“He’s probably in bed, Brother. He spends most of his nights in the library.”
“Well if he is, wake him.”
They sat without speaking, Bear almost visibly steaming, Precious Wind regarding Xulai with a strange expression, half amusement, half concern, while Xulai herself sat suspended, in a kind of mental cobweb, thoughts going off in all directions and ending nowhere in particular. The abbot gave no hint either of discomfort or of what he might be thinking.
A rap came at the door, which opened to admit a very tall, gray, thin brother in wrinkled white robes and a disheveled golden stole, his golden headdress so far atilt it was in imminent danger of sliding down over one ear. He had obviously dressed in a hurry. His furry eyebrows struggled with each other over the bridge of his beaky nose, and his lips were pursed in annoyance. The wrinkles around his mouth indicated the expression was habitual.
“Sit down, Brother Wordswell,” the abbot said invitingly. “Will you have tea? No? Well then, sit comfortably while this young woman tells us a tale and asks you for some information afterward.”
Xulai folded her hands in her lap. “The abbot asks what we know about Alicia, Duchess of Altamont. To speak of her we must first speak of Mirami.
“Falyrion, Duke of Kamfels, had a wife, Naila; a daughter, Genieve; and a son, Falredi. Naila died. Not long thereafter, Falyrion married Mirami, who bore him a daughter, Alicia, and a son, Hulix. Then Falyrion died and Falredi succeeded to the ducal throne of Kamfels. Then Falredi died. Mirami’s son Hulix succeeded him as duke. Mirami left Kamfels to her toddler son, under the care of a steward, and took her daughter, Alicia, to the court of King Gahls on the King’s Highland. It is my understanding that the king calls his court, city, and the surrounding area Ghastain.
“Strangely enough, over the preceding few years, King Gahls had been married three times. All three of his young, healthy, virginal wives died soon after marrying, suddenly, strangely, and childless.
“King Gahls then married Mirami, who very promptly bore him a son, supposed half brother to Mirami’s other children, though likely they are full siblings sired by her chamberlain and constant companion.”
Bear half rose. “Xulai!”
She waved him down imperiously. “Alicia grew up and was given the duchy of Altamont. It was then suggested to Justinian, Duke of Wold, that he should marry Alicia, Duchess of Altamont. He, being already betrothed to a Tingawan daughter of the clan Do-Lok, refused this honor, and his wife-to-be was cursed on their wedding day. She later died strangely and childlessly, and the duchess Alicia is now trying to force a marriage with Justinian.
“One ducal husband and one ducal stepson dead in Kamfels, three royal brides dead in Ghastain, one ducal bride dead in Wold, all dead! And, after all these convenient deaths, one of Mirami’s children is heir to the throne of Ghastain; one is Duke of Kamfels; one is Duchess of Altamont; and all three of the children, Rancitor, Alicia, and Hulix, are evincing considerable interest in Wold and the castle of Woldsgard.
“That is what we know about the duchess and her mother. Oh yes! It is not impossible that Naila, Falyrion’s first wife, was an even earlier target.”
She looked up. Silence. Three pairs of eyes focused on her, three jaws slightly dropped. Brother Wordswell was staring at his hands. “I’m sorry,” she said in an unapologetic tone. “I thought you wanted me to speak.”
“How old are you?” asked the abbot.
“It seems I am about twenty,” Xulai said with a slightly twisted smile.
Bear said disagreeably, “Twenty going on sixty-five.”
“I had been told you were somewhat younger,” murmured the abbot.
“What an odd coincidence!” Xulai replied, managing a smile. “I had been told the same thing. For some no doubt suitable reason, I was treated as though I was much younger and was enabled to look and act the part. I suppose it was a kind of protective coloration provided by the Tingawans who selected me as Xakixa. Now it is evidently time to give up that particular pretense. It’s a relief to me, in a way, for it helps me understand why I’ve been troubled for quite a long time by feelings that did not seem suitably childish.”
After a long moment’s silence, the abbot said, “It’s strange no one else has noticed these coincidences in Mirami’s life.”
