Old One harrumphed. Though his people easily made the sounds of speech, a good harrumph was an accomplishment. "Your Majesty," he said, "I will have the Lion found and notified. As for your larger request-it is in our hive mind now. I will call attention to it, and my people will decide together. What you ask goes far beyond anything we have ever contemplated. And no one of us can decide for all. We must decide together. For if even a few do what you ask, we will all be held accountable, I have no doubt."
In the Rude Lands, many could not read and write, and those who could, seldom had paper or pen at hand. People learned to listen and remember. And some, by nature and long experience, remembered and repeated quite accurately.
From Duinarog, Macurdy had gone first to the royal palace at Indervars, the throne-home of Indrossa. Which was the easternmost of the River Kingdoms, the nearest to the Eastern Empire and invasion. The king, he learned, already knew of the war, of the destruction of Balralligh and the occupation of Colroi. And the massacres of their people-human as well as ylvin.
Macurdy did not ask him to promise troops for an allied operation. He simply said he planned one. Given the horror stories the king had heard-apparently not far from the truth-he might well hesitate. The queen would work on him. She'd sat in on their talk, and she was a Sister. So all Macurdy suggested was that the king order the reserves to train evenings and Six-Days, in case they were needed to defend the kingdom.
He also spoke with the king's lord general and his staff, discussing the principles of hit-and-run attacks by small mounted units. Units trained to fight on foot and on horseback, attacking escorted supply columns, especially in forest and at night.
With his reputation as a war leader, they paid attention. But Macurdy left with the impression that any forces they mustered would be defensive.
He moved on. The Sisterhood Embassy at Indervars had agreed to courier a message for Macurdy, to Wollerda in Teklapori. Wollerda would know what to do, and Jeremid could carry a copy to Asmehr, for whatever good that might accomplish. He himself mounted Vulkan and headed west for Visdrossa, and on to Kormehr, Miskmehr, and Oz.
Old One had quickly gotten the attention of the raven he had in mind: a venturesome male known as Blue Wing, still in his prime. Blue Wing had been the Lion's companion during much of the human's earlier years in Yuulith. Remarkably enough, Blue Wing was even then in the Great Eastern Mountains, newly returned from wandering. He'd been away since early spring, visiting first the Southern Sea. Had explored its coastal districts, then worked his way back north via the shore of the Ocean Sea. He'd seen the scavenged corpses washed up on the Scrub Coast beaches, and learned from the hive mind of the debacle in the Copper River Gorge.
But he'd not put his attention on the long-departed Macurdy, and hadn't been aware of his return.
The Lion, said Old One, had been reported traveling on a great boar, headed west through Visdrossa. "If you would," Old One said, "I hope you will find him and stay with him. Communicate to him and for him, be his mind-ears and far-tongue. He may be at Ferny Cove by the time you can catch him. If any of our people see him, they'll tell him you're looking for him."
Blue Wing agreed, but he didn't set out at once. He had a nest, so to speak. Not the pile of sticks in which he'd help raise a brood. That had long since been claimed and enlarged by a pair of young eagles. What he now thought of as home was a small ledge, little more than a niche beneath an overhang on Silver Mountain itself, a niche large enough to perch on comfortably. His people sometimes cached things they thought pretty, or interesting, or that had a personal meaning. And in that nest, covered with sand and pebbles, he'd hidden something he realized now he wanted Macurdy to have.
He flew there at once. And in the morning, after breakfasting on the remains of a cougar kill (its owner was sleeping off his own breakfast), Blue Wing got his polished blue stone. Then he flew with it to the entrance of the king's palace, where he laid it down and asked to speak with Finn Greatsword.
The guards had been instructed to inform the king if Old One came around, but this wasn't Old One. "What's yer business?" asked the senior guard.
"I am carrying out an errand for your king, and I need his assistance."
They let him in then, and with the stone in his beak, the bird rode on the arm of a page to the royal apartment. There he laid the stone on the table in front of His Majesty. "I am Blue Wing," he said, "Macurdy's companion when he was in Yuulith previously. Old One wants me to go to him, to be his mind-ears and far-tongue. And I want to take this stone to him, but I need something in which to carry it. It's awkward and burdensome to carry in my beak; it slows me. And there's always the danger of dropping and losing it."
The king stared at the polished blue gem.
"My people," Blue Wing went on, "have little of what yours call 'talent.' But when I saw this, I felt sure it was enchanted."
He cocked his head, his obsidian eyes on the dwarf. "I took it from a tallfolk skeleton on the Scrub Coast beach, a skeleton so long, I suspect now it was one of the invaders'."
Cautiously the king picked it up, and examined it by lamplight. "Yer right," he said, "it is enchanted. It's far the most powerful stone I've ever touched or seen. And it never formed in the earth, I'll tell ye that. Like the best swords, it was created by wizardry, with a spell added at every step." He looked up at Blue Wing. "Not protection spells, or curses. Something… neutral. But very powerful." He put it down again. "Myself, I wouldn't keep it around, rare though it is. The Lion, though-he's said to have killed Lord Quaie in a contest of magicks. And to have killed a troll this very Six-Month by calling down lightning from the sky. So you may be right. It may be something he can use."
Turning, he called toward the door, and a servant came in. "Send Glinnuth to me. Have her bring sewing things, and some light, tough cloth. Spider silk would be right. I need a sack made, big enough for this." He gestured at the stone. "With a drawstring," he added.
The dwarf lad scurried off. "This could," the king said, "prove good or ill. We'll let the Lion decide for himself. To me he seems a lot more lucky than unlucky."
The comment did not reassure Blue Wing. Among his people it was a truism that those whose luck ran heavily to the good would pay for it eventually.
In the Rude Lands, Macurdy had been eating routinely at inns along the highway, often going unrecognized. For when he wished, he used his concealment spell lightly, leaving him visible, but easy to overlook. Meanwhile Vulkan waited or foraged invisibly outside. This allowed Macurdy to listen, instead of answering questions. Reports of the invaders had penetrated the Rude Lands, news worrisome but sparse. And in the River Kingdoms, like the Rude Lands in general, farming and herding remained the heart and backbone of their economy.
So while the war was often talked about, the main topic of conversation was the peculiar weather. Ten-Month had arrived, and in most years, in northern Kormehr, the first freeze was still a few weeks in the future. But this year there'd been frost almost every night since before the equinox, with some hard freezes. Even the gaffers couldn't remember such a year.
Nonetheless, tapping the Web of the World for warmth, Macurdy and Vulkan often slept out on clear nights, in a haystack, or beneath some hedge-apple row beside the road. They traveled till it was getting dark, or sometimes after, and let dawnlight waken them. Macurdy would eat breakfast at the first inn they came to-sometimes deep into morning-and a second meal toward evening, or later.