From the traders he found out where the king’s army had been all this time. It seemed that after reaching Gird’s village, they had had word from Gadilon about an army harassing his domain—an army headed by a terrible, cruel commander named Gird. Gird thought back to his near encounter with the brigands in Gadilon’s forest, and managed not to laugh. The king’s army was busy, the traders said, in the south and east, convinced that that was the main peasant force. And the traders had heard only vague rumors of trouble in the north until they were near Brightwater—and then the rumor had said the trouble was up on the River Road, near Grahlin.
“We were near Grahlin,” said Gird, not specifying when, or why they’d left.
“I don’t expect the king has heard that yet,” the trader said. “Sier Sehgrahlin has much of the old magicks, but not the way of calling mind to mind. Even if he could, the king could not hear, nor any with him. There’s no one much left with that, but the king’s great-aunt, and she’s too old to matter.”
“Where is she?” asked Gird.
“In Finyatha, of course, in the palace. Amazing lady; she came to the market there once, when I was a boy, and my grandfather sold her a roll of silk from the south. She looked at me and said ‘Yes, you may pet my horse,’ and my grandfather clouted me for presuming. I never asked; she saw it in my mind. She told my grandfather so, and he said I shouldn’t even have been thinking it, and clouted me again.”
“What was the horse like?” asked Gird, suddenly curious.
“A color I’d never seen; I heard later it was favored in Old Aare: blue-gray like a stormy sky, with a white mane and black tail, and what they called the Stormlord’s mark on the face, a jagged blaze that forked. But it was the fittings that fascinated me: that white mane was plaited in many strands, each bound with bright ribbons that looped together. The saddlecloth was embroidered silk—I was a silk merchant’s child, I could not mistake that. Then when she mounted, she sprang into the saddle like a man—and rode astride, which the horse nomad women do, but no merchant woman I had known. My grandfather told me later all the magelords do, men and women alike, but they think it is presumptuous in lower ranks.”
Gird returned to the topic that seemed to him more important. “But if she is the only one—and the sier Grahlin has no such powers—then his messengers must find the king’s army before the king will know and come north?”
“Yes. If he even calls for him: did you not know that Sehgrahlin is the king’s least favorite cousin? They have been rivals for years; Sehgrahlin refused to send his troops on this expedition, although he has some up north, guarding against the horsefolk. He will not like to ask the king for help, that one; he will do his best to drive you out of his domain with his own powers.”
He had done that, Gird thought, but what more would he do? He asked the merchant, who shrugged. “He might help Duke Pharaon—they’ve hunted together a lot, and he once loved Pharaon’s sister—but he married into the Borkai family. Those he would help, but they lie away north of you, north and west, right on the nomad borders.” The trader knew what the gnomes had not—or what they had not bothered to teach Gird—which lords lived where, and how they were related. Gird had Selamis write it all down, although he suspected Selamis might know some of it already. Then he asked about the one magelord family the gnomes had mentioned, and the trader’s expression changed. “Marrakai! Where would you have heard about them? They’re not even in Finaarenis; Marrakai’s a duke in Tsaia. No magicks, that I know of, but probably the best rulers in both kingdoms: honest, just, and put up with no nonsense. If that brigand you say is using your name wanders into Marrakai lands, he’ll find himself strung high before he knows it.”
The trouble with towns, Gird realized when he had been there a hand of days, was that they were harder to leave than villages. He would like to have had a town allied to him—but he could not hope to protect Brightwater against a full army. No army had come, but one might. Their barton had grown, swelled with sudden converts, but he didn’t trust that. The newly elected council of merchants and craftsmen wanted him to stay (one told him frankly that it was cheaper to feed his army than pay the bribes and taxes of the earlier rulers) but he had not won his war. When the gnomes sent word that it was now time to redeem his pledge to help them at Blackbone Hill, he was glad of the excuse—but he left most of his army near Brightwater, under the command of Cob, whose broken foot was nearly healed.
Chapter Twenty-six
Under a milky sky, the crest of Blackbone Hill loomed dark and inhospitable. Gird had expected the darkness, but not the shape, which made him think uneasily of a vast carcass, half-eaten. Sunburnt grass, like ragged dead fur, seemed stretched between the gaunt ribs.
“There’s them says it’s a dragon,” Wila, his guide, said nervously. Clearly he thought it was something. Gird forced a grin.
“If ’tis, ’tis dead, long since.”
Wila shook his head. “There’s bones, up there. All black, black inside and out. Seen ’em myself.”
“Dragonbones?” Despite himself, Gird shivered. No one had seen a dragon, but the tales of Camwyn Dragonmaster proved that dragons had lived, and might still. Even the lords believed in dragons; one of the outposts up on the western rim was called Dragonwatch.
“Dunno.” Wila paused, and hooked one foot behind his knee, leaning on his staff. “All the bones I seen was too little, unless a dragon has almighty more bones than other creatures. If they’d been normal bone, I’d have said fish or bird—something light, slender. But black like that—and no one could think that hill’s just a hill, like any other.”
Gird glanced upslope again: true. Something about the shape of it, malign and decrepit, made the hairs on his neck crawl. “Why’s anyone live here, then?” he asked.
“Well, now.” Wila switched feet, and leaned heavily into his staff. Clearly this was a question he’d hoped to answer. “In the old days,” he said, “before the lords came out of the south on their tall horses, this was uncanny ground. The Threespring clans claimed the east side for spring sheep grazing—it’s not so bad then, with new grass and spring flowers. The Lady tames all, you know,” he added, and dipped his head. Gird nodded, and swept his arm wide, acknowledging her bounty. “Then the Darkwater bog folk, they claimed herb right to the western slope, and the land between rock and bog.”
“Herb-right to that?”
“Aye. In the old days, that is, when the Darkwater bog folk gave half the herbalists in this region, they gathered the Five Fingers from that very rock, the Lady’s promise to redeem it, they said.” He peered closely at Gird. “You do know the Five Fingers—?”
Gird nodded. “But where I come from, only the wise may say the names—I have heard, but cannot—”
“Ah—yes. I forgot. You’re from the overheard, aren’t you?”
“Overheard?” Gird hadn’t heard that term.
“Where the kuaknomi overhear the blessings and overturn them. That’s what I was taught, at least. Where the kuaknomi overhear, only the wise may say the name of any sacred thing, lest a prayer be changed to curse.”
“They don’t come here?”
“Well—there’s them as says Blackbone Hill has felt their touch, but aside from that, no. We have the truesingers here, the treelords.”
“Elves?”
Wila snorted, then coughed. “That’s coarse talk of them, lad. What they call themselves is truesingers. Sinyi, in their tongue.”
“You speak it?” Gird could almost forget the coming battles for that.
“A bit.” Wila put both feet on the ground, and picked the staff up. “Best be going, if we’re to be past the Tongue by dark.” And despite Gird’s questions, he would say no more about elves, but led the way at a brisker pace than Gird expected from someone his age. What he did say, briefly and over his shoulder, had to do with the human settlement now nestled at the hill’s steeper end. “Lords forced it,” he said. “Broke apart the Threesprings clans, and settled a half of ’em here, and put in two brothers from the bog folk, and set them all to digging in the hill. Came out as you’d think: fever and death, broken bones and quarrels, but the lords want what comes out the mine shaft, and never mind the cost. Send more in, when too many die. It’s a hard place, Blackbone, and no hope for better.”