Josua stood up, regarding the jester sadly. “I cannot talk to you now; old man. Not when you are like this.” He frowned, watching Sangfugol struggle with him.
“I will help, Prince Josua,” Simon said. He could not bear to watch the old man shame himself a moment longer. Simon and the harper managed to get Towser turned around. As soon as his back was to the prince, the fight seemed to drain out of him; the jester allowed himself to be steered toward the door.
Outside, a bitter wind was blowing across the hilltop. Simon took off his cloak and draped it around Towser’s shoulders. The jester sat down on the top step, a bundle of sharp bones and thin skin, and said: “I think I will be sick.” Simon patted his shoulder and looked helplessly at Sangfugol, whose gaze was less than sympathetic.
“It is like taking care of a child,” the harper growled. “No, children are better-behaved. Leleth, for example, who doesn’t talk at all.”
“I told them where to find that damnable black sword,” Towser mumbled. “Told them where it was. Told them about the other, too, how ‘Lias wouldn’t hold it. ‘Your father wants you to have it,’ I told him, but he wouldn’t listen. Dropped it like a snake. Now the black sword, too.” A tear ran down his white-whiskered cheek. “He tosses me away like an orange rind.”
“What is he talking about?” asked Simon.
Sangfugol curled his lip. “He told the prince some things about Thorn before you left to find it. I don’t know what the rest’s about.” He leaned down and grasped Towser’s arm. “Huh. Easy for him to complain—he doesn’t have to play nursemaid to himself.” He showed Simon a sour smile. “Ah, well, there are probably bad days in a knight’s career, too, are there not? Like when people hit you with swords and so on?” He pulled the jester to his feet and waited for the old man to get his balance. “Neither Towser nor I are in a very good mood, Simon. Not your fault. Come see me later and we’ll drink some wine.”
Sangfugol turned and walked away across the waving grass, trying both to support Towser and simultaneously keep him as far as possible from the harper’s clean clothes.
Prince Josua nodded his thanks when Simon reentered Leavetaking House; Simon felt odd being commended for such disheartening duty. Eolair was finishing his description of the fall of Hernysadharc and of his people’s flight into the Grianspog Mountains. As he told of the remaining Hernystirfolk’s retreat into the caves that riddled the mountain and how they had been led there by the king’s daughter, Duchess Gutrun smiled.
“This Maegwin is a clever girl. You are lucky to have her, if the king’s wife is as helpless as you say.”
The count’s smile was a pained one. “You are right, Lady. She is indeed her father’s daughter. I used to think she would make a better ruler than Gwythinn, who was sometimes headstrong—but now I am not so sure.”
He told of Maegwin’s growing strangeness, of her visions and dreams, and of how those dreams had led Lluth’s daughter and the count down into the mountain’s heart to the ancient stone city of Mezutu’a.
As he told of the city and its unusual tenants, the dwarrows, the company listened in amazement. Only Geloë and Binabik did not seem astonished by Eolair’s tale.
“Wonderful,” Strangyeard whispered, staring up at Leavetaking House’s arched ceiling as though he were even now deep in the bowels of Grianspog. “The Pattern Hall! What marvelous stories must be written there.”
“You may read some of them later,” Eolair said with some amusement. “I am glad that the spirit of scholarship has survived this evil winter.” He turned back to the company. “But what is perhaps most important of all is what the dwarrows said about the Great Swords. They claim that they forged Minneyar.”
“We are knowing some of Minneyar’s story,” said Binabik, “and the dwarrows—or dvernings, as the north-men call them—are in that story.”
“But it is where Minneyar has gone that most concerns us,” Josua added. “We have one sword. Elias has the other. The third . . .”
“Nearly everyone in this hall has seen the third,” Eolair said, “and seen the place where it now lies as well—if the dwarrows are correct. For they say that Minneyar went into the Hayholt with Fingil, but that Prester John found it ... and called it Bright-Nail. If they are right, Josua, it was buried with your father.”
“Oh, my!” Strangyeard murmured. A moment of stunned silence followed his utterance.
