“There are many tunnelings that seem to emerge around that place. But these were made long before Erchester and the rest were being built. I am doubting these landmarks still remain.” He looked up as Qantaqa returned from her hunting, her shaggy pelt pearled with rain.
“I think I know more or less where he must have come up,” Miriamele said. “We can look, anyway.”
“That we will do.” Binabik stretched. “Now, one more night we will be sleeping in this place. Then down to the horses.”
“I hope they’ve had enough to eat. We didn’t expect to leave them this long.”
“I can be promising you that if they were finishing the grass, the next thing they chewed through would be the leather traces that held them. The horses will not suffer for want of finding food, but we may not be finding the horses.”
Miriamele shrugged. “As you are always saying, there’s nothing we can do about it until we get there.”
“I say it because it has a great truthfulness,” Binabik replied gravely.
Rachel the Dragon knew what she would find, but her resignation did not make it less of a blow. For the eighth day in a row, the food and water she had put out were untouched.
Offering a sad prayer for patience to Saint Rhiappa, Rachel gathered up those things that would not keep and put them in her sack. She would eat the small apple and the bit of hardening bread tonight. She replaced the neglected offerings with fresh ones, then lifted the lid on the bowl of water to make sure it was still clean and drinkable.
She frowned. Where was that poor man Guthwulf? She hated to think of him wandering blind in the darkness, unable to find his way back to the regular meals that she had been providing him. She was half-tempted to go and look for him—had in fact roamed a little wider than normal in the last few days—but knew that it would be inviting trouble. The farther down into these tunnels she went, the greater the chance that she would fall and hit her head, or tumble into a hole. Then she would be helpless. She might worry about blind Guthwulf, but no one at all was worrying about old Rachel.
These thoughts made her frown deepen. Just as such things might happen to her, so might they have happened to Guthwulf. He might be only a few furlongs away, lying injured. The thought of someone needing her care when she could not give it was like an itch inside of her, a hot frustration. Once she had been the mistress of all the castle servants, a queen of sorts; now she could not even do what was necessary for one poor sightless madman.
Rachel shouldered her bag and stumped back up the stairs, heading toward her hidden sanctuary.
When she had pulled aside the tapestry and pushed the door inward on its well-oiled hinges, she lit one of her lanterns and looked around. In a way, it was almost restful living in such a solitary fashion: the place was so small it was easy to keep clean, and since only she came here, she knew that everything was done in just the right way.
Rachel set the lamp on the stool she used as a table and pulled her chair next to it, wincing. The damp was in her bones tonight, and her extremities ached. She did not feel much like sewing, but there was little else to do, and it was still at least an hour before the time she would go to bed. Rachel was determined not to lose her routine. She had always been one to wake up just moments before the horn blare of the night sentries giving over duty to the morning watch, but these days only her morning trip upstairs to get water from the room with an outside window helped her retain a connection with the world beyond. She did not want anything to strain the tenuous contact with her old life, so she would sew for at least an hour before she allowed herself to lie down, no matter how her fingers cramped.
She took out her knife and cut the apple into small sections. She ate it carefully, but when she was finished her teeth and gums hurt, so she dipped the heel of bread into her water cup to soften before she ate it. Rachel grimaced. Everything hurt tonight. There was a storm coming, that seemed sure—her bones told her. It didn’t seem fair. There had only been a few days in the past week when she had actually been able to see sunlight out of the window upstairs, and now even that was to be snatched away.
Rachel found her needlework hard going. Her mind kept flittering away, something that normally would not have affected her stitchery at all, but which tonight was causing her to stop for long moments between every few movements of the needle.
What would things have been like if Pryrates hadn’t come? she wondered.
Elias might not have been a wonderful king like his sainted father, but he was strong and shrewd and capable. Perhaps he would have outgrown his churlishness and his bad companions; the castle would have remained in her control, the long tables snowy with their spotless cloths, the flagstones swept and mopped to a high gleam. The chambermaids would be working industriously—under Rachel’s stem gaze, everyone worked industriously. Well, almost everyone ...
