“Take me outside, Papa!” he had demanded. “Take me out. I want to see if I’m as tall as the castle walls!”
His father had laughed, enjoying his excitement, and then carried him to the massive old Festival Oak at the garden’s far end to let him feel its centuried bark, so covered with cracks and bumps that the young Morgan could imagine it was a dragon’s armored skin.
But that had been before Prince John Josua had lost interest in his wife and young son, before he had become so immersed in his old books and his writing that he scarcely joined Morgan and his mother even for meals. Even when he was with them in those later days, he had seemed always to be thinking about something or somewhere quite different.
It was hard to mourn the way his grandparents did, with careful conversations and quiet ceremonies. Morgan felt his father had left him years before he died.
Now that they had reached the hilltop, Simon and the rest of the mounted company could look down the river’s course and see almost the whole of the Drorshull Valley. Even several days into Avrel, snow was still piled so thickly that in many places everything but village and farmstead roofs were buried; even the church spires that marked out each settlement seemed to be standing on tiptoe.
“Look,” said Morgan, pointing. “Is that it?”
The royal progress had been following the course of the river for several chilly days, through cold rains and painful flights of gravelly sleet, but it seemed they had finally reached their destination—a huge, walled city at the far end of the valley, where the Gratuvask split into two channels. Set on the peak at its center was a keep surrounded by four stocky towers, each crowned with a steep, conical roof.
“Elvritshalla,” Simon said. “Praise God, we’ve finally arrived. I haven’t seen the place for so long!”
Even so early in the gray afternoon, the city smoldered with lights like a field of live coals. “What are those other lights, Grandfather?” Morgan asked. “The ones stretching over the river?”
“That is the Lyktenspan—‘Lantern Bridge’ in Westerling,” the king explained. “The lanterns are hung along its whole length. Most of the time they are lit at sunset each evening and extinguished when the sun rises, but it looks like they’ve lit them early today—perhaps because of us!”
“I would not be surprised,” Miriamele said. “We are the High Throne, after all. It is not as though we visit every sennight.”
“It’s a very nice bridge,” Morgan said dutifully, but Simon thought it a poor compliment. He had loved the Lyktenspan since the first time he had seen it: the distant rows of lights always seemed to float above the river like something magical.
“Did you know,” he told his grandson, “that there are times in winter when the lanterns burn for days straight, because the sun never rises?” He frowned at Morgan’s dubious look. “Don’t scoff, lad, it’s the truth. In summer it is the opposite—the sun stays in the sky for days.”
Morgan was obviously doing his best to stay on his elders’ good sides, but his youthful pride, just as obviously, made him fear being the butt of some hoary old joke. “Is that really true, Grandmother?” he called to the queen.
“Unlike some of the things your grandfather says, yes, it actually is. Duchess Gutrun used to speak of how the winter made her fret because it felt as though the sun had actually gone away for good. But do not ask me why such a thing should be.”
“It is because the vault of the sky is curved, I think,” Simon said. “Something of that sort. Morgenes once explained it to me.”
“Ask Lord Tiamak,” the queen suggested. “He doubtless has learned something from his many books that can explain it, Morgan.”
“I will, Grandmother.” But the prince could not hide his lack of enthusiasm at the prospect of being lectured on the workings of the firmament, and Simon felt a prickle of irritation. What did it take to engage the lad? Morgan would inherit the rule of this land and most of the known world, yet he acted as though it were all some unwanted chore. It was hard for Simon not to blame Miri. She was always worrying about their grandson, trying to protect him from his own mistakes. He certainly understood why—how could he not, after the terrible loss she had suffered, they all had suffered?—but protecting the boy from the consequences of his mistakes seemed like the wrong idea.
Yes, he lost his father. But I lost both my mother and father before I was born, and I had no loving grandparents, no younger sister, none of the things that Morgan has. I had blistered hands from hard work in the kitchen, and I had Rachel the Dragon pinching my ears. Would the boy trade his condition for mine?
Simon took a breath. “It would not harm you to learn a bit more about the history of the nations under our High Throne . . .” he began, but Morgan saw his direction and changed the subject.
“Why is the bridge so high over the river? I’ve never seen a bridge so tall.”
Simon had to admit it was a sensible question, and his annoyance faded. His grandson was no fool, at least. The Lyktenspan was set on a row of tall stone arches so that it stood far above even the leaping froth thrown up by the turbulent river.
“That’s because when the spring thaws come, the Gratuvask climbs over its banks and rises a man’s height or more, and stays there for weeks,” Simon explained. “The water rushes down from the mountains so fast that it’s full of white foam. And cold! I remember Isgrimnur talking about it. ‘It isn’t water, it’s melted ice,’ he used to say. ‘And it hasn’t melted much.’” He laughed.
Morgan had an unusual expression on his face, as though he was doing his best to understand a new idea. “You and Grandmother talk about the duke very often, Grandfather. You must have loved him. I’m sorry I never knew him.”
Simon was a bit surprised by Morgan’s words, worried that they were meant only as distraction, but after a moment he nodded and smiled. “Duke Isgrimnur was a great man,” he said, then corrected himself. “He is a great man, and we may yet greet him before this day is over. Isgrimnur is the best friend Erkynland and the High Ward ever had, a man who saved my life and your grandmother’s life many times over. I have prayed God would let him see you once more, now that you are grown, and not just because you will inherit the High Ward from us one day and rule over his people. It would mean much to the queen and to me if that good old fellow could give you his blessing.”
The perpetual rush and roar of the river filled their ears as they followed its course along the floor of the valley, past tidy farms and prosperous villages all but hidden under snow. In places the drifts were still piled so high that the houses were marked only by the smoke wafting from their chimneys. Morgan seemed to be enjoying the sights, but Miriamele just wanted the ride to end, in part to escape the cold, but in the largest part because she desperately wanted to see beloved Isgrimnur still alive.
The prince seemed most impressed by the house-sized chunks of ice floating past them down the churning, fast-moving Gratuvask. Miri could not help smiling at the look of wonder on Morgan’s face, and remembered her husband at a similar age, a kitchen boy seeing things that even the hardiest travelers had never experienced—the Sithi’s beautiful, ruined city of Da’ai Chikiza, the great stone pillar of Sesuad’ra . . . he had even fought a dragon, like someone in an old story! He might not want to speak of it now, might feel some strange modesty, but that did not change the fact that the king was no ordinary man.
Even in his middle age, Simon still stood almost two hands taller than Morgan, but Miri thought they were more alike than not. Stubbornness? Morgan had inherited a full measure of it from Simon, but as her husband liked to point out, Miriamele was no sapling bending to the wind herself. And of course trying to get Morgan’s father John Josua to do anything he hadn’t wanted to do had been like trying to pull a badger out of its den. And Morgan’s mother Idela was not much more tractable, although she pretended to be. No, if she was going to be fair, the queen had to admit that Morgan’s stubbornness was a family affair, generations in the making.