None of the differences mattered even a copper’s worth. As she had before, Marcovefa still lay there. She wasn’t dead. But she wasn’t among those present, either.
“What are we going to do?” Hamnet Thyssen heard the despair in his own voice.
“We fought the Rulers before we ever met Marcovefa,” Liv said. “We can go on fighting without her.”
Neither Hamnet nor Audun Gilli said anything to that. They could go on fighting, yes. They had to, in fact. And they had fought before. The only trouble was, they hadn’t fought with anything resembling success. Could they now? Hamnet had to hope so, but he couldn’t see how.
“Thank you for trying,” he said, half-bowing first to Audun and then to Liv.
“We need her,” Liv said simply.
“Maybe Earl Eyvind will have some notion of what to try next,” Audun said. “He’s not a wizard, but he knows a lot.”
“So he does,” Hamnet said morosely. Audun might have suggested that he ask Gudrid. That would have been less appealing. Offhand, Hamnet couldn’t think of anything else that would have been.
EYVIND TORFINN AND Gudrid were eating together when Count Hamnet found them. Back in Nidaros, neither of them would have dreamt of sucking the marrow out of a sheep’s leg bone while sprawled out near a fire. But Hamnet had seen on the journey through the Gap that they could rough it when they had to.
He stood waiting to be noticed. Gudrid ostentatiously ignored him. He didn’t mind. If anything, he preferred having nothing to do with her to having anything to do with her. Earl Eyvind took longer to see Hamnet was there than he might have, though.
At last, he did. “What can I do for you, Your Grace?” he asked.
“Well, Your Splendor, it’s like this. . . .” Hamnet Thyssen told him what had happened to Marcovefa, and about the moonstone spell Liv had tried.
“I . . . see,” Eyvind said slowly. “How very unfortunate.”
“Hamnet never did have much luck with women, but this is ridiculous.” Gudrid sounded amused.
“Your Splendor, will you please tell this . . . person I came for your advice, not for hers?” Hamnet said.
“Oh, you can talk straight to me, Hamnet, dear,” Gudrid said. “It’s not my fault you don’t know what to do with them if you find them.”
Again, Count Hamnet spoke to Earl Eyvind: “Will you please tell her I will kill her if she opens her mouth again about Marcovefa? Will you tell her I am not joking? Will you remind her we’ll have a demon of a time fighting the Rulers without Marcovefa? And will you also remind her how much she enjoyed their company the last time she ran into them?”
What Earl Eyvind did say to Gudrid was, “I think you would do well not to provoke Count Hamnet, my sweet. I think you would do very well indeed, as a matter of fact.”
Gudrid’s eyes flashed. She didn’t take kindly to anyone who tried to tell her what to do. But, for a wonder, she kept her mouth shut. Or maybe it wasn’t a wonder. Maybe it was the murder writ large across Hamnet Thyssen’s face.
Whatever it was, her silence kept him from grabbing his sword and keeping his promise. Instead, he asked Earl Eyvind, “What do you know about magics made with moonstones?”
“I assume Liv told you the legend of Levigild the hero?” Eyvind said. Gudrid’s eyes glinted again, but she stayed quiet. One of her gifts was gauging just how far she could goad Hamnet without endangering herself. She’d pushed right to the edge—almost over it—this time, because she hadn’t realized how upset he was, not only for himself but for their cause.
“She did.” Count Hamnet nodded. “She used his name in her spell, I think, but it didn’t do any good.”
“All right,” Eyvind Torfinn said. Hamnet didn’t think it was. Before he could say so, Earl Eyvind went on, “Other legends also accrue to the mistletoe, you know.”
“That was the kind of thing I was hoping you could tell me about,” Hamnet said. Gudrid yawned enormously. Hamnet kept pretending she wasn’t there, which was the best thing that could have happened to her.
“I will tell you what I know.” Eyvind paused to gather his thoughts. Hamnet pictured him riffling through an enormous codex inside his head. That probably wasn’t how it worked, but the end results were about the same. Eyvind said, “You will of course have met the custom of kissing under the mistletoe on the night of the winter solstice.”
“Don’t bet on it,” Gudrid murmured.
Hamnet went right on ignoring her. As long as she insulted him alone and not Marcovefa, he could, with effort, hold his temper. He nodded to Earl Eyvind. “Yes, of course, Your Splendor.”
“Excellent!” By the way Eyvind beamed, Hamnet might have been a promising pupil.
“I don’t see what that’s got to do with anything here, though,” Hamnet said.
“Well, neither do I,” Eyvind admitted. “It was the first thing that came to mind, that’s all.” It was on the top page of the codex between his ears, Hamnet thought. Eyvind continued, “The powdered leaves, if drunk, are sovereign against the falling sickness.”
“But the arrow gave her something like the falling sickness,” Hamnet protested.
“I am telling you what I know of mistletoe and its uses,” Earl Eyvind said stiffly. “If it does not correspond to the woman’s symptoms, I am not responsible for the discrepancy.”
Hamnet wanted to hit him. Even if he did, though, he realized Eyvind wouldn’t understand. To the scholarly noble, this was a scholarly problem, no more and no less. Eyvind Torfinn didn’t seem to grasp that, without Marcovefa to oppose them, the Rulers could do pretty much as they pleased against this ragtag force of Bizogots and Raumsdalians.
“Do you know of any charms for waking people out of a long sleep?” Count Hamnet asked.
Eyvind shook his head. “I am afraid I do not. Lacking any sorcerous capabilities myself, I never extended my investigations in that direction.”
“Listening to Hamnet might put anyone into a long sleep, but I don’t suppose that’s magic,” Gudrid said.
“No, probably not,” Hamnet agreed. Gudrid looked unhappy. He’d told her before that he didn’t much care if she insulted him. She evidently hadn’t believed him. Too bad—he’d told the truth. She told so many lies herself, she had to expect them all the time from other people.
“Can Marcovefa eat? Can she drink? Can we sustain her until such time as we find a means to defeat this sorcery?” Earl Eyvind asked. They were all good questions—perhaps Eyvind had a better connection with reality than Hamnet had thought.
He spread his hands. “I don’t know the answers to any of those. We just have to see, that’s all. If we can take care of her, you’re right—that buys us time. If we can’t . . .” The face he made told what he thought of that prospect.
“Yes, who’d give you a tumble then?” Gudrid said.
She was lucky. Hamnet Thyssen walked away from her, not toward her. He went over to one of the cooks’ kettles and dipped out a bowl of barley mush. The mush had bits and shreds of mutton in it. A baby could have got it down with no trouble. With any luck at all, an ensorcelled invalid would be able to do the same. If she couldn’t, the game was up. It was about that simple.
He dipped a horn spoon into the mush and blew on it, the way he would have before feeding a baby. Then, worriedly, he slid the spoon between Marcovefa’s flaccid lips.
She smiled. She ate. She swallowed. But her eyes didn’t open and she showed no sign of being aware of herself. Hamnet looked at the good and ignored as much of the bad as he could. He gave her another spoonful, then another, then another. Before long, the bowl was empty. He wiped off her chin. She was no neater than a baby would have been. He didn’t care. She wouldn’t starve to death.