Yes, Simon. If the red priest hadn’t come to blight their lives, Simon would still be here. Perhaps he would have found some work to suit him by now. He would be bigger—oh, they grew so quickly at that age—maybe even with a man’s beard, although it was hard to imagine anything manly about young Simon. He would come by sometimes to visit her at the end of the day, maybe even share a cup of cider and a little talk. She would keep a careful eye that he wasn’t getting too big for his breeches, that he wasn’t making a fool of himself over the wrong sort of girls—it wouldn’t do to let that boy get too far out of hand....
Something wet fell onto her hand. Rachel started.
Crying? Crying, you old fool? After that mooncalf boy? She shook herself angrily. Well, he’s in better hands than yours now, and tears won’t bring him back.
Still, it would have been nice to see him grown, a man, but still grinning that same impudent grin....
Rachel put down her needlework in disgust. If she was not going to get any sewing done, it was a waste of time to pretend. She would find something else to do, instead of just sitting in her chair moping and dreaming like some ancient crone beside the fireplace. She wasn’t dead yet. There was still work for her to do.
Someone did need her. Pacing slowly back and forth in the tiny chamber, ignoring the dull throb of her joints, Rachel decided that she would indeed go and look for Earl Guthwulf. She would be careful, and she would keep as safe as she could, but it was her Aedonite duty to find out whether the poor man was hurt somewhere, or sick.
Rachel the Dragon began making plans.
A great curtain of rain swept across the lich-yard, bending the knee-high grass and splattering on the old tumbled stones.
“Did you find anything?” Miriamele called.
“Nothing that is pleasant.” She could barely hear the troll for the hissing of the rain. She bent closer to the crypt door. “I am finding no tunnel,” he elaborated.
“Then come out. I’m soaking wet.” She pulled her cloak tight and looked up.
Beyond the lich-yard, the Hayholt loomed, its spires dark and secretive against the muddy gray sky. She saw light glimmering in the red windows of Hjeldin’s Tower and crouched lower in the grass, like a rabbit covered by the shadow of a hawk. The castle seemed to be waiting, quiet and almost lifeless. There were no soldiers on the battlements, no pennants fluttering atop the roofs. Only Green Angel Tower with its sweep of pure white stone seemed somehow alive. She thought of the days she had hidden there, spying on Simon as he daydreamed through idle afternoons in the bell chamber. As constricting and smothering as the Hayholt had seemed to her then, it had been a comparatively cheerful place. The castle that stood before her now waited like some ancient hard-shelled creature, like an old spider brooding at the center of its web.
Can I actually go there? she wondered. Maybe Binabik is right. Maybe I am being stubborn and headstrong to think I can do anything at all.
But the troll might be wrong. Could she afford to gamble? And more importantly, could she walk away from her father, knowing that the two of them might never again meet on this earth?
“You were speaking
the truth.” Binabik slipped out through the crypt door, shielding his eyes with his hand. “The rain is falling down very strongly.”
“Let’s go back to where we left the horses,” Miriamele said. “We can shelter there. So you found nothing?”
“Another place with no tunnels.” The troll wiped mud from his hands onto his skin breeches. “But there were quite a few dead people, none of them good to be spending time with.”
Miriamele made a face. “But I’m sure that Simon came up here. It has to be one of these.”
Binabik shrugged and set out toward the clutch of wind-rattled elms along the lich-yard’s south wall. As he walked, he pulled up his hood. “Either you are remembering it with some slight wrongness, or the tunnel is hidden in a way I cannot discover. But I have scrabbled in all the walls, and been lifting all the stones ...”
“I’m certain it’s not you,” she said. A flare of lightning lit the sky; the thunder followed a few moments later. Suddenly an image of Simon struggling in the dark earth appeared before her mind’s eyes. He was gone, lost forever, despite all the brave things she and the troll had said. She gasped and stumbled. Tears coursed down her rain-wet cheeks. She stopped, sobbing so hard she could not see.
