After a span of silence, she asked, “Is it true that the Sorthe nobility ride flying beasts? I was told that at the Wizard’s Moot. But no Sorthemen attended, so I don’t know the truth of it.”
“That is true, more or less. They have tamed great flying beasts for their knights: something akin to dragons–but smaller, less clever and less proud. Not much larger than a horse. They call them draig.”
“Not a true dragon then,” said Caewen, reflecting. “No dragon would lower itself to being touched by anything it considered a lesser being, let alone ridden. And dragons would not make good pets, besides. No one so much as talks to a dragon and walks away unchanged. It gets into you, the voice, the gaze of their eyes. All of it.” She sounded a little haunted as she spoke. Her eyes grew distant and she seemed to shiver.
“You speak from experience?”
“I’ve had my adventures before today. And dragons in particular? Yes. I have met such a beast, and I never, never wish to again.” She lingered for a while on her next words. “The feeling of being very small under the gaze of something very large and hungry never entirely leaves you. It must be how a mouse feels in the gaze of a cat.” Then, shaking her head, she said, “What can you tell me about passages north? Are there any passes that are unguarded?”
The two of them began to speak on matters of geography that the boy knew nothing about, and found hard to follow.
As he sat and listened, he was handed a mug of warmed black stout and a plate of roasted nuts that were still steaming. He’d never eaten any nut except for little, bitter beechnuts collected in the season. In contrast, these were big chestnuts, doughy to eat and rich with flavour. The boy immediately decided they were better than anything he had ever eaten before.
Caewen took a drink from her cup. “And what of the white women? Are those servants of the Winter-King too?”
“No. Those lost souls belong to Athairdrost, and they belonged to his father before him. His family made a long-ago bargain with something or someone.” He shook his head. “I don’t know what. Something bleak. Now, it is true that Athairdrost is a sorcerer in his own right, but he does not have the power to bind the shays of the dead to his will alone. No. There is some other bargaining there, or I’m a wet-sop of a fledgeling.”
That struck the boy as strange. He ventured to say, “A bargain with some other thing? Behind the Winter-King’s back, do you mean?”
“Could be.”
“We might be able to use that to our advantage,” said Caewen.
“But now, I have been doing some squawking and chattering,” said the old man, “and you have not exactly told us what you are about at all.”
Caewen told him the story of everything that had happened since she and Dapplegrim had met the boy. Though, the boy did notice that she left some details vague. She did not specifically mention the Old Great Spell, but circled around a more nebulous threat that she and her friends were looking to deal with. The old fellow fell silent and sad when he heard that the Seeress was dead. “Many a time I visited her, and we talked and talked. We were friends, of a sort. Dead you say?”
Caewen nodded. “Murdered.”
“By agents of Sorthe?”
“So it seems.”
Now he sounded more suspicious. “And what is this threat exactly? My people are few and not well-built for fighting. I think in your heart you mean well, if I am a judge: but even the well-meaning can bring suffering into the world. Sometimes I have even thought that all suffering is the work of well-meant deeds.”
She was quiet for a long time. At last she said, “And I do not know if we can trust you. I can only judge insomuch as I can judge. I must rely on my own gut, I suppose.” She held her thoughts for a while longer, then said, suddenly. “You were servants of the Night-Queen once, weren’t you?”
That seemed to take the owlet-hobbes by surprise. Some looked affronted. Some muttered. Others frowned. But the old man just raised one thin, grey hand and said, “We were. However, our forefathers and great nest-mothers broke those chains a very long time ago. It is the nature of our second skins that suggests this to you, I think?”
“Owls,” said Caewen. “Yes. That seems most likely a magic out of the night-lands.”
“It was. It is, I guess. But we are no one’s servants now. We are our own people, free.”
“And yet concealed?” she said. “Here, within this valley.”
“The Queen-without-Mother, she who is night and chaos… she does not like to let her servants slip free, not lightly. If we were found, it would not go well for us.”
“I see.” She looked at the floor. “You have bene honest with me, I think. I will return the trust.” She went on then to describe what they had learned about the Old Great Spell from the ghost of the seeress. She explained that Prince Athairdrost had the one half-piece of it already, and was looking desperately for rest of the object to complete it. She grew more hesitant in her tone. “I’m not sure whether it can be done, but I think we ought to try and take the spell-fragment away from our Princeling sorcerer. Whether the Old Great Spell can be used to work either good or ill–or both at once–I do not know… but I fear we need to take it out of the grasp of men with unkind intents.”
The old Hob blinked his great, bright eyes and whispered, “It does not surprise me that Athairdrost would have kept a piece of the spell and not given it to the Winter-King. All I have heard of him suggests deep and smouldering ambitions. The prince may even plan to use it himself, if he can master it. Certainly, he will have it on his person, no question of it. That is not a thing he would let out of his reach. No, indeed.”
The boy interrupted then. “Could he use it then? If he gets all the broken pieces?”
“Maybe,” said the old Hob with a shrug. “Maybe. Who knows in what weird ways the circles of sorcery work? I do not.”
“Will you help us then?” said Caewen.
“I will have to consider. You are right to ask, because the answer is not forgone. I have my people to think of. That said, we will not hinder you. But, will we help you? I do not know. That is a different question, and quite a different matter. We are in constant danger of discovery. Ever more, the Princedom’s knights patrol the cliffs and roads by wing, as well as hoof. They have only been drawn off westward lately by fighting. Eventually they will fly east and notice our little vale.”
Caewen nodded. “We did see columns of soldiers going west in the night.”
“Small wars and petty sieges,” said the old Hob with a wave of the hand. “The small kingdoms of the mountains will not stop the combined armies of Sorthe and the Winter-King in their southward march. Not for long. And then the dragon-things, the draig, will return to our skies, and we will be at risk of being found again. A thing to think on I suppose.” He hummed to himself. “What can we risk? What should we risk? What can we spare when that day comes?”