“But I held it in my hand,” Josua said at last, wonderingly. “I myself placed it on my father’s breast. How could Bright-Nail be Minneyar? My father never said a word about it!”
“No, he did not.” Gutrun was surprisingly brisk. “He would never even tell my husband. Told Isgrimnur it was an old, unimportant story.” She shook her head. “Secrets.”
Simon, who had been listening quietly, spoke up at last. “But didn’t he bring Bright-Nail from Warinsten, where he was born?” He looked to Josua, suddenly fearful that he was being presumptuous. “Your father, I mean. That is the story I knew.”
Josua frowned, considering. “That is the story that many told, but now that I think on it, my father was never one of them.”
“Of course! Oh, of course!” Strangyeard sat up, slapping his long hands together. His eyepatch slid a little, so that its corner edged onto the bridge of his nose. “The passage that troubled Jarnauga so, that passage from Morgenes’ book! It told how John went down to face the dragon—but he carried a spear! A spear! Oh, goodness, how blind we were!” The priest giggled like a young boy. “But when he came out, it was with Bright-Nail! Oh, Jarnauga, if only you were here!”
The prince raised his hand. “There is much to think of here, and many old tales that should be retold, but for the moment there is a more important problem. If the dwarrows are right, and somehow I feel that they are—who could doubt such a mad tale, in this mad season? —we still must get the sword, call it Bright-Nail or Minneyar. It lies in my father’s grave on Swertclif, just outside the walls of the Hayholt. My brother can stand on his battlements and see the grave mounds. The Erkynguard parade on the cliff’s edge at dawn and dusk.”
The giddy moment was over. In the heavy silence that followed, Simon felt the first stirrings of an idea. It was vague and unformed, so he kept it to himself. It was also rather frightening.
Eolair spoke up. “There is more, your Highness. I told you of the Pattern Hall, and of the charts the dwarrows keep there of all the delvings they have done.” He rose and walked to the saddlebags he had deposited near the doorway. When he returned, he spilled them upon the floor. Several rolls of oiled sheepskin tumbled out. “These are the plans for the diggings beneath the Hayholt, a task the dwarrows say they performed when the castle was named Asu’a and belonged to the Sithi.”
Strangyeard was the first down on his knees. He unfurled one of the sheepskins with the tender care of a lover. “Ah!” he breathed. “Ah!” His rhapsodic smile changed to a look of puzzlement. “I must confess,” he said finally, “that I am, ah, somewhat ... somewhat disappointed. I had not thought that the dwarrows’ maps would be ... dear me! ... would be so crude.”
“Those are not the dwarrows’ maps,” said Eolair, frowning. “Those are the painstaking work of two Hernystiri scribes laboring in cramped near-darkness in a frightening place, copying the stone charts of the dwarrows onto something I could carry up to the surface.”
“Oh!” The priest was mortified. “Oh! Forgive me, Count! I am so sorry....”
“Never mind, Strangyeard.” Josua turned to the Count of Nad Mullach. “This is an unlooked-for boon, Eolair. On the day when we can finally stand before the Hayholt’s walls, we will praise your name to the heavens.”
“You are welcome to them, Josua. It was Maegwin’s idea, if truth be told. I am not sure what good they will do, but knowledge is never bad—as I’m sure your archivist will agree.” He gestured to Strangyeard, who was rooting among the sheepskins like a shoat who had uncovered a clump of truffles. “But I must confess I came to you in hope of more t
han thanks. When I left Hernystir, it was with the idea that I would find your rebel army and we would together drive Skali of Kaldskryke from my land. As I see, though, you are scarcely in a position to send an army anywhere.”
“No.” Josua’s expression was grim. “We are still very few. More trickle in every day, but it would be a long wait before we could send even a small company to the aid of Hernystir.” He stood and walked a little way out across the room, rubbing the stump of his right wrist as though it pained him. “This whole struggle has been like fighting a war blindfolded: we have never known or understood the strength brought against us. Now that we begin to grasp the nature of our enemies, we are too few to do anything but hide here in the remotest regions of Osten Ard.”
