A wreath of red nettles had been placed on Matrick’s brow as an offering to the Autumn Son. Without it (or so Vail’s priests alleged), the Heathen would betray the king’s soul to the Frost Mother and so condemn it to eternity in the icy halls of hell.
The royal children were dressed all in black, their grief as varied as their parentage. The twins cried (which Clay was beginning to think was their natural emotional state) while Lillian stood with crossed arms, glaring with those fierce blue eyes at any who dared console her. Kerrick’s fat face was a mess of tears and running snot. Whenever he thought no one was looking he stole a handful of what Clay hoped were raisins from his pocket and jammed them into his mouth. Only the oldest, Danigan, remained composed. He actually looked bored as the priest droned on, commending Matrick’s achievements not only as a king, but as a doting father, and a loving, beloved husband.
Lilith, for her part, played the role of grieving widow so well that Clay half-expected the crowd to start tossing roses at her feet as she took her bows. The act was belied only by the way she clung to Lokan’s arm, as though she were adrift at sea and he the last spar of a sunken ship. The broad-shouldered Kaskar had found some ornate black armour for the occasion, and he wore an expression of grim austerity that looked somehow fraudulent on the face of one so young.
Is he fool enough to believe she might make him a king? Clay could almost pity the boy if he actually thought so. Lilith would no more want for another husband than she’d want a rotting pumpkin for a head. It was likely she’d assumed upon marrying Matrick that he would drink himself into an eternal stupor and leave the governing to her. Instead he had risen to the task and become, by all accounts, a competent, compassionate king. Now she would rule alone, without the need to keep her rapacious desires in check.
Once again Clay had spent too long inside the maze of his own head. He found the exit in time to hear the priest invoke the gentler half of the Holy Tetrea, consigning Matrick’s soul to the Summer Lord’s eternal care and the Spring Maiden’s everlasting ministrations. Matty, were he not actively engaged in the act of faking his own death, would no doubt have made a joke at precisely that moment. Finally the boat was shoved off from the shore, where the quickening current took hold and carried it east downriver.
“This is fine,” said Moog, leaning in. “Better, actually. We don’t even need to dig him up. Just follow the course of the river and collect him later. Did you see all that gold they sent off with him? We’ll be rich!”
Gabriel didn’t look as confident. “It doesn’t make sense,” he said. “What’s to stop anyone else from doing the same? There could be brigands downriver just waiting to loot the king’s boat. Why would …” He trailed off. “Oh.”
Clay followed his gaze and saw Lokan holding a longbow. The northman had an arrow already nocked, and was holding its pitch-smeared tip over the flame of a small brazier.
The Kaskars did not, apparently, simply send their dead kings floating peacefully downriver. They also set them on fire.
Suddenly every eye in the assembly was upon him, and Clay realized he’d just screamed “NO!” at the top of his lungs.
Roll with it, Cooper, his mind goaded. And fast—they’re all looking at you.
“No,” he repeated. He took a step forward, still unsure of what to say or do next, and then found himself reaching for the bow in Lokan’s hands. “Let me. He was my friend. I would send him to the gods myself. Please,” he added, as the northman looked to his queen for confirmation. Lilith appeared skeptical for a moment, but then nodded, and Lokan handed the weapon over like a child forced by his mother to share his new toy with a sibling.
Clay claimed the bow, purposefully bringing the arrow’s flaming tip close to Lokan’s face as he squared himself to the river. The boat was little more than a hundred yards off—a shot even someone who’d never shot a bow in their life could make with careful aim and a bit of luck.
He drew. He fired. He missed. Badly.
Clay heard a few groans behind him; a couple snickers as well. “Sorry,” he said lamely. “Blinded by grief. Let me try again.” The Kaskar handed off another arrow, and Clay took his time setting the tip alight. Finally he took aim, and this time he missed by a much more narrow margin.
“Damn that wind,” he muttered, beckoning Lokan to pass him another arrow. The northman regarded him skeptically, probably because there was no discernible breeze whatsoever.
His third shot splashed down just short of the boat, which was nearing a bend in the river that would take it out of sight. Already it was shrouded in a cloud of white fog rolling out from behind the distant tree line.
The queen sighed. “Lokan, will you please show this oaf how to properly set the body of my dear, departed husband on fire?”
The northman’s smarmy smile returned. “Of course, My Queen.”
“Your Highness—” Clay started to protest, but Lilith cut him short.
“Enough. You’ve made a mockery of this hallowed ritual. It is lucky for us that Lokan is a master of the bow—and of several other weapons besides,” she added coyly.
It was all Clay could do not to roll his eyes at the innuendo. He relinquished the bow, and took a short step away, waiting as the young northman casually put another arrow to string and set it alight.
Cocky little bastard’s making a show of it, Clay realized. He saw Gabriel shift nervously in his periphery.
Lokan planted his feet and set his sight on the king’s boat, now barely visible for the fog. Difficult as the shot would be from so far off, Clay had little doubt the queen’s champion was capable of making it, and so he waited until the man had drawn the bow to its full extent before he said, too quietly for anyone but the northman to hear, “Have you picked out a name for your son yet?”
“Wha—!?” The string snapped. The arrow went backward, spinning dangerously into the crowd. As the mourners scrambled from the missile’s errant path, Lokan wheeled on Clay. His face went from pink to red to livid purple, coloured by anger, or shame, but probably anger.
“I’ve always thought ‘Orag’ had a noble ring to it. A good northman’s name, that.”
Lokan was obviously furious, but when the youth took a step toward him Clay matched his gaze. “Fuckin’ try it,” he said, quiet and cold as an ice-mantled mountain. The Kaskar stopped dead in his tracks.
The gathering had gone quiet again, and after a few moments Lokan blinked as though released from a spell. “My Lady, I am sorry. I …” his eyes flitted to the crowd, to Clay, then back to his queen. He bowed his head. “I have failed you.”
“No matter,” Lilith said breezily. She straightened, pulling her black shawl up over slim white shoulders. “The fire is just a formality, after all. It is well that my husband’s soul is gone, for his body will be broken on the Teeth of Adragos.”
“The Teeth of who now?” asked Moog.
It was right about then Clay realized the fog on the river was not fog at all. It was mist. Which was sometimes a vastly different thing altogether.
In the end, it was being dead that saved Matrick’s life.
They found him at dusk, sitting on a rock near the base of the falls. There was a nasty gash across the left half of his face that had sheared off the lobe of one ear, and he was covered head to toe with dark bruises. The eye above his injury was terribly swollen, so that when he saw them and smiled it shut completely.
“Glif be praised! I’m free!” he yelled, his voice almost lost to the roar and rush of water.
The others were gazing up at the towering waterfall, apparently known as the Teeth of Adragos, likely due to the spires of sharp black stone that jutted from the lake below.
“How …?” Moog seemed unable to finish the question, and so Gabriel asked it himself.