my dearest queen.’ Conrig made a formal inclination of his head. ‘I regret that your pain will be endured to no good outcome.’
She touched his cheek. ‘We are with one another so seldom now that I welcome the opportunity to be here – even if it can only be in a brief Sending. Consider a voyage to Moss this summer. You can easily contrive an excuse.’
‘It’s a wonderful idea. You’ll be hearing from me.’ He bent over her hand again, and a moment later she disappeared.
Aghast, Stergos whispered, ‘Surely you would not go to her!’
Conrig’s smile was grim. ‘No more than I would dive headlong into the steaming crater of Mornash volcano. But let her have hope.’
The Royal Alchymist spoke anxiously. ‘You know what Kilian must be after.’
‘I know. But the Darasilo Trove can’t be easy to get at, else our uncle would have had his minions seize it years ago…or you and Snudge would have located the bloody thing yourselves.’
‘But –’
‘Brother, we’ll consider the matter tomorrow, when Snudge returns. He knows more about that cache of sigils than anyone else we can trust. For now, I think you and I should carry Risalla to her bed. Then you must bespeak Snudge ordering his return and warn Abbas Noachil to put Kilian and his three cronies into close confinement. Meanwhile, I’ll seek out Earl Marshal Parlian in the gardens and ask his opinion of this fine mess. One thing is certain: I was much mistaken in telling my Royal Intelligencer that this would be a peaceful summer.’ Stergos had given all of the Brothers in the palace permission to set aside their usual duties and enjoy the Solstice entertainments. So he was surprised to find three red-robed figures standing outside the great door that led to the Alchymical Library, engaged in earnest conversation. He vaguely recognized them as visiting scholars, associates of Prior Waringlow who had come down from Zeth Abbey several months earlier to do research on some historical project or other.
‘Why are you tarrying inside the palace on such a beautiful night?’ he asked them, unfastening a large iron key from the ring he wore on his belt. To reach his own rooms, he had to pass through the library.
The Brothers bowed in respectful unison. One of them said, ‘We had hoped to do some studying, Lord Stergos, but found the library locked. Perhaps you’ll admit us –’
‘Nonsense! Go listen to the music and have a cup of wine. Your work can wait.’
‘Certainly, my lord.’
Stergos watched them go, trying to recall their names. But thoughts of what he must say and must not say in the upcoming wind-conversation with Vra-Mattis, the novice Brother assigned to Snudge, distracted him, and he gave up the effort as he fitted the key into its massive lock.
Drumming. Drumming. Drumming.
Dom dom t’pat-a-pat pom…dom
The sound coming from the little hut beyond the byre was soft but still audible in every room of the arctic steading’s main house, repeating the same simple percussive figure, continuing hour after hour for nearly two days, longer than ever before. Sometimes the beat would falter, the timing spoiled because of inattention or the fatigue of the drummer’s aged wrists and fingers; but after a painful pause the rhythmic sound always began again.
Dobnelu the sea-hag was having a particularly difficult time crossing the barrier this time. She could not recall how many false starts she’d made. Fven a single mistake in the three thousand measured patterns of drumming meant going back to the beginning, but it was unthinkable that she abandon the effort. Not even her dire premonition about the woman and the boy who were her special charges must tempt her to give up. Red Ansel Pikan and Thalassa Dru were waiting beneath the ice. Needing her.
And so was the One Denied the Sky.
Dobnelu could only join them in the starless world by means of the drum-trance, a ritual not especially difficult for Tarnian shamans in the prime of life, but an excruciating ordeal for a woman whose years numbered over four score and ten.
Dom dom t’pat-a-pat pom…dom.
Eyes shut tightly against the brightness of Midsummer Eve, resolutely gripping the bone drumsticks in her gnarled hands, Dobnelu the sea-hag forced herself to go on.
The maidservant Rusgann and the boy were somehow able to sleep through the maddening sound of the drumming, but Maudrayne Northkeep always remained conscious of it, even when she slipped into and out of a troubled half-doze. In disjointed prayers, she begged for an end to the infernal noise.
At last, as always, the end did come. The drumbeats ceased abruptly after a single climactic DOM. There was a sudden silence, broken only by the bleating of a goat in the meadow. The hag had succeeded in opening the door to that other place again. She’d entered and so left her prisoners free of her supervision for at least a day, perhaps even two.
Maudrayne pushed aside the opaque curtain of her cupboard-bed and descended on the stepstool, naked except for the ornate golden necklace with the three great opals that she never took off, her Uncle Sernin’s precious wedding gift that she had worn on the night she cast herself into the sea. The air in the shuttered little room was fresh and pleasantly cool, thanks to the sod roof of Dobnelu’s sturdily built home. Outside, under the endless midsummer daylight, it was probably rather warm. Perfect for what she had planned.
After putting on her clothes, she tiptoed to the partly open door leading to the large central chamber, the combined kitchen and sitting room where her serving woman and the boy slept. The hourglass on the mantelpiece indicated about three in the morning. Little Dyfrig’s nook was wide open and he sat unclothed on the edge of his bed, watching his mother with solemn, intelligent eyes. Neither Maudrayne nor her son needed much sleep in the summertime: their Tarnian blood saw to that. But Rusgann Moorcock was a southerner, and she’d demonstrated that she could sleep through a tundra-deer stampede. Her bed-cupboard’s curtains were shut.
‘No more magic drum,’ Dyfrig whispered to his mother. His hair had the same tawny golden color as that of his father, and he also possessed Conrig’s handsome features and unusual dark brown eyes. A moon earlier, the boy had celebrated his fourth birthday.
Maudrayne put a finger to her lips and beckoned him. He slipped to the floor noiselessly and joined her at the kitchen’s single small window. Leather-hinged at the top and held open by a hook and eye fastened to the low ceiling, it was covered with a screen of black gauze to exclude biting midges. Outside, bright sun shone on the meadow and reflected from the island-strewn expanse of Useless Bay beyond the drop-off into the fjord. A distant iceberg with multiple spires, like a dazzling white castle, hovered on the horizon off Cape Wolf.
Maudrayne pointed to the sea-hag’s holy hut at the edge of the steading and spoke softly into the boy’s ear. ‘Eldmama Nelu has drummed herself into an enchanted sleep again. Her body will stay in the hut for a few days now, while her spirit soars away northward to the icecap of the Barren Lands to talk to the One Denied the Sky and the other witches and wizards. Now that she’s gone, we can leave the farm without her permission and go wherever we please! Would you like to walk along the seashore today and have a treasure hunt?’
He squealed with excitement. ‘Yes! Yes! Maybe we can find whale bones, or scales from a mirrorfish!’
‘Shhh. You’ll wake Rusgann –’
Curtain-rings rattled and the maid’s homely face popped out of her enclosure. ‘I’m already awake, Your Grace.’ A lanky body modestly clad in a homespun shift emerged. ‘And you know very well we’re forbidden to leave the steading circle without Dobnelu along to protect us from danger.’
Ignoring the servant’s admonition, Maudrayne went to the larder, where she gathered rye bread, cheese, a small crock