“I will wear it tonight,” he said. “If there are answers for us on the Dream Road, as there were in the past, then I want to know them.” He lifted his hand to forestall his wife and the lord steward. “No, no, don’t scold me. Binabik is my friend, and I trust him. His cleverness has saved me many a time.”
“Still, the queen is not wrong to fear, and neither is Count Eolair,” the troll said. “Nothing is being simple where the Dream Road is in the matter. Let me come to you when you wake so you can tell me if you begin your dreaming once more.”
Simon nodded and let his wife draw him away toward their makeshift bedchamber, a frame of screens at the far end of the hall. Miriamele looked decidedly unhappy, and Eolair could not entirely blame her. Too many old stories and portents were in the wind, in a way not seen since the days of the Storm King’s rise.
Yes, the new snow falls, but when it melts all that has been hidden comes back to the light, he thought. Does nothing ever truly change?
“If I may say so, Morgan—I mean, Highness,” Sir Porto began, wheezing clouds of vapor like smoke from a hayfield fire, “and I mean no disrespect to the king’s and queen’s honorable troll friends, but—”
The first wave of the storm had passed just after sunset. The sky was clear but the hill path was almost obscured by fresh drifts. Morgan was laboring so hard to follow the two nimble trolls up the narrow, slippery way, and doing so by moonlight in addition to everything else, that he did not answer for some time. “What?” he said at last. “What? Out with it.”
“I think this is a foolish adventure, Prince Morgan.” The old knight seldom spoke so forcefully. “We are getting quite high up in the hills now. The guards have fallen a long distance behind us, and I am no longer the climber I was in my youth.”
“You’re doing well, though,” Morgan said, secretly glad for the chance to catch his own breath.
“You are kind, Highness, but that misses my point. I don’t know what these people from Yick-Nick plan for you, but I think we should go back.”
Morgan sucked in enough air to make a derisive noise. “Nobody forced you to come, Porto. Even Astrian and Olveris had the good sense to stay inside where it’s warm, and you can see how much my guards are worried about me, sitting on a rock down there somewhere. If you don’t like it, go join them.”
But even as he said it, Morgan was having his own second thoughts. He had supposed Snenneq and Qina simply meant to take him out walking, perhaps to look at another frozen lake—the young trolls had a strange love of being out of doors when more sensible people were sitting around a fire. Instead he found himself climbing up into the dark, slippery, stony hills for reasons they wouldn’t yet explain to him. If his grandmother and grandfather knew he was endangering himself this way, they would doubtless be furious again. But somehow, for that very reason, he was determined not to turn back, not to give up and go home like a child who could not keep up with his elders.
“But I can’t leave you,” the old knight said with breathless indignation. “You are my liege!”
“That didn’t stop the guards, did it? And I’m not your liege, anyway.” Morgan looked up the path and saw Snenneq and Qina high on the slope above him now, little more than moving shadows against the stars and the black sky. “My grandmother and grandfather are your lieges—I’m only the heir. And if I fall off this damnable mountain and die, then it’s even more certain I won’t be anyone’s liege.”
“Highness!” Porto was horrified, and made the Tree sign with vigor. “Do not say such things, even in jest!”
“Very well. But I am going on, so if you are too, it’s time to get on your feet.”
They did not make it much farther up the mountainside before Sir Porto, weary and light-headed, lost his balance yet again and this time nearly fell down the long, steep slope. Qina, who by this point had circled back and was walking behind him, caught the old man’s arm and steadied him until he could find a safe spot to sit down.
“It must be easier to be so small,” said Porto as he watched Little Snenneq trotting back down the path toward them. “Every time I stand up I want to fall backward down the hill.”
“This good place for old Porto Knight, I am thinking.” Qina herself seemed quite fresh, her breathing even and not particularly deep as she shrugged off her pack and pulled out a woolen blanket. She had to stand on tiptoe to wrap it around the tall old man, even though Porto was sitting on a low slab of rock. “Now you have warm until we come back.”
