But this gathering was no child’s performance of grown-up ways. It was deadly serious business, the monarch of Hernystir welcoming his liege-lords, the king and queen of Erkynland. Simon and Miriamele ruled over Hugh’s Hernystir and most of the rest of Osten Ard by the authority of the High King’s Ward, the empire that Miriamele’s grandfather John of Warinsten had created with his strength and his sword. But even at the best of times, some of the lords of the High Ward’s component nations had chafed under John’s rule.
Eolair could not help wondering whether Hugh was becoming such a man. Or did something else explain his odd behavior in keeping Simon and Miriamele waiting so long outside the city? And even after they rode in, Hugh had waited to meet them until they had reached the Taig itself, which suggested less than perfect subservience on his part. But Hugh had been changeable and headstrong all his life, something Eolair knew better than most.
Hugh’s father Prince Gwythinn had been one of the first to die in the great war that had made Simon and Miriamele monarchs. Gwythinn had been killed and mutilated by renegade Rimmersmen serving Miriamele’s father, King Elias of Erkynland, who had been corrupted by the lying promises of Ineluki the Storm King. Gwythinn’s body had been left for his kinsmen to find. When his father King Lluth had died in battle against the Rimmersmen not long after, only Lluth’s daughter Maegwin and the king’s young wife Inahwen had remained to lead their shattered people. Then madness had taken Maegwin, and with her, nearly all that remained of Eolair’s hope for his native land.
The Storm King’s attack on the countries of men had failed at last, but in the chaos that followed, the ruined, headless nation of Hernystir struggled to hold itself together. Over the first few months a surprising number of nobles asserted slender if not completely spurious claims to the throne, and it seemed only civil war would settle their rivalries. Then a sort of miracle occurred. Everyone had been certain that the line of royal blood had ended with Maegwin until a young woman of the court was pushed forward by her mother and father to tell her tale and show the infant she had been sent off to bear in secret—Prince Gwythinn’s bastard.
Gwythinn had not married the young woman before his death, but he had made certain promises to care for her, and her family had his ring and letters to prove it. The court was anxious to have a royal family again, so the child’s claim was backed by the wiser nobles—not least of whom was Eolair himself—who did not want their suffering nation to tumble into war again so soon. So, in the end all fell into place for the infant Hugh ubh-Gwythinn. When his mother died from a fever a few years later, young Hugh was given to the king’s widow, Inahwen, who did her best both to raise him for kingship and to rule as his regent, with help from Count Eolair whenever he could pull himself away from Simon and Miriamele and the court of the High Ward in Erkynland.
And here sat Hugh tonight, Eolair thought, a man now more than thirty years of age but still with much the look of the changeable, energetic child who had gusted through the Taig like a spring gale flinging open the shutters. Still the same large, round eyes that could look so innocent, so surprised by any accusation. Still the same curling dark hair that would never lie flat, but bounced with every shake of his head, every loud laugh. The round cheeks of his childhood were gone, his handsome face grown thin, but it was still easy for Eolair to remember the monarch’s charming youth.
So why did this older Hugh make him so uncomfortable?
King Hugh caught him staring. “Eolair! My noble Eolair Tarna, better-than-uncle! Why do you look so downcast? Must I beat the potboy for sloth? Boy! Bring the master of Nad Mullach more wine!”
Eolair smiled. “No, Majesty. I have been amply and regularly served and your table is splendid. I am only thinking.”
“Bah. Thinking. You will sadden us all.” Hugh held high his cup, waiting until the roar of drunken conversation diminished in the high wooden hall. “Instead, we should all rejoice! This is a rare feast indeed, when we are joined by our brother and sister monarchs!”
Eolair saw Miriamele’s head lift at the same moment as Simon looked down at the table. Neither of them had failed to notice Hugh’s choice of words.
As the cheers fell away and people began to wave for their cups to be refilled, the dowager queen Inahwen rose quietly from her seat. Hugh noticed. “Dear lady, why do you leave us?”
