Snenneq turned to the prince in delight. “That is being it! Yes! A hook on the string and the fish are coming. Hungry fish, down at the cold bottom. We will catch many!”
“I can’t. I’m still in bad grace with my grandparents for going out to the lake in Elvritshalla.”
Little Snenneq shook his head. “For my part, I am sorry. My father-in-law and mother-in-law, as they will one day be, were also upset with me. ‘Snenneq,’ they said, ‘you are having no right for leading the prince into danger.’ But we can go and find your guards or your swordsman friends to accompany our lake expedition.”
Morgan didn’t like that idea, either. Was he a child like his sister, in constant need of being watched? “Huh. If the old people had their way, we’d sit all day at their feet, waiting to be spoken to.” He contemplated his wearisome lot in life. “Do you have any of that kangkang with you?”
Little Snenneq did indeed happen to be carrying a skin full of the tart, chest-warming beverage. Morgan accepted a long draught. “I don’t need any guards,” he said as he handed it back, “but my grandmother wants me to join her and the rest of them in the hall—the nobles and all. They’re talking about the Norns and if there will be a war.” In truth, he was still strongly considering avoiding the council meeting. He felt sure Astrian and Olveris would have found somewhere warm by now, a place to drink and tell lies without interference from Morgan’s royal obligations.
“Ah,” said Snenneq, impressed. “Then that is being something important and you must, of course, give them your counsel. You are having a good fortune, Prince Morgan!” And Qina nodded, agreeing.
“Good fortune?”
“That they are at recognizing your wisdom even with your young age. I have all my life been studying and practicing for importance in my tribe, but had scorning for my reward. It was only Qina’s father, the so-wise Binbinaqegabenik, who was recognizing my cleverness. All the rest of the older Qanuc were thinking me foolish—even a bragger.” He frowned, then thumped his chest with his fist. “It was harming to even a heart of great bravery like Little Snenneq’s. But see, your people are more wisely thinking of you, Morgan Prince. They seek your counseling. They know your worthfulness!”
Morgan doubted that his grandparents and the rest truly did know his worthfulness—he wasn’t exactly certain of it himself—but as he considered Snenneq’s words he had to admit that he would also have been angry if the king and queen had not asked him to join them. Would they ask him again if he stayed away this time? They would surely call it ‘sulking,’ a word he loathed from the depths of his being. No, the more he thought about it, the more Morgan realized that it was the only sensible strategy. He would show up, and when they ignored him as they always did, his grandmother would have to admit he had been right.
“In any case, I suppose I had better be off,” he said. “Good luck with your fishing. Don’t fall in.” It had been meant as a jest, but Morgan felt a pang of regret when he realized how sorry he would feel if anything bad happened to either of them, and he quickly made the sign of the Tree.
But Snenneq seemed immune to such superstitious doubts. “Oh ho! I will be giving it my closest attention. It is the fish who will be coming out, Morgan Prince, not Little Snenneq who will be falling in!”
“True,” said Qina. “Because his leg holded will be. By me.”
Morgan watched them walk away across the courtyard, two small shapes, hand in hand. When they had gone, he straightened his shoulders and headed inside to try to be a prince.
If there was one thing that age had taught Eolair of Nad Mullach, it was that the present instant was no more real than a layer of fresh snow. As he had seen this morning on a slow walk around the Blarbrekk Castle commons, the drifts might make everything look clean and new, but underneath waited the same old trees, stones, and earth. The older he got, the more he realized how unusual true change was.
These thoughts had been spurred by Prince Morgan’s coming in from the cold to join them all at the table in the Earl’s study, although why Morgan did so was a bit unclear, since the prince looked as though he expected to be scolded for something. It was funny, actually: Eolair had not known King Simon well until the young man took the throne of Erkynland, but he was certain he’d witnessed similar baffled, angry expressions on Simon’s face during his first years of rule. And yet now, the same look from his grandson irritated the king to no end.
To be fair, Eolair had to admit that Morgan’s unhappy expression irritated him a bit, too. He hoped the prince’s appearance here was the beginning of a true change, not merely a new layer of snow. Morgan needed to take more interest in the affairs of the land, and not only because of a possible new threat from the north. Eolair was growing very dubious about King Hugh in Hernystir, the squabbling between the brothers in Nabban, and in fact the future of the High Ward. Decade after decade, it seemed, the old players shuffled off the scene, but those who followed them acted out the same parts, the same rituals of greed and foolishness.
But it’s not entirely their fault, Eolair thought. The young don’t realize that they know almost nothing, or that nothing is ever new. That’s their glory and their most dangerous flaw.
“What we need most now is knowledge,” King Simon declared, pulling Eolair’s attention back to the council at hand as if he had guessed his secret thoughts and meant to share them. “Merciful Usires, how I miss Doctor Morgenes! Gelo?, too, of course, bless her. Without their wisdom, and with no word from the Sithi, we can only guess at what the Norns might be doing.”
“Yes, but we are without them,” said Miriamele. “We must think about what we do know—and what we need to learn.”
Prince Morgan stirred. “Morgenes—he was the one my father named me after, wasn’t he? I never understood that, because everyone says they didn’t even know each other.”
“Your father never met him, but he read Morgenes’ book about your great-grandfather, King John,” Simon said. “That is how he knew him, and why he honored him—and you—with the name.” He gave the prince a stern look. “And you should have read that book by now, too, as you kept promising you would. I managed when I was younger than you, and I scarcely knew how to read! You would have learned many lessons about kingship, and you would also know something about your father’s namesake.”
“Doctor Morgenes was indeed being very wise.” Binabik now did what Eolair as Hand of the Throne usually had to do in such situations, namely, try to unpick quarrels before they began. Eolair was grateful to let someone else do it for a change. “But all wise people are not being gone from the world. Some of them are here now.” The troll smiled. “I am not speaking of myself, with certainty, but instead our good Tiamak and Count Eolair, who between them have been seeing and reading so very many things. And, Majesties, you are wise ones yourselves. Few others have been at doing the things that you have.”
“You rate yourself too modestly,” Simon said with a brief smile. “But nobody here knows very much about the Norns, and that’s what we need right now. The Sithi could help us, God knows, but they stay stubbornly silent. That’s why I miss Morgenes and his wisdom so much right now. That’s why I miss Gelo?.”
“Who is Gelo?, anyway?” Morgan asked. “I’ve heard people saying her name.”
“She was a valada,” said Binabik. “What the Rimmersfolk call a wise woman.”
“A very wise woman,” said Miriamele.
“She was a shape-shifter,” said Tiamak. “She could take the form of an owl. I saw her do it with my own eyes.”
“She was a witch,” Eolair said, then could not help smiling at the faces of the others as they turned toward him. “But of course she was! What else would you call her that would be more truthful? In Hernystir, where I was raised, the word is not quite so fearful as it is for you Aedonites. She could walk the Road of Dreams. By sweet Mircha’s rains, Tiamak is right—she could even take the form of a bird!”
“She’d lived four hundred years or more,” said Simon.
“Really?” said Tiamak. “How do you know that, Majesty?”
“Aditu told me.”
“Ah-dee-too? Who is that?” asked Morgan, a touch plaintively.
“A woman of the Sithi,” his grandmother said. “One of our closest allies.”
“Four hundred years old,” said Tiamak. “Amazing. When Gelo? was dying, I heard Aditu call her ‘Ruyan’s Own.’ Perhaps that was true—perhaps she really was a great-great-grandchild of the Navigator. The Tinukeda’ya nearly all live longer than men.”