“No, you are right.” Eolair held the horn up to admire it in the dying daylight. “And I would be the first one to agree that we need more sense in this world.”
Morgan had never seen the horn before, although it been mentioned in many stories about Sir Camaris and the Storm King’s War. He was surprised to discover that it disturbed him, although he could not have said precisely why. In some ways it seemed crude, just a curving cone incised with small, precise carvings, a silver mouthpiece, and simple silver decorations around the wide end its only ornaments. But something about it held Morgan’s eye, made his heart slow and then speed again.
“That’s it?” he said. “That’s the horn of great Camaris, like in the songs?”
“It was, but I think he was not the first to wind it—not by centuries. Do you see these marks?” The count drew his finger along the carvings. “These were made by the Sithi, and not recently, or so I have been told. This horn was crafted when the Sithi still ruled Osten Ard.”
“Are you going to blow it?” Morgan asked.
“Of course. Or at least, I am going to try.”
“Try?”
“The horn is like other great and powerful things, Highness—not always easy for us to understand. When Prince Josua brought it to Sir Camaris, who had lost his wits, the old man seemed at first not to recognize it, then suddenly Camaris took it up and blew it loudly and clearly. After that great blast his mind became clear again. Why should that have been? You can ask the Sithi when we meet them—if we meet them—because I doubt anyone else could say.”
“Then . . . may I try?”
“To sound the horn? Of course, Highness.” Eolair lifted the hem of his cloak and rubbed the mouthpiece until it shined.
Morgan took the horn. It was surprisingly heavy, not like something made of bone or antler at all, but more like stone. He lifted it to his lips and then lowered it, feeling the hush of the woods press in upon him. “If they hear it, the Sithi . . . they’ll come?”
“No one can know,” Eolair told him. “But if they do hear it, I doubt they will ignore it. Not something like Ti-tuno.”
Morgan lifted it to his mouth, steadying it with his other hand. He pursed his lips and blew, but nothing came out but a splutter of air. “I didn’t think it would work,” he said.
“Try again,” said Eolair, and for once an adult’s urging did not feel like an order or a scolding. “Think of the Sithi. They have lived here since long before mortal men walked this land. Think of them in their forest deeps, listening.”
Despite having seen the Sitha woman on her sickbed, and having heard many stories of the old days, it was hard for Morgan to imagine the Fair Ones. Old stories kept creeping in, stories he had heard from older children and from servants in which the pale-haired Sithi were more like ghosts than men. He closed his eyes and tried to think of the wounded Sitha’s catlike eyes, which had opened once when he had gone to see her, blazing golden against her bloodless features, startling him badly. He tried to imagine eyes like that here in the forest, perhaps watching the prince and the old count this very moment, golden eyes staring from the shadows. This time, the horn gave out more spit than air, but still did not sound.
“I can’t do it,” he said, and held the horn out to Eolair.
“If you can’t, I doubt I can either, Highness—not with these weary lungs of mine.” The count shook his head. “If the horn has something of the Sithi’s making in it, your claim to it is at least as great as mine. It passed from Camaris to your grandparents. Try once more.”
It was strange for Morgan to think of having any claim on such a thing, especially by the mere accident of birth into the royal family. But of course, that was why he was expected to be king someday, was it not? By the accident of his birth? By the accident of surviving his father? The thought made him feel empty. He lifted the horn to his lips and blew mightily, blew until his cheeks ached, but no sound came.
“Once more, then we will return,” said Eolair. “If we cannot make it sound, still we can find other ways to announce our presence. There is no shame. Please, Highness, just try once more.”
Morgan wanted to argue because he knew that there was shame in failure. As someone who knew he had been sent to these empty, dark woods simply because he had been caught breaking rules, he knew that as well as anyone. But here in the ancient forest it suddenly seemed like something that had happened far away and long ago. He felt the weight of the horn in his hand, the substance of it, and looked at the last gleam of the setting sun burning between the trunks like a distant fire.
Snenneq’s knuckle bones said that I won’t get what I expect, he suddenly remembered. What will I do then, if I don’t become king? A strange anger filled him, not the sort that scalded his heart when he didn’t get his way, but another sort of feeling, a deeper rage at blind, foolish fate. But why? he wondered. Why does it have to be that way? Why does anything have to be that way, just because others say that it is?
Without even realizing, he lifted the horn to his lips, holding it with both hands like an upended wine goblet, but instead of letting the fiery taste of happiness run down his throat and fill it up, this time it was his job to do the filling—to fill this heavy thing with his own breath. To bring it to life. What if this is the only important thing I ever do?
And as he thought this, Morgan for the first time felt the famous horn as something more than an ancient artifact, a piece of lost history. He closed his eyes and the twilit forest vanished.
There was only Morgan and Ti-tuno, then. For an instant he thought he could feel what the horn’s creator had felt, the nameless Sitha who had long ago carved the runes and polished the curving surface until it gleamed. In that instant he could even sense how the horn’s triumphant music was not summoned from somewhere else, but crouched inside it like a dragon hiding in a cavern, all that fiery power coiled but awake and waiting. Somehow, even if only for the space of these few heartbeats, the horn became part of him and he, not just the air inside him, became part of the horn as well.
He blew. This time, he heard something immediately, a rattle that became a groan. His lungs and the horn became one thing, a passage of fire from his body into the horn and then out into the silent forest, a single note that grew from a moan to a stuttering howl to a deeply sounding roar, like the bellow of a huge beast. The sound climbed into the air of the forest clearing and hung there for so long that Morgan almost forgot it was he who was making it. Then it fell away, leaving only faint echoes.
Despite having been the one to urge him to try one last time, Count Eolair looked surprised—almost stunned. “You did it, Highness,” he said in a voice so soft it was almost a reverent whisper.
His heart pounding with exultation, Morgan winded the horn once more, as much to feel the sensation again as anything else. Ti-tuno’s call rolled out through the darkening woods, deep and throaty and astonishingly loud, the cry of some creature God had made and then forgotten. But the Sithi did not come.
Morgan still felt a sense of triumph, but though he blew two more times, nothing answered the blasts but echoes.
The prince and the count got back on their horses and returned through the forest, through an evening now alive with cricket song, back to the cookfires and the company of other mortal men.
43
Into Deeper Shadows
“Why are you here, mortal?” demanded the halfblood slave, looking her full in the face. “Here in the storerooms, we heard no mention of your coming.”
His lack of courtesy was both insulting and infuriating, but Tzoja did not dare let herself be goaded into making a scene. Just the proper amount of anger was what she needed, no more, no less: the Hikeda’ya were highly sensitive to precedence and position. “How do you dare speak so to me, you low creature?” She hoped her features showed the cold fury she felt, but not her even stronger fear. “Do you not see my household sigil? Mortal or not, I am an important concubine of the High Magister of Builders, Lord Viyeki himself! I gave him a child who, despite being a halfblood like yourself, is an honored member of the Order of Sacrifice—a Queen’s Talon, no less!”
Her inquisitor flinched just the tiniest bit, an infinitesimal tightening of his skin as if anticipating a blow, something Tzoja would never have noticed before living in Nakkiga. Now, she knew, it meant that her gambit had succeeded, at least in part.