28
Countess Rhona’s Tears
Third Day of Anitul, Founding Year 1201
My dear Lord Tiamak,
Greetings from your servant, Etan. I pray that God gives good health to you, your lady, and our king and queen.
Here I will tell you a few of the adventures I have had and the things I have learned since I left Kwanitupul. Since I know you for a supremely busy man, I will preface all by saying that I have discovered nothing that much advances the search for Prince Josua. Whether my quest has so far been completely without useful results, I will leave you to judge.
The voyage from the edge of the Wran to the city of Nabban brought a few unpleasant surprises. All ships stay very close to the shore these days because of the current savagery of the kilpa, so travel is slow.
I told you in my last letter, which I hope you received, that I had seen kilpa for the first time, and of how unpleasant I found them. I have had closer sight of the creatures since then, and it has not improved my opinion. They are very lively this year, the sailors always enjoyed warning me, although I think even they had begun to tire of trying to frighten the monk new to the sea by the time we had the encounter I will describe.
The fishing boat on which Madi the guide had bought our passage lay at anchor one night near Dellis Latia. It was the sort of boat owned by fisher-folk too poor to have a Niskie on board—one of the terrible sea-creatures actually climbed onto the boat in the middle of the night. Madi, his children, and I were all sleeping in a sort of tent the captain had put up for us in the middle of the deck, and we awakened to the sound of shouting and men running up and down the deck with torches.
I did not dare rush out at first, knowing nothing of what was happening, but the shouting suddenly stopped and I could hear the sailors talking in more normal tones again, so I asked Madi to go and see what had happened. He refused, stating his duty to stay near his children, which does not seem to stop him from spending nights in portside taverns and returning only with the dawn’s light, so I went myself.
The small crew was gathered at the stern around what, at first, I took for a dead man but soon learned was something quite different. A kilpa had climbed silently up the anchor rope and onto the deck. Luckily for all, the ship’s mate had seen the creature and had gone silently for an ax, then came up behind the thing and killed it, staving in its head so deeply that the ax could not be easily pulled out again.
As the men held torches close, making the Sign of the Tree and spitting into their hands—a sailor’s custom, I’m told—I took the chance to examine the creature, but only after convincing myself by several hard pokes that it was truly dead. As best I could tell in the dim light it was gray and smooth in some places and knobby in others, like a frog, but its shape was too much like a man for any Godly person’s comfort. It smelled of the sea and of corruption. The eyes were black and shiny, and its mouth was like a hole, almost completely round, as if the horrible thing had been surprised by the suddenness of its own death. But one of the sailors leaned in with a boat hook and pulled the mouth open, showing me that inside was a pair of jaws much like a bird’s beak, except that both halves of the beak were divided into many sharp, back-curving teeth.
“Get those into you, you’ll never get loose,” the sailor told me, and it was easy to believe him. I still cannot forget how disturbingly manlike the brutish thing seemed, especially in the shape of its head and the flabby, splayed fingers that looked so much like ours.
We heard many more of the creatures in the water all around the ship that night, honking and hooting and splashing, and so the mate stayed awake on deck with a lantern and the ax that had served him so well, but by God’s grace we had no other unwanted guests. I do not know if you have ever heard kilpa, my lord, and I hope you have never heard them in such a situation. The noise they make, I would say, is what you might expect from a goose with a mouthful of water. I do not mean to be flippant, nor to disturb you overmuch with these descriptions, but I know your love of philosophy is wide, my lord, and along with the plants and herbs you love so much, I think you are interested in even the less wholesome parts of God’s unfathomable Nature.
The rest of the trip toward the city passed without any great trouble, and at last we came around the Horn of Nabban and reached the city’s great harbor and safety, at least from kilpa.
