Eftgan nodded as they headed toward the stairs to the royal apartments. “Well,” she said, “somehow I think this new one is going to be all right. And my congratulations! I just hope she’s not born speaking in tongues, like her mother. Here’s the barber. Come straight upstairs when you’re done: the door’s almost ready. I’ll have your things sent for. And the pots.” She went off looking amused.
Half an hour later, between the loss of the mustache and what he could have sworn was three-quarters of his hair, Lorn walked up that narrow stairway. He was briefly distracted as he glanced up at the decorated ceiling of the bare-walled black stairway. It was tiled in an odd lattice-pattern, with many tiles painted to resemble holes bored in the ceiling. But the breath of cool air coming down to him told him that some of those holes were real... the right size for shooting poisoned darts through, or for pouring boiling water. This central tower of Blackcastle, its keep, was the oldest part, and dated back to just after the time when Eálor Éarn’s son had been attacked by assassins in his own house. Those assassins had not come off well, though they thought they had caught Eálor unarmed in his rooms. Their timestained, dusty skulls were nailed up neatly on the wall of one of the castle dungeons, and the big fireplace poker which Eálor had snatched up to ward them off had been made the battle-standard of Darthen, Sarsweng by name. But since that time, the Darthene royal family had taken steps to make sure no one came at their quarters who wasn’t welcome there.
“Anybody home?” he called as he came almost even with the landing. The door at the top was ajar, but there was no guard there that he could see.
“No!” shouted someone, and began giggling wildly: a blond head stuck itself around the corner of the door and stared at Freelorn with big mischievous green eyes. It was another of the princes, Goddess knew which one. There were five of them, most fairly close in age, all blond like their mother, and two of them were twins. Lorn had never been able to keep them straight except for Barin, the heir and eldest.
“Come on up,” Wyn shouted from somewhere back in the apartments. Lorn went through the door as the prince, in a plain gray smock well decorated with lunch, scampered away into another room.
The royal apartments were of the same black basalt as everything else, but the stone here was dull-surfaced rather than polished, as in the newer parts of the castle. Big windows opened out on the morning from the central hearth-room, and rather beat-up furniture was scattered around. On one couch the twin five-year-old princes were snoozing at opposite ends, one with his thumb in his mouth. The other had his head pillowed on the side of a large dog with long, silvery, fluffy fur.
“In the back, Lorn,” Eftgan called. “The middle door.”
He walked through the rooms down a hall that led into the heart of the keep. The middle room’s door stood open, and past the big canopied bed in it, so did a low door bound with huge bands of bronze. A key with an ornate finial almost the size of Lorn’s fist stood out of its lock. Freelorn padded across the thick dark carpet, past the three-year-old prince, who was playing with a resigned-looking tabby cat, to this inner room or cabinet. There Eftgan was sitting on a stool, and Wyn behind her, rubbing her neck while she sat half bent over, leaning elbows-on-knees and panting like a runner who’s just run a course.
A short distance away from them, outlined against the dull stone wall in a thin line of bitter blue light, was the Kings’ Door. It looked as if someone had taken Khávrinen or Skádhwë and used one or the other to cut straight through the two-foot-thick stone as if through a loaf of bread into the outside air. But the view through the tall rectangular hole was not one of the city from about a hundred feet up, as it should have been. On the other side of the opening was a great stretch of green country, hilly, with a far prospect of snow mountains in the background, and sheep grazing calmly thirty feet away. Off to one side were several grooms in the livery of the Darthene royal household, and a number of horses, Eftgan’s Scoundrel and Freelorn’s Blackmane among them. Fastened to Blackie’s saddle by a leading-rein was a small shaggy brown packhorse, laden with pots and pans.
Lorn shook his head in quiet amazement, his hair ruffling slightly in the breeze that poured out through the opening. Though with Eftgan’s help he and his people had used the Door before, he had never actually seen it in its own place. If a ruler was apt enough at sorcery or Fire, its doorway could be made to manifest briefly in other places, as Eftgan had obviously just done to let the horses be put through from the courtyard.
