Morning dawned.
Alistair lay in his bed for some while, immobile, his jaw tense as though in death, staring at nothing. At last he rose and, his limbs trembling from more than mere cold, crossed the room to his water basin. He broke the thin film of ice with his elbow and splashed his face until it burned raw. Then, still trembling, he dressed himself and left the room.
He felt a need for horses and hunts. He often did on these mornings after night terrors. Somehow, he must prove to himself that he was not the coward the darkness told him he was.
Somehow, he must drive out the face of that child and the words still echoing in his ears.
Slinging a heavy cloak over his shoulders, he hastened down the stairs, ignoring covert glances from the servants already up and moving about their dawn tasks. He proceeded out to the inner courtyard and stood cursing when the heavens chose that very moment to open.
He’d not be able to ride now. But perhaps the smell of stables and the nearness of his horses would be some comfort. Still cursing, he hurried through the courtyard. Rain drove across the stone cobbles, soaking the edge of his cloak, but it wasn’t as cold as he had expected, and he did not mind it.
In his haste, he ran into a scurrying little scrubber.
“I do apologize, your lordship!” the old man cried, though it was he who had been quite nearly knocked from his feet, saved only by Alistair’s swiftly catching hold of his skinny arm.
“No, no, my fault,” said Alistair quickly, making certain the scrubber was steady on his feet before letting him go. The old man, unsheltered from the rain, grinned damply up at him, water dripping through his white beard.
“I’m all right now,” he said in a thin but cheerful voice. “A pleasant morning to you, my lord.”
Alistair nodded and made to move on, but a gnarled hand gripped his arm. “Look ye there, fine sir,” said the old man, pointing.
Alistair, surprised, looked up. There was a break in the clouds, an odd enough sight on such a heavy morning. But odder still, Alistair spied the gleam of a star in the sky above.
“The blue star!” the old scrubber said, his voice almost gleeful. “Do you see it? Ah, the clouds have covered it now. But did you see?”
“I saw,” Alistair said, shaking the old man’s hand away. “I saw it, grandfather.”
“They say,” the scrubber persisted, “that when the blue star shines at rainfall, it’s a sign of change to come.”
“Do they? Well, that’s interesting of them,” Alistair said, hurrying on before the daft little man could babble more nonsense.
He nodded to the guardsmen as he passed through the gate into the outer courtyard. It was quiet that morning without the usual market bustle beginning to arrive, for no one dared display wares or offer services in such grim weather. A few soggy page boys, scullery girls, and stable hands scurried about on various errands. Otherwise, only the luckless wall patrolmen were out. Everyone else remained hiding like rabbits in a warren until the rain should let up.
Alistair kept on toward the stable, set on reaching its shelter. But suddenly he stopped and turned. A shout disturbed the drone of pounding rain, drawing his attention to a disturbance at the outer gate.
“Etanun! Etanun!” a high, youthful voice shouted.
Alistair frowned. Of all names to hear cried in that tone of distress, this one from legend and children’s tales was not the first he would expect. Curious, he changed his course and made for the gate, where he saw two guards standing menacingly at their posts. One of them was shouting.
“Get away, little rat! You’re not welcome here.”
Alistair drew closer and looked beyond the guards and fastened bars of the gate to see a ragged urchin kneeling in the mud of the road beyond, hands clasped, feet and head bare. The visible skin was brown as a nut, and the short, skull-plastered hair was black as a rook’s wing. The poor little thing trembled with cold.
“What’s going on?” Alistair said, and the guards turned and hastily saluted.
“We don’t know, my lord,” the first replied. “The creature doesn’t speak our language. Keeps chattering on in some foreign tongue. Maybe an easterner, jumped ship at the ports?”
Alistair approached the bars for a closer look. The urchin stared up at him with wide black eyes, mouth open and filling with rainwater. “Um . . . he is freezing,” Alistair said.
“Then he should return where he belongs,” the other guard growled, shouting again at the stranger. “Be off with you! Go back to your own kind, and let this be a lesson to you not to abandon your ship!”
But Alistair, frowning, did not think the little person was a sailor. There was something altogether earthbound about the child. If it was a child.