“I was not put on the throne, remember. I was the king’s daughter.”
“Unbend a little, my sweetheart. There was never a more unpopular monarch than your father since Crexis the Goat killed the Redeemer. The truth is, neither of us should have ruled. It should have been your father’s brother Josua, who led the fight against him, but Josua passed the throne to us instead.” He reached over and carefully began to stroke her hair. “But all this is neither here or there. I want to see the Sithi again. I cannot say why, but I will never feel complete again if I do not. The world we knew in our youth is gone, but the Sithi are not. You never saw Jao é-Tinukai’i, but there is nothing like it in the world. Even the greatest cities the Sithi once built can’t compare. It was like a song, a story . . .” He could not find the words and fell silent.
“What does that have to do with Morgan? He doesn’t know the Sithi, and will probably not feel anything like the same thing as you if he meets them. He will complain that they don’t know any funny songs and the women are too old.” She laughed suddenly in spite of herself. “I imagine he will be less successful seducing women who have lived a thousand years.”
“I imagine so.” Simon closed his eyes. The stars on the canopy were beginning to dizzy him. He had not realized until this moment that he was tired. “God gives us one short life, Miriamele. I was lucky to have wise teachers—Binabik, Gelo?, Aditu, Jiriki, and most of all Morgenes. They taught me to see beyond the obvious. I try to remember that. Morgan has had no such teacher.”
“Then be that teacher, Simon. Do not send him away. The Sithi are not as they were. They are not going to take him in and tutor him.”
“But that is just the point, Miri. You’re right. The Sithi are different than they were to me, or at least they seem to have changed. The world is different than it was when we were young. We have tried to teach him, but Morgan has never wanted to learn anything from us, so he has to learn for himself. So far, he has only had a little patch of the world to explore, and he has known it only as a prince. No wonder he sees little beyond the bottom of a tankard!”
“You can’t make him be like you, Simon.”
“I don’t want to. I want him to learn things on his own. Not completely alone, of course. Eolair is one of the kindest, wisest men I know. And don’t forget, Morgan will also have the trolls as companions for much of the trip. I know Binabik and Sisqi won’t let him come to harm if it can be avoided or escaped.”
“Don’t, Simon. Don’t be so trusting. God didn’t save John Josua, for all our prayers.”
“I trust nothing as true except what I have seen, Miri. That’s why Morgan needs something different. He will grow. He will see something of the world, a part of it that does not know to bow down to him, to indulge him, to pardon him when he behaves badly. What if you had never left Meremund? What if you had spent the whole of the Storm King’s war living in a castle, hearing news only from servants who didn’t want to upset you? What if you had never tested your own courage?”
“Many would have been happier if I hadn’t,” she said with some bitterness. “They called me mannish. They called me a witch for cutting my hair and wearing men’s garb.”
“Not me,” said Simon, but could not keep the yawn inside him any longer. “I called you perfect. I called you my love.”
She slid her head up a little higher, so that her mouth was close to his ear. Even after so many years, the feeling of her warm breath there still made him shudder a little. “Go to sleep,” she said. “You are tired and tomorrow will be a difficult day.” She kissed him. “But do not think you have cured all my unhappiness or curbed all my anger.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it.” Sleep was tugging at him, and for once he was glad he had stopped dreaming. He didn’t want to see that deadly blue eye again. He didn’t want to feel that ancient, unforgotten cold.
He was knocking, knocking so loud the entire castle must hear it, but still the heavy door remained shut, a solid rectangle of dark wood. He pounded until his knuckles were sore, but still no one answered him.
“Father!” His voice was high and quavering because he was close to tears, but knew that if he let them flow he would be mocked—princes do not weep. “Father, are you there? Why won’t you answer?”
Just when he was about to turn away, as he had so many other times, the door silently swung open, then stopped, exposing a black gap of barely a hand’s breadth. He stared. His heart seemed to be thumping as loud as his knuckles had against the ancient wood, as though someone was still knocking. Somehow he knew that his father stood on just the other side, waiting and listening. His father had finally opened the door. He was waiting for his son.
But he’s dead, Morgan realized, and his stomach clenched in sudden terror. The door began to swing inward again, the dark gap growing larger but revealing nothing but blackness beyond. No, my father’s dead. He’s been dead for years—I don’t want to see him that way—!
He sat up, damp with sweat, tangled in a blanket atop a vaguely familiar bed with a warm, slender body stretched next to him. The pounding continued.
“Your Highness!” someone called from the other side of the door, and he recognized the voice of Melkin, his squire. “Please, your Highness, open up! I have a message for you!”
“God’s bloody Tree!” Morgan cursed, trying to still his speeding heart. What good was strong drink if it didn’t keep away bad dreams? Especially that one, the old one that had plagued him so long. The worst one. “In the name of the Aedon, go away!” he shouted, then groaned and rolled on his side. He tried to pull the covers over his head, but the young Rimmerswoman beside him complained at being stifled and tugged them off her face. This ordinary sound and movement pushed back the darkness tangling the prince’s thoughts.
What was the girl’s name again? Svana. The swan. Not a bad name for her, actually. Her hair had been so fair it was almost white, her limbs long and graceful. At least, that was what he had thought when he had been drunk. He wasn’t so certain he wanted to look too closely in the harsh daylight.
The rapping at the door resumed. “Highness, please, don’t go back to sleep! The king and queen have summoned you!”
Morgan groaned. His jaw still throbbed from the blow he had suffered on the tower roof, and his brains felt so foul from too much wine the night before that he would have welcomed his own beheading in Market Square. Instead, he was to be hauled out of his warm sickbed—although in all honesty he had to admit that he was the one who had deliberately made himself sick with drink—to be scolded, doubtless in front of the whole court, for the disaster of Hjeldin’s Tower.
“I said go away, Melkin. Come back when the sun is higher. Tell them I climbed a mountain and flew away.” Oh, sweet Usires, but it would be wonderful to be able to float away on the warm wind. “What time is it?”
“Nearly twelve of the clock, Highness.”
“Then come back when the sun is lower instead.” He unsquinted his eyes for a moment. Even with the windows shuttered, the light leaking past the edges tortured him. “Below the horizon would be best.”
“But Highness! The king and queen . . . !”
“The king and queen can wait. It’ll give them more time to think of things to scold me for. They’ll thank me, you’ll see.”
“But Prince Morgan . . .”
“Go piss in your ear, Melkin.”
Just as he was settling back into the sticky clutches of sleep, the door to the room banged open. Startled, Morgan rolled onto his side, but when he peered through slitted eyes at the doorway, instead of his squire’s lanky form he was surprised to see what looked like one of the mountain trolls standing there waving something at him.
“Get up, Highness!” the stumpy figure announced. “I have good news for you.”
Squinting against the hateful light, he saw at last that it was no troll but only Mistress Buttercup, the extremely short, largely round proprietress of the house. He groaned again. “Good news?”
“Your debt is paid, Prince Morgan.” She shook the sack in her hand, which clinked substantively. “The Lord Chamberlain has sent gold on your behalf, at the orders of the king and queen.”
“What?” He pulled himself up to a sitting position, which required him to remove Svana’s elbow from his chest. “Then why are you waking me?”