The Waters Rising (31 page)

“Only one man returned from the armada of Ghastain: Huold, only thereafter called the Fearless or the Heroic. He arrived at Ghost Isle on the back of a great silver fish. There’s an interesting mosaic of it, as a matter of fact, in the castle of—”

“Just the story,” interrupted the abbot. “Please.”

The librarian frowned, trying to remember where he’d left off. “Ah. He told the people of Ghost Isle that he stood beside Ghastain when the great wave came. He said that he leapt into the sea himself and grabbed the fin of the great fish, riding it into the depths to save his leader and friend. Down he went, away from the sun, the air, farther down, where the only light was the green luminescence of living things. He reached for Ghastain’s extended hand, from which something trailed upward. Then a huge tentacle rose like a serpent from the depths to snatch Ghastain away from him. Huold said this was one of the arms of the Sea King himself. Just as it took Ghastain, Huold managed to catch hold of the thing that trailed upward from his hand: supposedly the sacred thing, the powerful thing, the whatever-it-was.

“He told the people of Ghost Isle that the whatever-it-was supposedly gave him the power to ride the great fish to the anchorage in Ragnibar Fjord. There he found a man to serve him, a mountaineer, and they two together set out south—this was long before the Stoneway was cut through—with the intention of traversing the Icefang Mountains. Woldsgard did not exist then, of course. That whole area was wilderness.

“So far, most stories are in agreement. From that point on, the stories diverge. Most of them agree that Huold went south, to the place where Woldsgard was later built, and from there headed west into the mountains. Many of the stories mention the place now known as Marish, for the ruins of an ancient temple, a Hag’s temple, lie near there, and Drawlip of Thrattlemere writes that the sacred thing was said to have come originally from there. Others say this is ridiculous, that the miraculous thing belonged originally to the Forest God, or the Hag Goddess, or any of a dozen other deities. Various other writers claim that Huold had sworn to Ghastain that he would return the thing to its place of origin, but this may merely be an attempt to explain why he went off into the mountains as he did.”

Wordswell nodded to himself. “Up to Huold’s arrival at Ghost Isle—a place now drowned beneath the sea—everything concerning the mysterious relic is unsubstantiated. Then we begin to find some undoubted and documented happenings. It is undoubted truth that some people from a settlement on the site of the place we now call Wellsmouth took a wagon into the mountains to cut wood, and there they found Huold’s servant half-frozen just inside the complex of caverns now called Chasmgard. He told of Huold’s arrival on the fish and said he had lost his master in the mountains during a storm. He couldn’t remember when or how long before.

“Later on, the servant was questioned, repeatedly, carefully, by people from the abbey that existed then, a forerunner of this abbey, though not on this site. The servant knew nothing of the thing, the sacred thing, whatever-it-was of legend. After they left the Ghost Isle, Huold had never mentioned any such thing to him. He was asked where they had been going. To a place to return something, he said. What had they been going to return? He didn’t know. What had Huold worn? Had he worn a bracelet, a ring, a belt, a torque, a pendant, perhaps? Had he carried anything in his kit? Did he wear a band to hold his hair; did he carry a knife? Did he carry anything closed, like a leather bag that the servant had never seen the contents of? To all such questions the servant said no. No, he had carried nothing the servant hadn’t seen, worn no gem, necklace, pendant, ring, anything of the kind. The only knife had been one they both used, and so on.”

“Then it could be anything,” said Xulai. “It could be a word, a phrase, words to be written or carved, a map to something that would be found in one place and taken to another. It could be anything or nothing.”

The aged brother reached up to push his high headdress into a more securely perpendicular position before allowing himself to nod. “Yes. It could have been anything or nothing. There was no one left to clarify the matter. Both Huold and Ghastain were gone. Ghastain had set governors over his conquered lands, to rule in his name, under his law. When they learned of Ghastain’s death they kept his legal system, but they began to rule as kings in their own right. King Gahls is the tenth generation of such kings ruling in Norland. He and his forefathers conquered many of the smaller lands—conquered them, or married into them, or allied with them and swallowed them. Altamont was separate until the duchess took it at the order of King Gahls. King and duchess may have a difference of opinion as to its ownership now. Kamfels and the lands of Hallad, Prince Orez, are still separate realms.”

