guiro

"And that's why I have to see him," she said finally, her voice unsteady. "That's why." Simon rustled atop his bedroll. "What? What do you mean? See who?" Miriamele took a deep breath. "My father, of course. That's why we're going to the Hayholt. Because I have to speak to my father." "What nonsense are you talking?" Simon sat up. "We're going to the Hayholt to get your grandfather's sword, Bright-Nail." "I never said that. You did." Despite the tears, she felt herself grow angry. "I don't understand you, Miriamele. We are at war with your father. Are you going to go see him and tell him there's a cockindrill under your bed again? What are you saying?" "Don't be cruel, Simon. Don't you dare." She could feel the tears threatening to become a torrent, but a small ember of fury was burning inside her as well. "I'm sorry," he said, "but I just don't understand." Miriamele pressed her hands together as tightly as she could, and concentrated on that until she felt herself in control again. "And I have not explained to you, Simon. I'm sorry, too." "Tell me. I'll listen." Miriamele listened to the flames crackle and hiss for a while. "Cadrach showed me the truth, although I don't think he realized it. It was when we were traveling together, and he told me of Nisses' book. He had once owned it, or a copy of it." "The magical book that Morgenes talked about?" "Yes. And it is a powerful thing. Powerful enough that Pryrates learned that Cadrach had owned it and so Pryrates... sent for him." She fell silent momentarily, remembering Cadrach's description of the blood-red windows and the iron devices with the skin and hair of the tortured still on them. "He threatened him until Cadrach told him all the things he remembered, Cadrach said that Pryrates was particularly interested in talking with the dead—'Speaking through the Veil,' he called it." "From what I know of Pryrates, that doesn't surprise me." Simon's voice was shaky, too. Obviously he had his own memories of the red priest. "But that was what showed me what I needed to know," Miriamele said, unwilling to lose the thread of her idea now that she was finally talking about it out loud. "Oh, Simon, I had wondered so long why my father changed the way he did, why Pryrates was able to turn him to such evil tasks." She swallowed. There were still tears standing wet on her cheeks, but for the moment she had found a new strength. "My father loved my mother. He was never the same after she died. He did not marry, did not even consider it, despite all the wishes of my grandfather. They used to have terrible arguments about it. 'You need a son to be your heir,' Grandfather used to say, but my father always told him he would never marry again, that he had been given a wife and then God had taken her back." She paused, remembering. "I still don't understand," said Simon quietly. "Don't you see? Pryrates must have told my father that he could talk to the dead—that he could let my father speak with my mother again, perhaps even see her. You don't know him, Simon. He was heartsick with losing her.

He would have done anything, I think, to have her back, even for a little while." Simon drew in a long breath. "But that's ... blasphemy. That's against God." Miriamele laughed, a little shrilly. "As if that would have stopped him. I told you, he would have done anything to have her back. Pryrates must have lied to him and told him that they could reach her... beyond the Veil, or whatever that horrible book called it. Maybe the priest even thought that he could. And he used that promise to make my father first his patron, then his partner... then his slave." Simon pondered this. "Perhaps Pryrates did try," he said finally. "Perhaps that is how they reached through to... to the other side. To the Storm King." The sound of this name, even as quietly it had been spoken, was greeted with a skirl of wind in the thatches above, a rush of sound so abrupt that Miriamele flinched. "Perhaps." The thought made her cold. To think of her father waiting eagerly to speak with his beloved wife and finding that thing instead.