“In Geloë’s house,” Miriamele whispered, remembering.
“And he was not the only one. A message we were receiving in the White Waste, sparrow-carried—which now it is my thinking was sent by Dinivan of Nabban, since Isgrimnur later heard him speak it as well—also held a warning against false messengers.”
Miramele felt a pang at the memory of Dinivan. He had been so. kind, so clever—yet he had been broken like a kindling-stick by Pryrates. Isgrimnur’s tale of the horrors he had seen in the Sancellan Aedonitis still colored her nightmares.
A sudden thought came to her: she had fought Cadrach when he tried to take her out of the Sancellan, resisted him and called him a liar until he was forced to strike her senseless and carry her out—but he had, in fact, told her the truth. Why hadn’t he simply run and saved himself, leaving her to make her own way?
She turned to look at him. The monk had still not caught his breath; he lay curled against the wall, his face blank as a wax doll’s.
“So long have I wondered who could be such a messenger,” Binabik continued. “Many are the messengers who have come to Josua, and also to Simon and Dinivan, the two who somehow had these warnings. Which messenger was meant?”
“And now you think you know?”
Binabik started to answer, then took a breath. “Let me tell you what I am thinking. Perhaps you will be finding some flaw—you too, Cadrach. I have hope only that I am wrong.” He knitted the fingers of his small hands together and frowned. “The dwarrow-folk say the Great Swords were all having their forging with the help of Words of Making—words that the dwarrows say are used for pushing back the rules of the world.”
“I didn’t understand that.”
“I will try for explaining,” Binabik said unhappily. “But truly we are having little time to talk.”
“When I’ve caught my breath, you can talk while we’re climbing.”
The troll nodded. “Then here is my explaining about the world’s rules. One is that things want to fall downward.” He put the stopper on the water skin and then dropped it, illustrating his point. “If some other kind of falling is wanted—to make this fall upward, that might be—that is one thing that the Art is being used for. To make something that is going against the world’s rules.”
Miriamele nodded. Beside her, Cadrach had raised his head as though listening, but he still stared out at the opposite wall.
“But if some rule must be broken for a long time, then the Art used must have great powerfulness, just as lifting a heavy thing once and then dropping it is easier than the holding of it in the air for hours. For such tasks, the dwarrows and others who were practicing the Art used ...”
“... The Words of Making,” Miriamele finished for him. “And they used them when the Great Swords were forged.”
Binabik bobbed his head. “They did that because all the Great Swords were forged of things that had no place in Osten Ard, things which were resisting the Arts used for creating a magical weapon. This needed overcoming, but not just for a moment. Forever was the time that these resisting forces must be subdued, so the most powerful Words of Making were being used.” He spoke slowly now. “So those blades, it is my thinking, are like the pulled-back arm of the giant sling-stones your people use to attack walled cities—balanced so that one touch sends a vast rock flying like a tiny, tiny bird. Such great power is being restrained in each one of those swords—who knows what the power of three brought together may be doing?”
“But that’s good,” said Miriamele, confused. “Isn’t that what we need—the strength to overcome the Storm King?” She looked at Binabik’s sorrowful face and her heart grew heavy. “Is there some reason we can’t use it?”
Cadrach shifted against the wall, turning his gaze at last on the troll. A gleam of interest had kindled in his eyes. “But who will use it?” the monk asked. “That is the question, is it not?”
Binabik nodded unhappily. “That is indeed what I am fearing.” He turned to the princess. “Miriamele, why is Thorn being brought here? Why are Josua and others searching for Bright-Nail?”
“To use against the Storm King,” Miriamele replied. She still did not see where the troll’s questions were leading, but Cadrach evidently did. A grim half-smile, as of reluctant admiration, curled the monk’s lips. She wondered who the admiration was for.
“But why?” asked the troll. “What was telling us to use them against our enemy? This is not something for tricking you, Miriamele—it is what I myself have been worrying until my head feels full of sharp stones.”
