Ironcrown Moon (6 page)

She wrapped the food in a cloth and put it into a basket, together with a long kitchen knife, a leather bottle of mead, and two wooden cups. There would be plenty of good water from freshets trickling down the cliff face. “The only question is, will you accompany Dyfi and me on our holiday, or stay behind and sulk?”

The maid was hauling on her garments. “It’s not safe, Your Grace! There’s others that could find us here besides magickers. Like that blue fishing vessel that tarried offshore two tennights ago.

Dobnelu said the crew peered at the steading with a spyglass! The old woman was in a rare tizzy about it. It seems that plain eyesight isn’t hindered by her shielding magic. The fishermen could have seen you out by the byre.”

“Please God, they had! For I recognized the lugger as one belonging to Vik Waterfall of Northkeep Port, where my own family’s castle lies. And since catching sight of it, I’ve thought of nothing but how we might use such a boat to get away from here.”

“Oh, no, Your Grace!”

“Stop calling me that, you stupid creature! The only one here worthy of such an honorific is my son.” She turned away, and her next words came through gritted teeth. “And I’ll see Dyfrig gets the crown he deserves… if I don’t die of vexation and melancholy first, trapped in this loathsome place.”

The sturdy maidservant persisted in speaking her mind, as was her habit. Rusgann’s fierce loyalty had never equated with submissiveness. “My lady, you owe it to the lad to keep him secure. To obey High Shaman Ansel’s instructions and those of the sea-hag.

Life here’s boring, I’ll give you that, but Mistress Dobnelu and the shaman know what’s best for you.”

“Lately, I’ve had my doubts.” Maudrayne stared out the window at the desolate grandeur of the
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fjord and the high tundra above it. The snow that had blanketed the windswept plateau was finally melted, leaving outcroppings of pink and grey granite and patches of vivid green grass tinged with the purple, yellow, and white of short-lived arctic wildflowers.

Rusgann sniffed. “I suppose doing housework and taking care of farm animals is a hard life for a highborn lady like you—”

“You silly thing! That’s not it at all!”

“Well, what, for pity’s sake?” the maid muttered. “We have a snug place to stay, plenty of food to eat, and magic to keep your enemies at bay.”

“We’ve been here for four years, Rusgann, hardly ever leaving the stone circle. I have only a small child and you and that senile witch for company, with infrequent visits from Ansel when he can spare us the time. God knows I’m used to northern winters that are eight months long, but not the isolation we have to endure here in this miserable hovel!” Maudrayne gestured in disgust at the modest kitchen, which was neat and clean enough now thanks to her own efforts and those of the maid. “My family’s castle at Northkeep is a cheerful place, full of people. When I lived there we weren’t forced to stay inside during the long winter nights—not even when the Coldlight Army prowled the sky. My brothers and cousins and I played in the snow and went visiting and bathed in the hot springs. There was singing and feasting and games and bards telling wonderful tales. And in summertime we sailed and hunted and fished and gathered berries and went exploring. This wretched steading might as well be a prison. And Ansel won’t even tell me how long we must stay here.”

“He said we must remain until there’s no danger to you and the lad. How can you dispute the wisdom of that?”

She stamped away from the window with her blue eyes blazing. “And just when will the danger be over? When Dyfrig is a man full-grown? When his damned father is dead?… All of life is fraught with peril, yet we don’t spend our time hiding safely under the bed!”

Rusgann made a helpless gesture. “You seemed content enough to stay here earlier.”

“When I believed we had no other choice. When Dyfrig was a baby who couldn’t understand the need for prudence and secrecy. But he’s four now, and wise beyond his years. He needs teachers and companions of his own age. If he’s forced to spend his entire childhood here, file:///K|/eMule/Incoming/May,%20Julian%20-%20[Bor...0-%20Boreal%20Moon%202%20

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May, Julian - Boreal Moon 2 - Ironcrown Moon his spirit will be stunted—just like those tiny winter-blasted birch trees up on the tundra that never grow more than two handspans high. I can’t let that happen to my son! Surely there are better ways for Ansel to secure our safety. Why can’t we live under the protection of my brother Liscanor at Northkeep instead of in this cramped farmhouse?”