“And Wold,” said Xulai firmly.

“And Wold,” agreed Brother Wordswell. “And Elsmere and Merhaven. Before he set out to conquer the Sea King, Ghastain promised Huold all the western lands, to him, to his children, into perpetuity. At that time, those lands included those now held by Wold and by Prince Orez. The promise was no momentary sentiment. It was a serious matter. The deed to the lands was written, witnessed, and sealed in the presence of agents from the institution which preceded our abbey. It is included among the documents from that time. It is still here. I’ve read it.”

“So he had children,” said Xulai.

“Before the sea adventure, Huold had one grown daughter and six grown sons. All his sons had predeceased their father, killed in various bellicose expeditions, so when Huold vanished, only his daughter, Lythany, was left to come forward and claim the western lands. The abbey ruled that she was the legitimate heir rather than any of Huold’s supposed grandsons, including several born when Huold’s sons had been so long absent or dead as to make their fatherhood miraculous if not impossible. The eldest of these grandsons, the Direking of Chandar—an unknown person from a place that no longer exists—is claimed by Queen Mirami, however, as an ancestor.”

Xulai smiled a cat smile. “Clever. I hadn’t heard that.”

“It is said King Gahls brags of her heritage, but then, the king brags about many things of questionable provenance and doubtful value. It is certain, however, that both Prince Orez and Justinian are of the twelfth generation of Lythany’s line.”

Silence grew in the room, broken only by the crackle of the fire as four people pondered the possibilities inherent in what they had just heard.

Bear scratched his head, stretched his neck as though it troubled him, and said, “Possessing this thing, whatever it is, would be a . . . strong argument that one was the real inheritor, but in twelve generations, this thing has not been found?”

“Likely it has never truly been looked for,” said the abbot. “Remember: what Wordswell has told you is a story some hundreds of years old. Such stories grow in the telling. They are embroidered with fancy and colored with all manner of miraculous detail. When all who knew the heroes as mere men have died, the stories continue, swelling mere men into mythic heroes, expanding mythical heroes into demigods. Reasonable men who read history always discount about ninety percent as fiction.”

Brother Wordswell nodded. “This is true, but some of the facts are indisputable. Huold did vanish, and his daughter—”

“What was her name, again?” interrupted Precious Wind.

“Lythany,” said the old man. “Which is our form of her real name: Lythaiene, which means ‘truth prevails’ in the language of the time. Lythany took the lands and ordered the building of the fortress of Woldsgard. It was she who ordered the cutting of the Stoneway in order to make travel to Kamfels easier. She was a good steward of the land and an enlightened ruler of the people who came to settle it. She was the first who forbade slavery. She settled various lands, some of those now held by Prince Orez, on her nephews and nieces; she married a member of her own tribe; she had two children of her own. Her daughter was Yvein, called the Songbird, and her son was Harald Axearm. Harald inherited the lands of Woldsgard, and Yvein married into a great family to the west from which Prince Orez is descended. I have the family trees in my library . . .”

“Our library,” corrected the abbot with a chiding smile.

Wordswell’s lips crimped themselves into a deprecating moue. “Certainly, Eldest Brother, it is ours, except that I seem to be the only one who is dragged from his bed to answer questions about it. At any rate, Justinian, Duke of Woldsgard, is the twelfth generation in direct descent from Huold himself. He is also descended through both Harald and Yvein when the two branches of the family were united through marriage several generations later. And if you ask whether Queen Mirami’s claim to descend from Huold is provable, I can only say that it can’t be proven from any source we know of. In fact, no one even knows where she came from. She was first noticed as a protégé of that strange fellow, the one at Altamont . . .”

“The Old Dark Man!” said Xulai. “Great Bear has mentioned him.”