“Because ...” For a moment, she could not remember. “Because of the rhyme. The rhyme that told how to drive the Storm King away.”
“When frost doth grow on Claves’ bell ...”
Binabik recited, his voice ringing strangely in the stairwell. His face twisted in what looked like pain.
“And Shadows walk upon the road
When water blackens in the Well
Three Swords must come again
“When Bukken from the Earth do creep
And Hunën from the heights descend
When Nightmare throttles peaceful Sleep
Three Swords must come again
“To turn the stride of treading Fate
To clear the fogging Mists of Time
If Early shall resest Too Late
Three Swords must come again . . . ”
“I’ve heard it a hundred times!” she snapped. Anger only thinly covered her fear at the little man’s strange expression. “What are you saying?”
Binabik lifted his hands. “Listen, listen to what it is telling, Miriamele. All the first parts are true things—diggers, giants, the great bell in Nabban—but at the end it only speaks of turning Fate, of clearing Time ... and of Early fighting against Late.”
“So?”
“What, then, is to say that it speaks to us!?” hissed Binabik.
She was so astonished by the troll’s agitation that it took several moments before his words sank in. “Do you mean to say. . . ?”
“That it could just as easily be speaking of what will be helping the Storm King himself! For what are we mortals being to him if not the Lateness to his Earliness? Who is turning this Fate? And whose fate is it being?”
“But ... but . . .”
Binabik spoke on in a fury, as though the words had been unbottled after a long fermentation and now foamed free. “Where did the idea to look for this rhyming come to us? From the dreams of Simon and Jarnauga and others! The Dream Road has been long compromised—Jiriki and the other Sithi have told that to us—but we were frightened enough to believe those dreams, desperate to have some way for fighting the returning Storm King!” He paused a moment, panting. “I am sorry, but I have so much angriness at my own stupidity... ! We took a twig of great slenderness and hung a bridge upon it without thinking more. Now we are over the middle of the chasm.” He slapped his palms against his thighs. “Scrollbearers, we are now called. Kikkasut!”
“So ...” She struggled to understand the ins and outs of what the troll had said; a throb of despair had begun beating inside her. “So the dreams about Nisses’ book—those were the false messengers? The ones that led us to this rhyme?”
“That is what I am now thinking.”
“But that doesn’t make sense! Why would the Storm King play such a strange trick? If we cannot defeat him, why lead us to believe we could?”
Binabik took a breath. “Perhaps he has need of the swords, but cannot bring them himself. Pryrates was telling Cadrach that he knew where Bright-Nail was and did not wish it touched. Perhaps the red priest was having no plans of his own, and was doing only the Storm King’s bidding. I am thinking the dark one in the north needs the great power that is in those blades.” His voice broke. “It ... it is my great fear that all this has been a complicated game, like the Sithi’s shent, created for making us bring the remaining swords.”
Miriamele sat back against the wall, stunned. “Then Josua, Simon
... all of us ...”
“Have been doing the enemy’s bidding all along,” said Cadrach abruptly. Miriamele expected to hear satisfaction in his words, but there was none, only hollowness. “We have been his servants. The enemy has already won.”
“Shut your mouth,” she spat. “Damn you! If you had told us what you knew, we would likely have discovered this already.” She turned to Binabik, struggling to keep her wits. “If you’re right, is there anything we can do?”
The troll shrugged. “Try to be escaping, then find our way back to Josua and the others for warning them.”
Miriamele stood. A few moments earlier she had been rested and ready to climb again. Now she felt as though an ox-yoke had been laid across her shoulders, a ponderous, painful weight that could not be shrugged off. There seemed little doubt that all was indeed lost. “And even if we find them, now we will have no weapons to use against the Storm King.”
Binabik did not reply. The diminutive troll seemed to have shrunk even smaller. He rose and began clambering up the stairs again. Miriamele turned her back on Cadrach and followed him.
