I knew she would be leaving...
It was impossible. A boy might have some shard of the talent, but not a man. And while he was just now eighteen, by the shadow on his chin and the deepness of his voice, Teravian had left boyhood behind. She had to be mistaken. All the same, she found herself speaking.
“How did you know, my lord? You said you knew you’d find me in this part of the castle. Only I told no one where I was going, and I don’t believe anyone saw me come this direction. So how did you know I was here?”
His eyebrows drew down in a scowl. “I don’t know. I just did. Why are you all always asking me things like that? Ivalaine. Tressa. Even Lirith. Well, I’m tired of it, all right? I’m not some insect you can pin to a board to examine as you please.”
Aryn found this response telling. First, it meant others, including the queen, had noticed similar instances. So this was not the first time Teravian had known something he shouldn’t have. And second, by his defensive tone, it was clear he knew they were onto something, and it frightened him.
And why shouldn’t it, Aryn? If it’s true, if he really does have
some shard of the Sight, then he is unlike almost all other men.
And who wishes to be di ferent from everyone else? Even you
hid your right arm most of your life.
Perhaps she could find a way to bring it up with Mirda; the elder witch might be willing to discuss it with her.
“I’m sorry, my lord,” she said. “It was not my place to pry. Again, I thank you for what you’ve done for me today. I won’t ...I won’t forget it when we’re married.”
He crossed his arms. “When we’re married. It sounds so ridiculous. I’d think it a bad joke. Gods know that’s the only kind my father knows how to make. But it’s real, isn’t it?”
Once again, Aryn decided to let the insult pass. After the way she had reacted to seeing him in the great hall the previous day, she deserved a jab or two. “We should probably get going,” she said. “Supper will be on the board soon, and you know your father hates it when members of his court are late.”
She held out her left arm. He stared, uncomprehending, but after she gave him a pointed look, he clumsily took her arm in his, leading her down the corridor.
“By the way,” she said as they walked, “I positively hate orange.”
His smirk returned. “I know. That’s why I suggested it to Lord Farvel.”
47.
They sailed across a black ocean under the light of cold northern stars.
Beltan knew he should be freezing. Chunks of ice drifted past the hull of the ship; his breath fogged on the air, and frost clung to his mustaches. All the same, he was warm inside his woolen cloak; his skin tingled as if he had rolled in a snow-bank after spending hours in the smoky heat of a sweat lodge. It was the same tingling he had first felt in the prison in Travis’s world, after his captors had done their experiments on him, had infused his veins with strange blood. The sensation grew a little stronger each time one of the shadowy figures passed nearby.
It was difficult to get a good look at the ship’s crew in the starry light. They never seemed to stand still, and their motions were fluid and unpredictable, like shadows that caught the corner of his eye only to vanish by the time he turned his head to gaze at them full on.
“What are they?” Vani said beside him, her black leathers merging with the dark.
As usual, he hadn’t seen the assassin approach. Couldn’t she just walk up to him like a normal person?
Of course not. Popping out of thin air is far more mysterious, and she just can’t help showing off.
Except, much as he wanted to believe that, he knew it wasn’t the case. She moved the way she did because it had been ingrained in her by decades of training. Just as for the rest of his life he would always walk like there was the weight of a sword at his hip, whether a blade was buckled there or not.
He swallowed the angry words he had been going to say. “They’re Little People. At least, I think that’s what they are. A troupe of them came to Calavere last Midwinter and helped us uncover a conspiracy in the castle.”
Vani crossed her arms. “Little People? You mean like the fairy we saw in Tarras?”
“Sort of.” Beltan scratched his scruffy chin. “I’m pretty sure fairies are a kind of Little People. From what I know, there are different types—fairies, dwarfs, greenmen, and the like. Of course, I always thought they were all just stories for children until they showed up in the castle last year. But you should be asking Falken about this, not me. I’m no expert on fairies.”
“Truly?” Vani said, raising an eyebrow.
Again Beltan felt the tingling sensation coursing up his arms and down his back. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s go see what they’re saying to Sindar.”
Grace and Falken stood near the stern of the ship, speaking with the silver-haired man. He seemed to be answering a question the bard had asked.
“...only that it’s impossible for me to say where I found them. You see, it was they who found me.”
Even in the dim light, Falken’s shocked expression was clear. “What do you mean they found you?”
Sindar passed a hand before his eyes. “I don’t remember much. I was stranded on a rocky shore, alone and lost—that’s all I know. What events led me there, I can’t say. I think I had been traveling to someplace important. Or rather, to some
thing
important. I believe I had been injured, and also that I had been healed, but that I was still far weaker than I once had been. I know I was weary, that somehow I had exerted myself beyond all limits, and that I didn’t have the strength to do anything save sit there on the beach and stare at the sea until the waves washed me away like the foam.”