“And Huold came from where, originally?” asked Bear.

“There are as many stories as tellers,” said Wordswell. “He was born of the gods. He was born of a virgin who had been shut up in a cell for twelve years. He was born of said virgin because the sun god came in through the little window of the cell and impregnated her. And so on and so on.

“There is no record of the name ‘Huold’ before his time, so we cannot say what language the name comes from. It has no cognate in any language we know now. Ghastain was Angrian, a harsh people from the far southeast, far beyond the Big Mud, where the deserts are. It is possible Huold was also Angrian. Since the waters rising have changed things over the last centuries, we no longer see the Angrian people.”

Xulai said, “So, since we have no idea what this thing was or is, and yet the duchess is energetically seeking it, we must at least allow for the possibility that she has found out or has some hint of what it is or that it might justify her mother’s claim. I overheard her say something about things discovered in the Edgeworld Isles . . . in a library there . . .”

Wordswell shook his head dismissively. “Our scribes and copyists have been through all the island libraries a dozen times over the past two centuries. I doubt there is anything there that we have not copied and brought here.”

Xulai said casually, “They’ve seen the vaults below? Deep vaults?”

Wordswell laughed. “Oh, my gracious, that again! The deep vaults holding the last of the ease machines. My daughter, if I may call you that without offending you, the stories about vaults below this place and that place have been told for hundreds of years. The Edgeworld Isles are coral islands; do you know what that means?”

“Precious Wind taught me, yes. They are islands that grow on the shells of little creatures that build up over the centuries, often on the tops of old volcanoes. When the seas rise, they grow to the surface; when the seas fall, they protrude above the waves.”

“And where, in all this growing and sinking and unsinking, can vaults be created? Caves are found mostly in mountains where running water eats out caverns in the rock.”

“I see.” Xulai smiled. “I supposed that if they existed, they had been dug out in the Before Time, perhaps in the time of the Big Kill. I suppose even coral could be dug out and then the hole made waterproof.”

“It probably could, but I have heard the stories as long as I have lived, and as yet, no one has found such a vault. Just as I have heard that this thing of Huold’s in time of need will come up ‘out of water’ and call to those it will serve.”

“If it is an evil thing, perhaps it is calling to Alicia?” the girl murmured. “And from the story you tell, it is an evil thing.”

“Why do you think so?” asked the abbot.

“If Ghastain wielded it, slaughtering all those people, it must have been . . .”

The abbot leaned forward to take her hand and she looked deep into his eyes, blue eyes: kindly, clear, and guileless. “If it existed at all, it may have been completely neutral, Xulai. It may be merely a source of power like the one that underlies us here at the abbey. You have seen the great pit in which the abbey is built? It is the result of something huge, some enormous sky stone that fell long, long ago at the end of the Before Time. Some say that this sky stone and its companions is what put an end to the Big Kill, for there were great earthquakes then. Mountains were heaved about, some made higher, some leveled. The enormous tableland we now call the Highlands of Ghastain was thrust up. Norland was created anew, half of it shorn away to the west. Some remnants of that great stone lie beneath us. Our forefathers drilled down to it and hot water came up! It takes heat from the stone, even after all this time, and we use the heat for cooking and keeping warm and bathing. We try to use that power for good. If we were ever overrun by an army of evil, however, no doubt they would use it for ill. Power is power as the sun is the sun, the wind is the wind. The villager blesses the rain as it falls on his crops; the pillager uses it to cover his approach. It is the wielder who determines the good or evil.”

Xulai would have asked for more information about the power that underlay the abbey, but the abbot had already risen and crossed to the door, where he called for Brother Aalon. Though it did not seem enough time had passed, they heard the heavy stroke of the single bell,
dong! Dong! Dong!

“Lunch bells,” said Bear. “We’ll collect the others at the meal and decide what to do next.” He set off down the hall.

Xulai, lingering while the others departed, turned to the abbot and took his hand. “Eldest Brother. For my sake, please do not tell anyone what we have talked of here. Not anyone, even your close associates.”