Here in Nabban I have only Josua’s distant early days to use as a guide, his years studying with the Usirean Brotherhood and his later time here during the war in which he lost his hand. It was not easy to find anyone who still remembers the prince. I might have had better luck among his fellow nobles, but the city is dangerous now and many of the rich and powerful have fled to their country estates. My best luck came from finding comrades of Josua’s from his days among the Usirean Brothers, many of whom are now high officials in the church. A few of these kindly gave me their time but had little to tell about Josua, at least little of interest to us. The most useful source was Syllaris the Younger (his father was also a paragon of the Church) who exchanged letters with Prince Josua for many years—even after he had taken his family to Kwanitupul at the end of the Storm King’s War. But Syllaris had not heard from him or anything about him since the time he left on that fateful journey whose ending we still cannot guess.
Syllaris did, however, have many letters from Prince Josua that he kindly allowed me to copy. I would never make a writing priest, I fear, and after three days of transcribing them, my arms and hands ached and trembled so that you would have thought me palsied, but I have them with me and if my other tasks permit, will copy them for you as well.
Not a single person of those I spoke to had heard anything about Prince Josua since his great silence began. If anything truly useful is to come of my journey, it will have to be found in Perdruin, his last known destination. But I must confess, my lord, that I am doubtful any trace of him remains there after twenty years and more. Still, my God can work wonders!
May the Good Lord bless you and keep you, Lord Tiamak, and our noble King and Queen as well.
Your humble servant,
Fr. Etan Ercestris
When the rap on the door came, loud and insistent, even the king’s servants were confused. Several of them appeared from out of the side rooms connected to the royal bedchamber, none of them completely dressed. Simon was groggy too, but none of the servants were accomplishing anything useful so he pushed past them in his nightshirt and went to the door.
“Who is there? What hour of the clock is it?” he demanded.
“It is Countess Rhona, Majesty. I must talk to you!”
Something in the tone of her voice made Simon open the door without asking first to see if there were guards with her. It was a foolish mistake—he knew even popular monarchs should not be so careless with their safety—but he was alarmed, worrying for all his loved ones, Miri and Morgan and little Lillia, and terrified at the prospect of more bad news.
Rhona stood before a huddle of guards. She was dressed in a white night robe as if she had just come from bed, with only a blanket thrown around her shoulders for warmth against the castle’s night draughts; one of her maids stood beside her, similarly attired but without a blanket, young face full of fear. “Oh, Majesty, I am so sorry,” said Rhona, and then burst into tears.
As the countess struggled for composure Simon felt a chill of dread creep over him, but the guards were watching and he did not want to show it. “Good God, woman, sorry about what? Tell me! You are frightening everybody. Has something happened to my granddaughter?” Although Rhona’s title lifted her far above such tasks and responsibilities, her own kindness of heart had made her one of Lillia’s most careful guardians.
“No, no,” Rhona managed at last. “Lillia is well so far as I know, all the gods bless her. No, it is my husband. He just rode in and his news . . .” She suddenly became aware of the soldiers staring, their faces pale and ghostly in the dim, lamplit corridor, and took a moment to collect herself. “It was just that his news shocked me. I am sorry to be such a fool, to weep like this. But he is coming directly to speak to you. I am very sorry for the late hour.”
Simon heard a clatter on the stairs at the end of the passage, then Rhona’s husband Count Nial appeared, still dressed for the road in cloak and high boots. He had clearly not shaved in several days, but it was still easy to see the rivulet of blood on his cheek.
“Are you hurt?” Simon asked.
“No, praise Heaven. Just a branch when I was riding too fast.” Nial reached up and dabbed at the blood, then squinted at it briefly. “I must request an audience, Majesty. I am sorry to wake you at such a cruel hour.”
“Please, no apologies, my lord.” Simon felt a little relieved—it was doubtful Nial would be bringing him news about his wife, so that meant neither Miri nor Lillia were the cause of Rhona’s tears. “I can see you have come in haste. Come into my chamber. I will have the servants bring you something to drink and to eat, then we’ll hear your news.”
The guards, understanding that the moment had passed, and they would have to wait like everyone else to find out what was happening, retreated to their respective posts outside the royal bedchamber. Simon ushered Rhona and her husband in, but the maid lingered in the doorway.
“Rhona?” he asked, indicating the fretful servant.