Binabik’s small hand closed about hers. “I am here with you.” His own voice trembled.
They stood together in the rain for a long time. At last Miriamele grew calmer. “I’m sorry, Binabik. I don’t know what to do. We have spent the whole day searching and it hasn’t done us any good.” She swallowed and wiped water from her face. She could not speak of Simon. “Perhaps we should give up. You were right: I could never walk up to that gate.”
“Let us make ourselves dry, first.” The little man tugged her forward, hurrying them toward shelter. “Then we will talk over what are the things we should do.”
“We have looked, Miriamele,” said Binabik. The horses made anxious noises as the thunder caromed across the sky once more. Qantaqa stared up at the clouds as though the great sound were something she would like to chase and catch. “But if you wish it, I will wait and look again when the rain is gone—perhaps the searching would be safer by night.”
Miriamele shuddered at the thought of exploring the graves after dark. Besides, the diggers had proved that there was far more to fear in these crypts than just the restless spirits of the dead. “I don’t want you to do that.”
He shrugged. “Then what is your wishing?”
She looked at the map. The wandering lines of ink were nearly invisible in the dark, storm-curtained afternoon. “There are other lines that must be other tunnels going in. Here’s one.”
Binabik screwed up his eyes as he studied the map. “That one is seeming to me to come out in the rock wall over the Kynslagh. Very difficult it would be to find, I think, and it would be even more beneath the nose of your father and his soldiers.”
Miriamele nodded sadly. “I think you’re right. What about this one?”
The troll considered. “It is seeming to be in the place the town now stands.”
“Erchester?” Miriamele looked back, but could not see over the tall lich-yard wall. “Somewhere in Erchester?”
“Yes, are you seeing?” He traced the line with his short finger. “If this is the little forest called Kynswood, and this is where we are now standing ...”
“Yes. It must be almost in the middle of the town.” She paused to consider. “If I could disguise my face, somehow ...”
“And I would be disguising my height and my troll-ness?” Binabik asked wryly.
She shook her head, feeling the idea solidify. “No. You wouldn’t need to. If we took one horse, and you rode with me, people would think you were a child.”
“I am honored.”
Miriamele laughed a little wildly. “No, it would work! No one would look at you twice if you kept your hood pulled low.”
“And what would we do with Simon’s horse, and with Qantaqa?”
“Perhaps we could bring them with us.” She didn’t want to give up. “Maybe they would think Qantaqa was a dog.”
Now Binabik laughed, too, a sudden huff of mirth. “It is one thing to make people be thinking a small man like me is a child, but unless you could find a cloak for her as well, no one will ever have belief that my companion is anything but a deadly wolf from the White Waste.”
Miriamele looked at Qantaqa’s shaggy gray bulk and nodded sadly. “I know. It was just a thought.”
The troll smiled. “But the rest of your idea is good. There are just a few things we must do, I am thinking....”
They finished their work in a grove of linden trees on the edge of a fallow field just west of the main road, a few furlongs from Erchester’s northernmost city gate.
“What did you put in this beeswax, Binabik?” Miriamele scowled, probing with her tongue. “It tastes terrible!”
“That is not for touching or tasting,” he said. “It will come loose. And the answer is being, just a little dark mud for color.”
“Does it really look like teeth are missing?”
Binabik cocked his head, eyeing the effect. “Yes. You are appearing very scruffy and not-princess-like.”
Miriamele ran her hand through her dirt-matted hair and carefully stroked her muddy face. I must be a sight. She could not help being pleased for some reason. It is like a game, like a Usires Play. I can be anyone I want to.
But it was not a game, of course. Simon’s face loomed before her; she abruptly and painfully remembered what she was doing, what dangers it would bring—and what had already been lost so that she could get to this place.