Xulai nodded. “There has been some notice; covert, I should imagine. And there’s no real reason anyone should have taken overt notice. The events occurred over a period of years and in separate places. The births of Alicia and Hulix came some years before the deaths of Duke Falyrion and Falredi; there was at least a year or so between the deaths of each of King Gahls’s three young wives; the birth of the heir to the throne came years before Alicia was given the lands of Altamont and began her assault upon my . . . lord Justinian. And there were years, long years, after that before Princess Xu-i-lok died.
“To anyone hearing of these, they would have seemed separate happenings, one thing at a time, but I heard about them all at once, in the space of a few hours. It was like hearing a song, each verse with the same refrain. Death. Barren wives. Mirami.” She looked down at her hands, then up into the librarian’s quiet face. “Elder Brother, what do you know of Huold the Fearless?”
“And how did Huold get into this matter?” Wordswell asked.
Xulai had briefly thought she might tell the abbot about her real parentage and what she had learned about the duchess during her nighttime mission in the forest of Wold, but upon considering last night’s meeting with the prior, she had decided against it. She was not entirely sure he could be trusted, and those things had been Xu-i-lok’s secrets, her mother’s secrets. She would keep them until she knew it was no longer necessary. The story she could tell was true in most of its elements, and it would do well enough.
“The road to the Stoneway, north of Wold, is little used. I often sat in one of the orchard trees along the road, well hidden from any passerby, a quiet place where I could read or merely sit and watch the birds. One day the duchess went past on her way to visit her brother. She passed very slowly, stopping here and there along the way, eating Wold with her eyes as I had seen her do before. I heard her remark to her companion that she intended to find something on Wold lands that Huold had left there. I wondered if that might be why she is so set on my cousin marrying her. So she’ll have the right to scour the lands, looking for whatever it is.”
“You never mentioned this to me,” said Bear, his eyes slitted as they were when he was angry.
She smiled sweetly at him, ignoring the answering heat his tone had ignited. “Bear, I beg your pardon. It happened just before the princess died. If you’ll recall, everyone at Woldsgard was grieving and distracted. Then this journey began, almost overnight, and there’s been no time to talk quietly of anything at all. The trip has been long and tiring and dangerous, and it was more important to get here safely than to discuss the devices of ancient heroes, which, in fact, I had forgotten about until this morning.”
“But since it did come to mind,” the abbot said thoughtfully, “you thought it might be useful to know about it.”
“Yes. Exactly. Who was Huold, and what was it he hid or left or buried on the lands of Wold, assuming he did any such thing?”
“The thing he supposedly took into the Icefang range during his last journey,” said the abbot, cocking his head and staring at his librarian.
Brother Wordswell wiped his lips, shrugged, looked over the company searchingly, then settled himself. “Throughout all his many conquests, it was said that Ghastain wore or carried a mysterious thing of limitless potency which gave him great power.” Wordswell shifted in his chair, head rotating back and forth slightly, as though glancing through an index on the wall that no one else could see. “It was said that this whatever-it-was allowed him to prevail even when the odds were against him, even when vastly outnumbered, even when he attacked heedlessly, without planning. The post–Before Time historian Thrastus Danilus tells us that as Ghastain’s reputa
tion grew, so did his pride. He thought himself invincible. He coveted the world!
“During all those years, Huold was his faithful and beloved companion, many times wounded in Ghastain’s service. He was sometimes called the Arm of Ghastain. We learn from the historian Barkamber that when Ghastain ran out of other places to covet, he amassed an armada and sailed westward to seize the isles of the Sea King. Barkamber quotes the stories of that time, which tell us that the Sea King called up the power of the deep. Waves taller than the tallest tree rose from the depths; Ghastain grasped the thing of power and called upon it, but it was of no use. He and all his men were drawn down into the sea.
“Only one man returned from the armada of Ghastain: Huold, only thereafter called the Fearless or the Heroic. He arrived at Ghost Isle on the back of a great silver fish. There’s an interesting mosaic of it, as a matter of fact, in the castle of—”
“Just the story,” interrupted the abbot. “Please.”
