As they drew near the black mouth of one cave, Flyn's nostrils were filled with the stench of ordure. The stink poured forth, overpowering despite the cold. For the first time, Flyn felt the sisters change their pace, quickening their steps as they passed the reeking portal.
Sooner than he expected, the tunnel ahead ended in the radiance of snow and sun. The sisters led him out into the light.
They emerged into a large, roughly circular gorge. The feet of four great mountains formed the depression, their towering slopes completely surrounding the hollow and honeycombed with the mouths of caves. At the center of the vale stood a massive tree. Flyn's beak stood agape as he craned his neck upward to try and absorb its inconceivable height.
The tree was completely devoid of leaves, its uppermost branches rivaling the surrounding peaks. The eye of the maelstrom was centered above the tree, leaving the entire vale free of the storm. As the wights began walking across the dale, Flyn leveled his gaze. Roots as large around as drum towers coiled up from the ice, supporting a trunk which the walls of the Roost could not have encompassed. The girth of the tree dominated the valley, leaving barely a bowshot between the root base and the slopes of the gorge. Hoarfrost covered the wood, bloating the already huge branches. Indeed, the entire tree was encased in murky rime, giving it a sickly, petrified appearance. Flyn detected movement all along the tree, which proved to be scores of vættir, walking along the roots, climbing the slopes formed by the ice, and scaling the boughs, each struggling higher.
At the top of the tree, the thick branches splayed up and out, and Flyn could see a pile of debris resting in the palm of the limbs.
A nest.
The vættir were making the long climb towards it and several fell while Flyn watched. Some were caught by shelves of ice growing from the trunk or nearby branches, but one plummeted to the valley floor to break upon the hoary roots. Flyn saw dwarf corpses half encased in ice at the base of the tree, some still moving, still trying to struggle out of their frozen prisons.
“Well, ladies,” Flyn told the sisters, unbuckling the belt and letting it fall. “Off you go. As for me, I do not fancy another climb.”
Doffing his pack, Flyn pulled Coalspur's harness over his head and drug the blade free, tossing the harness and scabbard aside. Flexing his neck and shoulders, he gazed up at the distant nest, employing his coburn vision. He watched for a moment, scanning the cold heights, but could detect no heat. Could she have perished? Had she succumbed to time and now lay like her mate, a lonely, lost pile of bones? No, the gathering vættir proved she still lived. She was up there.
Filling his lungs with cold air and holding his sword aloft, Flyn crowed at the top of his voice, issuing the war cry of the Valiant Spur, a throttling screech of challenge. Thrice he crowed, each expulsion louder than the one before. His cries echoed through the dale. As they receded, Flyn waited and watched.
Movement caught his eye, above the nest in the highest branches. Heat began to appear across his vision, a muted blur the color of shifting flame. Flyn could see a shapeless bulk perched in the limbs, now beginning to emit a heat quickly turning an angry red. A pair of great wings unfurled, snapping outward, shedding a layer of snow and ice that hung briefly in the air before falling away from the extending feathers. A prodigious head snaked out from under one wing and Flyn saw it swivel to look down upon him.
The Corpse Eater opened her beak and answered his challenge with a shriek that shattered the ice around her.
THIRTY
“Your name is Beladore.”
Deglan watched Sigrun closely as he said the words, but his statement did nothing to the woman. She did not even look up, merely continued to try and rub warmth into her hands through her mittens.
Crow Shoulders’ army had stopped upon a wide plateau near the edge of the Mother's Gale. The winds this close to the maelstrom whipped into Deglan. The gusts kept him shivering, nearly kept him from breathing, but they would not keep him from learning the truth. He had waited long enough.
They were forced to abandon their mounts in the high passes and, though Sigrun remained close, helping Deglan struggle through the snow, the punishing gales shushed all attempts at speech. He yearned to question her, but that desire had been placed behind the need to survive the mountains.
When they reached the plateau, Slouch Hat was able to focus on quelling the winds and Deglan nearly collapsed with relief as the incessant pressure fled his body. Soon, the howling voice of the Gale receded. It was a queer sensation, looking at the solid twist of that seemingly living storm, its roar muted, its breath weakened. Deglan became aware of his own breathing and the sharp sniffles of the woman beside him.
