“Saints!” Neil breathed. “Men built that? Not the Echesl?” He crooked his finger and touched his forehead, a sign against the evil of that name.
“Men built it, yes. They quarried the stone in the Eng Fear mountains, two hundred leagues upriver. It was sixty years in building they say, but now no one can come against Crotheny by sea.”
“It is a wonder,” Neil said. “Proud am I to serve that.”
“No, lad,” Fail said gently. “You don’t serve a thing of stone, no matter how grand. Never that. You’ll serve Crotheny, and her king, and the royal line of Dare.”
“That’s what I meant, Chever Fail.”
“They call a knight sir, in the king’s tongue, lad.”
“Sir Fail.” The word sounded awkward, as did every word in the king’s tongue. It lacked music, somehow. But it was the language of his lord, and he had learned it. Practiced at it as hard as he had the sword, the lance, and the mace.
Well, almost as hard.
“Sir Fail,” he said again.
“And soon Sir Neil.”
“I can’t believe that. How can the king knight me? It’s no matter, I’ll be proud to serve him, even as a footman. Just so long as I can serve him.”
“Lad, I tilted at Sir Seimon af Harudrohsn when I was only in my eighteenth winter. I fought beside all five Cresson brothers at the battle of Ravenmarh Wold, and I sent Sir Duvgal MaypAvagh—who himself slew more than twenty knights— to the shadowcity, along with his second, before the gates of Cath Valk. I have known knights, lad, and I tell you that in my fifty-six years, I’ve never seen a lad more deserving of the rose than you.”
Neil’s throat tightened further with love and gratefulness to the tough old man. “Thank you, Sir Fail. Thank you for— for everything.”
“That better be the wind in your eyes, son. I don’t go for all this courtly weeping, as well you know.”
“It’s the wind, chev—sir.”
“Good. And keep it that way. And don’t let any of these fops at the court steer you a different course. You’re a warrior of the marches, raised by a good father and then by my hand. Just remember that, and you’ll keep who you are. It’s the steel in the marches that keeps safe the soft gold here in the center. Gold’s pretty, but it’ll scarce cut butter. Don’t worry about pretty, lad. Worry about your edge. The court’s more dangerous to a real warrior than a thousand Weihand raiders are.”
“I’ll remember that, sir.” He tried to stand taller. “I will make you proud of me.”
“Come below. I have something to give you.”
“I was going to save this until after the king knighted you, but your armor took a hard beating at Darkling Mere. And it is, after all, a lord’s duty to keep his warriors looking warlike, eh?”
Neil couldn’t answer. As when he had first seen Thornrath, he was struck speechless as his master unrolled the sealskin bundle to reveal the gleam of oiled steel.
Neil had worn armor since he was ten. First toughened leather, as he had been wearing that ill-fated dawn his father died, then a steel cap and byrnie with greaves, and finally the hauberk of chain he wore now, with its battered but serviceable breastplate.
But he had only dreamed of what Fail de Liery presented him—a suit of lord’s plate, articulated by lobstered joints. It was good, plain work, with no frills or elaborations.
It must have cost a small fortune.
“Sir Fail, this is more than I could ever dream of. How can I ever—I could never take that. Not on top of everything else.”
“It’s fitted for you,” the old man said. “I had the measurements taken when your last suit of clothes was made. No one else could wear it. And as you know, I am much insulted when my gifts are refused.”
“I—” Neil grinned. “I’d never insult you, Sir Fail.”
“Do you want to try it on?”
“Saints, yes!”
Thus it was, when they passed beneath the great arch of Thornrath, Neil MeqVren stood proudly on the deck of the Saltspear, his house de Liery tabard cinched around the most perfect suit of armor ever made. He felt bright and deadly, a sword made human.
The wonders piled up. Passing through the great arch, the waters before them were parted by a high, hilly land.
“Two rivers meet here,” Fail told him. “The bloody-minded Warlock from the southeast and the Dew tumbling out of the Barghs in the north.”
“And so this island is royal Ynis itself ?”
“It is. The rivers meet five leagues ahead of us, on the other side of the island, split again, and come back together here.”
“Ynis! Then where is Eslen? Where are the rivers that flow above the land?”
“Patience, lad. It’s farther east. We’ll be there near sundown. But as to the rivers—you’ll see.”
Ynis rose from a flat plain, a series of hills spotted with delicate, spired castles, red-shingled hamlets, fields and forest. The plain around the island was mostly fields of grain, very green. Cottages were there, and men working the fields, and strange towers with great wheels turning on them. Canals ran off from the river, some so long they vanished in the hazy distance.
And indeed, Neil realized with a growing sense of excitement that he was looking down upon the landscape. Embankments had been raised along the riverside, forcing it to flow higher than the country around.
“When our ancestors fought here against the last stronghold of the Echesl, this was a plain, or so the legends say,” Sir Fail said. “Ynis was the mount they raised for their castle. But after their defeat, and the castle Eslen was founded in its place, it all sank into quagmire, marsh, all the way to the horizon. The Echesl had used some sort of sorcery to keep the water back, and with their passing, it passed, too. The people living here could have abandoned it then, found better land in the east, but they wouldn’t do it. They swore to take the land back from the waters instead.”
“They found the secret of the Echesl sorcery?”
“No. They worked hard. They built dikes. They made these pumps you see, pushed by the winds, to drain away the water. Two thousand years of slow, hard battle with the waves, but you see the result.” He laid a hand on Neil’s shoulder.
“So, you see, men did this, too.”
And finally, sailing above the land like characters in a phay story, they hove in sight of Eslen of the three walls.
On the highest hill stood the castle, with its eight towers of chalk-white stone bloodied by twilight, long pennants fluttering black against the rosy clouds. From there, the city spilled down like water poured from the top of a hill, dammed briefly by each of the concentric walls surrounding the castle but never quite contained, slate-topped waves of buildings flowing over the smaller hills until they reached the waterfront and piled against stone-faced quays and stout wooden piers. Shrouds of mist and woodsmoke lay in the low places between the hills, and candlelight already made windows into eyes here and there.
“It’s all so grand,” Neil murmured. “Like an enchanted city of the Queryen, from the old tales. I’m afraid to look away, for fear it will vanish.”
“Eslen is no city of moonbeams and spider silk,” the old knight assured him. “It’s real enough, you’ll see. And if you think this so grand, wait until you see the court.”
“I can hardly wait.”
“Oh—you’ll learn about waiting, son, never doubt that.”
The Saltspear came to a quay, a sort of watery plaza surrounded with docks replete with colorful boats of every size. One stood out above the rest, a five-masted battle-queen that dwarfed the Saltspear and every other ship anchored there. Neil was admiring her when he suddenly recognized the flag she flew and instinctively reached for his sword.