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The liquid was cold, yet burned at the same time. I coughed, choked, and blinked blearily at Arn’s face, seen through a haze. I could not feel my hands or feet, and was forced to keep swallowing or drown in whatever she was pouring through my unresisting mouth.
Yet I made no demur, rammed back into my physical self and glad of the event. It takes much effort to fly forth in such fashion but hardly any to return; the ship of any invisible self longs to moor itself to the body once more.
The drink did not taste of Elder vintage, but rough mortal alcohol without the body of ale or the healthful tang of mead. When she took the container away, my eyes welled with hot saltwater. “Ugh,” I managed, feebly. “Have we halted?”
“Only for a few moments.” Her eyelashes were white, and frost lingered upon her hair as well as her shoulders. Despite that, she looked relieved, though her woad-stripe cracked, flakes falling free. “Asleep on your feet like a horse. We have only the liquor from the pale things left; the Elder did summat to render it less harmful. Come, take a step or two.”
“The worst is past.” Aeredh’s arm was still over my shoulders. I barely felt his warmth; the entire world was ice. “Dawn comes, and we are almost to Redhill.”
It meant nothing to me. “T-towers,” I managed. Arn’s attention sharpened. “Made of iron, and inside it a red thing. It knows, Arneior.”Seidhrgripped me; the unbidden vision had to be spoken, lest its memory slip away. “No. Not it.” My hand flew up, gripped a fold of her mantle’s front. “He.He knows I am here. North, amid the ash.”
“What does she say?” Daerith the harpist swam into view over my shieldmaid’s shoulder. My head tipped back, and it was a relief to see a few stars glimmering cleanly between snow-laden branches.
Even if unfamiliar, they were still real, and whole, and good.
The forest was grey—Aeredh was correct, dawn approached. The entire world was hushed as if immured in the Unmaking, that great void broken by Allmother’s first song. She is at once ever-singing and music itself, but even the greatestseidhrhas a beginning, vast ongoing notes which brought the world into being and kindled secret fires in the depths where nothing had existed before.
The wise say that music has always been, and will always be.
“It is as we feared.” Aeredh’s breath touched my ear, hot as a brand. The Elder’s fingertips scorched my cold forehead. I had rarelybeen this close to man not of my kin before, and was too frozen to feel anything at the event. He made a swift motion, and I thought for a moment I was flying again—but no, he had simply bent to place my arm over his shoulders, and his own left arm slipped about my waist, holding me indecently close. “Come, as quickly as we may. How fares Eol?”
“Well enough, Efain says, though only half-conscious.” Arneior thrust the stopper into the skin-mouth, and eyed the Elder balefully. “Neither of them will last much longer in this weather. We must find shelter.”
“And so we shall.” Aeredh set off again, carrying most of my weight despite my twitching attempts to help.
I wished I could walk unaided, for even a few steps. To be still in deepfreeze winter is to court death; the blood stops moving and lethargy grips the entire body.
I had to make them listen. “He knows.” I forced the words through a burning throat, through numb lips. “He knows I am here,he knows.”
Aeredh froze, his stillness that of a hunting creature sensing it has been seen. So did every Elder, and a blade rang from its sheath—Efain’s, I thought, for he was the one who spoke.
“I can smell you, idiot,” the Northerner said in the Old Tongue. “Come out.”
The next voice was a surprise—a man’s, deep and resonant, and very amused. “And I heard your approach since before moonrise. What brings a king and his wolves to Redhill, my lords?”
We had been found, and—for once during that terrible journey—not by a foe.
PART THREE
REDHILL TO THE WILD
Laden with Discoveries
He was not born curst, but the Enemy hated his family above all other Secondborn. And over and over, the young lord paid the price.
—Reikat Halfhand,The Third Saga of Hajithe’s Son
Karat Vaerkil—literally, “the blood-colored hill”—protected a large swathe of Dorael’s southeastron border in those days; a column of solid rock rose, stony and mostly sheer, to a great height. Whoever held its windswept tower could see far in every direction, and wherever one trod in those lands, its stony crown was easily visible. It was honeycombed with smooth-carved passages, and hidden ways radiated veinlike from it as well, for the hill had been delved by those most cunning.
A clutch of spiny, ice-freighted bushes protected a scattered tumble of boulders; deep in the pile’s heart was a crack wide enough for a man to slip through. Inside, the dimness was uncomfortably akin to the passageway out of quaking, riven Nithraen, and it was warmer though my breath still turned into a thin cloud. Bands of different rock in the tunnel’s walls glowed enough to give faint illumination more than enough for Elder eyes, yet I shuddered at the return of darkness.
I was not even embarrassed at being carried between Aeredh and another Elder whose name I did not know. Even my shieldmaid accepted Daerith’s aid in the final stretch, leaning upon his arm, hersilence of the peculiar type meaning she kept herself from foul language only by a supreme effort of will.
Less than an hour after we were hailed by a voice from a thorn-brake, firelight painted the walls of a half-timbered, half-stone room, and we were made welcome with deep brown ale and dense, sweet waybread of a type Arn and I had not tasted before. There was also Elder winterwine from a great cask, and the lord of the hill himself brought a wooden cup to Aeredh.
The garrison here was Northerners, clad in black cloth and oddments. A few were people of Lady Hajithe’s hall, though most hailed from other quarters, and the man who held Redhill—for in spring to autumn the rocky prominence was covered in a plant which dyed it ruddy, especially at sunset—was accorded all the honor of a steading-lord. But ’twas not he nor any other Secondborn who had wrought its tunnels.
Our mantles and undermantles were taken, Arn and I wrapped in rough woolen blankets and placed near the fire, and every hospitality possible pressed upon us. I sat and shivered in great waves, my body accepting the warmth only fitfully, and Eol, his rent armor stripped free, was laid upon a hurriedly cleared table. He was more wounded than he had appeared; I had failed in avolva’s duty once more, for I should have tended him despite his reluctance.
