“Their old Castle Tangleroot,” said Ayaminu. “It can be no other.”

“Vigri left most of his soldiers to protect Elvritshalla,” Isgrimnur went on. “He says the men he has are too few to press a siege in such an open place and he fears the Norns will escape again. He asks us to bring our forces and hurry to his aid.”

“The castle may be falling down,” said Ayaminu, “but the passages beneath it are deep and vast. The Hikeda’ya could hold it for a long time.”

“Not if we drive them out like rats,” said young Floki, “with fire and black iron.” His broad face told how greatly that idea cheered him.

“Let the corpse-skins hide there until Doomsday,” Brindur said. “Our men have fought hard and long. Many of them have been away from Rimmersgard for more than a year, and many who came with us now lie buried in Erkynland and foreign lands even farther south. What does it matter what a few hundred Norns do? Their power is broken.”

“Their power is never broken while their murdering queen still lives.” Sludig bore no title yet, but was certainly due for advancement: he had been one of Isgrimnur’s most trusted housecarls even before the war, and had done great deeds in the struggle against the Storm King. “This might be the last of their generals and nobles, trapped in a ruin far from their home. I think Floki has the right of it, Thane Brindur. This is our chance to stamp on the whiteskins like baby snakes found under a rock.”

Isgrimnur did not much like either choice. “There are no words for the hatred I feel for those monsters,” he said slowly. “For what they did to my son Isorn alone I would kill every last one of them, man, woman, and child.” He shook his head, as though it were almost too heavy for his neck to bear. “But Brindur is right, our people are weary. I do not want to see any more good men die fighting the fairies.”

“Fight them today or fight them again soon,” Sludig said, slapping at one of the axes on his belt. The young Rimmersman had taken the death of the duke’s son Isorn almost as hard as Isgrimnur himself. Even now, Sludig’s hatred of the Norns ran hot and strong through his blood. “When they have recovered enough to attack our lands again, my lord, we will surely wish we had dealt with them once and for all in their time of weakness.”

Isgrimnur sighed. “Let me think, then. We have already made camp so we have this evening, at least. Leave me alone for a while.”

As the men went out, Ayaminu stopped at the tent’s doorway, her eyes gleaming like golden coins in the reflected light. “Do you wish me to stay, Duke Isgrimnur?”

He snorted. “You wished to come along to listen and watch, and since that was the will of our new king and queen, I said yes. Never did I say that I would let you give me advice.”

“That is no surprise, I suppose. Elvrit’s race was always stubborn and bloody-minded. Perhaps the days of Fingil Red-Hand are not as far in the past as you would like to think.”

“Perhaps not,” said Isgrimnur sourly.

“Already slowed by the coffin containing the body of their great warrior, High Marshal Ekisuno, one of the largest troops of the People was soon joined by more Hikeda’ya fleeing the southern defeat. Their swelling numbers now impeded their progress even more.

“Duke Isgrimnur of Elvritshalla, the leader of the Northern mortals, pursued them with a great army of his race, but the People were also harried by one of the duke’s strongest allies, Jarl Vigri of Enggidal. Caught between these two cruel enemies, a mixed party of Cloud Children, most of them from the Order of Builders, along with a few Sacrifice warriors and those of other orders, were forced to take refuge in the abandoned fortress of Tangleroot Castle, where it seemed certain that the only conclusion would be their honorable and inevitable deaths.”

—Lady Miga seyt-Jinnata of the Order of Chroniclers

Although the roof and most of the upper floors had long ago collapsed, the great hall beneath Ogu Minurato, the Fortress with Tangled Roots, was the least damaged part of the ancient, tumbledown castle. It was here that the rubble had been cleared to make room for the great funeral wagon, whose wheels were almost as tall as Viyeki himself. They had to be, because Ekisuno’s mighty witchwood sarcophagus was too heavy to be carried by any smaller cart: the various Celebrants now praying around it seemed no larger than children.

Viyeki was disturbed to see how quickly things had fallen apart here outside the sacred protective walls of Nakkiga. Only a few mortal centuries gone and the natural world had all but swallowed Ogu Minurato, eating away at its walls and foundations, replacing them with its own substance, so that a sea of roots now covered the stone floors where the queen’s Sacrifices had once drilled. It was a reminder that the greater world lived at the same hurried pace as the mortals—that it was Viyeki and the rest of his Hikeda’ya kind who were forever out of place.

This world knows its own, he decided. After all, the Cloud Children were exiles from the sublime Lost Garden and could not expect any other place to fit them as well.

“We live too much in the past,” said a voice behind him, as if contradicting his thoughts.

Caught by surprise, Viyeki turned to see his master Yaarike watching the scene. Viyeki made a gesture of respect. “All praise to the queen, all praise to her Hamakha Clan,” he said in ritual greeting. “But I beg your pardon, High Magister. I do not understand what you mean.”

“Our love of the past impedes us, at least in this situation,” Yaarike said.

By looks alone, Viyeki and his mentor could almost have been brothers. The skin of the High Magister of the Order of Builders was smooth, his face as refined as his noble ancestry, but subtle, almost imperceptible tremors in his hands and his voice revealed his age. Yaarike was one of the oldest of the surviving Hikeda’ya, one who had been born even before the fabled Parting from their Zida’ya cousins—the ones the mortals called Sithi.

“How can we live too much in the past, Magister?” Viyeki asked. “The past is the Garden. The past is our heritage—that for which so many of us have fought and died.”

Yaarike frowned slightly. His hair was down; it hung beside his face on either side like fine white curtains. “Yes, of course, the past defines us, but the simplicity of your response disappoints me.” He made a flicking gesture with his long fingers that was halfway between irritation and fondness.

“I am shamed, lord.”

“You are the cleverest of my host foremen—I should not have to explain myself. But I meant that we are suffering here and now because of our own overconfidence, Viyeki-tza.” In such moods, his master’s endearments often sounded like belittlement. Viyeki waited silently.

“Remember what you first learned when you entered the Order of Builders so long ago? When you discover a flaw in stone, do not examine only the flaw, but how it formed, what it will do if left alone, and how the stone around it has responded. Do not neglect what beauty may have been created—if there were no flaws in order, life would be immeasurably poorer.”

Viyeki nodded, uncertain of what this had to do with overconfidence. “Please help me see how to examine this flaw, Master.”

“That is a better response.” Yaarike nodded. “Ask first how many centuries have we planned this campaign against the mortals? The answer is, for almost eight Great Years—five centuries, as our enemies reckon it, since the Northmen first took mighty Asu’a from our kind. On that day Asu’a and its Zida’ya king, Ineluki, both fell to the enemy, and the precious witchwood groves were burned. So many mourning banners were flown when the news came that all Nakkiga was draped in white.”