The countess nodded. “She is trustworthy, Sire. She is my niece from Hernystir. And she has already heard my husband’s news when he woke me up.”
Simon decided it was better to have the maid inside than outside talking to the soldiers, so he ushered her in, then sent his servants for refreshment for the count.
It was obvious that whatever Nial had to tell was unpleasant: he could barely wait for the food and drink, tapping his foot on the floor. Simon, though, was in no hurry. After so long without dreaming, he was beginning to feel as if his missing dreams had flooded into waking life instead—terrible, mad dreams, like his grandson vanished and his daughter-in-law dead—and he was reluctant to hear what was next.
I never wanted to be a king, he thought as a servant came in and poured wine. He snatched up his own cup and lifted it to his lips. Never even thought of it. I could barely imagine being a knight. How did this all come to me? And why, if I am only to rule over disaster?
For a moment he remembered the dull red anger of the Conqueror Star, the flaming comet that had hung over the Hayholt in the earliest days of Miriamele’s father’s reign. It had been a warning that bad times were on the way, although King Elias had paid little attention. But where is my warning? Simon thought.
He became aware that Nial and Rhona were both waiting for him to say something. He paused, his second cup of wine halfway to his lips. “Please, Count, if you’ve eaten something, give me your news.” He did his best to smile. “I am fortified now.”
“We will need a different kind of fortification, I fear, your Majesty.” Nial’s long face was pinched, and beneath the grime of travel he was clearly distraught. “What good men have long feared has come to pass. An army of Norns have left their mountain and crossed into Erkynland.”
“What?” Simon nearly sprang out of his chair in surprise. He folded his long legs under him and perched on the edge of the seat. His hands were shaking, so he clasped them together. “Tell me all.”
It did not take long. Nial explained that while in Hernysadharc he had received a private message from Earl Murdo of Carn Inbarh concerning Aelin and Naglimund—a message so shocking and dangerous that it had been committed to memory by a trusted third party instead of written down. Simon listened in amazement coupled with a newer, greater sense of unreality, as if his fantasy about dreams escaping to bedevil his waking life had proved itself true.
“I know Sir Aelin,” Simon said at last, struggling to make sense of what he had just heard. “I know he is trustworthy, and not only because he is Eolair’s kin.” Anger rose in him, a fury he had not felt in a long time. “God’s Bloody Tree, what is King Hugh playing at? Is he completely mad? And what do those white goblins want this time? Surely if Aelin is right, the troop he saw crossing Hernystir is too small to attack our cities, even with the Norns’ strongest magicks.”
“It is hard for me to say, Majesty.” Nial looked like a man who had just lost his closest friend. “If this Aelin’s report is true, then by all the gods, beyond even the danger it portends, the honor of my country has been thrown down and trampled in the mud! I have never felt ashamed to be a Hernystirman until today.”
“You are not to blame for King Hugh’s actions, my lord.” But God in his Heaven knew that Simon was itching to lash out at someone. The moment Miri had gone the entire world seemed to tumble off its perch. He took a breath. “Eolair had concerns about Hugh the last time we saw him, and then Queen Inahwen wrote to tell that it was worse even than Eolair had thought. But I never suspected Hugh would do this. Nothing like this. Blessed Saint Rhiap, what could have possessed him?”
“Foolishness. Murderous foolishness.” Countess Rhona’s tears had dried without trace, as if the anger and disgust that twisted her features had boiled them away. “The rumors were true after all. Inahwen said that Hugh and that witch, Lady Tylleth, have revived the secret worship of the Crow Mother—the Morriga. I daresay that has led them to the Norns.”
“I wish I had known of this,” said Count Nial, his face grim. “Perhaps I could have done something. I heard rumors, but rumors—well, they are as common as flies.”
“You could not have done anything,” Simon told him. “When a king goes mad, no one person can lead him back. I saw it happen with Miri’s father.” He stopped to think for a moment. “It was the Norns behind that too, or at least the Storm King.”
“Was it not their queen?” Rhona asked. “That dreadful masked witch?”