“If this thing weren’t so convenient,” Eftgan said, between deep breaths, “I would close it, I swear I would. Using it costs me more than almost any other wreaking I do. But if I did shut it, I would lose the best escape route in the place. Too many people try to kill kings in their beds....” She looked up at Lorn. “What do you think?”
“About closing the Door? It seems a waste.”
“Lorn, I meant what do you think about your
face.”
He shrugged. “I’m used to it by now, I suppose.”
Eftgan’s expression went wry: she glanced at Wyn as she straightened. “Did you ever see a man with such a sense of humor? Or lack of it. Lorn, go look in the mirror.”
Bemused, he peered around the edge of the little room’s door and glanced at himself in the mirror over the clothes press. Except it wasn’t a mirror. It was a window, and some stranger was looking through it at him. Blond, a south Arlene perhaps, with that Southern heavy, rough cast of feature, ruddy-complexioned, slightly husky of build. And then he realized that the other man’s clothes were the same as his—
The breath caught under Freelorn’s breastbone for a moment, then got loose again. He touched his face: the blond man did the same.
“How long have I looked this way?” he said, his voice coming out oddly. It was deeper than usual.
“Since you left the barber’s.”
Lorn went back into the room of the Kings’ Door. Eftgan was on her feet now, stretching, putting her clothes in order. Her sword already hung at her hip. Wyn now handed her a big, plain old fireplace poker, about three feet long. At least it would have been plain if half its length were not encrusted with diamonds driven into the black iron. Eftgan hefted Sarsweng, gazing idly at the flash of its gems, then looked at Lorn. “Does it suit you?”
“Very well,” he said. “What if I want to take it off myself?”
Wyn brought Eftgan a leather strap. She wound several turns of it around Sarsweng, slung the poker over her shoulder, and fastened first one end of the strap, then the other, to her baldric. “Four elements combined with your own blood,” she said. “Boil a pot of muddy water and use it to wash: that’s one way. Just beware. Once it’s off, it needs me or another Rodmistress to put it on again.”
She kissed her husband. “I won’t be too late.” Eftgan said. “Don’t forget to sit in on Balan’s lessons today.”
“I will,” Wyn said. “Don’t forget to look into that business with the vineyards.”
“I’ll do that. Come on, Lorn.” Eftgan turned away, through the door.
He followed her. At first there was no feeling of doing anything more than stepping through a doorway. Then pressure built up in his ears, he swallowed, and they popped. He walked over to Blackmane and took his reins from a groom, who bowed to him casually, and headed back the way Lorn had come.
He watched the other groom join his fellow, stepping through the Door. Then it was gone, and the breeze from it gone as well. Eftgan mounted up. Lorn took just long enough to make sure that everything he needed for the trip was packed in his saddle roll. He paused to look over the packhorse too. “His name is Pebble, the groom tells me,” Eftgan said over his shoulder. “Will these do?”
“Your cooks are right,” Lorn said, examining one holed kettle. “You
did
need new pots.”
Eftgan chuckled. “There are some newish ones there as well... it seemed as if a mixed bag would look more natural. Tools are in the canvas bag there. Mount up, Lorn, and let’s get going.”
He got up on Blackmane, and they rode south. They were in high country, not yet mountainous but soon enough to be that way—the Southpeaks reared up in the distance, low, blue, and misty in the morning. The land about was not much good for farming. The bones of it showed through the ground, mostly slate here, giving way to granite. Ferny-looking bracken was everywhere, both last year’s dried growth and this year’s new. A fair crop of stones lay all about the amber-and-green fields. The rocks would be the despair of anyone with a plowshare and plans for it, but kine or sheep might graze here and do well enough. There were sheep on some of the nearer hills.
Eftgan was cantering along beside Lorn, looking around her with a slightly preoccupied air. For some time Lorn said nothing to her, and after a while the mountains distracted him. They were distant, but even from here he could see the banners of cloud that streamed away from them, torn like tattered veils by the high winds. “What do you make of that?” he said finally.
Eftgan glanced up. “Ah,” she said. “Well... the other day, Herewiss destroyed one of those mountains. You remember.” There was mockery in her tone, but it was kindly. “You don’t take away a whole mountain without changing the weather pattern that’s used to living around it. It’s going to be unsettled down in this part of the world for a while now.”
