Prince of Dogs (Crown of Stars 2)

“So he did, my lord count. I have no reason to disbelieve him. It was a miracle that anyone survived or that the tunnel appeared.”

“But a tunnel did appear,” said Lavastine.

“And you survived,” said the young lord, and blushed.

His father glanced sharply at him, frowned, and then played absently with the ears of the hound that lounged at his feet. “Dhuoda,” he said to the woman seated to his left, the only other person so honored in the chamber. “Can you be without so many men for another summer’s season? If we leave after sowing, I don’t know if we can return by harvest.”

“Much depends on the weather,” she said. “But despite everything, last year’s harvest was decent and this winter has been mild. It could be done if you muster after the Feast of St. Sormas … if you think it worthwhile.”

“The king’s favor and a just reward.” Both he and the noblewoman looked at the young man. “Eagle, where is Lord Geoffrey?”

“Lord Geoffrey remained behind to hunt with the king. He will follow later and will meet you here by the time you muster your troops.”

“Was the king so certain I would agree?”

“He said, my lord count, that he would grant you the reward you asked for.”

The young Lord had the propensity to blush a fierce red. He did so now. Liath could not imagine why. But at this moment she did not much care about the embarrassments of the nobly born. She only wanted to stand in this room, to shelter in this safe hall, for the rest of her life.

“Tallia!” said Lavastine in the tone of a man who has scented victory. “He will give us Tallia.” He stood. “Let it be done. Eagle, you will return to the king to let him know that I hereby pledge to free Gent from the Eika.”

4

HE climbs upward on the old path through a forest of spruce, pine, and birch. Soon the forest fades to birch only and at last even these stunted trees fall away as he emerges onto the fjall, the high plateau, home of the WiseMothers. The wind blows fiercely at this height, whipping his ice-white hair. A rime of frost covers the ground.

The OldMother, who is both his mother and his aunt, sent him here. “Speak to them, restless one,” she said. “Their words are wiser than mine.”

He finds the youngest of the WiseMothers still on the trail, her great bulk easing upward toward her place with the others. He sees them now in the distance like stout pillars surrounding a hollow burnished to a bright glare by the glittering threads that mark the spawning net of ice-wyrms. But he does not mean to brave the ice-wyrms’ venomous sting this day.

Instead he stops beside the youngest of them, who has not yet reached their council ground. Although she passed the knife of decision to his OldMother before his hatching, it has taken her these many years to get as far as a morning’s hard walk for him. But she, like her mothers and mothers’ mothers before her, grew from that same substance that carves the bones of the earth. She has no reason to move swiftly in the world: She will see many more seasons than he can ever hope to, and long after her bones have hardened completely, her thoughts will still walk the paths of earth until, at last, she departs utterly to the fjall of the heavens.

He kneels before her, brings her in offering nothing durable or hard, only those things made precious by their fragility and transience: a tiny flower once sheltered in the lee of a rock; a lock of downy hair from one of the Soft Ones’ infants which just died last night; the remains of an eggshell from Hakonin fjord; the delicate bone of a small bird such as a priest would carve marks into and with its fellows scatter onto stone to read the footprints of the future.

“WiseMother,” he says. “Hear my words. Give me an answer to my question.” Having spoken, he waits. One must have patience to converse with the WiseMothers and not just because of the ice-wyrms.

Her progress up the path is so slow he cannot actually see her forward movement, but were he to come in another week, the lichen-striped boulder that lies beside the tread of her great hooves would be a finger’s span behind. In that same way they hear and they speak to a measure of years far longer than his own. Perhaps, indeed, once they are no longer bound to the world of the tribe by the knife, it is actually hard for them to understand the words of their grandsons who speak and move so swiftly and live so short a time, not more than forty circuits of the sun.

Her voice rumbles so low, like the lowest pitch in the distant fall of an avalanche, that he must strain to hear her. “Speak. Child.”

“OldMother heard from the southlands. Bloodheart calls an army together, all the RockChildren who will come to him, to campaign against the Soft Ones. If I take such ships as I have gathered and sail south when the wind turns, will I still be in disgrace? Is it better to remain here, risking little, or sail there, risking much?”

The wind blusters along the rocky plateau. Rocks adorn the land, the only ornament needed to make of it a fitting chamber for the wisdom of the eldest Mothers—all but the FirstMothers, who vanished long ago. Below, trees shush and murmur, a host of voices in the constant wind. It begins, gently, to snow. With the thaw will come spring rains, and then the way will lie open to sail south.

Her voice resonates even through the earth beneath his knees, though it is faint to his ears. “Let. Be. Your. Guide. That. Which. Appears. First. To. Your. Eyes.”

His copper-skinned hand still lies over her rough one. He feels a sharp tingling, like lightning striking nearby, and withdraws his hand at once. The offerings he has laid upon her upturned hand melt and soak into her skin as honey seeps into sodden earth, slowly but inexorably. The audience is over.

He rises obediently. She has answered, so there is no need to walk the rest of the way up the fjall, into the teeth of the wind, to kneel before the others by the hollow where all come to rest in the fullness of time.

He turns his back on the wind and walks down through the sullen green and white of the winter forest. Below the trees he walks through pastureland, the steadings of his brothers and oldest uncles, the pens of their slaves. All this is familiar to his eyes; he has seen it many times before: the sheep and goats huddling in the winter cold, scraping beneath the snow to find fodder; cows crowded into the byres, fenced away from the dogs; the pigs scurrying away to the shelter of trees; the slaves in their miserable pens.

But as he comes up behind his own steading, newly built from sod and timber, he sees a strange procession wind away into the trees. Silent, he follows. It is a small group of slaves, six of them; one carries a tiny bundle wrapped in precious cloth. They are hard to tell apart, but two he can recognize even from a distance: the male named Otto and the female-priest named Ursuline. These two have become like chieftain and OldMother to the other Soft Ones he keeps as slaves; over the winter he has observed their actions among the others, forming them into a tribe, and it interests him. As this interests him.

A clearing lies in the trees. Certain markers of stone, crudely carved, are set upright into the soil. It is a slave place, and he leaves it alone as do all the RockChildren. Slaves have their customs, however useless they may be. Now, he sees what they are about. They have dug a hole in the ground and into the earth they place the body of the infant that died in the night. The female-priest sings in her thin voice while the others weep. He has tasted the tears of the Soft Ones: They are salt, like the ocean waters. Is it possible that their Circle god has taught them something of the true life of the universe? Why else would they cover their dead ones in earth even as they leak water onto the dirt? Is this what they give in offering? He does not know.

But he watches. Is this event the one he must use as his guide? What does the funeral presage? His own death if he returns to his father’s army? Or the death of the Soft Ones whom Bloodheart will attack?

Risk much or risk little.