His grandmother rolled her eyes to the heavens. “Oh, spare me. Is this what a prince does to honor the day of his father’s birth? Drinks until the morning hours? Stumbles back in, half-dressed, smelling of vomit and cheap sachet? Could you not at least spend your time with women who can afford a decent pomander? You stink like the end of Market Day.”
Yes, there had been a few girls. He remembered that now. He and Astrian had been walking them back to their village, for their protection—Olveris was off protecting an older woman he’d met—but then things had become a bit confusing, as the walk turned into a game of hide and seek. Then there had been wet grass. Somebody had been named “Sofra,” he thought—a very friendly someone. After that he had been back in camp, trying to get past the demon tent-flap. Waiting for his lazy squire to wake up and help him . . . which reminded him. “Where’s Melkin?”
“If you mean your squire, I sent him out a short while ago to get me a blanket—a clean blanket. I didn’t expect to be waiting so long, and I was getting cold.”
She sounded very, very unhappy. “Please, Majesty. Gra’mother. I know you’re angry, but . . . but I can explain.”
Queen Miriamele rose. “There is nothing to explain, Morgan. There is nothing interesting or unusual about anything you have been doing, except for the fact that you are heir to the High Throne.” She moved to the tent flap. “We will only be a day or two in Hernysadharc—where the people are already whispering about you and your friends, I am told—then we must travel to Elvritshalla in Rimmersgard to say farewell to one of the finest men your grandfather and I have ever known. You will not simply be a visitor there, you will be all they will see and remember for years of the man who will one day lead them—the man to whom even the king of Hernystir and the duke of Rimmersgard must kneel. Will you make yourself an ugly joke as you have done in Erchester and all during this journey? Will you earn the people’s loyalty or their scorn?” She flipped shut the hood on the lantern, leaving only her voice to share the darkened tent with him. “We leave early tomorrow. Isgrimnur still lives, but for how long no one knows. You will be on your horse at first light. If you are timely and presentable, I will not tell your grandfather about this. Remember, first light.”
Morgan groaned despite himself. “Too early! Why so early?” He tried to remember what Astrian had said, because it had made sense at the time. “I only drank wine so I could sleep better and not . . . I mean, so I could be a good prince. A better prince.”
There was a long silence. The queen’s voice was cold as a blade. “Your grandfather and I are tired of this foolishness, Morgan. Very, very tired.”
The queen seemed to have no trouble with the flap, passing through and out into the night without a sound. Morgan sat on the chest in darkness and wondered why things were always so much easier for everyone else.
3
Conversation with a Corpse-Giant
The waxing moon was nearly full, but curtained by thick clouds, as were the stars. It was not hard for Jarnulf to imagine that he was floating in the high darkness where only God lived, like a confessor-priest in his blind box listening all day long to the sins of mankind.
But God, he thought, did not have that corpse-smell in His nostrils every moment. Or did He? For if my Lord doesn’t like the scent of death, Jarnulf wondered, why does He make so many dead men?
Jarnulf looked to the corpse stretched at the side of the tree-burial platform nearest the trunk. It was an old woman, or had been, her hands gnarled like tree roots by years of hard work, her body covered only by a thin blanket, as though for a summer night’s sleep instead of eternity. Her jaw was bound shut, and snow had pooled in the sockets of her eyes, giving her a look of infinite, blind blankness. Here in the far north of Rimmersgard they might worship at the altar of the new God and His son, Usires Aedon, but they honored the old gods and old ways as well: the corpse wore thick birch bark shoes, which showed she had been dressed not for a triumphal appearance in Usires the Ransomer’s heavenly court, but for the long walk through the cold, silent Land of the Dead.
It seemed barbaric to leave a body to scavengers and the elements, but the Rimmersfolk who lived beside this ancient forest considered it as natural as the southerners setting their dead in little houses of stone or burying them in holes. But it was not the local customs that interested Jarnulf, or even what waited for the dead woman’s soul in the afterlife, but the scavengers who would come to the corpse—one sort in particular.
The wind strengthened and set clouds flowing through the black sky, the treetop swaying. The platform on which Jarnulf sat, thirty cubits above the icy ground, rocked like a small boat on rough seas. He pulled his cloak tighter and waited.
? ? ?
He heard it before he could see anything, a swish of branches out of time with the rise and fall of the wind’s noises. The scent came to him a few moments later, and although the corpse lying at the far end of the platform had an odor of its own, it seemed almost healthy to Jarnulf, matched against this new stink. He was almost grateful when the wind changed direction, although for a moment it left him with no way of judging the approach of the thing he had been waiting for since the dark northern afternoon had ended.
Now he saw it, or at least part of it—a gleam of long, pale limbs in the nearby treetops. As he had hoped, it was a corpse-giant, a Hun? too small or too old to hunt successfully and thus reduced to preying on carcasses, both animal and human. The sinking moon still spread enough light to show the creature’s long legs flexing and extending as it clambered toward him through the treetops like a huge, white spider. Jarnulf took a slow, deep breath and wondered again whether he would regret leaving his bow and quiver down below, but carrying them would have made the climb more difficult, and even several arrows would not kill a giant quickly enough to be much use on such a dangerously constrained battlefield—especially when his task was not to kill the creature, but to get answers from it.
He was frightened, of course—anyone who was not a madman would be—so he said the Monk’s Night Prayer, which had been one of Father’s favorites.
Aedon to my right hand, Aedon to my left
Aedon before me, Aedon behind me
Aedon in the wind and rain that fall upon me
Aedon in the sun and moon that light my way
Aedon in every eye that beholds me and every ear that hears me
Aedon in every mouth that speaks of me, in every heart that loves me
Ransomer, go with me where I travel
Ransomer, lead me where I should go
Ransomer, give me the blessing of Your presence
As I give my life to You.
As Jarnulf finished his silent recitation, the pale monstrosity vanished from the nearest tree beneath the edge of the platform; a moment later he felt the entire wooden floor dip beneath him as the creature pulled itself up from below. First its hands appeared, knob-knuckled and black-clawed, each big as a serving platter, then the head, a white lump that rose until light glinted from the twin moons of its eyes. For all its fearsomeness, Jarnulf thought the monster looked like something put together hurriedly, its elbows and knees and hairy limbs sticking out at strange angles. It moved cautiously as it pulled itself up onto the platform, the timbers barely creaking beneath its great weight. Its foxfire eyes never left the dead woman at the far end of the wooden stand.
Jarnulf had seen many giants, had even fought a few and survived, but the superstitious horror never entirely went away. The beast’s shaggy, powerful limbs were far longer than his own, but it was old and smaller than most of its kind. In fact, only the giant’s legs and arms were full-sized: its shrunken body and head seemed to dangle between them, like those of some hairy crab or long-legged insect. The Njar-Hun?’s fur was patchy, too: even by moonlight Jarnulf could see that its once snowy pelt was mottled with age.
But though the beast might be old, he reminded himself, it was still easily capable of killing even a strong man. If those grotesque, clawed hands got a grip on him they would tear him apart in an instant.
The giant was making its way across the platform toward the corpse when Jarnulf spoke, suddenly and loudly: “What do you think you are doing, night-walker? By what right do you disturb the dead?”
The monster flinched in alarm and Jarnulf saw its leg muscles bunch in preparation for sudden movement, either battle or escape. “Do not move, corpse-eater,” he warned in the Hikeda’ya tongue, wondering if it could understand him, let alone reply. “I am behind you. Move too quickly for my liking and you will have my spear through your heart. But know this: if I wanted you dead, Godless creature, you would be dead already. All I want is talk.”