I am consorting with gods,
the back of Lorn’s mind said to him in uncomfortable echo of the morning’s conversation.
And gods won’t stop at changing such as me: they’ll change the bones of the world if it suits them
....
“That is what prompted this meeting, I think,” Eftgan said. “Various people became uncomfortable at the occurrences of the past few days. In any case, the meeting is fortuitous... if the cause is what I think.”
She paused, as if for breath. Lorn thought at first that he understood the cause: they were climbing a steepish hill, and Blackmane was working at it, his chest heaving in and out like a bellows. Scoundrel, walking beside him, was making light work of it all as usual... but then he was carrying a load a third lighter again than Lorn’s gelding was.
Freelorn clucked at Blackie and urged him up to the top of the hill. “So what am I supposed to look at—”
And he saw, and the breath went out of him as they paused there on the hillcrest, waiting for the escort to catch up with them.
The party waiting for them numbered about thirty. Their horses were small, barely more than shaggy ponies. That was what first gave away to Lorn just who it was he and Eftgan were meeting. The waiting group’s clothes confirmed the judgment. They wore no trews or breeches, but the strange long undivided shin-length garment that he had come to know since he was young—a garment that was tied up between the legs with another band of cloth when the people wearing it needed to move quickly, as in battle. The band of cloth was patterned, and wound up and around the chest and shoulders, and streamed down behind in a sort of tail, like a cape born stunted. A linen or cotton shirt under it, maybe a skin thrown over it all—and a couple of the people below had those skins, one in a spotted fur, one in something goatish and long-furred. Bows in cases hung by the sides of the horses—those terrible little horn recurve bows—and crude curved swords in rude sheaths. He could see how poor the sheaths were, barely more than tree-bark strapped together with leather thongs. He had no desire to be so close, none at all. Not three days before, he had had one of these people’s arrows a span deep in his chest.
“What are we doing meeting with
Reavers
?” he said to Eftgan, under his breath.
She paused for a moment, then rode down the other side of the hill as the escort caught up with them. “They’re here, in my land. Anybody in my land is my business.” She eyed him, a rather challenging look: Lorn ostentatiously glanced away. “Besides... Cillmod seems to have been talking to them. And when is the last time we did any such thing?”
Lorn shook his head. Historically, there had never been much use in talking to Reavers: the few who had tried had died without finding anything out. The Reavers came from over the southern mountains, in the summertime, through the passes, they tried to take people’s land, they were driven out, always with terrible losses, and after a respite, they always came back. Not every summer, by any means. But most years you would hear of burnt crops somewhere, of land overrun and won back with too much blood. It was rare to know anyone from the south who had not lost friends or family to the Reavers, or who did not hate them with the same resigned and impersonal hatred one usually reserved for plague or root-wilt. People tended not to think of them as really human, and this was easy, for their languages were as strange as their ways, and they died rather than remain captive. There was some discussion as to whether they even knew the Goddess. Just now they had invaded in greater numbers than ever before, and been driven back again more conclusively than when the first alliance of Arlen and Darthen had done it. Yet here they were again....
Lorn looked down the hillside. This party didn’t look particularly threatening... but where there was one Reaver, there were a thousand more, sooner or later. “How long have they been here?” “No more than a day or so. The circuit Rodmistress for these parts sent me word. They’ve done nothing, threatened no one. They’ve just waited here.”
“Waited,” Lorn said.
“Yes.”
“Do we have an interpreter with us?”
“I can manage that,” Eftgan said. “‘Samespeech’ is one of the first things they teach you when you master your Fire. How our guests will find it—” She shrugged. “We’ll burn that bridge when we come to it. Meanwhile, you have your own face back until we part. I think you may need it.”
They rode on down the hill without further words exchanged: but Eftgan slipped Sarsweng from its carry-sheath and laid it across her saddlebow. Lorn looked more closely at the group of Reavers awaiting them, as they drew closer. They were much of a size, but there was one man among them who both was smaller than the rest, sharp-faced, with fair hair tied up in a tight knot behind and seemingly held in place with some kind of thick dyed grease. Under the strange hair, and the odd clothes, this man looked faintly worried.