He took a quick look around. Slouch Hat was in council with Arngrim two dozen paces away. Half of the warlord's sons had left to scout ahead, loping off into the blowing snow outside the husk's protection. The other six were near the edge of the plateau, surrounding the Dread Cockerel, keeping him from marching headlong into the Mother's Gale. In that instant, Deglan feared for Flyn. Was he somewhere within those peaks? Or was his sword simply lying next to his wind-shredded corpse? No, if anyone could get through that storm, it was Bantam Flyn. But speculation and self-deluded comfort were a waste of time. Deglan had more pressing concerns.
He saw his chance and did not waste it on questions.
“Your name is Beladore,” he repeated. “And you are no thrall. Leastways, no thrall of Arngrim's.”
“Slouch Hat told me you might discover the truth,” the woman said calmly, still intent upon her hands.
“He bloody-well knew I would,” Deglan growled. “Why do you serve him?”
The woman looked up and Deglan saw that there was no difference between Sigrun and Beladore. She had not changed because she had been discovered. She did not gloat or show dismay. Indeed, Deglan could detect no difference in her bearing or countenance. Whatever name she used, this was the strong, haunted woman he had known while in his cell and throughout this blasted march.
“He is not easily denied,” she replied.
Her answer caused Deglan to sneak another look at the husk.
During the slog through the passes, Slouch Hat had used the crown's Magic to blunt the force of the blizzard at times, but most of his craft was focused on navigating the draugr army through the passes. For all the husk's cunning, he could not successfully herd all two thousand. Many of the dead had been lost to ravines, their careless steps dropping them over the precipices. Others simply trailed behind, the column stretched thin through the narrow paths. The reach of Slouch Hat's control must have had its limits, for the numbers of the army dwindled after each peak. Even huddled in frigid despair, Deglan's old soldier's brain had kept track of the numbers, and he smiled into his mantle as more and more of the draugr were lost.
Now, barely half of the original two thousand remained. Staring at the reaping winds between the four peaks ahead, Deglan thought the rest were doomed. He doubted even dead men could prevail against that maelstrom. Certainly he saw his own death within the towering cruelty of the gusting gyre.
“That is not the reason,” Deglan said, turning back to Beladore. “Tell me the damn truth.”
For a moment, he thought his brusqueness would cause her to refuse, but she took a decisive breath, holding it in for several heartbeats before answering.
“Who else can teach me about my bloodline?”
Deglan stilled. “You know.”
“I am Jerrod's heir,” she said, without pride or shame. “Though in truth, I was told years ago, while in exile, by a crone I befriended.” She gave a small, self-deprecating laugh. “But, in a place dubbed the Isle of Mad Women, it is unwise to believe any of what you hear.”
“Until Slouch Hat rescued you.”
The smile faded. “Until I escaped.”
“The humans have long said there is no return from that isle.”
“Well,” Beladore's voice was a whisper, “there is no more isle, now.”
Th
e certainty in her hushed voice sent Deglan's hair standing. He opened his mouth to respond, but Beladore spoke before he could.
“You knew Ke–,” she stopped abruptly, her face rippling with conflict. “You knew my husband.”
Deglan scowled. She meant Kederic Winetongue, the human warlord who hated Fae and failed to see his most trusted warriors making deals with Red Caps, among other trespasses.
“I had the displeasure,” he said through sour spit.
Beladore's head tilted slightly to the side. She seemed almost intrigued by his vehemence. “Could you possibly hate him more than I?” Her eyebrows rose slightly. “Slouch Hat is right about you, Master Loamtoes. Your capacity for grudges is bottomless.”
“That hollow bastard is about to learn how right he is through personal experience.”
The woman's face filled with sadness and pity. Pity, Deglan saw, that was directed at him. “I hope you will discover how wrong you are. But I wonder if even immortality could provide you enough years to change.”