“I beg forgiveness, Your Majesty, but I feel a bit weak and the wine is too much for my head. I mean the High King and High Queen no disrespect, of course. I am suddenly unwell.” Inahwen didn’t look Hugh directly in the eyes, but her shoulders were squared as though she expected some kind of violent response, which seemed odd to Eolair: if she was not the king’s true parent, Inahwen was the closest thing that Hugh had.
“Ah, then I beg forgiveness myself for putting you through a tiresome evening, dear stepmother.” Hugh smiled. His expression seemed quite ordinary, but Inahwen turned her head as though it hurt her to see it.
“Not tiresome at all, Majesty,” she said. “How could it be, in this best and highest of company?” She smiled and inclined her head in a bow toward Simon and Miriamele, but it appeared to Eolair that the dowager queen was having difficulty keeping her lip from trembling.
“Please don’t stay on our behalf, Queen Inahwen,” Simon told her. “But we will have a chance to see you before we leave, I hope?”
Inahwen assured them of it, and made her way down the length of the table. King Hugh now clasped Simon’s shoulder, pulling the High King back into conversation. Eolair took the opportunity to rise and follow Inahwen out of the great hall.
“Poor, poor queen,” said Lady Tylleth.
Miriamele was not sure she’d heard correctly. “I beg pardon?”
“The poor dowager queen. She does not like these gatherings.” The dark-haired woman laughed. “I do not blame her. They can be tedious. The king loves his company, but some of the older folk at court weary of long evenings.”
Miriamele was not so much younger than Inahwen that she enjoyed hearing this woman speak of “the older folk.” “Your queen did much to save this kingdom during the Storm King’s War and after it.”
“Of course, of course!” Tylleth laughed again, as if it was a little strange anyone should take offense. “All the more reason she should rest now, with Hugh on the throne.” Lady Tylleth gave every appearance of being as attractive and stupid as a peacock, but Miriamele could not shake the certainty that something deeper and perhaps darker was going on beneath the surface.
Do not let your petty jealousies get in your way, she chided herself. Think of the wise words of holy St. Yistrin—“God gives us all youth, and then takes it away again.” What have you gained to offset that loss? Patience? Perhaps a little wisdom? Then be patient, and perhaps you’ll also be wise. This banquet was work to be got through, just as much as reviewing the verdicts of the assizes or examining the exchequer with Pasevalles. She did her best to smile and said, “Pardon me for being clumsy, Lady Tylleth, but is there not concern still here in Hernystir about the succession?”
Tylleth waved her hand at this tiny matter. “Oh, believe me, Hugh has bastards enough if the need of an heir arises before he and I have made one.”
Miriamele found this young woman more than a little disconcerting. “You seem unworried.”
“We will conceive. The gods have promised me.” Her eyes, darkly lined in a style Miriamele thought of as almost exclusively southern, showed not a trace of doubt. “I hope I do not insult you by speaking of my belief in the gods of my own people—your Aedonite piety is well-known even here in Hernystir.”
Miriamele could only shake her head, although she could not help feeling that something less than complimentary had been delivered. “Of course not. The king and I have never tried to force our own faith on others.” She did her best to smile. “And of course we pray that Heaven will bless you both with a healthy child.” Miri could not help wondering w
hether the woman was a little mad. Was she really certain that making an heir would be so easy, even with divine help? Miriamele and Simon had only managed one child in all their years together, and that child was dead. Had John Josua not married while still young there would be no male heir. The High Ward itself would be in danger, all its nations ready to plunge back into chaos when she and Simon died, as they someday must.
God grant I go first, she thought suddenly. I will not have the grace to put up with them all if Simon is gone. He was always the patient one. Miriamele turned to look for her husband. Sometimes too patient. At the moment, Simon was looking more than a bit like one of the weary old ones himself, smiling stiffly as King Hugh poked and prodded him, the younger monarch prattling on and on about hunting or something else that her husband could not care less about. Put to work in the Hayholt’s steamy kitchens from a young age, Simon had not enjoyed the sporting education most kings received. Nor did he much like the noise of belling hounds—and neither did Miri.
