Aldasair blinked rapidly, trying to locate his voice. ‘What?’
‘Oh, and I’ve something to show you, if you don’t mind?’ Bern smiled, his eyes merry. ‘Unless you’d like to stay here and learn Thump also?’
Aldasair followed Bern outside and across the palace grounds. It was a brighter day than they’d seen in some time, yellow tufts of clouds streaking across a blue sky.
‘Thank you,’ he said, fingering his sticky cuff. ‘I did not know what to do with them.’
‘Ah, well. I have eight brothers and sisters, all younger than me. I’ve always been good at controlling a crowd.’
They walked to the west, the ground growing steeper until they came to the black stone path of the Hill of Souls. It had been cleaned, Aldasair noticed, the foliage cut back from the path.
‘You have been busy,’ he ventured. Bern nodded. He wore a light tunic, his shirt sleeves rolled up to reveal his brawny arms, and he had discarded the fur-lined cloak Aldasair had so often seen him with, but his hefty axes were still slung on his belts. Seeing Aldasair looking at them, he patted the flats of their blades almost affectionately, as though they were faithful hounds.
‘The Bitter Twins,’ he said, smiling. ‘My very own storied weapons. But here, they have been useful for clearing away some of the smaller trees. My father would have my guts for using them that way, but needs must.’
‘You have great need of weapons in Finneral?’
Bern’s normally merry face grew sombre. ‘We have done, certainly. When I was a very young man, we were constantly involved in skirmishes with our neighbours, the Sown. Every girl and boy grew up knowing how to use a fighting axe then. The Sown are a fearsome people.’ He grimaced. ‘We used to say that they raised their babies on cow’s blood, to give them a lust for battle.’
‘I have not heard of these wars.’
‘No reason you should have. Not all conflict is with the worm people, my friend. Though our greatest warlord married his son into the family of their king, and now all is smooth as milk with the Sown. You’ll have seen some of them ride in with us – they would have been the terrifically ugly people.’
Aldasair looked up, shocked, but Bern was grinning at him again. ‘A jest. They are actually very similar to my own people, really, but with appalling taste in rum. Do not drink their rum. Look, here we are.’
The war-beast shrine still sat at the end of the grove of trees, but already Aldasair could see that it had been transformed. All the debris had been cleared away from beneath the trees, and one or two that were dead had been reduced to stumps. The rough clay of the shrine had been washed and rubbed down, shedding its crispy patina of old leaves and mud, and all of the windows had been cleaned. The path leading to it was clear, and for a moment Aldasair experienced a strange doubling of memory; he had stood here once, more than once, with his clay war-beast clutched in his hands, his friends all around him.
‘Are you well?’
For all the strength in his arms, Bern’s touch on his shoulder was light. Aldasair shook him off, and then vaguely regretted doing so.
‘My apologies. It’s just that I had thought this place lost, and you’ve brought it back.’
‘Here. Let’s go inside.’
Bern led him through the door – there was no creak, and it opened smoothly – and the room within gleamed. The stone benches, once lost under dirt and ancient animal corpses, now shone with polish, and the floor was covered with fresh rushes, lightly scented with something floral Aldasair couldn’t place. There was a single lantern sitting on the lowest step, letting off a warm orange glow.
‘You’ll forgive me for the floor, I hope. The stones have cracked in several places – ice, I suspect – and it spoiled the impression I wanted to give. My mother insisted on clean rushes in the long hall, and I had some oils I use for me beard . . .’ He trailed off, and cleared his throat. ‘Not very Eboran, I know. As if you’d have rushes on your fancy marble floors! But they’re easily taken away again. Oh, your skylight.’
Bern nodded to the ceiling and Aldasair looked up, belatedly realising that the tone of light was different. Where the broken glass and leading had been was now a clean stretch of a translucent skin of some sort, carefully caulked at the edges.
‘I’ve no glass, of course, but we use these whale skins to let a little light into our tents when we’re travelling. It’ll keep the water out, for now.’
‘Whale skin?’ asked Aldasair weakly.
‘Yes!’ Bern’s face lit up. ‘Albino spear whales. They live in pods off our coast, and they have these extraordinary hides – pale, but strong, and water cannot get past them, yet they let the light in so well.’ He shuffled his feet. ‘Well, as you can see yourself.’
‘Why?’ said Aldasair eventually. He could not believe the change in this small room. Before it had been a sad, broken thing, a remnant of lost history, echoing with all the people who had gone. Now, it was cosy. Comforting even. ‘By the roots, why have you done this?’
To his surprise, the parts of Bern’s face not covered by his golden beard turned faintly pink. ‘’Tis a gift,’ he said, his voice gruff now. ‘A kindness. Ebora is –’ he tugged at his beard once, twice – ‘Ebora is a place of myth and story for my people, and by the stones, you can still see what it once was. You have been lost a long time, and no one should be left to wander alone.’
Aldasair looked up at the taller man. ‘It is,’ he said, with more feeling than he intended. ‘It is a kindness. You cannot know . . .’ He dipped his head once. ‘Thank you for your kindness, Bern the Younger.’
‘Here, look. There is another reason I wanted you to come up here.’ Bern crossed quickly to the stone benches and picked up a wooden box. When he brought it over to Aldasair, he saw that it contained around twenty clay figurines, in varying states of completion.
‘Most of them, I’m afraid, were all fallen to bits,’ said Bern. He looked apologetic, which Aldasair found extraordinary. Humans were so strange. It was hardly Bern’s fault that the Hill of Souls had been abandoned for so long, and yet there he was, looking sorry about it. ‘A few were just sludge. But these ones were mostly intact. You can still sort of see what they were, I think.’ He looked up at Aldasair, his expression uncertain now. ‘I wondered if you wanted to put them into the earth. You said that’s what you did with them, and I didn’t want to just – well. Seems to me like these were special to someone once.’
For a moment the room seemed to spin around Aldasair, and Bern’s face doubled, and then tripled. Aldasair thought of sitting at the long table of tarla cards, day after day after day, and the fat spider that had died in the middle of them all. Why hadn’t he got rid of it?
‘Yes,’ he said. His voice sounded firmer than it ever had done to his own ear. ‘We will take them, and find a good place for them to be.’