‘Then Ishouldcatch my death,’ the king said softly, his voice almost lost in the wind and the crash of waves in the Roaring Bay below them.Then, as thunder boomed, his voice rose again to a manic roar.‘May it appease them.May it spare the kingdom.That is what they say, is it not, witch-wife?Only death can sate the undead!’
‘You don’t know that, Elbrech,’ his mother cried.‘It is all in your mind!’
‘Father!’Owyn cried, stepping past his mother.She startled, then clung to his shoulder.He eased her hand open and moved forward, leaning on the scaffolding.With the other hand he cinched the rimewolf pelt tighter against the pull of the wind.A downward glance revealed a glimpse of white foam exploding against sharp, jutting rocks.He shut his eyes, tried to calm himself.‘Please, Father, come down!’
Jon Kenn emerged from the stairwell at another flare of lightning, his cheeks puffed out behind his beard.‘Owyn!’the old scholar wheezed.‘It isn’t safe!’
‘Lad, keep back from there,’ Uli warned.The housecarl placed his bulk between Owyn and his father.Easier to tear an oak tree out by the roots than to move Uli Boar-arm, a three-hundred-pound mountain roped with muscle.His bristle-haired forearms were wide around as the neck of a horse.One of those hands gently settled on Owyn.
‘Let me go to him,’ Owyn commanded, mustering all his authority, cursing the quaver in his voice.
‘Nay, lad—’
‘Uli, let him come,’ the king called down.‘I would speak with him.’
Uli’s hand lingered a moment longer, then released Owyn.‘You can speak from here, lad.The wind will pull you right from the—’
‘Do you hear them, son?’The king turned from his kingdom, his eyes full of a wild brightness.‘Turn your ear to the wind.’
At first Owyn nodded, then shook his head.The light in his father’s eyes, the desperation in his voice, made it difficult to think.More difficult, still, to form an answer.A terrible sensation filled him that all the world was balanced as a coin on its edge, and any word he spoke might be the breath of air that set it tumbling on to one face or the other.
‘I don’t hear them now, Father,’ he said.‘But some nights, yes, I hear their moaning on the wind.’
The king closed his eyes.A chuckle rolled through him.Owyn felt a sudden longing, a wish that he had found the bravery to broach this subject with his father before.He had brought his fears to his mother and his questions to Jon Kenn, neither of whom offered more than empty reassurances.With his father, he only ever discussed matters of state: taxation; military manuals; lessons in governance passed from king to crown prince for generations.There had been no time, nor any occasion, for him to share his fear of the night, nor to ask the king why he climbed his tower to rave at the wraiths that haunted him.The former might have indicated cowardice; the latter gestured, however faintly, towards the question of his father’s sanity, and was tantamount to treason in his mouth.
Again, Owyn felt the need for Ifan—for someone who might understand his own fear, his own confusion.Who would not, in a vain attempt to protect him, stifle his every attempt to discuss the horror that had seized the kingdom.
‘That, then, is no answer.’The king leaned his head back, letting the rain wash through his black and iron mane.‘Can there be an answer?One that does not twist my soul out of shape?That does not demand reparations I can never give?’
Jon Kenn stepped forward.‘Your Majesty—’
As a spark on dry leaves, the king’s anger flared anew.‘No words fromyourmouth, scholar.’He spat the last word.‘Nothing fromyou.’
‘Please, Your Majesty, let us return to your study, where—’
‘I saidquiet!’the king roared.
There was a voice on the wind, in the fragment of time between the flash of lightning and the rumble of thunder.A wordless howl in a tongue Owyn did not speak.Guilt and terror stirred in him.His knees buckled.
‘Lad!’Uli caught his arm as lightning tore apart the crane, the tread-wheel, the scaffolding.The explosion hurled Owyn backwards, wrenching his shoulder against the housecarl’s grip.
‘Elbrech!’His mother’s voice cut through the ringing in Owyn’s ears.Shapes danced behind his eyes.Silhouettes against the bright, forking after-image of lightning.Shadowed bodies hanging in the air.Reaching hands.
There was a low, wet, throaty laugh.Owyn crawled forward, slipping free of Uli’s grasp, the last dancing shapes and flickers fading from his vision.His father lay on the edge of the shattered scaffold.The smouldering ruin of the crane loomed over him.Rain washed his blood through the gaps in the wooden platform.The rise and fall of his chest filled Owyn with a relief to match the horror of that ghostly, incomprehensible accusation in the wake of thunder.
‘Father, can you move?’he said.‘Try to come this way.Jon Kenn is right here, Father.He’ll see to your wounds.It will be all right.’
The king’s eyes opened, their wildness gone, their sharp fire muted—by pain, or by lucidity?Slowly, wincing, he shook his head.
‘It will not, my son,’ he said.‘But this… This is justice, of a kind.Far, far too late, and too simple.But… I can hope—’ A cough tore through him.He wheezed, his face twisting in agony.‘Too late.I’m sorry.I can only hope it will be enough.’
He heaved himself on to his hands and knees, the rain battering at him, his limbs shaking with pain and effort.
‘That’s it, Your Majesty,’ Uli said, leaning towards him.‘A few paces this way, and I can pull you to safety beside the prince here, see?’
A pit opened in Owyn’s stomach.He had to say something.What word would bring his father back from the brink of madness?
Elbrech looked past him, his eyes filling with tears.‘Goodbye, Medrith.Care for our son.’
