Eolair took his knife and handed it to the queen. She cut the thread and unwound it, then unfurled the hide so carefully and gently that Simon groaned at how slowly she did it. This was the first thing that had happened since the previous day that even came close to making Eolair smile, but he still did not feel solid enough for that: whatever was holding him together seemed more fragile than even that slender rawhide cord.
“What kind of letters are those?” the queen asked, holding up the latticed hide. Untidy rows of strange characters filled it, drawn in black. “Eolair, can you read this? Tiamak?”
Eolair had seen things like it, but could not remember where. He shook his head.
“I can, Majesty,” Tiamak said. “Or at least I think I can.”
“Is it Wrannaman writing, then?” Simon asked in surprise. “That would be a strange turn!”
“No, sire.” Tiamak took the hide from the queen, then squinted as he tilted it toward the nearest torch. “These are the runes that Rimmersmen once used.”
Simon squinted and frowned. “That doesn’t look like Rimmerspakk.”
“It is, but the runes are different. I said ‘once used’. These are the old signs, the ones they brought from their former land, across the sea of icebergs. Only the Black Rimmersmen still use them in Osten Ard now. The Norns’ slaves.”
“But why would four or five Norns have a slave?” Eolair asked. “So far from their border? It makes little sense, unless one of the White Foxes was some kind of royalty.” He turned to Tiamak. “Can you read what it says?”
“As I said, this language is old Rimmerspakk, the ancient version of what I learned. I will try to make what I can of it.”
It took him a little while. As Tiamak puzzled through possible meanings, Binabik came in from the cold morning to say that the last of their rams had been found, which meant that even the four-legged members of the troll’s own small party had survived. When he saw what the Wrannaman was doing, he leaned close to look over his shoulder.
“It is not being much like the Rimmerspakk I can read,” the troll admitted.
“I think I have the sense of it now,” said Tiamak, looking down to the translation he had written on a parchment: “‘I travel with the Hikeda’ya,’ it says. ‘I am not one of them, but I will stay with them. This is what I must do. They travel on a mission to Urmsheim. I do not know why, but the mission is important to Nakkiga. The queen of the Hikeda’ya has awakened from her long sleep. The North is full of rumor and preparation for war. I heard one of this company say that the queen seeks the witchwood crown. I do not know what that means, but it is important to them. What I do know is that the queen of the north lives again, and while she lives, she plans our deaths.’” Tiamak cleared his throat. “It is signed ‘Jarnulf of the White Hand’.”
Eolair suddenly felt as if something was shifting beneath him, not a fixed, solid thing like rocks and earth, but a tangle of plans and assumptions that had seemed strong enough to bear them up only a few short hours before.
Queen Miriamele looked as troubled as Eolair felt. “Strange . . . and frightening. Do you know who this Jarnulf is, Count Eolair? Kenrick? Have any of you heard of him or this White Hand?”
As heads were shaking, Sir Kenrick held out his hand again. “Also we found this, which was lying near the arrow. It seems to have fallen loose when the arrow struck the ground. My man said he thought by the angle it had stuck in the mud that the arrow must have been fired from high up on the hillside.” The captain opened his hand, exposing a shiny something on a slither of silver chain.
“He Who Always Steps On Sand!” Tiamak cried, an oath Eolair had only heard the little man use when he was badly surprised. Coming forward to look more closely, the count saw it was a circle of silver dangling from a silver chain. A silver feather was laid across the circle, along with another shape Eolair could not quite make out. “This is the sign of the League of the Scroll,” Tiamak said hoarsely. “But ours are gold, not silver—and there has never been any Jarnulf in the League!”
King Simon stared at the silver charm, then swung his feet off the cot and turned to the Hand of the Throne. Eolair sighed, foreseeing what was to come.
“Old friend,” Simon told him, “this attack, all of this—well, it changes things.”
Eolair felt no surprise, only a small sadness. “Yes, sire. Of course it does. I will tell my great-nephew Aelin that I cannot go back with him to Hernysadharc. Give me time only to write a letter to Queen Inahwen.”
“Of course, of course.” But something in the king’s face said that even this morning’s discoveries, strange and ominous as they were, had not disturbed him like the death of the young harper, nor could much distract him from it. “Yes, I’m sorry, but that’s it, old friend. We can’t do without you—not now.”
“Of course, sire. I understand.” And in that moment, Eolair was not really certain that any such ordinary plans or frustrations mattered. It seemed the shift of balance he had sensed earlier had been just a hint of something even larger, a great and heavy pivot that would change the world so much that, no matter what they did, its full force would soon be upon them.
PART TWO
Orphans
Heaven took my wife. Now it
Has also taken my son.
My eyes are not allowed a
Dry season. It is too much
For my heart. I long for death.
When the rain falls and enters
The earth, when a pearl drops into
The depths of the sea, you can
Dive in the sea and find the
Pearl, you can dig in the earth
And find the water. But no one
Has ever come back from the
Underground Springs. Once gone, life
Is over for good. My chest
Tightens against me. I have
No one to turn to. Nothing,
Not even a shadow in a mirror.
—MEI YAO CH’EN
24
Terrible Flame
In the wild lands north of Kwanitupul, the swamp called the Varn stretched in a broad tongue of wet lowland all the way to the shores of the Unhav, the wide lake that the city people of Nabban called by a name in their own language, Eadne. The grasslander riders knew this northernmost part of the Varn well: In spring and summer the people of the Thrithings hunted here for birds and fish and otters (whose pelts the stonedwellers prized and paid for handsomely), so the grasslanders had learned the safe ways through this treacherous, trackless landscape while they had still been children.
“Why do the city men even come to live here?” Fremur asked. “They are not like us or even the Varnamen. They will be eaten by crocodiles or ghants. They will stumble off the safe tracks and drown.”
“Only a few of them,” said Unver. “Then the rest will drain the Varn and build farms.”
Fremur hoped that wasn’t true, but he had learned long ago not to argue with Unver. The tall, quiet man did not say much, but what he said was usually correct.
“Impossible,” said Odrig, Fremur’s brother, who was the thane of their clan even though their father still lived. “Only a coward would believe that stonedwellers could take our land. We will push them into the ocean.”
“Only a coward or a fool,” said Drojan, looking to Odrig for approval.
Unver did not say anything, and his hawk-nosed face remained impassive, but Fremur could almost feel the man’s anger tighten, like the stretching of a bowstring. Unver thumped his heels against his horse’s ribs and rode a little way ahead, picking his way through the tufts of reeds and the muddy pools on ancient tracks that would disappear again with the first rains of autumn.
“Fool,” said Drojan again, but not as loudly as he might have. Like Odrig, Drojan was barrel-chested and strong, but though Odrig might be as tall as Unver, Drojan was a head shorter and a great deal slower. If Drojan had not been Thane Odrig’s friend and lackey since childhood, Fremur felt sure he would not be insulting Unver so freely.
Odrig laughed. “No need to pick fights,” he said. “There will be blood to spill soon enough.”
Fremur was not entirely certain himself how he felt about Unver. The tall man was no one’s friend, and he had made it clear many times that he thought Fremur little more admirable than his elder brother Odrig. Still, there was something about pale-skinned Unver that Fremur could not ignore, some quality of purposeful reserve, of unusual thoughts unshared. Old beyond his three decades, uninterested in boasts or contests or drinking until he staggered, Unver was simply not like the other Thrithings-men.