These words didn’t quite make sense to Beltan. It sounded almost like Sindar had been in some sort of shipwreck, just like they had. Had he been injured in the wreck and lost his memory?
“I’m not certain how long I was there,” Sindar said. “Only that it was twilight when I saw the white ship come. Impossible as it seems, I knew it had come for me, that the ship was going to take me where I had been going, and that I had something I was supposed to do there, something important. So I splashed out into the sea as far as I could go, and a rope was cast out from the ship. I took it, and
they
pulled me in.”
Grace gazed at the shadows that flitted around them. “Did they tell you what it was you were supposed to do?”
“In a way. They didn’t speak to me. Not with words, at least. All the same, I knew we were going to Omberfell, that there was someone there I was supposed to meet, someone who needed to come with us. Then, when I overheard your story, I knew it had to be you.”
“But how did you know to find us at the Silver Grail?” Falken said, frowning.
Sindar laughed. “I didn’t. I simply asked people in the city where I was most likely to find important travelers, and they directed me to the inn.”
“And what about the story you told us?” Falken said, arms crossed. “I thought you were a ship’s captain who cared only for gold. Why did you lie to us?”
Sindar gestured to the ship around them. “Would you have believed me if I had told you the truth? When I first reached Omberfell, I spent some time at the docks, listening to the sailors there. That was how I learned about the duke’s edict, and the dark men whom you call the Onyx Knights. I decided to pose as one of those captains, thinking it would make it easier for you to believe and follow me. And it worked, didn’t it?”
Falken said nothing, but he appeared unsatisfied by this answer. Beltan couldn’t blame him. Sindar’s story begged more questions than it answered. A shipwreck might explain how he was stranded on a beach with no memory. But why had this mysterious ship come to him? Beltan could imagine the Little People had decided to help Grace get to Toringarth, just like they had helped in Calavere the previous Midwinter’s Eve. But what was Sindar’s part in all this? Beltan shivered and was startled to realize Sindar was gazing at him.
“I have to admit,” the silver-haired man said, “even if I hadn’t overheard your tale at the inn, I think I would have known it was you I was searching for. You look familiar to me somehow.” He nodded at Beltan, then glanced at Grace. “And especially you. But I suppose that’s impossible. Even if I did know you before I lost my memories, it seems you don’t know me.”
Grace lifted a hand to her chest. Beltan remembered she had said the very same thing about Sindar.
“Do you know who Trifkin Mossberry is?” Grace asked softly.
“No. But that name...it sounds like someone they would know.” Sindar gestured to a pair of dim forms that scurried by, one with an antlered brow, the other trailing hair tangled with leaves.
A thought occurred to Beltan. “Speaking of names, how is it you know your own? I thought you lost your memories.”
“I have. And I don’t know my name. Not my real name, at least.” His eyes followed after the shadows. “Sindar is simply what they called me.”
“Of course,” Falken said. “
Sindar
means silver in the tongue of creation.”
After that, they asked no more questions of Sindar. Not because they didn’t have questions, but rather because the silver-haired man seemed to wish to be alone with his thoughts. He moved to the prow of the ship and gazed into the night, as if he could see where they were headed in the gloom.
Despite searching the length of the deck, neither Beltan nor Vani could find any way belowdecks, so the four of them simply sat near the center of the ship. With a spell, Grace conjured a small globe of witchlight to give them illumination, if not warmth. Not that that they needed the latter; despite the frosty air, none of them felt cold.
Beltan stared at the ball of green light dancing in the center of their circle. It reminded him of the magics his mother used to work late at night when she thought he wasn’t awake. Only he was. He would sit at the edge of the loft where he slept, quiet as a mouse, watching as she worked by the fey light, grinding herbs and making simples with deft hands.
They didn’t sleep that night. Nor did it seem they remained entirely awake. Speaking became too great an effort, so they sat in silence as the stars wheeled overhead. Only gradually did Beltan realize that it was dawn, and that a thick mist had risen off the water, cloaking the ship as if in a silver cloud. By the goose bumps on his arms, he knew the sun had risen.
The others blinked, and frost fell from their eyelids like white dust. More frost powdered their faces, their hair, their clothes. However, as they stood it turned to beads of dew, then was gone. Beltan was a little stiff, but that was all.
It was no easier to get a glimpse of the ship’s crew by day than it had been by night. The fog clung to them, muting their twisted forms. All the same, from time to time, Beltan caught the glimmer of jewel-like eyes watching him.
“Where’s Sindar?” Grace said.
The mist swirled, and they saw the silver-haired man standing at the prow of the ship, staring into the fog.
“It looks like someone left us a present,” Falken said.
A small table had appeared on the deck of the ship where none had been before. On it was a clay jug and five wooden cups. Falken filled the cups and handed one to each, leaving the last for Sindar.
