miter

" "Brynioch!" Eolair felt quite stupefied as he stared first at the insignificant-seeming lumps of earth and snow behind them, then turned back to the huge pile of crumbling stone just ahead. It seemed dead, yet as he gazed at it his nerves felt tight as lute strings and his heart was pounding. "Do we just ride in?" he asked no one in particular. Just thinking about it was like contemplating a headfirst crawl into a dark tunnel full of spiders. "I will not go in that place," Maegwin said harshly. She was pale. For the first time since her madness had descended, she looked truly and completely fearful. "If you enter Scadach, you leave Heaven and its protection. It is a place from which nothing returns." Eolair did not even have the heart to say anything soothing, but he reached out and took her gloved hand. Their horses stood quietly side by side, vaporous breath mingling. "We will not ride into that place, no," Jiriki said solemnly. "Not yet." Even as he spoke, flickering yellow lights bloomed in the depths of the black tower windows, as though whatever owned those empty eyes had just awakened. Rachel the Dragon slept uneasily in her tiny room deep in the Hayholt's underground warrens. She dreamed that she was again in her old room, the chambermaids' room that she knew so well.

She was alone, and in her dream she was angry: her foolish girls were always so hard to find. Something was scratching at the door; Rachel had a sudden certainty that it was Simon. Even in the midst of the dream, though, she remembered that she had been fooled once before by such a noise. She went carefully and quietly to the doorway and stood beside it for a moment, listening to the furtive noises outside. "Simon?" she said. "Is that you?" The voice that came back was indeed that of her long-lost ward, but it seemed stretched and thin, as though it traveled a long distance to reach her ear. "Rachel, I want to come back. Please help me. I want to come back." The scratching resumed, insistent, strangely loud.... The onetime Mistress of Chambermaids jerked awake, shivering with cold and fear. Her heart was beating very fast. There. There was that noise again, just as she had heard it in the dream—but now she was awake. It was a strange sound, not so much a scratching as a hollow scraping, distant but regular.

Rachel sat up. This was no dream, she knew. She thought she had heard something like it as she was falling off to sleep, but had dismissed it. Could it be rats in the walls? Or something worse? Rachel sat up on her straw pallet. The small brazier with its few coals did no more than give the room a faint red sheen. Rats in stone walls as thick as these? It was possible, but it didn't seem likely. What else would it be, you old fool? Something is making that noise. Rachel sat up and moved stealthily toward the brazier. She took a handful of rushes from her carefully collected pile and dipped one end into the coals. After they had caught, she lifted the makeshift torch high. The room, so familiar after all these weeks, was empty but for her stores. She bent low to look into the shadowy corners, but saw nothing moving. The scraping noise was a little fainter now but still unmistakable. It seemed to be coming from the far wall. Rachel took a step toward it and smacked her bare foot against her wooden keepsake chest, which she had neglected to push back against the wall after examining its sparse contents the night before. She let out a muffled shriek of pain and dropped a few of the flaming rushes, then quickly hobbled to her jug for a handful of water to put them out. When this was done, she stood on one foot while she rubbed her smarting toes. When the pain subsided, she realized that the noise had also stopped. Either her surprised cry had frightened the noise-maker away—likely if it were a rat or mouse—or merely warned the thing that someone was listening. The thought of something sitting quietly within the walls, aware now that someone was on the other side of the stone, was not one that Rachel wished to pursue. Rats, she told herself. Of course it's rats. They smell the food I've got in here, little demon imps.

Whatever the cause had been, the noise was gone now. Rachel sat down on her stool and began to pull on her shoes. There was no point trying to sleep now. What a strange dream about Simon, she thought. Could it be his spirit is restless? I know that monster murdered him. There are tales that the dead can't rest till their murderers are punished. But I already did my best to punish Pryrates, and look where it got me. No good to anyone. Thinking of Simon condemned to some lonely darkness was both sad and frightening. Get up, woman. Do something useful. She decided that she would set out more food for poor blind Guthwulf. A brief sojourn to the room with a slit of window upstairs confirmed that it was almost dawn. Rachel stared at the dark blue of the sky and the faded stars and felt a little reassured.

I'm still waking up regular, even if I live in the dark most days like a mole. That's something. She descended to her hidden room, pausing in the doorway to listen for the scraping noises. The room was silent. After she had found suitable fare for both the earl and his feline familiar, she donned her heavy cloak and made her way down the stairwell to the secret passageway behind the tapestry on the landing. When she arrived at the spot where she customarily left Guthwulf's meal, she found to her distress that the previous morning's food had not been touched; neither man nor cat had come. He's never missed two days running since we started, she thought worriedly. Blessed Rhiap, has the poor man fallen down somewhere? Rachel collected the untouched food and put out more, as though somehow a slightly different arrangement of what was really the same dried fruit and dried meat could tempt back her wandering earl. If he doesn't come today, she decided, I’ll have to go and look for him. He has no one else to see to him, after all. It's the Aedonite thing to do. Full of worry, Rachel made her way back to her room. The sight of Binabik seated on a gray wolf as though it were a war-horse, his walking-stick couched like a lance, might have been comical in other circumstances, but Isgrimnur felt no urge even to smile. "Still I am not sure this is the best thing," Josua said. "I fear we will miss your wisdom, Binabik of Yiqanuc." 'Then that is being all the larger reason for me to begin my journey now, since it will be ended so much more soon.