Aelin described the surprising encounter on the road, a mere few miles south of the royal encampment. “I did not look back for the monster, I simply limped after my horse as fast as I could and dragged myself back into the saddle. By the time I turned the giant was long gone, but the rest of my company saw its footprints.”
The wine came, and after a few more questions Eolair turned the talk to other, less disturbing things, asking after his sister Elatha’s health, and how life fared at Nad Mullach, the ancestral home that Eolair had not been able to visit this trip because of the demands of the royal progress. Talking about the place filled him with melancholy. More and more, the count was looking forward to the day when he could lay down his burdens and return there to spend his last years in peace—a gentleman farmer caring for his forefathers’ land, the way he had always wished to be.
“Will you stay only this night, or can you stay and ride with us for a while on our way south?” he asked Aelin at last.
“I would love a more leisurely trip back,” the younger man said, “and I’m fairly certain the presence of some hundreds of Erkynguards would keep any giants at bay, but Queen Inahwen said she hopes for an answer from you quickly. I fear that tomorrow, after you have had time to write back to her, my men and I must hurry back across the Frostmarch to Hernysadharc.” Aelin was one of King Hugh’s favorite young courtiers, known like his great-uncle as a man who could tread the measures of an intricate Dillathi ring dance or, with equal facility, the even more courtly steps of arguing preferment and royal favors. But what Eolair liked best about his young relative was Aelin’s careful intelligence. The world was full of people quite certain they already knew the answer to every important question. The older Eolair got, the more he valued men—and women, too, most definitely—who thought for themselves, who asked questions, who were not satisfied with seemingly easy answers to difficult problems.
? ? ?
Some time later, when Aelin had gone to catch up with some of his friends among the Erkynlandish nobility, Eolair took up the letter from Inahwen, but not without trepidation. They had spoken so recently that it seemed strange she should send him a message, and even stranger she should go out of her way to send it with his own grandnephew to keep it safe. What matter was so pressing that it could not wait until Eolair was back in the Hayholt?
My dearest Count,
I hope you will forgive me for troubling you, especially with such a difficult request, when you have been so long traveling and away from Erkynland, where the high king and high queen depend so much upon you. But I am fearful, otherwise I would not trouble you, despite our long friendship.
You will remember, I hope, that when you visited me in the Queen’s Little House, we talked much about the Lady Tylleth and her influence upon King Hugh. I said something about her, and you asked me if that were really true, or only my dislike speaking.
Inahwen had called the king’s betrothed a witch, a bizarre word to come from the usually mild dowager queen. Eolair had certainly not forgotten.
I will leave it to you to decide whether I spoke harshly or not. You remember in the bad old days after my husband the king’s death, when Skali of Rimmersgard and his army ruled our land and the remnants of the royal family hid in the mountains, what happened to my step-daughter Maegwin, may the gods preserve her spirit? Do you remember the place she found? She took you there, and you once told me that what she found in that place added to her sad state, perhaps even increased the madness that eventually overcame her.
The Silverhome, it was called, that place under the mountains that the Sithi or their servants built, though poor Maegwin believed it the home of the gods. I confess I do not remember all you told me, and since at your suggestion we sealed those tunnels up years ago, I have not thought much upon it. Until now.
The tunnels have been now opened again. Tylleth and certain of her followers, for lack of a better word, have convinced King Hugh to unblock the ways into the earth that Maegwin found, saying that the caverns are sacred to our people and should not be hidden from them.
I have never gone there myself, because I am too frail for such clambering, but I have heard from others that the king’s mistress and her friends have made it into a sort of shrine (although not an Aedonite shrine, which would be bad enough) and that Tylleth and others conduct strange ceremonies there in the caverns under the Grianspog Mountains. They say they are merely restoring the worship of Cuamh the lord of the dark places underground (who, as you well know, the rest of us have never stopped venerating) but others say that the rituals are more serious than any mere worship of the Earthdog. In fact, I have heard tales from those I trust that they are worshipping someone else. I will not sully this letter with her foul name, for fear of her hearing it in her dark hall and bringing bad fortune upon us all, but you know the one I mean—she who was once called The Maker of Orphans and the Crow Mother.
Eolair sat back, rubbing his eyes. It was hard to read by candlelight these days, even if he held the parchment so close it nearly caught fire, but he did not want anyone else reading Inahwen’s words to him—not even Aelin.
But here is the heart of the matter, my dear friend. It is not this alone that frightens me, although it does frighten me very much, nor even the reports that they have found some old scrying-stone of the Sithi and use it to beg favor from their grisly mistress. What is worst of all is the report that Tylleth has brought King Hugh himself down into this once-buried place, and that he joins her there in this ancient, dreadful worship.
I have no power in this court. Whatever loyalty Hugh once felt toward me is long gone, buried beneath the scorn of his betrothed and her courtiers. He is openly rude to me, cruel and cutting in front of all his subjects, although I give him no cause. Even were I to denounce these dreadful practices outright, I would be dismissed as a mad old woman, and anything I said would only be taken as proof that my wits have fled. You may be thinking that yourself, but I swear to you everything I say is true, and all that is hearsay comes to me from trustworthy sources, or is confirmed by many reports.
Please, Eolair, my friend and once-lover, I beg you to come back to the Taig. Bring Queen Miriamele and King Simon with you if you can. Only you and they can uproot this terrible madness before it rises up from the deeps like a noxious disease and overwhelms the Hernystir we both love.
Whatever you do, write to me back as quickly as you can, and send messages only through the most trusted sources, as I have trusted your own kinsman, Aelin. But please, do not dismiss what I say. Come to see for yourself. See the shared glances, the whispered secrets, and smell the foulness in the air. The unpleasantness that you saw here with King Simon and Queen Miriamele has only become worse, and now that I know the reason, I cannot sleep for fear of what is to come.
Despite the frightened words, her signature was as steady as Eolair had ever seen it.
He read the letter again, his stomach roiling within him. He did not want to believe it, of course—he did not want to believe any of it—but he knew Inahwen too well to doubt that she believed it herself, and her every word had the sound of someone still carefully testing her own reason, aware that what she said would sound impossible. Most would have scoffed, Eolair knew, but he had seen too many incredible things to dismiss Inahwen’s fears. But it was a damnable time to ask him to come back to Hernysadharc, let alone bring the high queen and king, when they had all been away from Erkynland for months upon months.
Still, he knew he could not simply ignore Inahwen’s need. He wondered whether Simon and Miriamele would allow him to postpone his own return to the Hayholt, if only for a fortnight or two, so that he could ride to Hernysadharc with Aelin and try to make some sense of what was going on there.
Eolair sighed and called his servant to pour him another cup of wine. It was past time for him to sleep, but he sensed it would not come easily this night. As he waited for the young man to finish pouring, a grim bit of poetry he had often heard in childhood seeped up from his memory, unbidden and unwanted—a song about the Morriga, the Mother of Crows.
I see the world of the dead
The world that is coming
Her world, all laid beneath her feet
Summer will have no flowers
Cows will give no milk
Women will lose all their modesty
And men all their valor
Fruitless forests
And empty seas
Great storms will rage
Around empty fortresses
Battles will be waged everywhere
And treacherous princelings
Will drape a shroud of sorrows
Over the world
Every man will be a betrayer
Every son a thief
The count sat up another hour waiting for Aelin to return, but decided at last that the young man was likely having too good a time with his fellows to rush back and sit with an aging great-uncle. At last Eolair went to his bed, oddly grateful for the distraction of his aching bones.