“You could ask the High Shaman that question when next he visits us. But in the end, you have to trust his judgment.”

“I used to think Ansel was my loyal friend, whose only interest was our welfare.” Maudrayne spoke in a low voice and her expression was disillusioned. “Lately I’ve come to believe he may have other reasons for keeping us confined here that have little to do with our physical safety.”

“I don’t understand.”

“When last he came, just after the ice breakup, Ansel and the sea-hag were whispering together in the kitchen, thinking that little Dyfi was napping in his cupboard-bed. You and I were mucking out the byre. The boy heard Ansel say, ‘We must make certain he remains king. He’s the only one strong enough to hold them back. Without him, we have no hope of liberating the Source.’ The boy was clever enough to remember the strange words exactly—and he asked me about them.”

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Rusgann’s brow wrinkled in puzzlement. “I suppose Ansel was speaking of High King Conrig.”

“Yes, Both Dyfrig and I threaten him—but especially me, since I know a great secret of his that would cost him his throne. Perhaps Ansel hopes to eliminate this threat by keeping us out of the way.”

“But who is it who must be held back by King Conrig? And what in Zeth’s name is the Source?”

“I know not which particular enemy Conrig’s Sovereignty must hold in check. He has so many!

As for this Source, the last time Ansel spoke of it was after I jumped from the parapet of Eagleroost Castle into Gala Bay. As he rescued me, he spoke mysteriously about what his Source would think if my unborn child and I had died in the icy water.”

“My lady, I still don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“From other things old Dobnelu has said, I’ve come to believe that Ansel’s Source might have something to do with the person the hag visits during her long trances. Perhaps they are even the same.”

Outside, Dyfrig was calling. “Mama! Come out! Let’s have our picnic. I’m hungry.”

Maudrayne Northkeep, who had been wife to Conrig Wincantor and Queen of Cathra, picked up the basket and headed for the door. She looked over her shoulder and said to Rusgann, “I believe that Ansel and Dobnelu and this Source may be playing some deep magical game. To them, Dyfrig and I are nothing but pawns on their arcane game-board—and so, evidently, is my former husband, the Sovereign of Blenholme. But I’ll be no one’s game-piece willingly, and neither will my son. This is the last summer we’ll spend here, Rusgann.

We’re going to escape.”

The handmaid’s mouth dropped open in consternation.

Maudrayne laughed. “Don’t stand there gaping, woman. If you’re coming to the shore with us, step lively.”

She sailed out the door, and with Dyfrig skipping at her side went through the outbuildings toward the flowery meadow, where honeybees and boreal warblers foraged, and a herd of goats and sheep with their young grazed the fresh grass. At the edge of the enchanted circle, Maudrayne told the boy to wait while she went to the holy hut nearby and looked inside.

The place was windowless, but light entered through a smokehole in the roof. Dobnelu lay unconscious on a rickety cot, her discarded magic drum beside her. She was a small person who could not have weighed seven stone, dressed for the ritual in a tattered blue-silk robe that had once been magnificent and costly. Her head had only a few wisps of white hair and the skin of her skull was so translucent that blood vessels seemed to cover it like a netted cap. Her eyes, large and black and smoldering with arcane energy when she was awake, were shuttered by crinkled lids. Her mouth hung slightly ajar, showing a few stumpy teeth. From time to time her lips moved soundlessly.

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May, Julian - Boreal Moon 2 - Ironcrown Moon

“Where do you journey?” Maudrayne whispered. “Whom do you talk to?” The former queen’s hand stole into the basket where the sharp kitchen knife lay and she fingered the long blade. It would be easy to take the sea-hag’s life while she was entranced and helpless. But would such a deed be justifiable, even to permit their escape? The old woman was terrible-tempered and imperious but without real malice. She had opened her home to three refugees at Ansel’s request (complaining loudly all the while), but had treated little Dyfrig with unfailing kindness, so that he came to love her and called her Eldmama Nelu. Maude and Rusgann she had used as domestic slaveys and farmhands, berating them mercilessly when they were clumsy or negligent. But she had never punished them with her magic.

