tired and miserable. “We should not be surrendering either of them, Morgan or Eolair.” He made a gesture with his fists against his chest. “But no matter how I fear for Count Eolair, I cannot be leaving Morgan the prince. He is my true friend’s grandson and I am sworn to protect him.”
“So am I!” Porto declared. “I’ll go with you.”
“But so were we, his guards,” said Levias. “The troll is right—we cannot desert the heir to the throne.”
“We cannot leave Eolair to the Thrithings-men either,” said Porto. “Sergeant Levias, you take your men and follow the tracks of the ones who took him. I’ll go with the trolls.”
Binabik shook his head. “I am sorry, Sir Porto, but if Morgan is not to be found just within the forest border, your horse will not be able to follow us to all the places we will go searching for him. I give salute to your brave heart, but you should be riding with the guardsmen after Count Eolair. You tall men and your horses will have better traveling on the open plains than in the deep woods and undergrowth. Also, I am having some knowledge of the woods where the Sithi live, but you are not. Distances and directions there can have a most deceptive appearance.”
“But the prince—!” Porto began.
“Will have best service from those of us who can be following him in tangled woods,” said Binabik. “And experienced trackers some of us are, too. Also, Vaqana’s courageous nose will be of great usefulness as well.”
Porto was not happy. “Lord Chancellor Pasevalles himself said that I must protect the prince at all times! I can’t leave him and go after someone else. I can’t. It would betray my trust.” And despite his genuine fear for the prince, he could not help thinking of the gold he had been promised, too, gold that would have saved his failing years from wretchedness. Who would support a soldier who was too old to fight and who had failed his only mission?
Binabik turned from a quiet conversation with his family to look him in the eye. It was strange to feel intimidated by one so small. “Good Sir Porto, we are all understanding your unhappiness,” the troll told him. “This is not a choice any of us wished to have. But you will only be making us move with more slowness if you come with us. If you do not wish for following Eolair with the sergeant and his men, then at least you must ride back to the Hayholt with all the speed that is possible.”
“Back to the Hayholt?”
“Prince Morgan lost in the forest and the lord steward stolen by Thrithings-men, who also killed many of the royal Erkynguard—this must be told to the king and queen!”
“I cannot do it.” Porto shook his head, so empty inside he thought a strong wind might blow him over. “I cannot leave the prince and the Hand of the Throne both. Send one of the guardsmen back to Erchester instead.”
Binabik frowned, thinking, then began to search in the bag he wore over his shoulder. He came up with a piece of dried and polished sheepskin. “That twig, Snenneq—give it to me.” Stick in hand, Binabik held it in the flame of Ordwine’s torch—the guardsman had to bend so he could reach it—and then began to write with the charred end on the scrap of pounded skin. It took a long time, and Porto had to force himself to be patient.
“There,” the troll said at last, and handed the strip of hide to Porto. “Send this with whom you are choosing. It is for taking to the king and queen. It tells them of what has happened. Now we must go to our different ways.”
“But . . .” Porto began, but he had no good argument against the troll’s pitiless reasoning. “Very well,” he said at last, though it felt as though his heart was splintering, “if it must be so, it must be.”
“You are a good man in truthfulness, Porto,” Binabik said. “But now we can waste no more breath and no more moments.” The troll waved to his family, who urged their rams into movement once more as he followed on his wolf. “Ride well—and hunter’s luck,” he called back to the knight and the three Erkynguards. “May happy fortune be watching over you all and bring you home with safety again.”
Porto, suddenly not just melancholy but fearful that he was watching some terrible thing happening, something he did not entirely understand, only raised his hand, but words of farewell caught in his throat.
What have we done? he wondered. We were a large, fine company—a company of soldiers guarding the prince and one of the highest nobles of all Osten Ard. Now we are a tatter, a few threads, and they’re all being pulled in different directions.
The trolls rode off north toward the great forest, a spectacle that at other times would have been almost comical—several small, stocky people mounted on sheep and wolves, like a proverb illustrated in the margin of a religious book. Levias and the other two soldiers began to discuss what they should do next, but their quiet, halting words sounded to Porto like children’s fearful voices in the darkness.
In Morgan’s dream the outcropping had become a thousand times larger, a true mountain. At the top, beyond his sight but not beyond his hearing, she was speaking to him again:
The others cannot hear me now, not even the blood of my blood. Why can you?
I don’t know. I don’t even know who you are! Part of him wanted to climb the great stone, to come face to face with this creature haunting his dreams, but he could feel her power and her age and it frightened him.
You know me, child. I spoke to you in the place of my helpless rest and you heard me. But here, where I stand in the doorway, there are no names. I cannot give you what I do not possess.
He woke suddenly, startled by the noise of wolves howling outside of his stony refuge, but after a heart-pounding moment he realized no animal could make a sound so loud. It was the wind, risen to a fierce pitch, moaning and shrieking, and even the forest seemed terrified. The trees he could see bent and waved their limbs. He could hear cracking, and the sound of branches falling.
