She listened. “Yes. Yes. I can hear that too, but just faintly.” She looked around, confused. “There is a whispering. A chant that sits beneath everything else. It’s very difficult to pick out from the rest of the pain and the rage. I wouldn’t have noticed it at all, if you hadn’t pointed it out. Odd. I wonder what it is? It doesn’t belong here does it? It’s alien to this place.”
The boy of course couldn’t hear any of this. All he could hear was the endless gurgle and quiet rush of water as it plunged into the pool.
Dapplegrim shook his mane. He gave a quick nod of his head. “Yes. It’s out of place. And I think we can find out what it is. It’s not coming from the pool.” He looked up at the cascades of water. “The voice is bubbling into the pool from the waterfall. Didn’t that giant say something about someone telling lies to the oracle?”
Caewen took a few tentative steps along the pool’s rocky cliff edge. “It would be a sure way to mislead and stoke trouble. Peddling lies to a sorcerous prince would be so much easier, if it were done through a place of portents. I suppose one might use magic to infect an oracular power with lies: and then the oracle would do the lying for you? It would be a strange sort of magic, and not something that most mortal wizards could conjure. But why go to such length to tell lies? And to what end? Why?” She turned suddenly, her eyes wide. There was realisation there in her expression. “Dapplegrim!”
“What?”
“The wizard Fafmuir had an oracle in his tent. He had a brazen head. We thought he’d just gone mad–but maybe his personal little oracle was corrupted too?” Her brows drew together, darkly. “Gods and goddesses of all that is bright and dark… what if every portent-cave and omen-object in the world is corrupted? What if every seat of divination and scrying is overrun with lies? Would that even be possible?”
“Hur. Hur and Hurm. Maybe? It would take a grotesque amount of power. And, it would skew the world. Folk do put a lot of stock in their prophecies,” said Dapplegrim. “Kings trust their courtly magicians, and their far-seeing eyes. A little too much, I’ve always thought. I wonder–?”
They stumped and slipped their way up a muddy slope strewn with rocks. It took them to the top of the falls. They were standing about six or seven feet above the pool now.
The boy was careful to stay back from the slippery edge.
They went to the stream’s edge, where it ran in slow curling little shallows above the waterfall. The water here was so peaceful. It was strange to see it plunge violently into the pool, just a foot away.
They all looked down, searching the shallows and the rocks. The water was murky with forest tannins, but here and there a few small glinting pieces of something metallic shone. These little glinting bits of metal were lodged half-under stones. They were scattered immediately before the point where the stream rushed out into the air.
“Does anyone else want to fish these out?” said Caewen.
There was no reply.
Upstream of the pool, and above the waterfall, the water did not give off the same invisible miasma of malice, but nonetheless–reaching into it with bare skin still seemed unwise.
Caewen carefully adjusted her gloves to make sure they were on tightly. She dipped her fingers into the shallow water, and picked out a thin leaf of burnished golden metal. It had minute fiery markings all around its border, and something written in larger letters the middle.
The boy ran his eyes along the script. He read it aloud before he was able to catch himself. “The lords of the south are arraying for war. They will march on the night-lands before year’s end. Strike first.”
“What?” said Caewen, incredulous.
“You read that? How’d you read that?” added Fleat. “That’s some right weird script.” Then, even more confused, he said, “I didn’t think you knew how to cipher no letters at all.”
The boy felt his face blush. He shifted a little from foot-to-foot, and cleared his throat. The lettering was an ancient and dead language once used by fire-worshippers who had lived in the Cheald Hills. That people were long dead, and nothing remained of them but funerary mounds, stones and overgrown temples. These symbols were now unknown and unreadable. Except that he could read them. The book of teachings had taught him all about these fire-letters some few nights ago.
“Ah…” said the boy,” at last, feeling everyone’s eyes on him. “Well, the thing is–I was meaning to say something–but it seemed so odd. And then I didn’t know how to bring it up.”
Caewen’s voice was softly worried. “Bring what up?”
“The book from the Fane tomb. It’s been teaching me how to read at night, in my dreams. There’s an old man in my dreams. He teaches me how to read. And bits of history and lore too. There’s hundreds of languages in the book, I think. I keep finding that I can read more and more. Lately, I haven’t seen any script that I can’t read. It’s all been been a bit unnerving, truthfully.” He darted a tongue over his lower lip. “But, it hasn’t felt harmful or dangerous. He seems good. The scholar. And I remembered that the Fane-Queen said that the book had been hers, when she was a child. It can’t be evil then, can it?”
“Hurm. You really need to tell us about things like phantom teachings visiting in your dreams. Is there anything else? Is a ghostly warrior teaching you to use a blade. Do you know spells know? Can you befriend dragons?”
He shook his head. “It’s just the letters.” Then, hunching up his shoulders a little, he added, “I suppose it was my little secret. It was nice to have something of my own. And I was a little worried that you’d think I was making it all up, or losing my copper pennies, or possessed by evil spirits, or something.”
Caewen crouched down. Her smile was fragile, but open. She took off a glove laid a hand on his shoulder. “Ah, child. You can trust your friends more than that.” He looked up at her face, and did his best to nod. He did feel ashamed now, and wished that he hadn’t kept it a secret. It would have been easier.
“Besides,” she said with a smirk, “we’re all misfits and weirdfellows here. You don’t need to be worried about what we will think. I’m carrying a shadow-demon in my purse. Dapplegrim literally scares children. Fleat turns into an owl. You’re among freaks and friends.” She stood then. A shrug followed. “It does seem like a useful talent. It’s proved very helpful, here and now.”
“I suppose,” said the boy. He scuffed at the ground.
“It is. We now know what is written on the spell-ribbon.” Caewen peered down at the gold-foil slip. “It is definitely some manner of hexing intended to turn mind and thoughts to war. But who would benefit from the whole world descending into war? Not the Queens of Night and Day. They like things as they are. Who then? She turned to Dapplegrim. Who would you say is the third greatest power in the sphere of gods and goddesses?”
“Hurm, well, oh, many would claim that title. Our Lady of Dawn. The Duke of the Dusk Halls,” he continued listing a ramble of names. “The Whisperer of Storms. The Dun Raven. The Three Cowled Gods. The Mistress of Ships. The Hart-Crowned Lord.”
“H’m,” said Caewen, cutting him off before he rattled out the name of every god and goddess upon the earth. “What about fire gods? Or goddesses?” Whoever’s putting oracles awry seems to be allied to fire. There was the brazen head. The burned giant. His hounds of flame. Fire worshippers.”
He shook his head. “No. There was a Goddess of Flames, the third-born, but she is dead. Just as there is no Goddess of Shadows. They were both murdered by their sisters. Both of them were too powerful and–” He stopped. “Hurm. You know–I am starting to feel some suspicions.”
“And the message worries me,” said Caewen. “The lords of the south are not preparing for war at all. Whoever has worked this spell has been goading Athairdrost into thinking an invasion is imminent. And maybe the Winter-King too? It’s no wonder then that all the north is raising banners and marching to war. And anyone who could work magic of this depth could well be working all manner of other subtle spells. Who knows what’s happening in the south now? This is a mad flock of falsehoods here. We should check the other spells, and see what they say.” She pulled her glove back on, and bent to pick up another flake of gold, but Dapplegrim stood stiffly alert. He nickered.
“Not now!” he said. “Someone is coming. A man. He’s moving towards the pool, opposite.”
Caewen dropped. “Down! Everyone.”