The librarian frowned, trying to remember where he’d left off. “Ah. He told the people of Ghost Isle that he stood beside Ghastain when the great wave came. He said that he leapt into the sea himself and grabbed the fin of the great fish, riding it into the depths to save his leader and friend. Down he went, away from the sun, the air, farther down, where the only light was the green luminescence of living things. He reached for Ghastain’s extended hand, from which something trailed upward. Then a huge tentacle rose like a serpent from the depths to snatch Ghastain away from him. Huold said this was one of the arms of the Sea King himself. Just as it took Ghastain, Huold managed to catch hold of the thing that trailed upward from his hand: supposedly the sacred thing, the powerful thing, the whatever-it-was.
“He told the people of Ghost Isle that the whatever-it-was supposedly gave him the power to ride the great fish to the anchorage in Ragnibar Fjord. There he found a man to serve him, a mountaineer, and they two together set out south—this was long before the Stoneway was cut through—with the intention of traversing the Icefang Mountains. Woldsgard did not exist then, of course. That whole area was wilderness.
“So far, most stories are in agreement. From that point on, the stories diverge. Most of them agree that Huold went south, to the place where Woldsgard was later built, and from there headed west into the mountains. Many of the stories mention the place now known as Marish, for the ruins of an ancient temple, a Hag’s temple, lie near there, and Drawlip of Thrattlemere writes that the sacred thing was said to have come originally from there. Others say this is ridiculous, that the miraculous thing belonged originally to the Forest God, or the Hag Goddess, or any of a dozen other deities. Various other writers claim that Huold had sworn to Ghastain that he would return the thing to its place of origin, but this may merely be an attempt to explain why he went off into the mountains as he did.”
Wordswell nodded to himself. “Up to Huold’s arrival at Ghost Isle—a place now drowned beneath the sea—everything concerning the mysterious relic is unsubstantiated. Then we begin to find some undoubted and documented happenings. It is undoubted truth that some people from a settlement on the site of the place we now call Wellsmouth took a wagon into the mountains to cut wood, and there they found Huold’s servant half-frozen just inside the complex of caverns now called Chasmgard. He told of Huold’s arrival on the fish and said he had lost his master in the mountains during a storm. He couldn’t remember when or how long before.
“Later on, the servant was questioned, repeatedly, carefully, by people from the abbey that existed then, a forerunner of this abbey, though not on this site. The servant knew nothing of the thing, the sacred thing, whatever-it-was of legend. After they left the Ghost Isle, Huold had never mentioned any such thing to him. He was asked where they had been going. To a place to return something, he said. What had they been going to return? He didn’t know. What had Huold worn? Had he worn a bracelet, a ring, a belt, a torque, a pendant, perhaps? Had he carried anything in his kit? Did he wear a band to hold his hair; did he carry a knife? Did he carry anything closed, like a leather bag that the servant had never seen the contents of? To all such questions the servant said no. No, he had carried nothing the servant hadn’t seen, worn no gem, necklace, pendant, ring, anything of the kind. The only knife had been one they both used, and so on.”
“Then it could be anything,” said Xulai. “It could be a word, a phrase, words to be written or carved, a map to something that would be found in one place and taken to another. It could be anything or nothing.”
The aged brother reached up to push his high headdress into a more securely perpendicular position before allowing himself to nod. “Yes. It could have been anything or nothing. There was no one left to clarify the matter. Both Huold and Ghastain were gone. Ghastain had set governors over his conquered lands, to rule in his name, under his law. When they learned of Ghastain’s death they kept his legal system, but they began to rule as kings in their own right. King Gahls is the tenth generation of such kings ruling in Norland. He and his forefathers conquered many of the smaller lands—conquered them, or married into them, or allied with them and swallowed them. Altamont was separate until the duchess took it at the order of King Gahls. King and duchess may have a difference of opinion as to its ownership now. Kamfels and the lands of Hallad, Prince Orez, are still separate realms.”
