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“In that we are agreed.” Next he turned his imperious gaze to me, and the strange weight to it was neitherseidhrnor an Elder’s age and wisdom. I had little trouble meeting it, even if my heart did give an odd wringing motion, not quite a leap. “If we are attacked, you must stay close to Aeredh. He is the only one who knows our destination. We are prepared to give our lives to gain you its safety. I will have your word—bothof you—that you will not attempt to interfere or to aid any of us, Elder or Secondborn.”
“It seems ill to leave an ally upon the battlefield, my lord.” I sounded much like my mother, for homesickness roughened my voice somewhat. “We have not done too badly so far, and could have done much worse.”
“Oh, aye, we have been lucky enough to give me chills.” He made a restless movement to accompany the admission, very like Bjorn when pressed to own some fault or mischief, and fresh sadness pierced me. “I give you bare honesty, daughter of Gwendelint. Everything depends upon you reaching our destination. So Aeredh says, and I believe him. I have little right to ask anything of one I have wronged, but if you would be an ally to me and my men this is what we must have of you. I will even beg, if you like.”
I could have argued, but all I wished for was a few moments to collect myself. If this was his honesty, it deserved mine in return. “We will try,” I said, slowly. “But I cannot promise more, for…”For I am a coward, I should have said, but mercifully, other words came. “For I have not much experience of battles, and they seem confusing things. I cannot say what I will do in another. Arn is of more use to you than I shall ever be, my lord.”
“Then I will ask her to drag you bodily from the field, should it become necessary. You must reach Taeron’s refuge, else all is for naught, and I would not have that.” A muscle flickered in his stubbled cheek, and for a moment the wolf who shared his skin eyed me restlessly. How did he hide it, in the South? “Will you give your word to stay near Aeredh, and do as he asks with as much grace as you may? And you, shieldmaid, will you look only to our lady’s escape, and not seek to aid us?”
“It is a reasonable request,” Arn muttered, as if even admitting as much pained her, and she tapped her spear on cold but unfrozen ground once, thoughtfully.
“I will do my best.”I will probably flee screaming into the snow should another lich appear, and honor a promise by doing so.Truly, I was beginning to suspect I had come to Lokji’s attention in some way, and even my mother’s beloved Fryja has a difficult time restraining her foster-son when he takes an interest in some affair or another. “I give my word as avolva, son of Tharos.” To prove it, I offered my right hand.
He clasped my wrist in the way of Northern warriors, and for some reason my cheeks were scalding when we let go. Then he repeated the movement with Arn, who did not demur or flush,studying his expression with a faint puzzled line between her coppery eyebrows instead.
Aeredh approached, putting an end to further discussion. “Lady Solveig? May I trouble you to light the fire, as you did once before?”
I thought it likely he wished to prove some point to the harpist and the other Elder, so I agreed with good grace. The others were already returning with deadwood and damp kindling, and it was in that ring of stones Aeredh taught me theseidhrwhich, applied to wood, will make it burn with the blue tinge ofaelflame.
’Tis strangely simple, like most Elder wonders. This time I was prepared for the lighting to take far less force than usual even if the fuel was damp, and when I shook out my fingers afterward there was no need to let unspent power echo away through my inner halls. I even smiled, satisfied that I had performed well for once, yet I found Daerith, Yedras, and every Nithraen Elder who followed Aeredh regarding me, wearing expressions I could not quite name.
I could distinguish a few threads in the tapestry—shock, longing, an uneasiness as if I had shouted something obscene or suddenly grown an unsightly appendage. Yet none spoke, and none quite met my gaze, especially after Aeredh gave a half-bow, thanking me with all the courtesy of an Elder king.
The flames burned blue and camp was made with little further ado, dinner attended to for Elder and Secondborn alike, Arn and I bedded upon sweet-smelling pine and fir boughs, snug within our mantles. A watch was kept, but such was the safety of that blessed place I slept better than I had in NithraenorRedhill.
