Out of the corner of his eye he could see Noon and Aldasair standing off to one side, having caught up with them. Noon had taken off her cap and was looking at Ygseril with an expression Tor couldn’t fathom, but then his sister was grabbing at his arms, shaking him.
‘You come back now, of course you do,’ she said, moving her face into something that was more a grimace than a smile. ‘If there is to be glory, you could not miss it. It is so like you to know, Tormalin. That you should come back precisely now, at this time.’
‘Hest,’ Tor took a slow breath, ‘there is a lot we need to talk about, a lot to catch up on.’ Carefully, he helped her to her feet. ‘Hest, why are there humans in the city? What are they doing here?’
‘They had dreams,’ said Aldasair, in a matter-of-fact tone. ‘Dreams that made them remember what Ebora was, and why they needed it.’
Hestillion looked up, seeming to see the other people in the hall for the first time. Tor saw her dismiss their cousin instantly, before her gaze snapped to Noon.
‘Who is that?’
‘Please, let me introduce you properly.’ Tor cleared his throat. ‘This is Fell-Noon of the, uh, plains. She has travelled here with me, Hest, because we found something important, which I need to tell you about.’
Noon was still staring at the tree-god, acknowledging none of them. Tor had the sudden dizzying sense that he was the only sane one in the room.
‘A fell-witch?’ Hestillion shook her head as if to clear it. ‘No. No, not at all. This has never been a place for humans – I can’t tell what effect that might have. What if he’s insulted? What if the proximity of their blood taints him, as it does us?’ She paused this strange diatribe as some sudden realisation washed over her, and Tor found that he knew what she was going to say before she said it. Hestillion the dream-walker, always too perceptive for anyone’s comfort. ‘Did she burn you? With winnowfire? She did this to you?’ They were demands more than questions.
‘It’s a long story, Hest, please.’ Tor took a slow breath. ‘Let’s go to one of the smaller rooms, sit down together and open a bottle of wine. We can talk about all of it, I promise. I would like to share a drink with my much-missed sister. You still have wine here, don’t you?’
She was already shaking her head. ‘No, I cannot leave here, and now that you are here, Tormalin, you will have to stay too. That one,’ Hestillion pointed at Noon, as though gesturing to an offensive artwork she wished removed from her sight, ‘must leave. Now. I will not have a human in the Hall of Roots.’
Finally, Noon seemed to hear what they were saying, and she turned, an imperious expression on her face that Tor had never seen before.
‘You order me out? How dare you, small creature. I have more right than anyone to be here, in this place. Certainly more right than a child such as you.’
For a moment Tor was too stunned to move or speak. Dimly he was aware of Aldasair watching all this with a bemused expression.
‘How dare I?’ There was such a note of danger in Hestillion’s voice that Tor felt a genuine surge of panic – again he remembered the small boy she had murdered, his throat cut open in honour of their god. Noon, meanwhile, stepped forward, her cap falling to the floor as her hands leapt with green fire, filling the Hall with eerie light.
‘Noon, no!’ He grabbed at her shoulder, turning her towards him, and whatever it was that had been in her face winked out like a candle. After a moment, the winnowfire vanished.
‘Tor?’
‘This is too much,’ he said. ‘This place, it’s overwhelming. Aldasair, a quiet room where we can talk, please? A place where the stakes are not quite so apparent.’
Aldasair nodded. ‘I know such a room. Hestillion, will you join us?’
Tor was surprised by the simple note of kindness in his cousin’s voice, and even more surprised that Hest seemed to respond to it. Glaring once more at Noon, she pushed her hair back from her face and nodded.
‘The Bellflower Room has recently been aired,’ said Aldasair. ‘And I’ve had wine put in there for future guests. Follow me.’
Tor knew where it was, but he was glad to follow his cousin from the Hall of Roots, and relieved to put the dead form of Ygseril behind him. For all the emotions that had rushed back to him at their arrival in Ebora, he felt only dread when he looked at the god-tree.
41
Noon sat with her hands pressed to the table top. It had been carved all over with a looping pattern of ivy and vines, with small creatures – bats, birds, mice – peeking from behind the leaves, and then it had been covered all over with a deep shining varnish. Looking at it, following the swirling shapes and imagining the skilled hand that made them, calmed her. It was difficult to stay afloat amid the thoughts and images streaming through her head.
‘I then agreed to work for a Lady de Grazon, a human woman who owns property in the vine forest . . .’
Tor, she dimly understood, was giving his sister a swift account of his movements since he’d left Ebora. Noon caught pieces of story, unable to make sense of much of it, while the cold voice inside was suddenly hot, demanding to be taken back to the Hall of Roots, demanding to see the giant dead tree again. She blinked, pressing her hands to the table until her fingertips turned white.
‘. . . She is an eccentric woman, with a frankly unreasonable obsession with the Jure’lia and their artefacts. Vintage employed me as her hired sword and we explored certain areas of interest . . .’
The other Eboran, the one with long auburn hair, was staring at her from across the table. Just like Tor and his sister, he had deep crimson eyes and features as though carved from marble, but there was an openness to his face that she had not seen in his cousins.
He has been long lost, that one, said the voice in her head. He feels the loss keenly, has been cut adrift. Is not capable of ignoring it, as your lover has, is not able to fathom taking action, like the sister.
‘. . . It was only when we explored the compound that we realised what had caused Godwort to lose his mind. Isn’t that right, Noon?’
Her head snapped up, and she tried to recall what words had been said, in what order. ‘Yes. That’s right. The grief of it, the grief of it must have—’
Grief? Your human souls know nothing of real grief, nothing of what I and my kind have suffered.