Order had been overthrown; screaming, grinding chaos raged before the Hayholt’s walls. Pale Norns and shaggy, barking giants were everywhere, fighting with no discernible regard for their own lives, as though their only purpose was to strike horror into the hearts of their enemies. One of the giants had lost most of an arm to a warrior’s ax-blow, but as it pushed through panicked human soldiers the huge beast swung the fountaining stub as vigorously as it did the club in its remaining hand, both combining to fill the surrounding air with a mist of red. Other giants were yet unwounded, and they quickly piled terrible carnage around themselves. The Norns, almost as fierce but far more canny, gathered themselves into small rings and stood shoulder to shoulder, their needle-sharp pikes facing outward. The swiftness and battle mastery of the white-skinned immortals was such that they seemed to fell two or three humans for each one of their own number that fell ... and as they fought, they sang. Their eerie, strident voices echoed even above the clamor of combat.
And over all hung the Conqueror Star, glowing a sickly red.
Duke Isgrimnur raised Kvalnir in the air and shouted for Sludig, for Hotvig, but his voice was swallowed by the din. He turned his horse in circles, trying to find some area where the forces were concentrated, but already his army was scattered in a thousand separate pieces. Although he had been fighting vigorously for some time, Isgrimnur still could not quite believe what was happening. They were under attack by creatures out of old stories. The battlefield, grim but familiar less than an hour before, had now become a nightmare of otherworldly punishment.
Josua’s standard had been thrown down; Isgrimnur searched in vain for something he could use to give his forces a rallying point. A giant fell to the snow, thrashing as it died with a dozen arrows crackling beneath it, and the duke’s horse bolted away despite his attempts to control it, pulling up at last in an eddy of calm on the part of the northeastern hillside nearest the Kynswood.
When he had steadied his mount, Isgrimnur sheathed Kvalnir and removed his helmet, then tugged his surcoat up, grunting at the pain in his back and ribs. For a moment his bulky mail prevented him from pulling the garment over his head; Isgrimnur struggled, cursing and sweating, horrified at the thought of being taken by surprise and struck down in such a ridiculous position. The surcoat ripped at the armholes and he yanked it free at last, then looked around for something to which he could tie it. One of the Norns’ pikes lay on the snow. Isgrimnur unsheathed his sword, then leaned over, grunting, and hooked it up so he could grab the long shaft. As he tied the shirt sleeves to the smooth grayish wood, he stared at the bladed tip that seemed to blossom like a knife-petaled flower. When he had finished, he lifted the makeshift banner above his head and rode back into the thick of the battle, roaring a Rimmersgard war song that even he could not hear.
He had already dodged one swinging blow from an ax-wielding Norn before he realized his helm was still swinging on his saddle horn. Kvalnir bounced ineffectively from the creature’s strange painted armor. Isgrimnur managed to catch the returning blow on his arm, suffering only torn mail and a shallow gouge in his flesh, but the Norn was very nimble on the slippery snow, and was circling rapidly for another attack. The wind abruptly blew the banner across the duke’s face.
Killed by my own shirt, was his brief thought, then the cloth flapped away again. A dark something heaved into his field of sight and the Norn staggered sideways, blood erupting from a split helmet. The new arrival wheeled about in a splash of snow and returned to ride down Isgrimnur’s reeling enemy.
“You are alive,” Sludig gasped, swiping his dripping ax against his cloak.
Isgrimnur took a breath, then shouted over the growing rumble of thunder. “This is a damnable mess—where’s Freosel?”
Sludig indicated a knot of struggling shapes a hundred cubits away. “Come. And put your damned helmet on.”
“They’re coming down the walls!” someone shouted.
Isgrimnur looked over to see rope ladders unrolling at the far end of the Hayholt’s sloping outwall. The darkening sky and the dizzying flashes of intermittent lightning made it hard to see anything clearly, but to Isgrimnur the men making their way down the ladders looked like mortals.