Yet for all the sense of security I did not dream, and woke only once to see Aeredh feeding damp fallwood into blue flames, singing quietly in the Old Language.
It was not quite a lullaby or a lament. He sang of an Elder princess whose glance was like a knife, of a Secondborn who loved her, and of a mighty strike they performed against the Enemy himself. I heard only a few lines before I drifted back into a deep well of rest, Arn’s breath upon my braids and her arm around my waist, shieldmaid andvolvasurrounded by the smell of sap and soft springtime even amid the snow of winter just after the year’s turning.
Mistwood’s Shroud
Even up to the Cloak the dark things crept in those days, for the Enemy sensed weakness in those he hated most.
—Ancilaen Gaeldflor,The Alkuine’s Tale
The snow lingered, falling more or less swiftly as the mood took it. Yet a colder breath came from the North, a harsh exhalation soughing through laden tree limbs. We left the stone-ringed clearing just before dawn, Aeredh and Daerith holding Arn and me above the drifts while the other Elder moved in a loose guard-pattern at some distance, barely glimpsed among thickening trees. Slightly farther afield the wolves of Naras screened us, and occasionally wolfsong echoed through falling snow that day.
The forest swallowed us whole.
Perpetual twilight clotted under packed-together boughs, deepened with more than winter’s long darkness. Eventually the canopy was so thick what snow reached the frozen ground fell in strange patterns occasionally starred with thorny leafless bushes, undergrowth dead or sleeping until thaw. Hard upon the southron side of our route was a deep gloom more than physical, a maze of bewilderment swallowing what little light could filter through. It was called Dorael’s Cloak, a mightyseidhr-woven defense we skirted before turning more northerly. I gathered very little, from the whispers among our guardians, of the power in that Elder realm keeping the Enemyat bay—only that the wife of Aenarian Greycloak was mighty in her own way, and it was her invisible weaving netting the shadows between branch and bole. None passed that mantle save those given leave by the high king of the Elder who had left the far West, though kinsmen and those of certain houses of the Faithful were allowed to pierce it without much trouble.
But Dorael was not our destination. Not then.
To the north lay the bulk of the Wild, and an even thicker shadow. The land there was broken and reshaped, they say, during a long war fought between the Enemy and the gods themselves before any speaking or singing creature was awake to witness such mighty cataclysm.
Pressed against Dorael’s Cloak was the Mistwood, and by the third day we were well within its grasp. Great greyish veils wrapped the branches, hanging in sticky, icy sheets. There are skittering sounds even in the depths of winter, though the mushroom-pale things who make Mistwood their home are sluggish in the cold. Even the relative lack of snow upon the forest floor is no boon, for the rasp-clinging veils draping each bough choke light and sound, and in the deep gloom that passed for noon one brushed my mantle-sleeve and stuck fast.
Arneior was ahead of me, her generous mouth set with distaste and her spearblade glimmering even in the dimness. She stepped over a large, twist-knobbled root, and I sought to follow—but my shoulder-sleeve was well and truly caught.
The tattered, pale fabric hanging from a low leafless oak branch was very much like linen, though finer-woven than any produced at Dun Rithell or brought upriver from the south. No warp or weft was visible, and when studied closely it looked akin to the membrane in a fresh snake-egg. I again sought to pull away, gaining only a soft nasty sound as the glaucous sheet stretched, clinging to heavy dark-green wool.
“Hold.” Yedras the spearman, behind me as we moved single file, was suddenly at my untrapped left shoulder. “Be still, Secondborn.”
I almost flinched from his nearness, and Arneior turned. Her dark eyes narrowed, and she hastened back. “Sol? What is it?”
“Sticky.” I reached for the webbing, seeking to brush it free, but Yedras’s hand arrived first, striking lightly to push mine away.
“Do not,” he repeated, a tinge of exasperation sharpening each syllable. “And stand still, by the Blessed.” A flickergleam of metal showed; he had produced an Elder knife, its blade leaf-shaped and bright even in the cavernous gloom.
