“True,” said Qina. “Because his leg holded will be. By me.”

Morgan watched them walk away across the courtyard, two small shapes, hand in hand. When they had gone, he straightened his shoulders and headed inside to try to be a prince.

If there was one thing that age had taught Eolair of Nad Mullach, it was that the present instant was no more real than a layer of fresh snow. As he had seen this morning on a slow walk around the Blarbrekk Castle commons, the drifts might make everything look clean and new, but underneath waited the same old trees, stones, and earth. The older he got, the more he realized how unusual true change was.

These thoughts had been spurred by Prince Morgan’s coming in from the cold to join them all at the table in the Earl’s study, although why Morgan did so was a bit unclear, since the prince looked as though he expected to be scolded for something. It was funny, actually: Eolair had not known King Simon well until the young man took the throne of Erkynland, but he was certain he’d witnessed similar baffled, angry expressions on Simon’s face during his first years of rule. And yet now, the same look from his grandson irritated the king to no end.

To be fair, Eolair had to admit that Morgan’s unhappy expression irritated him a bit, too. He hoped the prince’s appearance here was the beginning of a true change, not merely a new layer of snow. Morgan needed to take more interest in the affairs of the land, and not only because of a possible new threat from the north. Eolair was growing very dubious about King Hugh in Hernystir, the squabbling between the brothers in Nabban, and in fact the future of the High Ward. Decade after decade, it seemed, the old players shuffled off the scene, but those who followed them acted out the same parts, the same rituals of greed and foolishness.

But it’s not entirely their fault, Eolair thought. The young don’t realize that they know almost nothing, or that nothing is ever new. That’s their glory and their most dangerous flaw.

“What we need most now is knowledge,” King Simon declared, pulling Eolair’s attention back to the council at hand as if he had guessed his secret thoughts and meant to share them. “Merciful Usires, how I miss Doctor Morgenes! Geloë, too, of course, bless her. Without their wisdom, and with no word from the Sithi, we can only guess at what the Norns might be doing.”

“Yes, but we are without them,” said Miriamele. “We must think about what we do know—and what we need to learn.”

Prince Morgan stirred. “Morgenes—he was the one my father named me after, wasn’t he? I never understood that, because everyone says they didn’t even know each other.”

“Your father never met him, but he read Morgenes’ book about your great-grandfather, King John,” Simon said. “That is how he knew him, and why he honored him—and you—with the name.” He gave the prince a stern look. “And you should have read that book by now, too, as you kept promising you would. I managed when I was younger than you, and I scarcely knew how to read! You would have learned many lessons about kingship, and you would also know something about your father’s namesake.”

“Doctor Morgenes was indeed being very wise.” Binabik now did what Eolair as Hand of the Throne usually had to do in such situations, namely, try to unpick quarrels before they began. Eolair was grateful to let someone else do it for a change. “But all wise people are not being gone from the world. Some of them are here now.” The troll smiled. “I am not speaking of myself, with certainty, but instead our good Tiamak and Count Eolair, who between them have been seeing and reading so very many things. And, Majesties, you are wise ones yourselves. Few others have been at doing the things that you have.”

“You rate yourself too modestly,” Simon said with a brief smile. “But nobody here knows very much about the Norns, and that’s what we need right now. The Sithi could help us, God knows, but they stay stubbornly silent. That’s why I miss Morgenes and his wisdom so much right now. That’s why I miss Geloë.”

“Who is Geloë, anyway?” Morgan asked. “I’ve heard people saying her name.”

“She was a valada,” said Binabik. “What the Rimmersfolk call a wise woman.”

“A very wise woman,” said Miriamele.

“She was a shape-shifter,” said Tiamak. “She could take the form of an owl. I saw her do it with my own eyes.”

“She was a witch,” Eolair said, then could not help smiling at the faces of the others as they turned toward him. “But of course she was! What else would you call her that would be more truthful? In Hernystir, where I was raised, the word is not quite so fearful as it is for you Aedonites. She could walk the Road of Dreams. By sweet Mircha’s rains, Tiamak is right—she could even take the form of a bird!”

“She’d lived four hundred years or more,” said Simon.

“Really?” said Tiamak. “How do you know that, Majesty?”

“Aditu told me.”

“Ah-dee-too? Who is that?” asked Morgan, a touch plaintively.

“A woman of the Sithi,” his grandmother said. “One of our closest allies.”

“Four hundred years old,” said Tiamak. “Amazing. When Geloë was dying, I heard Aditu call her ‘Ruyan’s Own.’ Perhaps that was true—perhaps she really was a great-great-grandchild of the Navigator. The Tinukeda’ya nearly all live longer than men.”

“This isn’t fair,” said Morgan. “I’m trying to pay attention, I swear I am, but who are all these people? Who’s the Navigator, and what does he have to do with this Geloë? What’s a Tinookidah or whatever you said? And what do any of these old stories have to do with someone finding dead Norns in a cow pasture in Rimmersgard last winter, which is what I thought you were all talking about?”

“Norns, yes, but Sithi as well,” said Binabik. “That is the strangest thing we were hearing. But it is good that you have questions, Prince Morgan,” Binabik said. “Perhaps, though, it is being too much for learning all in one day.”

But Eolair saw a moment to educate the prince, a rare moment when the young man actually seemed to want to learn. “The Norns and the Sithi were once all one family, Highness—one race,” he explained. “But not the Tinukeda’ya—Ruyan the Navigator’s people. They were mostly slaves and servants, at least in the early days. Even their leader Ruyan, it is said, with all his skill and craft, was no more than a thrall to the immortals. Long, long ago, he and his people built a fleet of ships to carry the Sithi and Norns here from the place they call the Garden.”

The king nodded. “My Sitha friend Jiriki said that, too—that the Sithi and Norns brought Ruyan’s people here as slaves. I do not know where the Tinukeda’ya came from. Jiriki said their name means Ocean Children. And it’s true that some of them live almost always on ships at sea. Miriamele met some.”

“The Niskies,” said the queen, nodding. “In fact one of them, Gan Itai, saved my life. The Niskies are the ones who protect the Nabbanai ships by singing the kilpa down.”

“Ah,” said Morgan, grasping at something he recognized. “Kilpa. I have heard of those things. Terrible, fishy creatures that steal sailors in the south from their ships and drown them.”

“You are correct, Highness,” Eolair said by way of encouragement. “And I have met Tinukeda’ya too, but from one of their other tribes,” he said, remembering the frightened, big-eyed dwarrows of Mezutu’a. “You see, these Tinukeda’ya are a race of changelings that can be as different in form between themselves as a noble lady’s lapdog is to a mastiff. These things matter to us now because all the creatures we are talking about, Sithi, Norns, Tinukeda’ya, live a long time.”

“Some of them live damn near forever,” said King Simon. “I’d guess the Norn Queen is still alive, even if she lost her power, as Aditu told us. Jiriki once said she was the oldest living thing in the world.” He turned to the young prince. “That’s why we want you to know these things, Morgan. Someday your grandmother and I will be gone—but the Norns won’t be.”