“Likely. I don’t know. It’s all going wrong.” He was feeling unutterably weary as well as fearful. For long moments he just stared into his wine cup.
“Your Majesty?” said Nial at last.
“I was just thinking. About when I was young. I lived here in the castle, you know. I was a servant, a scullion. Of course you know—that’s why they call me the Commoner King.”
“It is one of the reasons the people love you and trust you, Majesty,” said Rhona.
“But it’s not enough. It’s never enough.” He looked at them both and tried to summon another smile, but this time could not manage. “The thing is, when I was young I heard stories of the Norns and the Sithi, but they both seemed terribly far away, like dragons or witches—things I never expected to see in the world with my own eyes. If someone had told me all that would happen afterward, all the strange sights Miri and I would see, I would have thought myself ungodly lucky. Imagine, a common kitchen boy fighting a dragon—and surviving! And I met the Sithi and even lived with them. But none of it was like the stories. They never tell you that part, you know—the part where you’re afraid and you’re pissing your pants. They never tell you that these Norns and whatnot live forever and you’re never rid of them. That monster of a queen, sitting there in her mountain for centuries like a great spider, and all she ever thinks about is destroying us. And the only ones who could help us, the only other folk who truly understand them, have hidden themselves away. The Sithi are not going to be any help this time, that’s as clear as clear. We’ll have to face whatever Hugh has unleashed by ourselves.” He thought of all those he had learned from and trusted, Morgenes, Gelöe, Isgrimnur, Josua. All gone now. “I was lonely as a child, you know,” he said.
“I beg your pardon, Majesty?” said Count Nial.
“I had few friends here in the Hayholt. Only Jeremias the chandler’s boy, and that was later. When I was little I hardly mixed even with the other servants’ children. I lived with the scullions. Most of them were grown men. The chambermaids were my parents, more or less. But I was always lost in my own thoughts. I would be asked to play a game and something would catch my notice, and before I realized it I had wandered off to follow a bird or something. After a while they stopped asking me to play. They called me ‘mooncalf.’ I suppose I was.”
After a stretching silence, he looked up at last to see Rhona and her husband staring at him in a worried way. How long had he been woolgathering? What had he been talking about?
“I know you need rest, Count,” he said abruptly.
“But what about my news, Your Majesty? What about the Norns?”
“There is nothing to be done tonight, even if the White Foxes were camped just outside Erchester, pounding their war drums. I will call for Tiamak and Pasevalles and the rest in the morning.” He saw they were still regarding him with concern. “I am well, Countess Rhona—don’t stare at me that way, if you please. It is just that the late hour and the shock of your husband’s message has muddled me. In the meantime, let us say a prayer of thanks for Aelin and Earl Murdo—and you, too, Count Nial—true Hernystirmen all, brave friends who risked much to get us this news. And thanks to your good lady as well, of course.” Simon stood. The wine made him sway a little, so that he felt like a tall tree in the wind, roots beginning to work free of the earth. “To bed now, all. We will try to make sense of this bad news when God’s sun is back in the sky and the shadows are not so deep.”
The count and countess were whispering to each other as they left, perhaps about him, but Simon didn’t care. He had never felt so tired and overwhelmed in all his life, and for once his dreamless bed seemed like a refuge.
The news about Hernystir’s King Hugh had come to Pasevalles early in the morning, and the king had called for a meeting with all his most important councilors at noon to decide what to do, which left him little time for his errand. But he was unsettled and could not wait.
Pasevalles looked up and down the fourth-floor passage again, then paused to listen but heard nothing. He took a candle from the tray he carried and lit it from a hallway torch before going in.
No footprints showed in the thin layer of dust on the floor, which eased his mind greatly. Hearing Tiamak talk about tunnels and secret entrances had raised his hackles—he had half-expected to find his private sanctum had been discovered. Still, like almost everyone else in the castle, Tiamak and King Simon were busy now considering the news from Hernystir, which meant that the subject of hidden passages beneath the castle would likely be forgotten, at least for a while.
