“This isn’t fair,” said Morgan. “I’m trying to pay attention, I swear I am, but who are all these people? Who’s the Navigator, and what does he have to do with this Gelo?? What’s a Tinookidah or whatever you said? And what do any of these old stories have to do with someone finding dead Norns in a cow pasture in Rimmersgard last winter, which is what I thought you were all talking about?”
“Norns, yes, but Sithi as well,” said Binabik. “That is the strangest thing we were hearing. But it is good that you have questions, Prince Morgan,” Binabik said. “Perhaps, though, it is being too much for learning all in one day.”
But Eolair saw a moment to educate the prince, a rare moment when the young man actually seemed to want to learn. “The Norns and the Sithi were once all one family, Highness—one race,” he explained. “But not the Tinukeda’ya—Ruyan the Navigator’s people. They were mostly slaves and servants, at least in the early days. Even their leader Ruyan, it is said, with all his skill and craft, was no more than a thrall to the immortals. Long, long ago, he and his people built a fleet of ships to carry the Sithi and Norns here from the place they call the Garden.”
The king nodded. “My Sitha friend Jiriki said that, too—that the Sithi and Norns brought Ruyan’s people here as slaves. I do not know where the Tinukeda’ya came from. Jiriki said their name means Ocean Children. And it’s true that some of them live almost always on ships at sea. Miriamele met some.”
“The Niskies,” said the queen, nodding. “In fact one of them, Gan Itai, saved my life. The Niskies are the ones who protect the Nabbanai ships by singing the kilpa down.”
“Ah,” said Morgan, grasping at something he recognized. “Kilpa. I have heard of those things. Terrible, fishy creatures that steal sailors in the south from their ships and drown them.”
“You are correct, Highness,” Eolair said by way of encouragement. “And I have met Tinukeda’ya too, but from one of their other tribes,” he said, remembering the frightened, big-eyed dwarrows of Mezutu’a. “You see, these Tinukeda’ya are a race of changelings that can be as different in form between themselves as a noble lady’s lapdog is to a mastiff. These things matter to us now because all the creatures we are talking about, Sithi, Norns, Tinukeda’ya, live a long time.”
“Some of them live damn near forever,” said King Simon. “I’d guess the Norn Queen is still alive, even if she lost her power, as Aditu told us. Jiriki once said she was the oldest living thing in the world.” He turned to the young prince. “That’s why we want you to know these things, Morgan. Someday your grandmother and I will be gone—but the Norns won’t be.”
“But isn’t there anyone now like this Gelo??” asked Morgan, who seemed finally to have grasped the seriousness of their concerns. “Somebody who knows about the Norns and what they might be doing?”
“There is being nobody like Gelo?,” said Binabik with a sad smile. “Not before, and not now that she is being gone. And there is also being nobody living today as knowledgeable about these things as your namesake Doctor Morgenes, Prince Morgan. No, it seems we will have to find the solving of this ourselves.”
The troll was right, Eolair realized, even as the others began again to discuss the Norns and what Lady Alva’s story might mean. There was no other like Gelo?. Eolair had not known her well—he had only been in her presence for a few days, when he had visited Prince Josua’s camp during the Storm King’s War—but the memory of her bright, hunting-bird’s eyes would never leave him. From a distance she had looked like many other peasant women, short but solid, with the cropped hair and unprepossessing clothes of someone who cared little what others might think of her. But to be in her presence, to be examined by that yellow stare, had been to feel her power—not the might of a conqueror or even a will in search of mastery over others, but the unselfconscious power of a stone standing in the middle of a mighty river—something which did not move but instead let everything else bend around it in a rush of pointless motion and noise.
And she had dirty fingernails, Eolair remembered—something else he had liked about her. Too busy doing what needed doing to waste any time being anything but herself. Gods, yes, he thought. We would be immeasurably better off if all the Scrollbearers still lived—Gelo? and Morgenes and Jarnauga and Father Dinivan—and if they were all here now to tell us what to do. But Gelo? had died at the hands of the Norns, as had Jarnauga, and the red priest Pryrates had murdered Father Dinivan in the Sancellan Aedonitis and burned Doctor Morgenes to death in his own chambers.