“And what of you?” Deglan spat back. “How many years will it take you to see your own folly? Why do you wish to embrace your ancestry? It is filled with nothing but evil, bloodshed, enslavement and madness. Why would you walk the path of sorcery when there are others to tread?”
“Like motherhood?”
The words lashed at Deglan from the woman's tongue. Her face was wroth for the first time. Deglan found himself cowed in the venom of that stare. Bugger. Did she know? He tried to speak, but produced nothing but a slack-jawed stammer.
“Do not search for sweet sympathies, Deglan Loamtoes,” Beladore said, her voice quavering. “Believe me, there are no words that can heal my wound. Not even the most potent of elvish herbs in your ken could quell my pain for a single heartbeat. I know you were there. At the end, with my son.”
Deglan needed to be very careful now. “I did not see it,” he told her, truthfully.
“But I felt it!” Beladore's entire body shook with the exclamation, though her voice barely rose above a hiss. “His anguish and fear struck me down across leagues, his last moments filling me with excruciation, a pain only eclipsed by the great emptiness which followed. I thought I would die, hollowed out from the inside as I knew he was gone from this world. Nothing of him was left, nothing but an ache inside my womb that nearly devoured me, and a tiny, tearful whisper that I followed to Castle Gaunt.
“I knew something of my Magic by then. Unwittingly, I had unleashed it upon the isle in my grief, my power blooming as my son's was extinguished.” She broke off for a moment, some terrible memory fluttering across her face. Deglan swallowed, wondering what fell deeds she had wrought upon that cursed island. Beladore shook herself, her eyes snapping up once more. “I carry his beginning within me. I needed to see the place that was his end. But all I found was the remains of a husk. I renewed his life with my sorcery, seeking only answers, seeking someone who could tell me what had happened to my little boy. What Slouch Hat could not tell me, the Forge Born with a name could, for I had discovered much more within that castle than I sought.”
“The damn iron crown.”
Beladore nodded. “My birthright. A dread relic too dangerous for me to yet master. The husk helped me use the power of the crown to command Coltrane to answer our questions. I know my son perished to save those who failed to save him. I know that he was brave and compassionate, loving those who allowed him to die. I know you accompanied his body, alongside the coburn knights who were his guardians.” Beladore's face grew distant as she drifted in bitterness. When she spoke again, her teeth were clenched. “I even know the horrid name he was saddled with when he lived an orphan in their stronghold.”
She could not say the name, and neither would Deglan. “What did you call him?”
Beladore's grim visage was briefly broken by the barest of smiles. “Cadell.”
Deglan kept his face placid. He wondered if Corc knew Pocket's true name. The knight had never said if he did. Deglan did not even know if there had been time for an exchange of words when this woman had placed her changeling babe into the knight's arms in order to save the child from Kederic Winetongue's wrath.
“What does Slouch Hat want in Middangeard?” Deglan asked, wanting to keep away from the subject of the gurg.
“That is for him to reveal,” Beladore replied.
“Then at least tell me what happened to Coltrane.”
“That I will. But you must tell me what became of my son's body.”
Deglan's mind raced. This woman was sinking rapidly into darkness. Within a span of years she could be the next Goblin Queen, if that is what Slouch Hat intended. Airlann would bleed if the Red Caps marshaled behind her. Telling Beladore that her son still lived could be all that was necessary to steer her from that fate. Deglan could reunite them, let them live together in safety. Would she allow herself to be exiled to another island? Or would she take Pocket from his protected seclusion? More importantly, did Deglan risk telling her at all? She had already fallen prey to the husk's influence and, though his designs remained a mystery, he had the crown and the woman that was meant to wear it, at his service. The dwarrow and the men of Middangeard had already suffered. What could Slouch Hat accomplish if he attained both heirs to Jerrod's crown, mother and son? It was too dangerous for anyone to discover Pocket still lived. Yet, surely his grieving mother deserved to know. Once she did, it was possible she would renounce Slouch Hat and the crown, the joy overtaking all other emotion. And what of Pocket himself? Was it Deglan's right to rob the boy of the chance to know his mother's love?
