“What is their worth, Jiriki?” the count asked. “I know you use them to speak to each other. Is there something more? Can they be used as weapons?”
“Here is where our tongue and yours diverge, I fear.” Shadows were filling the forest now; in his dark, plain clothes, Jiriki seemed only a pale, floating half-face. “Can a Witness be a weapon? Not as such. But they are vastly powerful, for all that, and like the precious witchwood, they are vanishing out of the world. We use them to know each other’s minds across distance, and because of that, across time. But in the hands of other, less careful users, they can become portals into and out of unknown places. Dangerous places. This child’s grandfather once innocently looked into mine and found himself face to face with the Norn Queen herself.”
This child. Morgan hunched his shoulders, struggling to keep his temper. This child . . . !
“But why would anyone steal such a thing, Jiriki?” the count asked. “As you said, how could mere bandits know what they were?”
“I was hoping you might have some idea. Perhaps a rumor among mortals about Sithi objects being sold, anything that might suggest the attackers had an ordinary reason for taking them, like mere greed. But more and more I fear that those who attacked Sijandi and Tanahaya—and even those who attacked our mother and uncle—might actually have been seeking their mirrors, not just their lives.” Jiriki abruptly halted sudden and silent as a cat. “Look, we are near to the place where you summoned us. You will be with your own people soon.”
Morgan saw that they had indeed returned to the same part of the forest where he had blown the horn and summoned the Sithi, and at much the same time of day, with the sun sinking behind an unseen horizon and the blue of the sky deepening where it showed through the trees..
“So there is nothing we can do to convince your people to help us?” the count asked. “More importantly, to help your old friends, Simon and Miriamele?”
Jiriki was somber. “My sister is even now singing against the wind, trying to convince Khendraja’aro that your concerns cannot simply be dismissed because he dislikes mortals. And now that I have heard your story of this strange Rimmersman who travels with Norns and the message he sent to you, I am more than ever convinced that Aditu and I have the right of it. But unless our uncle and the rest of our people change their hearts, we can do nothing. Tell our friends in the Hayholt that I am sorry, Count Eolair.”
Morgan thought it was bad enough to be rejected, but to be ignored too was almost more than he could stand. It made him feel like a child standing beside the table waiting for the grown people to finish their talk. “Whose baby does your sister carry, Jiriki?” he asked suddenly.
“Prince Morgan!” the count said. “Some tact, please.”
“Don’t pretend you weren’t wondering, Eolair. Don’t blame me because I wasn’t afraid to ask.”
“That is not—” The lord steward broke off at a low flutter of sound from Jiriki. It took a moment for Morgan to understand that the Sitha was laughing, which only irritated him more.
“Forgive me,” Jiriki said. “We should have spoken of this earlier. I forgot that among mortals such things are often wrapped in shame and confusion. This one time at least, Eolair, Prince Morgan is correct—it is not a question that needs to be swallowed. My sister is indeed chiru—ready to share with the river of our people. In other, less complicated days you would have celebrated it with us, Eolair of Nad Mullach, because it is a rare and fine thing.” He turned to Morgan. “And although your question is not as important as you think it is, it will be answered, young mortal. Yeja’aro, our clan cousin, is the father.”
“Are they married?” Morgan asked.
Jiriki smiled. “No, it was not—is not—that kind of pairing. We have only a few births each generation, and in our house this is the first in nearly a century, as you would reckon it, so of course everyone was pleased by the tidings.”
So these were his grandparents’ beloved Sithi, Morgan thought in disgust—the magical creatures they always talked about as though they were angels or even gods upon the Earth. Yet they lived in the forest like bandits, could not defend themselves against a small force of mortal attackers, and their royal women bore children out of wedlock without shame or care. He felt cheated. The whole mission had turned out as he had feared—just an excuse to get him out from under his grandparents’ feet for a while.
When they stopped at the edge of the clearing a cold breeze came to meet them. They could see sunset glow through the branches. “You have only a little way to walk to reach the open lands where your friends and soldiers must be waiting. Farewell.”
“Farewell, Jiriki,” said Eolair. “I wish our meeting had been happier.”
“Do not despair, Nobody, not even the wisest, can know all ends. We may meet again in a happier hour.”
Eolair smiled without conviction. “I do not think I have so many hours, Jiriki—we do not live as long as you Sithi. My gods have nearly finished with me on this earth.”
For a moment Jiriki stood silent. Then he extended a hand and clasped Eolair’s. “As I said, nobody can know all ends. I hope your gods spare you longer than you suppose.”
“I will pray for your mother’s return to health,” the count said. “And for the safe birth of your sister’s child.”
Jiriki nodded, then turned to Morgan. “Faith,” he said.
The prince was startled. “What?”
“Faith in others, Prince Morgan,” he repeated. “Faith, as Eolair has, that most of your fellow mortals mean well.”
“But you don’t believe that!”
“Oh, but I do,” said Jiriki. “And I believe it of my own folk as well. We would not be having this conversation otherwise.”
“The world is full of liars.”
“All the more reason to look for truth and value it when you find it. And do not forget faith in yourself! Faith is all you lack, I think, to make your grandparents proud. Good luck and farewell, seed of the Hikka Staja.”
Before Morgan could do more than stare and wonder at what his last words meant, Jiriki turned and strode away; within a few moments he had vanished into the forest as if he had never been there at all.
“What did he mean? What was the name he called me?”
“I do not know, Highness,” said Eolair. “But we had better discuss it later. Now we should make our way out onto the open grassland as quickly as we can while we have the light. We don’t want to spend the night in these woods.”
Morgan shivered, though he did his best to hide it. “I hope Porto’s made a fire, at least.”
? ? ?
By the time Morgan and the count reached the forest fringe, the only trace of the sun was a bright blush along the western horizon. As they emerged from the last tall stands of birch and oak and onto the shrubby slopes leading down to the riverlands, they could see a smattering of fires on the meadow before them and a tangle of smoke like scratches against the darkening sky. They hurried toward them, the long grass whispering around their knees, then slowed and stopped.
“There’s no one there,” Morgan said. “No one waiting. Where have our men gone? Why would they all leave?”
Eolair looked up and down the plain. “Perhaps they are out searching for us—time among the fairy-folk is said to be different. Perhaps we have been away longer than we suspect.” He leaned forward, squinting now. “My eyes are too old to make out much from so far away—do you see anyone moving?”
“Nothing. Nobody.”
As they drew nearer to the silent camp, Morgan felt himself go cold all over, though the summer evening was warm and there was scarcely any breeze on the meadow. He could hear the river just a short way ahead, though it was too dark now to see more than a dark line across the grass. Most of the fires had burned down almost to coals, but they were not, as Morgan had first thought, deserted cookfires or the abandoned campfires of sentry posts.
When they reached the first fire they saw the last flames were feeding wearily on splintered wheels and blackened poles. “That was the supply wagon,” said Morgan. Even to his own ears, his voice sounded like a dead man’s, a ghost in an old folktale predicting doom. “By the Sacred Tree, what happened here?”
Eolair walked to the far side of the burning wagon and stood looking down. After a moment, Morgan went to join him and almost stepped on the body lying at the count’s feet. “Oh, Aedon preserve us,” the prince said, then turned away. “His guts are out.”