“Can we get on with things?” Merolanna grumbled. “This dress isn’t meant for such games. If you’d told me I’d be down on the floor like a child playing tops I’d have worn my nightclothes instead.”
Utta could not blame the dowager duchess for complaining. Though she herself was in good, healthy fettle, and much more conveniently garbed in a simple robe, her old bones did not particularly enjoy the exercise, either.
When they were seated, a small troop of soldiers and a trio of shaven-headed creatures (whose delicate features Utta guessed must be female) brought out a cushioned bed made from what had obviously once been a jewel case. The bundle from the uppermost drawer was lowered into it, then unwrapped to reveal a Rooftopper woman with dark hair and pale skin, dead or sleeping.
“I present to you the Glorious and Accurate Ears,” the queen said, “whose family has for centuries been our link to the Lord of the Peak, and who will today, for the first time, share the Lord’s words straightly with your folk.”
The trio of priestesses, if that was what they were, stepped forward to stand at the head and either arm of the Ears. They lit bowls of some stuff that smoked and waved them over her and then began to chant words too quiet to be heard. This went on for long moments; Utta could feel Merolanna shifting impatiently beside her. In the quiet room, the rucking and crinkling of the duchess’ dress sounded like distant thunder.
At last the priestesses stepped back and bowed their heads. The silence continued. Utta began to wonder if she or Merolanna were expected to ask a question, but then the woman in the bed began to move, first to twitch as in a fever-dream, then to thrash weakly. Suddenly she sat up. Her eyes opened wide, but she did not seem to be looking at anything in the room, not even the two giant women. She spoke in a surprisingly low voice, a slurry string of quiet sounds like bees buzzing. The priestesses swayed.
“What does she say?” demanded Merolanna.
“She says nothing,” the queen of the Rooftoppers corrected her. “It is the Lord of the Peak himself who speaks, and he says, ‘The end of these days comes on white wings, but it bears darkness like an egg. Old Night waits to be born, and unless the sea swallows all untimely, the stars themselves will rain down like flaming arrows.’ Those are the words of the Lord of High Places.”
Vague, apocalyptic prophecy was not what the dowager duchess had come to hear. “Ask about my son,” she said in a sharp whisper. But Utta could tell that a bargain was being struck, even if she did not yet know with whom they were bargaining—the Rooftoppers and their queen? Their god? Or simply this one Rooftopper oracle?
“We have been told that you know something of this woman’s son, O Lord of the Peak,” Utta said slowly and clearly, hoping that if the Rooftoppers spoke her language, so did their god. “Will you tell us of him?”
The woman thrashed again and almost fell from her bed. Two tiny, shaven-headed priestesses stepped forward to hold her as she mumbled and rasped again.
“‘The High Ones took him, fifty winters past,’” the queen said, translating or simply amplifying the Ears’ quiet mumble. “‘He was carried behind the cloud of unknowing mortals call the Shadowline. But he yet lives.’”
Merolanna let out a little shriek, swayed, and collapsed against Utta, who did her best to hold her upright: the duchess was of a size that she would destroy much of the Rooftoppers’ religious quarter if allowed to fall. “She will thank you for this news—but I think not today,” Utta said, a little out of breath. She bent closer to Queen Upsteeplebat. “Can your god not tell us more?” she whispered. “Is there a way to find her child?”
For long moments the Ears lay like a dead woman—much like Merolanna, who seemed to have fainted. Then the tiny shape stirred and spoke again, but so quietly that Utta could only see her lips move. Even the little queen had to lean against the rail of her chariot to hear.
“The Lord of High Places says, ‘The world’s need is great. Old Night pecks at its shell, yearning to breathe the air of Time. This castle’s priest of light and stars once owned a piece of the House of the Moon, ancient and powerful, but now it has been taken. Find where that stolen piece has gone and in return Heaven will speak more of this mortal woman’s son.”
With that the Ears fell into a deep, deathlike sleep. When it was clear she would speak the god’s words no longer, the priestesses wrapped her up again. This time the tiny soldiers moved in and carried the entire bed away into the shadows like a funeral bier.
Utta held Merolanna, who groaned like a woman in a bad dream, and wondered and wondered at the surpassing strangeness this day had brought.
The duchess stirred in her bed and sat up, hands clawing out as though something had been pulled away from her.
“Where are they? Did I dream?”
“You did not dream,” Utta told her. “Unless I dreamed the same dream.”
“But what else did that little creature say? I cannot remember!” Merolanna fumbled for the cup of watered wine on the chest by her bed, drank it so fast that a pinkish rivulet spilled and ran down her chin.
Utta told her the rest of the Ears’ pronouncement. “But I can make no sense of it.”
“My child!” Merolanna fell back against the pillows, her chest heaving. “I gave him away,” she moaned, “and now the fairies have him. Poor, poor boy!” In halting words, she told Utta of the child’s secret birth and disappearance. Utta was surprised, but not astonished—the Zorians did not believe humans could be perfected, only forgiven.
“If the little people’s oracle spoke correctly, that was almost fifty years gone, Your Grace,” she told Merolanna. “Still, we must try to understand the god’s words—if it really was a god who spoke. A piece of the Moon’s House, the little woman said. And that it belonged to the castle’s priest of light and stars.”
“Priest? Do they mean Father Timoid? But he is gone!” Merolanna tossed her head as if in a fever. “Why should some god send this message to torture me?”
“Perhaps they mean Hierarch Sisel.” Utta reached out to take the duchess’ hand, hoping to calm her. “He is the highest priest of all, so...”
“But he is gone too, to his house in the country. He told me he could not bear to see what the Tollys were doing.” Merolanna tried to calm herself. “Would he be the priest of light and stars, though? He is the great priest of the Trigon, and they are air, water, and earth...” She moaned again. “Ah, if only Chaven were here. He knows of such things—he studies the stars, and knows almost as much about the old tales of the gods as Sisel...”
“Wait,” said Utta. “Perhaps that is who it means. Chaven is a priest of sorts—a priest of logic and science. And his is the particular study of light and the stars, with those lenses of his. Perhaps Chaven had some powerful object that is now lost.”
“But Chaven is the one who’s lost!” said Merolanna. “He’s vanished! And that means my son is lost forever...!”
“No one simply disappears,” said Utta. “Unless the gods themselves take them. And the Rooftoppers’ god, at least, does not seem to know what’s happened to Chaven, so perhaps he is still alive.” She stood. “I will see what I can discover, Your Grace.”
“Be careful!” Merolanna cried as Utta moved to the door. She extended her arms again as though to draw the Zorian sister back. “You are all I have left!”
“We have the gods, Duchess. I will pray for my gracious lady Zoria’s help. You should do the same.”
Merolanna slumped back. “Gods, fairies...the world has run utterly mad.”