“I was wanting Moril,” Maewen said.
“He’s off over here somewhere,” Mitt said. They wandered that way together, between two lines of vague dark mounds. “Looks a bit like a street,” Mitt remarked. “I shouldn’t wonder if this wasn’t a town once. What do you want Moril for?”
It was soothing wandering between hummocks with Mitt. Maewen found it much easier than she had expected to say, “I’m being haunted. A ghost keeps speaking to me, and Moril helped last time.”
Mitt was truly puzzled. “What do you mean, a ghost? Last night you were saying it was the One, your father, who spoke to you. Or is this another voice?”
Help! thought Maewen. Why didn’t Wend tell me?
“It’s—it’s always very alarming when he does,” she said.
“That’s the Undying for you,” said Mitt. “What did he say?”
How can he be so matter-of-fact? Maewen wondered. Even for two hundred years ago. But she remembered what Navis had told her. Mitt knew what he was talking about. “He said I ought to have the Adon’s gifts,” she said. She wanted to ask Mitt if he thought the voice was really the One’s, but Noreth seemed to have told him already that it was, so she could hardly do that. Instead she said, “If this is Orilsway, Aberath is only a little way to the north. I can go and get the ring from there tomorrow.”
Mitt laughed. It was a hacking, unhappy noise. “You’ll be lucky! They’d cut your throat on the spot, girl. I know. I know that Countess.”
Maewen began, “But—” Then she saw that Mitt, once again, probably knew what he was talking about. Two hundred years before she was born, people really did cut throats. Earls could get away with it then. She changed her objection to “But I need that ring. What should I do?”
“I’ll get it for you,” said Mitt. It seemed obvious to him that this was what Noreth was angling for. And it ought to be child’s play. “I was looking at that ring only two days ago,” he explained. “I know just where it is. If I go off now, I can sneak in while it’s dark and pick it up with no one any the wiser.”
“But you’re saddlesore,” Maewen protested. “And your horse isn’t fresh.”
“Teach that horse a lesson,” Mitt said blithely. “And I’m not that bad. I was just having a moan.”
He was lying a bit about the soreness. Ouch! Flaming Ammet! he thought as he mounted the surprised and reluctant Countess-horse. But he kept his mouth shut. Noreth’s face, which he could see as a pale, anxious oval, was lifted toward him from beside the hummock he had used to mount. She was worrying, anyway. As he set off beside the half-seen waystone that marked the road to Aberath, he thought that she would have to give over this habit she seemed to have of worrying about everyone. She’d go off her head with it if she got to be Queen.
The green road, as they all seemed to be, was level and smooth and surprisingly easy to follow in the dark. The Undying did a good job, Mitt thought, if it was them who made the roads. And he was pleased to find that after years of indoors work, he had not lost the knack he had learned as a fisher lad of finding his way in the night. You did it the way they said bats did, mostly. Sort of by feel. Whenever the road turned, he could feel the air pressing off the bigger bulks of rock, and he knew to veer left or right, even when he could not see the pale grayishness of the track. The Countess-horse, to be fair to it, had the same knack, when it consented to go.
It made quite a fuss at first. After a mile of head tossing, loitering, and pretending to go lame, and hearty cursing from Mitt, it chose to surprise him by consenting to go. They thudded on at a fair pace. Mitt, in order not to think of the trouble he might be in if he got caught at the mansion, tried to work out why he was going off to get this ring for Noreth.
It might have belonged to the Adon, but whatever Alk said, Mitt was fairly sure it was just a ring. The Northerners could believe in these things if it made them happy, but Mitt had been brought up by the practical Hobin, making guns for a living in Holand, and he knew that the only virtue that ever got into a piece of metal was fine, careful workmanship.
Right. That was the ring. Did he believe the One wanted Noreth to have it?
Mitt had a little more difficulty here. He had never met this One the Northerners made so much of. Or had he? Mitt narrowed his eyes into the mild wind of the night as he remembered finding the golden statue and that great deep voice crying, “There!” That had surely not been Noreth shouting. Well, keep an open mind there. But would the greatest of the Undying be that bothered about a ring?
You could say it was Mitt himself bothering. If he took this ring, it would prove to the Countess that Mitt was not her hired murderer. That could be true. But it was fairly clear to Mitt that he was riding through the night like this simply because Noreth thought she needed the ring. That nervous, freckly look of hers made you want to do things for her. So you did them. And then trusted to Navis to get them all out of the consequences, Mitt added to himself as he came out beside the waystone above Aberath.
The Countess-horse knew where they were. It slithered gladly down the raked track to the town. Mitt was almost sorry for its disappointment when he dragged it over to the woods beyond the first fields and—to its incredulity—left it tied to a tree. It made its feeling plain, quite loudly, and several other horses answered it from stables in the town.
“Shut up!” Mitt told it. “Be quiet or I’ll bite you for a change!”
He ran away round the fields toward the cliff. Reproachful horse noises followed him for a minute and then stopped with a sigh Mitt could hear even at that distance. He grinned and ran with long strides. His legs ached from being wrapped round a horse so long and it was good to stretch them in spite of his soreness. He supposed he had vinegar to thank that he could run at all. He only stopped running when he was looking down at the pale heaving sea. There he paused to speak to the Undying he did know.
“Alhammitt,” he said. “Old Ammet. Do you hear me? I’d be much obliged if you and Libby Beer could keep an eye on me in the mansion. If I get caught there, quite a few people are going to be in trouble.”
There was no sign from the glimmering sea, but Mitt felt better as he hurried along the clifftop to the place where all the children regularly scrambled round the wall. He nipped round, quietly and carefully, and there he was out in the space by Alk’s shed. It was so easy Mitt could hardly believe it.
It went on being easy. Mitt slithered in among the buildings of the mansion, from well-known spot to well-known spot, and not a person moved or a sound disturbed the place except for the faint crunch of his own feet when he crossed the gravel court in front of the library. There were one or two dim lights in some of the upper windows. Otherwise he would have thought the place was empty. It reminded him of times in Holand when he sneaked into strange places with a forbidden message. In fact, it was too much like that. The mansion did not feel like anywhere he had ever lived anymore. Nor was it now, he thought ruefully, as his feet carefully inched through the dark archway and met the flight of stairs up to the library.
At the top his hand met the door and found the handle. Gently, gently, he turned the great latch ring and pushed the door open on the woody, booky mustiness inside. It was so dark in there that he realized he was going to have to find the glass case where the ring was by memory and feel. But since he was going to have to break the glass and someone might hear, he shut the door behind him as gently as he had opened it. He took a step into the room.
Cree-eak.
“Flaming Ammet!” Mitt muttered. “Wish I’d remembered how noisy this dratted floor was!”