“God damn their mercenary souls!” the duke growled. “And now we’re pinched from both sides. We’re being forced back against the walls and we won’t have the advantage of numbers much longer.” He turned and looked past his small, besieged company. Across the battlefield he could see determined clumps of men, Seriddan’s Nabbanai legions and Hotvig’s horsemen, trying to fight their way toward his surcoat-banner, which now waved on the strut of a scaling ladder socketed in the muddy ground. The question was whether Hotvig and the rest could cut their way through before Isgrimnur’s small party was crushed between the Norns and the mercenaries.
Perhaps we should fall back toward the base of the castle walls, he thought,—even try to fetch up in front of that new gate. There was little else he and Sludig and the rest could do: they were going to be forced back in any case, so they might as well pick their spot. The duke had noticed that none of Elias’ soldiers were atop the gate: he guessed it might not be wide enough. If that was true, he and his small company could use it as a rearguard without having to worry about missiles from above. With their backs protected, they could hold off even the fearsome Norns until the rest of the soldiers fought through ... or so he hoped.
And maybe if we make our-selves a little room we can force that cursed gate, or use those ladders, and go in after Isorn. No reason Elias shouldn’t have some mortal foxes in his henyard for a change.
He turned back to the horde of pale, black-eyed creatures and their witchwood blades. Lightning split the sky again, eclipsing for a moment the scarlet smolder of the Conqueror Star. Dimly, Isgrimnur heard a bell tolling, and felt it in his gut and bones as well. For a moment he saw what looked like flames crawling at the edge of his vision, but then the storm-darkness fell again.
God help us, he thought distractedly. That’s the noon bell in the tower. And here it is black as night. Aedon, it’s so dark....
“Oh! Mother of Mercy!” Miriamele looked down from the balcony, horrified. Below her perch on the king’s residence, the Inner Bailey was a sea of men and horses that moved in strange rippling patterns of conflict. Snow whipped and circled in the wind, making everything indistinct. The sky was knotted with stormclouds, but the red star burned visibly behind them, its long tail casting a faint bloody glow over all. “Uncle Josua has begun the siege!” she cried. Their hurry to find him and warn him seemed to have been for nothing.
The climb up the stairs had led them at last to a door hidden in the lower recesses of the storerooms beneath the king’s residence. Miriamele, who prided herself on her knowledge of the Hayholt’s ins and outs, many of them discovered while in her Malachias disguise, had been shocked to discover that a passageway to old Asu?
??a had been beneath her nose all the time she had lived here—but there were more surprises waiting.
The second came when they emerged cautiously into the ground-level portions of the residence. Despite the howling of wind and the roar of wild voices outside, the many chambers of the residence were deserted and showed little evidence of any recent habitation. As they passed through the cold rooms and grimy hallways, Miriamele’s fear of discovery had lessened, but her sense of things being wrong had grown steadily. Braced for any number of unhappy discoveries, she had entered her father’s sleeping chamber only to find it not just empty, but in such a fetid and bestial state that she could not imagine who might have been living there.
Now they had emerged onto a small sheltered balcony off one of the third floor rooms, where they crouched behind its stone railing, peering through the ornamental slits at the madness below. The air smelled strongly of lightning-tang and blood.
“I fear that is true.” Binabik spoke in a loud voice: between the uproar of combat and the howling winds, there was no fear of drawing attention. “People are fighting down below, and there are men and animals lying dead. But still something there is that is strange. I wish we could be seeing beyond the castle walls.”
“What do we do?” Miriamele looked about frantically. “Josua and Camaris and the rest must still be outside. We have to get out to them somehow!”
The daylight, darkened by stormclouds until the whole of the castle seemed sunk in deep water, shifted and flickered strangely, then for a moment the world suddenly shouted and went white. A coil of lightning had snapped down like a fiery whip; thunder rattled the air and even seemed to shake the balcony beneath them. The lightning curled around Green Angel Tower, hung for a moment as the thunder echoes faded, then sputtered out of existence.