The queen’s guards now lifted the litter and carried it and its shrouded passenger toward the arched doorway. The rest of the white-helmeted Teeth stepped forward from behind the throne and began to drive the confused and largely unspeaking elite of Nakkiga back across the cavern toward the stairs. It was not entirely clear what had transpired here in the Chamber of the Well, but Viyeki sensed that all of them had been made part of some grave bargain whose end remained unknown.

What truly happened? he wondered. Do we face such a terrible threat that a horror such as this, the murder of an innocent, was our only choice? Then why have we not begun to prepare against another siege?

Full of such dubious, almost certainly treasonous thoughts, he did not notice Jijibo the Dreamer approaching until the queen’s odd descendant reached out and took his arm. Exhausted and anxious, Viyeki recoiled.

“Congratulations!” said Jijibo, grinning. “Hea-hai, but just look at him! He’s been thinking too much and now it’s made him ill!”

It took the bewildered Viyeki a moment to realize Jijibo was talking in his bizarre way about Viyeki himself. “What do you mean, congratulations?” he asked.

“He really doesn’t know,” said Jijibo, wriggling with pleasure. “Your family has been noticed, Magister Viyeki! Yes, your family has been noticed in some very high places!”

Viyeki had no idea what the queen’s strange relative meant, but the words still chilled him. “I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

“No, you don’t, do you? Not yet. But then again, it is not always good to be noticed, is it? After all, look at that one!” Jijibo pointed to something behind Viyeki, then turned and trotted away up the stairs, laughing and talking to himself.

Confused, Viyeki looked back and saw Marshal Muyare being led out of the Chamber of the Well by his officers, some consoling him over his loss, others congratulating him on the singular honor he had been given. The high marshal did not look at any of them, but stared ahead helplessly, as lost and baffled as if he had been struck by lightning.

11 The Third Duke

People had dressed warmly, and the great chapel of St. Helvard’s Cathedral smelled of furs and grease and torch-smoke. Miriamele had thought she was impervious to the reek of many people pressed together, but she was feeling dizzy.

Frode, the Escritor of Elvritshalla, was ancient and not particularly swift of foot. As he ascended to the pulpit the queen found herself wanting to help push him up the stairs, but reminded herself that patience with others, especially the old and infirm, was one of the virtues the Aedon had most emphatically preached.

When he reached his spot, the escritor took a pair of lenses in a frame from his gold vestments and perched them on the bridge of his long, thin nose.

“Morgenes used to have something just like that,” Simon whispered to her. “It’s called a ‘spectacle’.”

Frode looked out over the gathering, which, in addition to the visitors from the south, comprised several hundred of Rimmersgard’s most important people, and cleared his throat. To Miriamele, it felt like the trumpet of an invading army. She had never liked funerals, and she liked them even less at her age, when they were no longer rare occurrences.

“Long ago,” the escritor began, his voice reedy but surprisingly strong, “these lands were a wilderness, a place where darkness of all kinds ruled. Before we came to Rimmersgard, our people lived across the ocean in Ijsgard, a green land in the west, and although they prospered there, they did not thank God for their fortune but worshipped instead the pagan demons of their fathers. Because of their heedlessness, the Lord sent a great catastrophe. The greatest mountain of that land burst into flames and fell down upon their chiefest cities, and all the skies went dark. Then Elvrit Far-Seeing led his people in their many ships through that darkness and across the ocean to this land, and thus were his people saved. And he built in these lands a great kingdom for himself, and his children ruled after him. The mightiest of those was Fingil, and during his life he ruled from the Himilfells south to the Gleniwent, and was called ‘Fingil the Great’.”

Fingil the Great, Miriamele thought. Or as the people called him who had lived here before the Northmen came, Fingil the Bloody-Handed. What does any of this nonsense have to do with dear Isgrimnur? She looked sadly at their old friend’s coffin, draped in the banners of his house and of Elvritshalla, with the ducal crown perched atop them all.

“But Elvrit’s people brought their old gods into this new land,” the escritor went on, “and still did not heed the words of our Lord, the true God. So the Lord sent unto them a punishment, the great dragon who came into the Hayholt and destroyed King Ikferdig, Fingil’s successor, driving our people back into the northernmost lands, home of Norns and giants and other grim enemies.

“And although Aedonite priests like our St. Helvard tried to save our people from the Lord’s wrath by leading them to the true faith, it was King John of Erkynland, the mighty Prester John, who slew the great dragon and finally brought the Lord God to his proper seat in Rimmersgard.

“Later John fought the last king of Rimmersgard, Jormgrun Redhand, who carried the relics and token of the old gods into battle, and at Naarved Prester John defeated him.

“And then John in his wisdom chose that good man Isbeorn from all the other nobles to rule the people of this new-conquered land—but only if Isbeorn would cast away his false gods and accept the true God, who sent his son Usires to die that Man might live forever.

“Duke Isbeorn did embrace the true God—praise the Highest—and afterward ruled long and well. His son Isgrimnur ruled even longer than his father had, granted a long life by the God he served so faithfully, and today it is that life we celebrate.

“Our beloved Duke Isgrimnur fought the Lord’s battles up and down the length of Osten Ard. He battled the barbarians of the Thrithings and the terrible Storm King at the very gates of the Hayholt, John’s capital, helping to save it and the Aedonite people—perhaps all people—from destruction. And then Isgrimnur pursued the Norns all the way to their foul seat in the Nornfells, driving them into hiding with so much loss that they have not troubled mankind again.

“Now our beloved duke is with the Lord once more. Now he sits at the right hand of a master even greater than King John Presbyter. But he has not left us unguarded. His son Grimbrand will take up the Sea Rover’s Crown and rule over all the lands of Rimmersgard under John’s High Ward in the name of John’s heirs, King Seoman and Queen Miriamele. Two dukes Rimmersgard has been given under God’s leadership, and now a third to come, another godly man, and peace has prevailed.”

Here the escritor paused to remove his lenses and polish them on his stole. Miriamele felt a tickle of hope that the long afternoon might be coming to an end, at least the part that took place in the smoky, drafty cathedral. As far as she was concerned, it could not end too soon: the days since the duke’s passing had been filled with every kind of obligation. She had met so many northern nobles she could no longer remember what Grimbrand had told her about a single one of them.