Pasevalles had discovered the hidden door while investigating the passages from John Josua’s old workrooms in the Granary Tower. When he realized that the maze of tunnels led not just down to all the mysteries below, but also up to one particular fourth-floor room, he had hastened to make that seldom-used chamber his own secret hideaway. It had been hard to visit the Granary Tower without someone noticing him, since its entrance was outside the residence, against the wall of the Inner Keep, so he welcomed a new entrance to the castle’s hidden deeps.
To his relief, he found no signs that anyone had visited the room recently, and no evidence anyone had discovered the secret door or its mechanism. He listened one more time for approaching footsteps, then pulled down on the wall sconce. The secret door, weighted on a pivot at its center, swung wide enough to let him slide through. Just to make certain he would be undisturbed, he barred it from the inside. It was one of the few portals in the whole castle that could be sealed from both directions. Pasevalles suspected the hidden passage might have once allowed Aedonite priests in the time of Tethtain the Usurper to get in and out of the castle without Tethtain’s soldiers discovering them.
It was a long way down the hidden stairs from the top of the residence to the bottom, but that was only the beginning of his journey. Holding his candle high and balancing the tray on one arm, he followed the twisting passages and crossings he had traveled so many times that he knew them like the halls of his childhood home, Chasu Metessa. But the corridors of Metessa had not been full of deadly traps like these were.
Pasevalles moved slowly, eyes wide open in the shadowed depths. He came to the end of the last passage, another low corridor cut directly into crude stone that ended in a vertical shaft extending upward to somewhere he could not guess. He did what he always did and stood the candle in the alcove at the end of the passage: the thing that lived here below the castle did not like light. Then he stepped forward until he could sense nothing above his head but an almost palpable darkness and the faint harmonies of moving air.
“I am here,” he called, but not too loudly, then listened to the forlorn sound of his voice echoing up the shaft. He waited but did not call again. He had learned that lesson the hard way, when his mysterious benefactor had ignored him for most of a month after he had made too much noise with his summons. Whoever—or whatever—lurked in this shadow-place seemed as averse to sound as to light, and Pasevalles did not wish to lose its favor.
At last, without knowing how he knew it, he discovered that he was no longer alone. A single word floated down to him from some unknown place above, a single whispered syllable as bodiless and inhuman as the wind.
“Speak.”
“I need the Witness. I have brought you a tray.” He set it down on the uneven stone floor, careful not to knock anything over or raise too much dust.
The voice did not speak again, but he heard stone scraping behind him and knew that the immense door had been lifted, though by what mechanism or magic he still couldn’t guess: he had felt the stone door and knew it was huge and heavy. He left his candle burning in the alcove—this was a dance he had performed many times and Pasevalles knew each step by heart—then made his way back down the corridor, trailing his fingers on the wall until he found the open doorway and stepped through. The massive door-stone slid back into place behind him, then another great stone slid upward and the light of the Witness spilled out as the door scraped shut behind him.
For a long time he could only stand and look at the gleaming thing—and no wonder: Pasevalles had never seen anything else like it, and felt certain he never would. He had dreamed of it more nights than he could count. The Witness and the rocky plinth on which it sat were the only two things in the small chamber. The first time he had stood before it he had thought the Witness stone was shapeless, but now it was almost a familiar sight, and he could see that the purple-gray crystal had the form of a cloud scudding along the sky, flat on the bottom but with swirls and peaks like something a baker might whip into being with flour and sugar and eggs. In the center of the object a spherical glow, yellow-white and cold, turned the imperfections in the grayish crystal into dark lines that almost seemed to flow and billow, though he had watched them carefully many times and had never seen them truly move.
Still, it was a beautiful thing, a wondrous thing, an object of astonishing power. Pasevalles moved closer and reached out to put his hands on it, amazed as always that his childhood certainties had proved true, that he truly was different than all other men—above them and above their mundane fates as well. What at first felt as cold as ice quickly warmed beneath his fingers until it was hard to tell where his own flesh ended and the Witness began. It seemed as though somehow Pasevalles flowed down into his own arms, and from there into the glowing stone itself. The shadows of the chamber vanished; he was swimming through very different shadows, through darknesses that had length and breadth, that he felt as if he could reach out and touch. But Pasevalles knew better than to try such foolishness, just as he knew better than to move incautiously in these dark subterranean spaces, or to offend the creature, person, or spirit who let him touch this incredible thing and bend it to his own uses.