It is to end the pain, the killing, she dutifully reminded herself. And to bring my father back to his senses.
She looked up. “I’m ready, I suppose.”
The troll nodded. He turned and patted Qantaqa’s broad head, then led the wolf a short distance away and crouched beside her, burying his face in her neck fur to whisper in her ear. It was a long message, of which Miriamele could hear only the throaty clicking of trollish consonants. Qantaqa twisted her head to the side and whined softly but did not move. When Binabik had finished; he patted her again and touched his forehead to hers.
“She will not let Simon’s horse stray far away,” he said. “Now it is time for us to be going forward.”
Miriamele swung up into the saddle, then leaned down to extend a hand to the little man; he scrambled up and seated himself before her. She tapped her heels against the horse’s side.
When she looked back, Simon’s horse Homefinder was cropping grass at the base of a rain-dripping tree. Qantaqa sat erect, ears high, yellow eyes intent on her master’s small back.
The Erchester Road was a sea of mud. The horse seemed to spend almost as much time unsticking itself as it did walking.
The city gate proved to be unbolted. The delicately-weighted portal swung open with only a light push from Miriamele, creaking gently. She waded back across the muddy wagon ruts and remounted, then they rode in between the tall gate towers, rain drizzling down on them from the clotted gray skies.
“There are no guards,” she whispered.
“There is no one at all that I am seeing.”
Just inside the gate lay Battle Square, a vast expanse of cobblestones with a green in the center, the site of countless parades and festivals. Now the square was empty but for a few stark-ribbed dogs rooting in debris at the mouth of one of the alleys. The square looked as though it had been unused for some time, forgotten by all except the scavengers. Wide puddles rippled beneath the rain. The green had become a desolate patch of pockmarked mud.
The echo of the horse’s hooves caught the dogs’ attention. They stared, tongues lolling, dark eyes wary; a moment later the pack turned and fled splashing down the alleyway.
“What has happened here?” Miriamele wondered.
“I think we can be guessing,” said Binabik. “You saw other nearby towns and villages, and I saw such emptiness all through the snowy lands of the north.
And this place, do you see, is closest of all to what has happened at the Hayholt.”
“But where have all the people gone? From Stanshire, from Hasu Vale, from ... from here? They didn’t just disappear.”
“No. Some may have been dying when the harvests were not coming in, but others have just gone to the south, I am thinking. This year has been a fearful enough thing for those of us who are having some knowledge of what is happening. For those who were living here, it must have seemed that they were suddenly finding themselves under a curse.”
“Oh, Merciful Elysia.” Her unhappiness was strangely mixed with anger and pity. “What has my father done?”
Binabik shook his head.
As they entered broad Main Row, there at last appeared some signs of human life: from the cracks of a few shuttered windows firelight flickered, and somewhere farther up the thoroughfare a door banged shut. Miriamele even thought she could hear a faint voice raised in prayer, but somehow she could not imagine a person from whom such a ragged sound would come; rather, it seemed that some wandering spirit had left behind its mournful cry.
As they turned the bend in Main Row, a figure in a ragged cloak appeared from one of the narrow cross streets in front of them and went shambling slowly away up the road. Miriamele was so surprised to see an actual person that she reined up and sat staring for long moments. As if sensing the presence of strangers, the figure turned; for an instant a look of fear showed on the wrinkled face beneath the hood—it was difficult to tell if it was a man or a woman—then the cloaked shape scuttled rapidly forward and vanished down an alleyway. When Miriamele and Binabik drew even with the place, there was no sign of anyone. All the doors that faced the narrow byway looked as though they had been boarded up for some time.
“Whoever that was, they were scared of us.” Miriamele could not keep the pained surprise out of her voice.
“Can you feel blame for them about that?” The little man waved his hand at the haunted streets. “But it is no matter. I am not doubting that many ghastly things have been happening here—but it is not our task to be worrying about such happenings. We are looking for something.”