“It was so fast. And some of it didn’t make sense. I can’t find the words, and I swear it isn’t this little bit of grog that’s fuddled me, beautiful and welcome as it is. Watching the Fair Ones and the White Foxes fight each other was like watching someone singing a song and playing at some contest, both at the same time, and I couldn’t understand either song or game. Can you compass that, Highness?”

Morgan waved his hand. “Go on.”

“And they were as bold and lovely as any fairies I ever heard about when I was young, my prince. But deadly. Deadly like a hawk is deadly, which is to say no more deadly than a sword’s blade, which only does what it is made to do.

“But when we went north after the Storm King failed, chasing the Norns back to Nakkiga, the Sithi did not come with us. Old Duke Isgrimnur, bless him, he was most set that the Norns should not get back to the shelter of their mountains, and he talked the king and queen into letting him take a great troop and pursue them, but the Norns moved too fast—like smoke on a brisk wind—and they made it all the way past their great walls and into their mountain. That was Nakkiga Gate, and the Sithi were not with us there. If they had been, there would be no White Foxes left.”

“But if they fought their kin at the Hayholt, why didn’t the Sithi fight with you that time?”

“A better man than I would have to answer that, Highness. I was only a soldier, and more concerned about having to ride all the way to the end of the world than I was about what the fairy-folk were doing. It was never certain that the Sithi weren’t coming, at least among us men. Many of us thought they would show up for the fighting, you see, riding in a great company as they rode to Hernystir, and as many were fearful of that as were happy to think so. You’d understand if you’d been there, my prince. They were so terribly different than men.”

“But the Sithi never did come to Nakkiga.”

“No, they didn’t. I heard from another fellow, who heard it from someone, that the Sithi still had some family feeling for the Norns—that they would defeat them but not destroy them. But Duke Isgrimnur, he was so set on it that he drove on regardless. Perhaps he too thought the Sithi would show up at the last. He was a great man, the duke, but even great men make mistakes.”

Morgan noticed a member of the Erkynguard lurking nearby, clearly waiting to say something. “A moment, Porto.”

The soldier made a half-bow. “Beg your pardon, Highness, but Count Eolair says it’s time for us to go into the forest.”

“Us?” said Morgan.

“Myself and some of the other men. Count said we should come along this time, Your Highness.”

Morgan excused himself to Porto, made sure to retrieve his flask, then followed the guardsman.

•   •   •

As they led half a dozen mounted Erkynguards toward the darkening line of the forest, Morgan asked Count Eolair about the armed escort. He had grown rather fond of his rides into and out of the forest edge with the old count, who never said exactly what you expected him to say—a rare trait in old people, Morgan thought.

“It is because we have now ridden beyond the easy reach, and perhaps even the repute, of the High Ward,” the count said. “Out here the Hayholt is more legend than fact, and the high king and high queen even less known. You will see it clearly if we reach New Gadrinsett. The citizens are loyal to the High Throne in theory, but the town that has built up around it is more Thrithings camp than Erkynlandish city. And the farther we go, the less anything we carry or wear will mean. Except our weapons, of course.”

“Do you mean bandits?”

“All manner of things. I hear you met one of the locals earlier this afternoon.”

“The River Man?” Morgan barely repressed a shudder. “Yes, and I would not like to meet him again.”

They were in among the trees now. Eolair led them deeper, until the last orange and pink smears of sunset gleamed only in spots through the high trees. They stopped at last in a forest clearing, beside a stream that was on its way to join the marsh down the shallow slope behind them, but they did not dismount. Eolair handed the wooden chest containing Ti-tuno to Morgan.

“Make music, my prince,” said Eolair.

Morgan took out the horn and weighed it in his hand. “Why can I blow it now, but I couldn’t when I first tried?”

“Who can say?” Eolair gave the ghost of a shrug. “The things the Sithi have made are always strange to mere mortals. Or perhaps it is simply that you found the trick.”

“If I found the trick, why don’t I know what it is?”

Eolair smiled. “Another question I cannot answer, Your Highness. But the light is fleeing us swiftly now. May I suggest you perform that trick you don’t know one more time?”

Morgan lifted the horn and sounded it, giving it all his breath, so that the mournful wail of it flew out into the deepening evening and rang and rang until the echoes died at last among the trees. The silences after the horn blew always seemed different than ordinary silences, although he could not have said why. Some quality of heightened stillness, perhaps, as though something listened and heard its call, even if the listeners were not the same ones he and Eolair sought.

Long moments passed, then Morgan winded the horn again. He had only a moment to savor the great silence after the echoes, then it was broken.

“Who are you, mortal men? And why do you carry a gift that is not yours to carry?”

The voice was not loud, but it seemed to fly straight into Morgan’s ear like a bee, startling him so that he nearly dropped the horn. The soldiers who had accompanied them grasped at their swords when they heard it, but Eolair held up his hand. “Do not draw your weapons,” the count said. “It would be pointless.” He looked slowly around the clearing, but saw nothing, heard nothing now that the voice had fallen silent, only the trees and the plashing of the little stream.

“I am Count Eolair of Nad Mullach,” the old man called, his voice only a little louder than when he had been talking to Morgan: he clearly thought that whoever had spoken was close by. “We mean no harm. I know your Prince Jiriki of old and would have words with him.”

“And I am a prince, too,” Morgan said, rather more loudly than he’d meant to. “I am Morgan of Erchester. King Simon and Queen Miriamele are my grandparents, and I’d like to talk to Prince Jiriki, too.” His heart, he realized, was beating madly, almost as swiftly as when he’d seen the river monster leap up to take the heron. “Show yourself!”

“Do not make demands,” Eolair said quietly.

A figure appeared at the edge of the clearing, so suddenly that it almost seemed to form out of the half-darkness. “Tell your men not to move,” the newcomer said. “They are surrounded by my hunters.”

“Nobody will move,” said Eolair.

The figure came toward Morgan, who was feeling a strong impulse to ride away as fast as he could. It was not that the stranger was frightening to look at—he was slender, and the angled bones of his face and his huge, golden eyes marked him clearly as one of the Sithi—but that Morgan felt a coldness beating out from him, a disdain. He felt certain that this odd creature in rough-spun garments, with red hair that seemed unnaturally bright, even in the darkening twilight, would happily have him feathered with arrows if the need arose, regardless of his princely status.

The stranger put out a thin, long-fingered hand. It took Morgan a moment to realize he wanted Ti-tuno. He looked to Eolair, who nodded.

The stranger took the horn and handled it with obvious reverence, turning it over in his hands, his lips moving as if in prayer. “It truly is Ti-tuno,” he said at last, his use of the Common Tongue almost faultless, but shaped and accented in liquid ways Morgan had never heard before. “It is a strange thing to hear its note in these dark days. We had thought it lost. Who are you?”