Did its mysterious guardian ever use the Witness? He doubted he would ever know.
For a long time Pasevalles was oblivious to everything but the not-place in which he floated and the dangers that surrounded him, dangers he could scarcely understand but had to avoid to make the Witness do what he wished. Then, out of the surrounding darkness, he felt something reach out to him and enfold him, holding him as effortlessly as a gnat trapped in a man’s closed fist.
Hail to the Lord of Song, Pasevalles said, or thought he said, since words and ideas were strangely interchangeable when he used the Witness.
The presence might have been amused or annoyed. It was so much stronger than he, he would never fully understand it, and even his best guesses sometimes proved utterly mistaken. What do you want now, mortal? it asked.
With respect, I wish to know why I was not told of King Hugh’s part in this. His soldiers met with the Hikeda’ya, and that meeting was seen by others—others who have spread the word to King Simon and his allies. It has made things much harder for me. He did his best to be measured, calm.
Do you think we owe you something? The presence that held him did not sound amused now. Do you think all our thought should be shared with you?
No, no, of course not. But if I am valuable to you, why do you make it difficult for me? Hugh is capricious, even for a mortal. You should not put such trust in him. He has made an arrogant mistake and given the game away.
He could sense the displeasure on the other side of the Witness like a hand squeezing his heart, and for a moment Pasevalles felt himself swooning as the pain grew. Was that all he was to them, he wondered, even as he fought to hold onto himself—a pet? Something to be indulged and then kicked, reward and punishment almost interchangeable?
You have worth to us, the voice on the other end of the Witness told him. But do not think that worth gives you the right to question the Queen of All and her closest servants.
No, he said. Never. But now the people of the Hayholt know that the Hikeda’ya have crossed into mortal lands. They are preparing their defenses. Instead of surprising them, you will have to fight.
This time the thought came to him with the cold amusement he remembered from previous conversations, an utter certainty of power. It was enough to raise gooseflesh, if he had been able at that moment to feel his own skin.
Has it not occurred to you that we might want them to know? We have suffered long, and we hunger for vengeance. We do not want a bloodless victory. A moment or something like it passed in that timeless place, long enough for Pasevalles to feel a little of the other’s thoughts—a blurry, red-lit vision of flames and widespread murder, sudden as the things revealed in a lightning flash. It is late to be worrying about what will happen, mortal.
But you will abide by your bargain with me? By the sacred names you swore upon, the Garden and Tzo and Hamakho?
The amusement evaporated in an instant and the cold washed back over his thoughts. We can do no other. We will give you what we promised. You will stand upon the corpses of your fellow mortals to receive it, but we will give it to you. As to the preparations of those other mortals, they will come to naught. Now, have you any other reason to waste our time?
Pasevalles, feeling as exhausted now as a bird caught in a gale wind, battered and confused simply by being so close to the voice that spoke for the Queen of Nakkiga, could only form a single negative. No.
And then the dark, cold presence was gone, and Pasevalles was back in the chamber, pulling his hands away from the Witness. He was breathing very hard and his knees were weak, so he took a moment to steady himself.
The first time he had been granted use of the Witness, it had been such a profound experience that he had not been able to imagine leaving such an astounding thing behind in the depths. He had even picked it up, heavy as it was, thinking he could carry it away to one of his hidden places in the Hayholt, but a few moments later he had almost fallen to his death down a shaft that opened in the floor of the Witness chamber.
Lesson learned. Pasevalles had realized then that he would have to play by the rules of the stone’s mysterious guardian if he wanted to taste such power again.
He moved to the door, empty-handed, as he had been each time since the first. The stone slab scraped quietly upward and he was released into the corridor. He took his candle from the alcove, saw the tray still waiting undisturbed where he had left it, then began his ascent back into the world of light and air and mortal men.