“Majesty?” Tylleth asked. “Have I said something that upset you?” But the hint of a smile seemed to lurk at the corners of the woman’s mouth. Something about this wife-to-be put Miriamele on edge, there was no escaping it. She was suddenly filled with a powerful desire to be anywhere else. “No. Of course not, Lady Tylleth. It has been a long day, that’s all.”
King Hugh’s heavy chair scraped on the floor—stone flags now, not the strewn rushes of the old days. Despite the ancient carvings still hanging in pride of place from the rafters, even the honest old wooden Taig was beginning to resemble something different—perhaps one of the palaces of Nabban. “A toast!” Hugh cried. “Let us raise our cups once more before the evening slips away! To our beloved fellow monarchs, who grace us with their company, King Simon and Queen Miriamele.”
“King Simon and Queen Miriamele!” shouted those still sober enough to get names and titles in the right order. The uproar was followed by an expectant silence. Simon looked to his wife, who nodded. He put a hand on the table and hoisted himself to his feet.
“To King Hugh and the throne of Hernystir,” Simon said, raising his own cup. “Long may the Stag of Hern’s house graze in these beautiful meadows. And I hear that the king is soon to be married as well.” He nodded toward Lady Tylleth, who straightened in her seat. “May the union be ever blessed.” The packed hall echoed to more toasts, more cheers.
Something else was needed, but Miriamele tried not to make it too obvious. Accustomed by years of practice, Simon caught her expression and, to her grim satisfaction, understood it.
“And,” he said, silencing the murmur and the returning hum of talk, “I would also like to make one more toast. This is a night of joyful reunion between old allies, and meetings with new friends, but as you know, it is not such joyful business alone that brings us here. The queen and myself are bound for Elvritshalla with the sad task of saying goodbye to a dear friend and a faithful ally, Duke Isgrimnur. Raise your cups in his honor, please.”
“Duke Isgrimnur!” many cried, but the response was more muted than to the previous toasts, and Miriamele distinctly heard someone down the table say, “One less frostbeard!” Before she could demand to know who had uttered such a vile remark, Simon caught her eye and shook his head. For a moment she felt almost as much anger toward him as toward the fool who had insulted the dear old duke, but Simon had earned her trust many times over. Patience, she told herself. He’s right. Not here, not this evening. She took a breath and did her best to let her fury seep away, just as wine spilled during the toasting was now soaking into the linen tablecloth. She could not help wondering whether the red stains could ever be completely washed out.
He caught up to her in the lower ward outside the great hall.
“Queen Inahwen! Highness!”
Inahwen’s maid continued a few discreet steps ahead as her mistress turned. For a moment Eolair saw not the mature, almost elderly woman who had left the hall, but Inahwen as he had once known her, golden-haired and fair of skin, threatened by shadows all around.
“You honor me, Count Eolair,” she said in Hernystiri.
The soft burr of his mother tongue reminded him of several things, not least the ticklishly warm feeling of Inahwen whispering it into his ear, so long ago that it seemed like another life. “Please, lady, in your mouth a title seems something shameful, at least for me. It has been too long, Inahwen. You look well.”
Her smile did not have much conviction. “I look like what I am—an old woman, old and in the way.”
“Never.” But her words struck him. “In the way of what? Do you object to the king’s upcoming marriage?”
She glanced at her maid, who was pretending to look up at the stars a short distance away, and at the two guards who had accompanied them from the great hall. “Oh, no. Who could object to the king’s happiness? But come to the Queen’s Little House and talk with me a while. I have no wine worth serving you, but there might be a little mead left from the midwinter festivities.”
“I have not had proper mead in months—no, two years, my good lady, since I was last in Hernysadharc. I would be honored.”
• • •
The Queen’s Little House was in truth not so little, a square, three-story structure in the modern style near the outer wall of the Taig. Eolair sat in a deep chair in the parlor as the maid was dispatched to the kitchen in search of mead.