The first light of dawn was coloring the violet sky, just ahead of the sun itself. The rain had weakened a little, but still blew sideways like the arrows of an attacking army. He had only a moment to feel grateful for his small portion of shelter, and another moment to worry about what would happen to him if the storm did not abate, then he heard another sound that pierced even the shrill anger of the wind.
“Reeeee! Reeeee!”
It was nothing he had heard before, not loud but clear even through the storm, so he knew it must be close by. It sounded like a hawk calling, or perhaps like some small animal screeching its terror as a predator snatched it up. He pushed himself as far back in the shallow crevice as he could manage. Whatever might be hunting out there in such unholy weather, he did not want to meet it.
He was only just starting to slide back into uneasy sleep when he was startled again, this time by a loud crack and what sounded like several branches falling, or perhaps even an entire tree brought down by the wind. He squinted out into the dim dawn light and saw a tangle of ash limbs that had just crashed to the ground near his rock, and in the midst of all the limbs and flapping leaves something small, round, and solid. It began to scream again—Reeee! Reeee! Reeeee!—but it did not crawl out of the fallen branches.
Morgan watched the pile of branches for what seemed a very long time. The shrill cries of distress grew fainter but did not stop. Dismay clutched at his stomach—not fear for himself, but at the clear sound of distress, of a small, terrified thing in pain. Still, he did not move, though every cry hurt him.
When the wind at last began to die and the diminished rain was falling at a more ordinary angle once more, Morgan crawled out of his crevice. The entire slope in front of the limestone outcrop was covered with fallen limbs and great piles of leaves that had been ripped living from their twigs, but the clutter of ash branches and the thing which had fallen with them had finally gone still. Morgan approached with caution, sword in hand. As he drew nearer, he saw that what had fallen was a single large and crooked limb that had brought down several others with it. He leaned over the tangle of broken branches at its outer end and saw something small and brown prisoned inside them, something that was still alive, because it turned its round, dark eyes toward him, semicircles of white showing along their edges. Then it began to thrash, but with the helpless weakness of something that had already tried and failed to escape more times than he could imagine.
It was no larger than a human baby, but he could see little else of the creature except its reddish-brown fur and a hint here and there of pink skin, because most of it was covered in mud and leaves. He reached out with the tip of his sword and lifted one of the covering branches, then broke it off near its base. The thing watching him did not stir, but the wide, terrified eyes never left him.
Within a few moments he had cut or broken enough branches to free the small creature. He stepped back to allow it to make its escape, but it did not move. He wondered if it was frightened of him or badly injured. He looked around, but the rest of the slope seemed empty of anything but the wreckage left by the storm.
“Reeeee,” the little thing whined, and this time it seemed like the bleat of something dying.
Caught up by something he could not have explained even to himself, Morgan slowly and carefully lifted the rest of the twigs off it until he could see the creature whole. He was no master of woodcraft, but the animal was utterly unfamiliar, and when he saw the tiny, long pink fingers on its forepaws, he had a sudden start. This, or something like it, must have been what touched him during his first escape into the forest. He guessed it must be one of the treetop watchers that had followed him through the woods.
Despite its almost human hands, the creature was no ape. It had the harelip and long, flat front teeth of a rat or squirrel, but its large eyes were set too far forward for either of those, and its small, round ears were low on its head, giving it a curious, manlike appearance almost as unsettling as the pink fingers. Its small chest was pumping in and out, in terror or its last extremities, but he feared it would bite him if he tried to help it any more, so he sat back on his haunches and watched. Still the little animal did not move.
He was about to give up and let it live or die on its own, but when he stood, the creature suddenly bared its teeth and screeched “CHIK!” loudly, then “Reee! Reee! Ree!” again, startling him so that he took a step back. He heard movement in the trees and looked up. He thought he saw a glimpse of red but couldn’t be sure.
“Chik!” the little thing barked once more, but then its head lolled back as though it had exhausted its final strength.
He bent toward it, this time wrapping his cloak several times around his hands. When he lifted it loose from the last branches it hissed and chiked again, struggling weakly in his grasp, but did not try to bite him, although he suspected that if it had been stronger it might have. Now that it was in his hands Morgan could feel it trembling through the wool of his cloak, and without thinking he wrapped it up and lifted it into the crook of his arm. He heard more movement in the trees overhead, but no voices answered the little thing’s quiet ree-reeing. He carried it back to the crevice, wrapping the cloak so that the little beast’s head protruded but its limbs were held against its sides, like a swaddled infant. When he reached his sanctuary he sat down with it in his lap. The struggling gradually ceased and the thing’s large eyes closed, but its chest was still rising and falling beneath his hands.
“Reeeeeeee . . .” it breathed, then fell silent again but for the thin whisper of its breath. He held it against his chest to warm it, and remembered the days when his sister Lillia had been a baby, when the only thing that had brought him even a moment’s relief from the horror of his father’s death was to hold her and watch her innocent face.
For a little while, he even forgot his hunger.