“Once more, then we will return,” said Eolair. “If we cannot make it sound, still we can find other ways to announce our presence. There is no shame. Please, Highness, just try once more.”

Morgan wanted to argue because he knew that there was shame in failure. As someone who knew he had been sent to these empty, dark woods simply because he had been caught breaking rules, he knew that as well as anyone. But here in the ancient forest it suddenly seemed like something that had happened far away and long ago. He felt the weight of the horn in his hand, the substance of it, and looked at the last gleam of the setting sun burning between the trunks like a distant fire.

Snenneq’s knuckle bones said that I won’t get what I expect, he suddenly remembered. What will I do then, if I don’t become king? A strange anger filled him, not the sort that scalded his heart when he didn’t get his way, but another sort of feeling, a deeper rage at blind, foolish fate. But why? he wondered. Why does it have to be that way? Why does anything have to be that way, just because others say that it is?

Without even realizing, he lifted the horn to his lips, holding it with both hands like an upended wine goblet, but instead of letting the fiery taste of happiness run down his throat and fill it up, this time it was his job to do the filling—to fill this heavy thing with his own breath. To bring it to life. What if this is the only important thing I ever do?

And as he thought this, Morgan for the first time felt the famous horn as something more than an ancient artifact, a piece of lost history. He closed his eyes and the twilit forest vanished.

There was only Morgan and Ti-tuno, then. For an instant he thought he could feel what the horn’s creator had felt, the nameless Sitha who had long ago carved the runes and polished the curving surface until it gleamed. In that instant he could even sense how the horn’s triumphant music was not summoned from somewhere else, but crouched inside it like a dragon hiding in a cavern, all that fiery power coiled but awake and waiting. Somehow, even if only for the space of these few heartbeats, the horn became part of him and he, not just the air inside him, became part of the horn as well.

He blew. This time, he heard something immediately, a rattle that became a groan. His lungs and the horn became one thing, a passage of fire from his body into the horn and then out into the silent forest, a single note that grew from a moan to a stuttering howl to a deeply sounding roar, like the bellow of a huge beast. The sound climbed into the air of the forest clearing and hung there for so long that Morgan almost forgot it was he who was making it. Then it fell away, leaving only faint echoes.

Despite having been the one to urge him to try one last time, Count Eolair looked surprised—almost stunned. “You did it, Highness,” he said in a voice so soft it was almost a reverent whisper.

His heart pounding with exultation, Morgan winded the horn once more, as much to feel the sensation again as anything else. Ti-tuno’s call rolled out through the darkening woods, deep and throaty and astonishingly loud, the cry of some creature God had made and then forgotten. But the Sithi did not come.

Morgan still felt a sense of triumph, but though he blew two more times, nothing answered the blasts but echoes.

The prince and the count got back on their horses and returned through the forest, through an evening now alive with cricket song, back to the cookfires and the company of other mortal men.

43 Into Deeper Shadows

“Why are you here, mortal?” demanded the halfblood slave, looking her full in the face. “Here in the storerooms, we heard no mention of your coming.”

His lack of courtesy was both insulting and infuriating, but Tzoja did not dare let herself be goaded into making a scene. Just the proper amount of anger was what she needed, no more, no less: the Hikeda’ya were highly sensitive to precedence and position. “How do you dare speak so to me, you low creature?” She hoped her features showed the cold fury she felt, but not her even stronger fear. “Do you not see my household sigil? Mortal or not, I am an important concubine of the High Magister of Builders, Lord Viyeki himself! I gave him a child who, despite being a halfblood like yourself, is an honored member of the Order of Sacrifice—a Queen’s Talon, no less!”

Her inquisitor flinched just the tiniest bit, an infinitesimal tightening of his skin as if anticipating a blow, something Tzoja would never have noticed before living in Nakkiga. Now, she knew, it meant that her gambit had succeeded, at least in part.

“I beg your indulgence, Mistress,” he said in a more guarded tone. “But I have been told that certain lowborn creatures have been making free with the Queen’s pantry. I am only doing what I am bound to do.”

“Mistaking me for a slave even lower than yourself, you mean?” Tzoja now felt herself on familiar ground again, since she had faced this sort of thing on many more legitimate errands. She made a sign with her fist against her throat that meant, I will swallow my righteous fury for the moment. “Still,” she said, “since I work hard, as you do, to protect that which belongs to the Great Mother of All and to preserve the memory of the Lost Garden, I will not mention you to my lord if you quickly comply with my wishes. I need enough food for a few days’ journey.”

The slave, who could not have been much older than Tzoja herself but whose Norn blood, as it did for her own daughter Nezeru, gave him the look of a much more ancient creature, made a strong gesture of apology. “Again, I ask for your mercy, Mistress, but why do you need such a quantity? Your master’s clan household has already had its allotment.” Starvation had been a familiar companion to the Hikeda’ya in the years after the War of Return’s failure. This menial had doubtless been harshly schooled in taking his guardian’s role seriously.

“Fool of a slave!” she said, making her face as disapproving as she could. “Do you think yourself a temple priest teaching an ignorant child to recite the Prayer for the Queen’s Strength? Or is the mortal blood in you so powerful that it stupefies the rest? Where is it written in the Hamakha Dictates that you may ask questions of a High Magister’s concubine? Do you demand the details of what my husband and master wishes to do with the food as well? If so, I think the Queen’s Teeth might take an interest in your interest.”

The blow was well-aimed. The slave’s face crumpled in poorly hidden fear. “No, Mistress! Please, do not misunderstand me. Usually we are informed of any such need ahead of time.”

“My husband has recently left on a mission given to him by our great queen herself. He left me detailed instructions on what I was to do during his absence. You say you were not informed, but I wonder if it is possible instead that you have lost his orders?” She paused for effect. “Again, I offer to call for the Queen’s Teeth, or even the nearest guards, and we will quickly find a straight path through this crooked passage.”

Surrender. “No, please, Mistress. I am certain the fault was ours.” The slave had the deep black eyes of his Norn blood, but the sallowness of his skin had been lightened by fear until he was almost as white as a pureblooded Hikeda’ya. “Make yourself free and do what you must.” He turned to where several of the less bold kitchen slaves cowered in the background. “We all pray for your husband’s safe return.”