I cannot kill the witch, Maudrayne realized. Nevertheless, I won’t rest until I find a way to get
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away without doing her serious harm.

She left the hut and closed the door behind her. Rusgann was waiting with Dyfrig, carrying her own cup and an extra bottle of mead.

Maudrayne put the things into the basket, handed it to the maid, then led the way through the pasture to the steep path down the cliff.

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Kittiwakes, fulmars, and other birds nesting on the rough rock walls and sea pinnacles made a raucous din. Green sedges, cliff ferns, and tufts of white starwort grew in sheltered high places, while some deeply shadowed stretches of shingle above the tide-line were still heaped with slow-melting slabs of ice driven ashore by the winter westerlies.

The tide was receding. They hiked along the emerging sands and slimy boulders below the fjord cliffs for hour after hour, finding all sorts of interesting things: colorful agate pebbles, net floats, shells, the skull of some small animal, and a freshly dead mirrorfish two ells long, from which the boy gleefully scraped a heap of huge, gleaming scales. There was even a chunk of white quartz with embedded metallic specks that might have been gold. Maudrayne carried all the treasures in the basket, along with the remains of the food.

Dyfrig raced ahead tirelessly, pursued by laughing Rusgann. After a while the two of them were lost to Maudrayne’s sight behind a jutting promontory at the end of the fjord beach.

She brooded as she hurried to catch up with them. Escape from Dobnelu’s steading was not going to be easy. The sea-hag was a vigilant guardian except when she was sunk in one of her trances or stupefied by strong drink, as happened when changing weather made her bones ache.

The drumming happened only at irregular intervals, so they would probably have to rely on ardent spirits to disable

Dobnelu’s windsearching ability. Fortunately, Rusgann was an expert distiller of malted barley liquor, and there was plenty left from last year’s batch. However, tempting the old woman to overindulgence without arousing her suspicions would be tricky.

As the raven flew, Northkeep Castle and its surrounding villages lay only sixty leagues to the southeast, on Silver Salmon Bay; but to get there traveling overland was virtually impossible.

Away from the shore, this region of Tarn was a trackless plateau of rolling tundra and bogs.

Game would be the only food source unless they waited for the berries that ripened at summer’s end. Maudrayne was an experienced hunter, but without a bow and arrows, she could take birds and animals only by means of inefficient snares. Nor was the upland wildlife entirely innocuous: even if they managed to evade the bears, snow lions, and wolf packs, biting midges might well eat them alive.

Following the shoreline meant fewer insects and predators, and the tide pools were full of mussels and crabs and stranded small fish. But the irregularity of the coast route more than doubled the distance to the castle, and the going would be appallingly hard, especially for a small child. South of Dobnelu’s home fjord, the shore was jumbled rock and salt marsh, rather than easily traveled sand. Below Useless

Bay lay another broad inlet with a river delta and treacherous flats that could be crossed only by means of ski-like mud-shoes. The final obstacle before Silver Salmon Bay and the settled lands held by her elder brother, Sealord Liscanor, was a precipitous headland so sheer that it could only be climbed with the aid of ropes.

No, only an idiot would think of escaping on foot. The terrain was too difficult and the journey would take too long. Dobnelu—or Ansel himself— would be certain to find them with windsight long before they reached Northkeep Castle. Only one course of action had any real chance of success: escaping the same way they had arrived—by boat.

Fishermen came only rarely into Useless Bay, fearing its treacherous shoals as much as the
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sorcery of the infamous sea-hag who dwelt there. But the sighting of Vik Waterfall’s lugger—and Dobnelu’s warning about the sailors having a spyglass—had given Maudrayne an idea. The next time a boat appeared offshore, she’d try to signal to it from a place out of the old woman’s sight. She’d proffer the valuable

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May, Julian - Boreal Moon 2 - Ironcrown Moon opal necklace, and use hand signs to tell the crew what she wanted and where and when to pick her up. If she was lucky, one of the men might recognize her, even though ten years had passed since she sailed her sloop-rigged yacht among the fishing fleet in Northkeep Port, before going south to become the bride of Conrig Wincantor…