“Oh, child, you look . . . so grown up. I keep remembering my baby. You and little Bartelmy.” She broke into tears.
“Bartelmy?” asked Xulai. “Oldwife, what about . . .”
“That thing got him,” she said. “They found what was left of him. That thing killed him. And it got Black Mike.” Weeping, she led Xulai and Precious Wind into the castle.
Prince Orez came out to meet them, embracing Justinian as a long-separated brother. “I’m sure you know how things have gone,” he said, motioning to include them all. “We feared you might be attacked on the way. We’ve lost too many people. The thing takes someone every night. Here, there, no reason for it. Time enough to talk about that later. Come in, there’s food prepared. Our people will take care of the horses.”
“One of us has a wolf pack,” said Justinian.
“I know. We’ve received messages.”
“How?” asked Justinian. “No pigeon can cross the sea!”
Orez said, “Before Abasio left the abbey, he sent pigeons to Etershore and here to Woldsgard saying that Precious Wind had left a far-talking device here. She had brought it from Tingawa originally and had used it to keep in touch with Tingawa since Xulai was a child. The message told me where it was and how to use it to receive messages from Tingawa. I’ve been getting them every now and then, only a few words, but enough so I could be sure we had prepared for the wolves. There’s a little gate in the back that opens into an orchard. She can bring them in there. We’ve cleared out a storage building for their den. Whenever she’s ready, we have meat hanging for them.”
Abasio remembered the gate, the poppleberry orchard. He went to find Precious Wind, and once they had the wolves settled they joined the others in a dining hall near the kitchens.
Orez was saying to Justinian, “When you left, Justinian, we got here within the time you allowed for. We beat the troops from the abbey by several days. I was a bit confused when they showed up, until one of the commanders advised me his orders had come from the prior, not the abbot. The commander, a Colonel Sallis, was perfectly reasonable. I showed him the authorization; your people here verified it, and he realized his men weren’t needed here. I told him I’d send a pigeon to get him some new orders and I asked him to take his men back to Netherfields, where they’d have room to camp and probably find some supplies. They were, I’m thankful to say, out of the way and off the road before King Gahls’s men arrived.”
“Not so easy with them, I imagine,” snarled Justinian.
“Getting rid of the royal armor was a bit harder. I’d taken the precaution of closing the gates and having most of my men inside on the walls, with the horses well up in the hills, where they couldn’t be seen. I didn’t want them thinking Wold had been invaded but I did want them to know it was defended. Their troop commander was surprised to learn that Wold was not part of the king’s territory. He had evidently received orders through Mirami or that old adviser of hers. I told him the king’s stepson would no doubt be eager to see them in Kamfels, which was a good thing as we had no room or provisions for them here, even overnight. I’m told they camped hungry just beyond the Stoneway and took several days to get themselves over to Kamfels. The ferry couldn’t handle many of them, so most of them had to ride all the way east around Ragnibar Fjord, and the road’s only wide enough for two horses abreast.”
“Hulix?” asked Justinian. “What’s going on there?”
“Evidently he didn’t need them either. They soon went back to Ghastain, most of them by the long, slow northern route along the river that runs into the fjord and then up onto the highlands by the forest trails. A few of them stayed for a while, then came back this way later. The ones who passed by here told us Hulix was very ill. You know about the explosion south of us?”
“We were told,” said Justinian. “The Old Dark House was destroyed.”
“Shortly after that Hulix fell ill. Strangely enough, we heard the same thing happened to the king’s son, Crown Prince Rancitor. About that same time, too.”
Justinian looked at Precious Wind, who shook her head. “I don’t know,” she said. “It’s possible the same machine that . . . maintained the . . . thing also maintained . . . but that would mean . . .”
“It would mean that the Old Dark Man was the father of Mirami’s children, or had a part in fathering or creating them,” said Xulai. “In both cases, Mirami needed a son: Hulix to inherit Kamfels, Rancitor to inherit Ghastain. Was something in the Old Dark House helping to keep them both . . . living?”
Precious Wind looked at the scarf she held in her hands, twisting it as she thought. It had become a habit recently, this wringing of the hands, or things in hands, though not yet her mind. Better her hands than her mind! “Most organisms are self-monitoring. If our bodies need something, some kind of feedback mechanism inside us tells us we are thirsty or hungry, or need to sleep, or it adjusts the flow of this hormone or that secretion. If we suppose the Old Dark Man’s creations were not self-monitoring, if their organs or components required adjusting from time to time, those adjustments might have been triggered remotely . . .”
“Remotely?” asked Justinian.
“Like the far-talker,” said Abasio. “It is triggered by a device that converts sound or writing into waves and sends those waves through the atmosphere to another device that converts the waves into instructions, or a voice, or