“And Wold,” said Xulai firmly.
“And Wold,” agreed Brother Wordswell. “And Elsmere and Merhaven. Before he set out to conquer the Sea King, Ghastain promised Huold all the western lands, to him, to his children, into perpetuity. At that time, those lands included those now held by Wold and by Prince Orez. The promise was no momentary sentiment. It was a serious matter. The deed to the lands was written, witnessed, and sealed in the presence of agents from the institution which preceded our abbey. It is included among the documents from that time. It is still here. I’ve read it.”
“So he had children,” said Xulai.
“Before the sea adventure, Huold had one grown daughter and six grown sons. All his sons had predeceased their father, killed in various bellicose expeditions, so when Huold vanished, only his daughter, Lythany, was left to come forward and claim the western lands. The abbey ruled that she was the legitimate heir rather than any of Huold’s supposed grandsons, including several born when Huold’s sons had been so long absent or dead as to make their fatherhood miraculous if not impossible. The eldest of these grandsons, the Direking of Chandar—an unknown person from a place that no longer exists—is claimed by Queen Mirami, however, as an ancestor.”
Xulai smiled a cat smile. “Clever. I hadn’t heard that.”
“It is said King Gahls brags of her heritage, but then, the king brags about many things of questionable provenance and doubtful value. It is certain, however, that both Prince Orez and Justinian are of the twelfth generation of Lythany’s line.”
Silence grew in the room, broken only by the crackle of the fire as four people pondered the possibilities inherent in what they had just heard.
Bear scratched his head, stretched his neck as though it troubled him, and said, “Possessing this thing, whatever it is, would be a . . . strong argument that one was the real inheritor, but in twelve generations, this thing has not been found?”
“Likely it has never truly been looked for,” said the abbot. “Remember: what Wordswell has told you is a story some hundreds of years old. Such stories grow in the telling. They are embroidered with fancy and colored with all manner of miraculous detail. When all who knew the heroes as mere men have died, the stories continue, swelling mere men into mythic heroes, expanding mythical heroes into demigods. Reasonable men who read history always discount about ninety percent as fiction.”
Brother Wordswell nodded. “This is true, but some of the facts are indisputable. Huold did vanish, and his daughter—”
“What was her name, again?” interrupted Precious Wind.
“Lythany,” said the old man. “Which is our form of her real name: Lythaiene, wh
ich means ‘truth prevails’ in the language of the time. Lythany took the lands and ordered the building of the fortress of Woldsgard. It was she who ordered the cutting of the Stoneway in order to make travel to Kamfels easier. She was a good steward of the land and an enlightened ruler of the people who came to settle it. She was the first who forbade slavery. She settled various lands, some of those now held by Prince Orez, on her nephews and nieces; she married a member of her own tribe; she had two children of her own. Her daughter was Yvein, called the Songbird, and her son was Harald Axearm. Harald inherited the lands of Woldsgard, and Yvein married into a great family to the west from which Prince Orez is descended. I have the family trees in my library . . .”
“Our library,” corrected the abbot with a chiding smile.
Wordswell’s lips crimped themselves into a deprecating moue. “Certainly, Eldest Brother, it is ours, except that I seem to be the only one who is dragged from his bed to answer questions about it. At any rate, Justinian, Duke of Woldsgard, is the twelfth generation in direct descent from Huold himself. He is also descended through both Harald and Yvein when the two branches of the family were united through marriage several generations later. And if you ask whether Queen Mirami’s claim to descend from Huold is provable, I can only say that it can’t be proven from any source we know of. In fact, no one even knows where she came from. She was first noticed as a protégé of that strange fellow, the one at Altamont . . .”
“The Old Dark Man!” said Xulai. “Great Bear has mentioned him.”
“And Huold came from where, originally?” asked Bear.
“There are as many stories as tellers,” said Wordswell. “He was born of the gods. He was born of a virgin who had been shut up in a cell for twelve years. He was born of said virgin because the sun god came in through the little window of the cell and impregnated her. And so on and so on.