Beltan eyed the cup in his hand. “Isn’t it dangerous to swallow fairy drink?”
“Almost certainly,” Falken said with a grin, then took a long drink from his cup.
Grace gave a hesitant smile and took a sip, and Vani took a long draught, staring at Beltan as she did. He felt a prickling that he knew had nothing to do with magic and raised his own cup to his lips.
At first he thought it was water. Then he decided it was a kind of clear wine. By the time he finished his cup, he knew it had been neither. But whatever the nature of the liquid was, he felt suddenly alive and awake. Before, his stomach had been growling. Now his hunger was gone, although he felt light rather than full.
After Falken called to him, Sindar approached and took one of the cups. He bid them good morrow before he drank. Beltan noticed that his green-gold eyes seemed to move often toward Grace. Then, without a word of explanation, Sindar returned to his place at the front of the ship.
“Do you think he’s all right?” Grace said.
Falken set down his cup. “I’m not sure. I think maybe he’s wondering who he really is, and why it is the Little People chose him for their purposes.”
“He’s not the only one,” Beltan said with a snort.
Vani prowled back and forth on the deck. “Falken, do you know how long it will take us to get to Toringarth?”
“With this haze, it’s impossible to tell where we are. But it seems to me we’re traveling swiftly. More swiftly than any usual ship. My guess is it won’t be long. A day or two, that’s all. In the meantime, it seems we’re safe enough here.”
“Really?” Grace said, folding her arms over her chest. “And I was just thinking that we’ve never been in more danger.”
Beltan knew Grace was right. He had never believed in the Little People until a year earlier. And while he could no longer deny their existence, he wasn’t about to let himself get used to them. They were strange and terribly old. What they did, they did for their own reasons. And while he supposed they bore no particular enmity for men, they bore humankind no love either. For most of history, Falengarth had belonged to them. Then, when men marched across the continent over a thousand years before, the Little People were forced to retreat to the Twilight Realm, from which they were only now, in these dark times, returning.
“They want you to find Fellring, don’t they, Grace?” Beltan said. “That’s why they’re helping us.”
Grace gripped the steel pendant at her throat, and Falken nodded.
“We knew the seal Travis put on the Rune Gate couldn’t hold forever,” the bard said. “All the signs point to the gate weakening again. If the Pale King rides forth, the only thing that can stop him is Ulther’s sword. And the only one who can wield it is you, Grace.”
She shook her head, but she didn’t protest. Beltan understood her fear. Last year, he had stood with Travis before the Rune Gate, and he had felt the dread, the power, the majesty pouring through those iron doors. He loved Grace; he would do anything to protect her. And he knew she was strong. Perhaps, in her way, stronger than any of them. But she was just one woman. How could she fight the ancient king of a vast army? Sometimes he wondered if Falken put too much stock in his own stories.
“He wants to open a door for Mohg, doesn’t he?” Grace said softly, to no one in particular. “The Pale King. Berash hasn’t forgotten his master, the one who made him. He wants to open a gate so the Lord of Nightfall can get back to Eldh and reforge the world in his own image.”
Vani glowered at these words. “I know nothing of Old Gods. But I do know something of gates. And the only two that I know to exist are now lost. One was surely consumed in the destruction of the Etherion. And the other is lost with...”
Her words faltered so briefly Beltan was sure the others didn’t notice.
“...with our companions. I don’t see how the Pale King can open a door for his master without one of the gate artifacts.”
“He can,” Falken said. “All he needs are the three Great Stones. He already has Gelthisar. And there’s already a crack between our world and Travis Wilder’s. That’s how Melia and the New Gods sent Grace there thirty-odd years ago, and that’s how the Pale King sent his own ironhearts there as well, probably around the same time. If Berash fits the iron necklace Imsaridur with the other two Imsari, he’ll have all the power he needs to rip the crack wide open. Mohg will step through, and he’ll take the Great Stones from the Pale King and use their power to break the First Rune.”
“Eldh,” Grace murmured, face gray as the mist. “He’ll break the rune Eldh and shatter the world.”
Falken gave a grim nod. “And then Mohg will remake Eldh in his own image. He’ll be the new Worldsmith, and all of Eldh will fall under his shadow forever.”
“And Earth, too,” Grace said. “They’re like two sides of a coin—just like the coin Brother Cy gave me and Travis. Earth and Eldh. What happens on one happens to the other.”
Falken didn’t disagree.
Even though his mother had been a witch, Beltan had never been comfortable with magic. Elire’s spells hadn’t been powerful enough to save her in the end. All of this talk of gods and runes left a queasy feeling in his stomach.
“Mohg can really do that?” he said. “Remake Eldh?” Falken nodded. “The Imsari hold the power to break runes as well as to bind them. We’ve seen that firsthand with Travis. Whoever holds all three will have everything he needs to destroy Eldh, and then forge it anew.”