“I have a bottle here we can start with,” said Inahwen, producing a ceramic jug from a sideboard and pouring it into two small glasses of fine workmanship. “It’s made from Circoille clover honey.”
Eolair took his glass and sniffed it as they settled into chairs by the fireplace. “Lovely. Then what use have we for the other?”
“The use of giving my maid something to do for a few minutes. You asked me a question. I gave you an answer. Did you believe it?”
He was almost amused to see this version of Inahwen. “You have become a plotter, then, my dear? What happened to the shy, truthful young woman I once knew?”
She gave him a sad look. “You mock me, sir.”
“No. Not at all. Talk to me, then. Do you dislike the idea of the king’s marriage?” He thought it would not be surprising if Inahwen felt protective toward Hugh, and Tylleth was certainly no subservient virgin bride.
“Marriage is a necessity. Do you know how many children he has fathered without benefit of one? Seven. Seven that are known. Can you imagine the furor if he died without a chosen heir?”
The mere idea of a half-dozen claimants to the Hernystiri throne was enough to make Eolair suppress a shudder. “Yes, I think I can. So the marriage will be a good thing, then?”
“If he wed someone else, it would be.” And although they were alone in the spacious room, she lowered her voice. “But not to that little witch.”
Eolair could not help being startled by the harshness of her words. “She is so bad, then? Or is it her father whose ambitions reach too high? He was a loyal bondsman to King Lluth, as I remember.”
“No, her father is trustworthy enough—a fat old gentleman farmer now that his fighting days are past, fond of meat and drink and bragging about his cattle. He gained much land when he married Tylleth to the Earl of Glen Orrga. It is the daughter herself, Tylleth, that I fear.” The dowager queen pursed her lips. “She is a witch.”
“You’ve used that word twice. Does it mean more than your dislike?”
Inahwen looked down at her glass for a moment. The firelight filled the room with long, dark shapes that moved as though in anticipation of something. “I do not know, Eolair, but I have heard many rumors and some of them are frightening to me.”
“What do those rumors say?”
“If I tell you, you will be certain my wits are gone.” She shook her head. “Some say Tylleth has brought back a very old, very evil worship.”
“Worship?” He was puzzled. “I am n
ot sure I understand, my lady, nor would I believe it anyway. You of all people should know that king’s favorites often attract ugly tales.”
Inahwen grimaced. “Yes, some cruel things were said of me also. But nobody ever accused me of reviving the rituals of the Crow Mother.”
“The—” Eolair could scarcely believe he had heard it. “The Maker of Orphans—the Morriga?” Even indoors beside a fire, a shiver traveled up his backbone. “Nobody would be so mad. It took Hernystir hundreds of years to destroy that horrid cult.”
“Still, that is what I am told, and by those who have no reason to lie to me. They say she has become fascinated with the Dark Mother, and she and some followers try to summon her.”
“Why?” Eolair had not thought of Morriga the Crow Mother in years. No Hernystirman had openly sacrificed to her since before King Tethtain’s day, three centuries gone. The last of her worshippers, a filthy, inbred remnant in the northern deeps of the Circoille forest, had been destroyed by Lluth’s father King Llythin long before Eolair’s own parents were born. Surely not even a self-absorbed creature like Lady Tylleth could hope to revive such a fearsome practice, he thought. “Why would she do such a mad thing?”
“How should I know? They say she claims the Morriga came to her in dreams.” Now that they were sitting by the bright light of the fire, he thought Inahwen looked pale and exhausted. “I hope it is only some passing fashion, Eolair—the pastime of bored courtiers. But I remember my grandmother’s tales of the Morriga’s followers from when she was a girl, how frightened people in her village were, how they would walk a long way to avoid the gaze of one of the Crow Mother’s worshippers.”
Eolair felt a pang of uneasiness, but would not show it. “Surely, even if there is any truth to this rumor, Lady Tylleth thinks of it only as an amusement—something to shock the Taig’s elders.” He essayed a smile. “Elders like you and me.”