“Huh.” Morgan waved his hand again. “Do you always do what your elders tell you? It’s not dangerous—not if you can climb, anyway. When I was just a boy I climbed every wall in this castle, every tower.” Which was a bit of an exaggeration, but after a humbling night with the trolls on the frozen lake, then another in the high cold hills of the Grianspog, he wanted them to know that he was not without skills and experience of his own.
Hjeldin’s Tower loomed only a short distance ahead. The crescent moon floated beside the tower’s shoulder like an angel of the Lord whispering to Usires in an old painting. Looking at it now, truly looking at it for the first time in a long while, Morgan was struck again by how different it was from the structures nearby; little surprise the trolls had wondered about it. Even before they were boarded up, the tower’s windows had been weirdly narrow, like squinted eyes. The only large openings, the top-floor windows that had once been filled with leaded red glass, were now just holes dark as the sockets of a skull. Other than those and a few chimneys, the tower was featureless, and its squat, cylindrical form did make it look a bit like—perhaps not a basket, as the trolls had thought, but one of the great tureens from the castle kitchen.
And what happens when you leave the lid on the boiling pot too long? Morgan wondered, then shook his head, trying to free himself from such a strange, unsettling thought. “But you could see for yourself about the stones on top of the tower,” he told the trolls. “I mean, if you wanted to. But probably you wouldn’t. Because of the things people say about it.”
“I do not understand you, friend Morgan,” said Snenneq. “See for myself? How can I? It is night time and we are on the ground.” He looked around. “Do you mean we could climb that other tower tomorrow?” He pointed at the shadowy spire of Holy Tree Tower on the far side of the chapel and of the residence. “And look down on it?”
“No, I meant you could see what’s up there by climbing it,” said Morgan in his most carefully careless voice. “I thought you trolls were good at that.”
“There are none better,” said Snenneq. “Anyone can be telling the truth of that, whether they have been to Yiqanuc or not. Do you not have a saying in your speech, ‘Nimble as a troll on a mountain track’?”
“Yes, but people say lots of things that other people tell them are true, without ever seeing if those people are right.” Morgan felt a momentary twinge; Snenneq meant well, and he was very good at delivering the kangkang, but Morgan had felt an itch all evening, and though he still could not identify it, he was beginning to see a way to scratch it. “I’m not certain I could climb it myself any more, of course. Some of the handholds are fragile, and I’m a bit too heavy now.” He patted his waistline. “I suppose you’re too big for it too, Snenneq.”
The troll gave him a look, half irritation, half suspicion. “What do you mean? It is forbidden by your king and queen to go onto it. That is what you were yourself saying.”
“Oh, yes.” Morgan laughed. “There are rules against it. Don’t want to break any rules.”
Qina said something in the troll language. It sounded brief and to the point. Morgan thought it was like the noise an unhappy pigeon might make. “She says you are sounding like you do want to break rules,” Snenneq explained.
“Never mind,” said Morgan. “It would be too hard, in any case. It’s not the kind of climbing you’re used to.”
Little Snenneq looked up at the smooth bulk of the tower, his face as round as a second moon. “If it were not forbidden,” he said after a moment, “I could be doing it.”
Qina said something else, her voice even sharper this time. Snenneq did not translate it, but looked at Morgan. He shucked off his pack and dropped it on the ground, then began to dig in it. Qina spoke to him again in the troll tongue, but this time Snenneq ignored her. After a moment, he pulled a coil of slender cord from the pack and dropped it on the ground.
“You carry rope with you?” said Morgan, surprised.
“With certainness.” He pulled off his jacket. Underneath he wore a shirt of some simple, homespun cloth that left his thick, dark arms bare. “I carry many things. That is because one day I will be a Singing Man, and such a man must be always preparing for what will happen. But the rope is not for me. If I am climbing up, then when I get to the top, I will let down the rope. Then you can be climbing too, Morgan Prince, and we will discover who is right and who is not.”
Qina had clearly lost her patience for the whole enterprise. She turned her back on them both and began walking back toward the center of the keep.
“Qinananamookta!” Snenneq called, but she did not look around.
Morgan was beginning to feel the smallest bit concerned with how things were going until Little Snenneq threw him the drinking skin. “Only enough to be taking for courage,” the troll warned. “Even with a rope, I am thinking you will not find it an easy climb.”
Morgan wiped his mouth, enjoying the fire in his throat and belly. “You’re really going to climb up the tower?”
Snenneq gave him a look of mixed amusement and disgust. “Words may be things of air, but once they are spoken, they are also things that exist. Do you believe a troll of Yiqanuc is without honor or pride?” He bent down to lace his rawhide boots more tightly, then walked to the base of the tower near the gatehouse and began studying the close-fitting stones.
One more quick draught of kangkang helped to banish the last of Morgan’s reservations. What was there to worry about, after all? Trolls were famous climbers. The king had bragged often enough about his time in the mountains with Binabik and his people. And although Morgan had been a bit more sedentary of late than in his adventurous childhood days—well, what of it? With a rope, he could easily make it. Hadn’t he been the best climber of all his friends?
Qina had disappeared from sight by the time Snenneq began to clamber up the wall, and that gave Morgan another moment of concern: What if she went straight back and reported what they were doing?
No, what Little Snenneq’s doing, he corrected himself. Nobody says I have to follow him up his silly rope. In fact, he thought, what would be just about perfect would be if a party of rescuers arrived just as Snenneq reached the top. Snenneq would be the one to take the blame, and Morgan would be able to honorably avoid climbing.
He took another swallow of kangkang to convince himself. The molten liquid ran down the center of him and into his stomach, filling him with cheerful unconcern. Anyway, what would it signify if they did get into trouble? He was already in so much trouble now that it hardly mattered. What mattered was that the evening had been boring but now it was not.
To Morgan’s surprise, Snenneq did not choose the easy path up onto the wall where Hjeldin’s Tower was set, an assembly of hoary old stones with broad spaces between them to make things easier, but instead began climbing the tower itself just beside the gatehouse. Within a few moments he had lifted himself above the level of the gatehouse roof and was clinging to the tower’s belly like a crawling fly.
Morgan could not help being impressed by the sureness with which Snenneq made his way. The moon was up and the light was good, but he also seemed to have an uncanny ability to guess at which cracks would work best. Once Snenneq placed a foot or a hand, he seldom lifted it until it was time to let go and move up. Still, even a troll could only go so swiftly up a smooth, vertical wall. Once or twice the facing stones proved unequal to the chore, cracking loose to expose the darker bricks beneath. Once, Little Snenneq even hung by just his hands for long moments, struggling to find a place to stick in his toe, and Morgan grew so anxious watching him that he had to have another long drink.
Within a short time Snenneq reached the second floor windows, little more than arrow slits that had been filled in with stone shards when the tower was sealed. The troll scooped some of the stones out, letting them clatter onto the cobbled roadway below, then stuck both his feet into the hollow he’d made and rested there for a short while.
“A good night for climbing, this is,” he called down. “I can see much of the village from here.”
“City,” Morgan called back, suddenly conscious of how loud they must be. “You know, I’ve been thinking that maybe this is not such a good idea after all.”
“I cannot hear you speaking, Morgan Prince. Not one word.”