“But what will I tell the king and queen if something happens?” the old knight moaned.
“Nothing.” Morgan was taking the opportunity to suck air deep into his lungs and shake snow out of his boots. “All will go well. The trolls will show me what they wish to show me, then we’ll come back, and you and I will have a warming cup together. Or several, since I denied myself earlier.”
“Now we must move again,” said Snenneq, who seemed just as unwearied as Qina. The top of his head might only reach Morgan’s chest when they stood side by side, but they were roughly the same size around the middle, and though his legs were short, his arms were almost as long as the prince’s.
In fact he’s made for climbing, Morgan thought. Made for falling, me.
“Come, friend Morgan,” Snenneq said. “Follow us.”
“Remind me again why I came with you?” he asked.
“Because I said I would show wonders to you,” the troll told him.
“Ah. Yes. Of course.” He patted Sir Porto on his blanketed shoulder, and said with a confidence he did not wholly feel, “Be brave, old campaigner. We’ll be back very soon.”
? ? ?
“Morgan Prince!” called Snenneq from somewhere above. “Almost we have reached a stopping place.”
“Oh, praise the Aedon!” Morgan was feeling the cold badly now, and wishing he had drunk a great deal less water and a great deal more wine. “We’re at the stopping place?”
“No,” said Snenneq. “We are almost at a stopping place.”
They scrambled up another bank of loose rock and then picked their way along a scarp that looked so narrow—though it was wider across than his shoulders—that Morgan sat down and inched along it like a child learning to crawl. He could see the lights of Radfisk Foss far below them now, obscured by the trees at the base of the slope and looking quite unreachably distant.
“Here is not for lingering,” called Snenneq, despite the fact that he had just taken off his pack. “Our slowness makes me worry.”
“Yes, well, I’m not all that happy myself,” said Morgan. He was quite disinterested in the whole adventure now. If it had not been for the full moon, the four of them would have been climbing these perilous heights in darkness. He had been finding the company of Astrian and Olveris a bit flat of late—the knights seemed to be doing nothing more than waiting for the journey to end—but he was beginning to think it was not such a good idea to let the trolls call the dance either. “Snenneq, why are we here? In fact, where are we going?”
“It is not just a where,” Little Snenneq said. “It is having more importance for when.”
“Oh, God save me from mad trolls!” Morgan sat down on the broad ledge. “That is enough. We’ll go back now.”
“True it is only being a little more far,” said Qina. “Do not be feared, Highness Prince.”
“Prince Morgan. No, just ‘Morgan.’ Simpler. What is only a little more far?”
“The top,” Snenneq explained. “But first you must be putting these on.” He pulled an oilskinned bundle out of his pack and began to unwrap it. He set a pair of climbing irons before Morgan, then took the other for himself. Qina had already donned hers in what seemed less than a moment; it made Morgan feel dizzied. “Go to,” Snenneq urged him. “You are remembering how, yes? But this time not for ice-sliding, only climbing.” The troll laughed so loud he blew snow from the fur around his hood. “What did you call it—skatting? Skating? We will not be doing that tonight, I think.” He paused, waiting for a response, grinning widely. At last he said, in a slightly injured tone, “That was a fine joke, you must admit.”
“Do Singing Men have to be good at jokes?” Morgan asked, swearing silently as he knotted his cold fingers in a rawhide thong by accident.
“A Singing Man must be skilled in all things,” Snenneq said with high seriousness. “Herding and hunting, making and finding, leaving and coming back again. He must travel so quietly the rabbits do not hear him pass. He must speak the languages of people and of animals and of storms—”
“He must speak when the moon is climbed too high,” said Qina with a stern look.
“By the Mountain’s Daughter, she is right!” Snenneq said. “You have kept me too long in conversing, Morgan Prince. Now we must go swiftly. Do not worry, Qina and myself will see you there safely.”
“But where is there?” Morgan asked, getting cautiously onto his feet. At least this time the odd weight and protrusion of the climbing spikes felt almost familiar.