“Binabik and I will take good care of your grandson, Majesties, never fear,” Count Eolair said. “And he will be a credit to you when all is done. Prince Morgan is a good young man, never doubt it.”
“Yes, he will be well and growing to a fine man, I am thinking, Simon.” Binabik spoke so quietly that none in the great hall could hear him but the count, the king, and the queen. “I have been reminded by him sometimes of another young man I once knew, confused and angry.”
“If you’re talking about me, I pray he doesn’t have to go through what I did,” said Simon. “But now I am cross with myself for losing my temper. I didn’t mean to send him off yet. There is one important thing still to do.” He sat up straight, raising his voice to silence the murmuring courtiers. “One more thing do we send with these brave envoys, to help them on their way. An object of great veneration. Tiamak, do you have it?”
Tiamak limped forward with a large wooden chest, which he handed to Simon. When the king opened it and lifted up what was inside, a stir went through the room, although few could have guessed exactly what it was he held.
“Here is the horn Ti-tuno.” Simon held it up to the light streaming through the windows and the silver chasing glinted. “This belonged to Camaris the Great, Prester John’s finest and most godly knight. It was found broken on the field of battle here at the Hayholt, where the war against the Storm King ended.”
“May God rest that brave old man’s soul,” said Miriamele, remembering the sadness of bringing Camaris out of the contentment of madness and back to cruel sanity.
“The story has long been told that this horn is of Sithi make, carved from a tooth of one of the great worms,” Simon continued, then waited until another wave of whispered conversation broke and fell back. “If you wind it at each stopping place when you reach Aldheorte Forest, I feel sure the Sithi will know you are there.” He lowered the horn back into the box, then signaled the lord steward to step forward. “Take it with our blessing, Count Eolair, and our love. May it bring you success in your mission, and then lead you safe home again as well.”
Eolair took the box. “I pray it is so, Majesty.”
“We all do,” said Miriamele. “We will pray for your safety every day until you and Prince Morgan come home to us.” Her eyes felt warm and suddenly wet. “Every day.”
38
The Factor’s Ship
Eolair knew he should have sent one of his underlings to deal with the royal kitchens. On the best of days the heat there was overwhelming, and what might be a cozy refuge in deep winter would be sweating agony on a hot day like this. But he knew Benamin the royal butler well, and knew that the man’s pride made him difficult on those with a less important position than himself. Sometimes Eolair wondered if Benamin realized that the Hand of the Throne actually outranked him, but at least he was respectful.
Several months’ worth of supplies finally arranged for the trip to Aldheorte Forest and the eastern lands along the Thrithings border, Eolair was heading back toward his chambers when he saw a small man kneeling on the floor just outside the pantry door. The man was shaking, and for a moment Eolair drew back, fearful of disease, but the little man looked up toward the ceiling and cried out, “Och, cawer lim!” in the count’s own Hernystiri tongue—“Help me!”—and began to weep. His wide-eyed face showed no taint of disease, only despair, and Eolair’s heart was touched to hear such a piteous cry from a countryman.
“What is it, fellow?” he asked in their shared tongue. “What afflicts you?”
“The summons!” the man said. “Do you hear? She calls us all! She calls us! Help me go home!”
Eolair recognized him now—a kitchen worker, one he had seen but never spoken with before. He had not known the man was Hernystiri, but the fellow’s obvious misery made the count wish he had found it out sooner. Homesickness was a terrible thing, especially at the end of a long life in a strange land. But Eolair also knew there was nothing he could do, not when his own journey was so close at hand. “Surely this is your home, too,” Eolair said, still in the Hernystiri tongue. “You have friends here, do you not?”
The man stared at him for a long moment, as though seeing him for the first time. “Help me,” he said again, more firmly this time. “I must go. She calls me.”
“Who calls you?”
“I said, help me! You must!” The weeping man had stopped weeping, and now he reached up and grabbed at Eolair’s wrist with surprising strength, so much so that it felt like he was squeezing the bones together.
“Let go!” The count yanked his arm free. “That is no way to treat a countryman.”
He was so busy rubbing his sore wrist that he did not see the change in the man’s face, the way the bulging eyes grew narrow and heavy-lidded. Neither did he see the carving knife the man had drawn from his ragged shirt; but then Eolair felt a burning pain in his chest and a harsh thump as blade hit bone, and looked down in amazement to see blood seeping through his doublet just below his shoulder. The kitchen worker, with a desperate grimace on his face, was lifting the knife to strike again. Eolair knew he should reach out to stop him, but for some reason could not. A coldness began to steal over him and his thoughts drifted like ashes on a hot wind. The room was quickly growing dark, filling with shadows that murmured as they surrounded him.
“Why have you . . . done this?” Eolair asked, but his own voice sounded far away.
“They will not stop me!” the man with the knife shouted, even as the shadows began to clutch at him, too. “I hear you, Summoner, and I am coming! Your servant hears you!”
The royal packet ship was called The Princess, a small, handsome cog bobbing at anchor just inside the Kynslagh breakwater, the dragons of the High Throne entwined in bright colors across its square sail.
Tiamak and Brother Etan descended the long, steep stairway toward the quay behind the Hayholt’s seagate, where the longboat waited that would take Etan out to the Princess. The smell of hot tar made him wrinkle his nose, and the gulls knifing past his head with their high-pitched cries made him fear for his balance on the damp stone steps. Tiamak had to go slowly, always leading with his stronger leg, and his halting pace made the monk even more anxious.
“You did not need to come down to see me off,” said Etan. “I hate to see you give yourself pain on my account.”
“How could I send you off into the world without even a proper farewell, my young friend?” Tiamak smiled. “That is how I left my home in Village Grove the first time, without even a niece or nephew waving to me. Such loneliness! Besides, there is someone I wish you to meet.”
This surprised Etan, who could only guess that Lord Tiamak meant the captain of the royal packet, but before he could ask him, the little man slipped on a wet stone and would have tumbled down to the nearest landing if Etan had not grabbed his arm.
“Now I am really worried,” the monk said as he helped Tiamak back to safe footing. “How are you going to climb back up?”
“More slowly than I am climbing down, for one thing,” said Tiamak with a slightly breathless chuckle. “It is easier going up—at least with stairs.”
Etan didn’t understand Tiamak’s remark, but they were on the last leg of the staircase now and the steps were slippery with spray from the waters splashing in through the sea gate. The seawall loomed high above them, blocking the morning sun and casting the stone stairs into shadow. Only a few ships and boats floated in the small harbor behind the seawall, but most of them contained goods for the castle, so the docks were alive with sailors and workmen.
As they reached the bottom, Etan saw a man waiting for them. The stranger was small and thin, and because his skin was darker than most of the Erkynlanders unloading cargo, at first Etan thought the man might be another of Lord Tiamak’s folk. Only as they stepped off onto the quay could he see that the man’s face was longer and bonier than any Wrannaman’s, and his skin a bit more pale; also unlike the royal counselor, he had dark whiskers all over his face, a short growth that looked as if it had been shaved a sennight earlier and not touched since.
“Ah, glory to the Aedon!” the stranger said, showing a wide smile full of black gaps. “There you are, Lord Tiamak, our darling. But it is good to see you safe and well!”
Tiamak gave a little snort. “Save your congratulations until I’ve reached the top again.” He turned to Brother Etan. “This is Madi. He will be your guide on your journey.”
Etan was startled. This was the first he had heard of anyone accompanying him. “Your pardon, Lord, but I do not understand.”
“Bless him, of course he doesn’t,” the stranger said. “He’s never been nowhere, you see? He doesn’t understand about the wide world.”