Deglan weighed all of this in an instant. He made his choice and took a deep breath.
A shout of triumph rang across the plateau, ending Deglan's words before they began. The scouting berserkers had returned and ran to their father, savage joy in their yellow smiles. They spoke excitedly, loudly.
“What are they saying?” Deglan asked.
“They have caught sight of the dwarf,” Beladore replied dispassionately.
Slouch Hat broke away from the jarl and his brood, nimbly traversing the snow to approach Deglan and Beladore.
“Crow Shoulders goes to get retribution,” the husk said without feeling. “Time for you to make good on your bargain, Deglan.”
“I will talk to the wizard,” Deglan proclaimed. “You just make sure Crow Shoulders keeps his word as well and leaves the rest be.”
“You will have to rely on your own cunning for that,” Slouch Hat said. “Sigrun and I will be proceeding into the Gale with the draugr.”
“You said you would help me!”
The husk's face rumpled with weary curiosity. “Have I not? You are still alive. And I have no intention of harming your companions. I care nothing for them. Deglan, you made your proposal to Arngrim before you knew I was at his side. You should cease this belief that I am the cause of your predicament.”
“This was my fool notion,” Deglan agreed grudgingly, “but you could damn well be my salvation. You can command the dead, tame the wind. Tell me you cannot stain the snow pink with these louts with a thought.”
“True,” Slouch Hat conceded. “And should they choose to stand in my way, I will do just that, as I will with any who oppose me.”
Deglan could no longer look at the husk. His eyes went to Beladore and he briefly saw a curdled brew of feelings at war upon her face before her resolve hardened once more.
“I wish you luck, Master Loamtoes,” she said earnestly. “I hope you soon find your way home.”
There was an unspoken question behind her eyes.
“If you wish to visit Cadell,” Deglan told her, “go to the Roost in Albain. There is a ridge on the eastern side of the promontory where the Valiant Spur cremates their own. That is your son's resting place. Fare you well.”
Deglan turned away and saw Crow Shoulders had assembled his boys. They thumbed at their weapons and made jests to one another, basking in the promise of blood. It looked as if they intended to take
Sir Wyncott with them.
As Deglan took a step to join them, he felt Slouch Hat's fingers claw into his shoulder.
“A parting gift, old friend,” the husk's reedy voice said.
A dizzying wash of pain nearly spilled Deglan to the snow. He kept his balance, but was bent double and watched as blood poured from his nose to adorn the white at his feet with crimson jewels.
“Buggery and shit,” Deglan snarled, his voice thick with bile. “What did you do to me?”
He heard laughter and shouted jests issue from the berserkers. Their words waded heavily through his stuffy ears.
“By a giant's cock! Hrani, go and fetch that stunted fuck.”
“Not I. It is said gnomes are grown from piles of dung. I will not sully my hands with his shit-skin.”
“It would only make you smell sweeter, brother.”
Roars of appreciative laughter erupted from the men and Deglan looked up, his head clearing.
Crow Shoulders gave an impatient wave of his arm. “Tell the gnome to come, hollow man!”
Deglan did not speak the fjordmen tongue, yet he understood every word. He glanced back at Slouch Hat.
“You are stubbornly blind to so much,” the husk said. “Best you are not deaf as well.”
Deglan produced a rude gesture. “I would rather you had made me able to piss lightning.” He turned his back on the husk and joined the Middangearders.
“So, which one of you she-bears has the smallest prick?” he asked, smiling.
One of the berserkers backhanded him. The blow was delivered lazily, yet it caused Deglan's teeth to slice the inside of his mouth and send him reeling. He righted himself quickly, looking at the man who struck him.
“So, you then,” Deglan said, spitting blood at the man's feet. “I shall call you, Thumb Cock, until you give me your name.”
Snarling, the man drew a seax and brandished the long knife in Deglan's face. “Name me such aloud again and it is not my name that will enter your ear!”
“Grand,” Deglan said, ignoring the knife. “I was just trying to discern if you could now understand me as well. Clearly you do. Off we go.”
The Errantry of Bantam Flyn Page 55