Deornoth leaned forward. “If we could strike back somewhere, my prince, people would rise on your behalf. Very few beyond the Thrithings even know that you still live.”
“There is truth to that, Prince Josua,” Isorn said. “I know there are many in Rimmersgard who hate Skali. Some helped to hide me when I escaped from Sharp-nose’s war camp.”
“As far as that, Josua, your survival is only a dim rumor in Hernystir as well,” said Eolair. “Just to carry that information back to my people in the Grianspog will make my journey here a great success.”
Josua, who had been pacing, stopped. “You will take them more than that, Count Eolair. I swear to you, you will take them more hope than that.” He passed his hand across his eyes, like one wakened too early. “By the Tree, what a day! Let us stop and take some bread. In any case, I would like to think about what I have heard.” He smiled wearily. “Also, I should go and see my wife.” He waved his arm. “Up, all, up. Except you, Strangyeard. I suppose you will stay behind?”
The archivist, surrounded by sheepskins, did not even hear him.
Immersed in dark and mazy thoughts, Pryrates did not for some time notice the sound.
When at last it cut through the fog of his preoccupation, he stopped abruptly, teetering on the edge of the step.
“Azha she‘she t’chakó, urun she’she bhabekró ...”
The sound that rose from the darkened stairwell was delicate but dire, a solemn melody that wove in and out of painful dissonance: it might have been the contemplative hymn of a spider winding its prey in sticky silk. Breathy and slow, it slid sourly between notes, but with a deftness that suggested the seeming tunelessness was intentional—was in fact based in an entirely different concept of melody.
“Mudhul samat‘ai. Jabbak s’era memekeza sanayha-z‘á Ninyek she’she, hamut ‘tke agrazh’a s’era yé ... ”
A lesser man might have turned and fled back toward the upper reaches of the daylit castle rather than meet the singer of such an unsettling tune. Pryrates did not hesitate, but set off downward once more, his boots echoing on the stone steps. A second thread of melody joined the first, just as alien, just as dreadfully patient; together they droned like wind over a chimney hole.
Pryrates reached the landing and turned into the corridor. The two Norns who stood before the heavy oaken door abruptly fell silent. As he approached, they gazed at him with the incurious and faintly insulting expression of cats disturbed while sunning.
They were big for Hikeda’ya, Pryrates realized: each was tall as a very tall man, though they were thin as starveling beggars. They held their silver-white lances loosely, and their deathly pale faces were calm within the dark hoods.
Pryrates stared at the Norns. The Norns stared at Pryrates.
“Well? Are you going to gape or are you going to open the door for me?”
One of the Norns slowly bowed his head. “Yes, Lord Pryrates.” There was not the slightest hint of deference in his icy, accented speech. He turned around and pulled open the great door, exposing a corridor red with torchlight and more stairs. Pryrates stepped between the two guards and started downward; the door swung shut behind him. Before he had gone ten steps, the eerie spider-melody had begun once more.
Hammers rose and fell, clanging and clattering, pounding the cooling metal into shapes useful to the king who sat in a darkened throne room far above his foundry. The din was terrible, the stench—brimstone, white-hot iron, earth scorched to dry salt, even the savory-sweet odor of burned manflesh—even worse.
The deformity of the men who scurried back and forth across the floor of the great forge chamber was severe, as though the terrible, baking heat of this underground cavern had melted them like bad metal. Even their heavy, padded clothing could not hide it. In truth, Pryrates knew, it was only those hopelessly twisted in body or spirit or both that still remained here, working in Elias’ armory. A few of the others had been lucky enough to escape early on, but most of the able-bodied had been worked to death by Inch, the hulking overseer. A few smallish groups had been selected by Pryrates himself to aid in certain of his experiments; what was left of them had eventually been returned here, to feed the same furnaces in death they had served in life.
The king’s counselor squinted through the hanging smoke, watching the forge men as they struggled along beneath huge burdens or hopped back like scalded frogs when a tongue of flame came too close. One way or the other, Pryrates reflected, Inch had dealt with all those more lovely or clever than himself.