Eolair looked around the room. Here they all sat, the king and queen, the trolls from distant Yiqanuc, Tiamak who had been born in the marshy Wran, and young Morgan, confused and frustrated by all the things he did not understand. But now we are the ones who must protect the realm, he thought. It is up to us to be those that others will speak of in some future time, the ones of whom they will say, “Thank the gods they were here.” Because if we are not—if the tide of vengeance comes rolling down from the north again, and we fail to hold what others helped us keep at the last time of darkness—there may be nothing to say, and no one left to say it.
Miriamele had just sent her ladies ahead to prepare the bedchamber when she noticed Binabik waiting at the door of the jarl’s study. The small man looked tired, but she thought she still might be unused to this aged version of a familiar face. She smiled at him. “It is so good to see you and Sisqi, Binabik. And your child, Qina—she’s grown to be such a beauty! It all gives me heart.”
He bumped his fist against his chest. “Heart is what we are all sometimes needing. As we say in Yiqanuc, ‘Fear is the mother of wisdom, but every child must be leaving the home one day.’”
Miriamele was still trying to work that out when Simon finished his conversation with Sir Kenrick about the disposition of the guards. Since they were staying in the house of a trusted ally, there had apparently been little to discuss.
Sir Kenrick paused in the doorway and bowed deeply to the queen, then looked down at the troll and made a curious half-bow, like an overbalanced nod: as with most of his fellows, the stocky captain marshal never quite knew how to treat the royal couple’s odd friends. Matters of deference and title were often especially difficult. Just a fortnight past, Miriamele knew, Lord Chamberlain Jeremias had been almost in tears trying to decide what Binabik’s rank, “Singing Man of Mintahoq Mountain,” signified as far as precedence at table.
“He’s my oldest and closest friend,” Simon had told him, then hurriedly added, “after you, Jeremias, of course.”
“One more question,” Kenrick said now, “begging your Majesties’ pardons. Perhaps if we make good time to Vestvennby we could give the men a day of freedom there. It would cheer them up after all this snow and short rations.”
“I’m sure that can be arranged,” said Simon.
“We will consider it, Sir Kenrick,” the queen said with a meaningful glance at her husband.
“Why shouldn’t they have a day in Vestvennby?” the king asked when the captain had departed.
“I didn’t say they shouldn’t, although we’ve lost time already with this storm. I just said we would consider it. Together. Before we make announcements.”
“I didn’t think you would disagree.”
“You don’t know unless you ask, husband.”
He pursed his lips, but at last nodded. “I suppose that’s true.”
For a moment she wanted only to put her arms around him, only for the two of them to be alone somewhere without responsibilities, just a husband and wife. But that would not happen. That would never happen. She sighed and squeezed his hand. “Right, then. I think Binabik is waiting to speak with you.”
“With both of you, to speak with exactness,” said the troll, stepping forward. “But it is about something you were saying another day, friend Simon. When we were in Elvritshalla, you told that you have stopped dreaming. Was that a true saying?”
An expression crossed her husband’s face that also reminded her of a younger Simon—a worried one. “It was,” he said. “It is. You know I’ve always had strange dreams, Binabik, but especially in the Storm King years. I dreamed of the Uduntree, didn’t I? Long before I saw it. The wheel, too, never knowing I’d be strapped to one! And I dreamed of Stormspike Mountain back in those days as well, and the Norn Queen, when I didn’t know anything about her. In Gelo?’s house, when we walked the Dream Road—remember?”
Binabik nodded. “Of course I am remembering. And also what the great Sitha lady Amerasu told you—that you were perhaps one closer to the Road of Dreams than others. Has it changed in the years we have been apart?”