In fact, Pryrates thought, grinning at his own cruel levity, if that was the standard it was a miracle anyone at all remained to stoke the fires or tend the molten metals in the great crucibles.
There was a lull in the clangor of hammers, and in that moment of near-quiet, Pryrates heard a squeaking noise behind him. He turned, careful not to appear too hurried, in case someone was watching. Nothing could frighten the red priest: it was important that everyone know that. When he saw what made the sound, he grinned and spat onto the stone.
The vast water wheel covered most of the cavern wall behind him. The mighty wooden wheel, steel-shod and fixed on a hub cross-cut from a huge tree trunk, dipped water from a powerful stream that sluiced through the forge, then lifted it up and spilled it into an ingenious labyrinth of troughs. These directed the water to a number of different spots throughout the forge, to cool metal or to put out fires, or even—when the rare mood struck Inch—to be lapped at by the forge’s parched and miserable laborers. The turning wheel also drove a series of black-scummed iron chains, the largest of which reached vertically up into the darkness to provide the motive force for certain devices dear to Pryrates’ heart. But at this moment it was the digging and lifting of the wheel’s paddles that engaged the alchemist’s imagination. He wondered idly if such a mechanism, built mountain-large and spun by the straining sinews of several thousand whimpering slaves, could not dredge up the bottom of the sea and expose the secrets hidden for eons there in darkness.
As he contemplated what fascinating things the millenial ooze might disgorge, a wide, black-nailed hand dropped down upon his sleeve. Pryrates whirled and slapped it away.
“How dare you touch me?!” he hissed, dark eyes narrowing. He bared his teeth as though he might tear out the throat of the tall, stooping figure before him.
Inch stared back for a moment before replying. His round face was furred by a patchwork of beard and fire-scarred flesh. He seemed, as always, thick and implacable as stone. “You want to talk to me?”
“Never touch me again.” Pryrates’ voice was restrained now, but it still trembled with a deadly tension. “Never.”
Inch frowned, his uneven brow wrinkling. The hole where one eye had been gaped unpleasantly. “What do you need from me?”
The alchemist paused and took a breath, forcing down the black rage that had climbed up into his skull. Pryrates was surprised at his own violent reaction. It was foolish to waste anger on the brutish foundrymaster. When Inch had served his purpose, he could be slaughtered like the dull beast he was. Until then, he was useful to the king’s plans—and, more importantly, to Pryrate’s own.
“The king wishes the curtain wall refortified. New joists, new cross-bracing—the heaviest timbers that
we can bring from the Kynslagh.”
Inch lowered his head, thinking. The effort was almost palpable. “How soon?” he said at last.
“By Candlemansa. A week later and you and all your groundlings will find yourselves above the Nearulagh Gate keeping company with ravens.” Pryrates had to restrain a chuckle at the thought of Inch’s misshapen head spiked above the gate. Even the crows would not fight over that morsel. “I will hear no excuses—that gives you a third of a year. And speaking of the Nearulagh Gate, there are a few other things you must do as well. A few very important things. Some improvements to the gate’s defenses.” He reached into his robe and produced a scroll. Inch unfurled it and held it up to better catch the fitful light of the forge fires. “That must also be finished by Candlemansa.”
“Where is the king’s seal?” Inch wore a surprisingly shrewd look on his puckered face.
Pryrates’ hand flew up. A flicker of greasy yellow light played along his fingertips. After a moment the glow winked out; he let his hand drop back to his side, hidden in a voluminous scarlet sleeve. “If you ever question me again,” the alchemist gritted, “I will blast you to flakes of ash.”
The foundrymaster’s face was solemn. “Then walls and gate will not be finished. No one makes them work as fast as Doctor Inch.”
“Doctor Inch.” Pryrates curled his thin lip. “Usires save me, I am tired of talking to you. Just do your job as King Elias wishes. You are luckier than you know, bumpkin. You will see the beginning of a great era, a golden age.” But only the beginning, and not much of that, the priest promised himself. “I will be back in two days. You will tell me then how many men you need, and what other things.”