31
Aldasair stood on the far side of the gardens, looking down into the plaza. Already, there were more humans here, their tents and carriages clustered like colourful anthills. They had lit fires against the chill of the day. The smell of wood smoke and cooking was everywhere, and their voices were clear in the stillness, the babble of their feelings battering Aldasair like waves of pebbles: eager, angry, confused, calm, excited, uncertain. It was too much.
There were things he should be doing, but today it was so hard to remember how Ebora had been just a few short weeks ago, and that made him feel like he was a ghost of himself, so he turned away from the teeming plaza and walked, instead, further into the overgrown gardens. Bern the Younger had been hard at work on the other side, clearing away the debris of decades of neglect, burning it in huge piles outside the gates. Aldasair had nodded to him briefly the day before, not quite looking at the man’s bare chest – the ink patterns on his arms swept across his skin there, too – but hadn’t been able to speak. Instead, the human had nodded back, an expression of sympathy on his face that Aldasair had found deeply uncomfortable. He had avoided him since.
Here, the trees and bushes were thick, covering the narrow gravel paths and the rockeries. The small streams that had been carefully cut into the earth had either vanished entirely or been filled with a sludge of ancient dead leaves, and he passed two of the elegant enamelled bridges, hanging broken and skeletal over mud. The ground here grew steeper, and he quickened his pace, belatedly realising why he had come this way.
The Hill of Souls.
Eventually, he stumbled across the old path, the one that had been cut into the rising ground and paved with heavy black stones. These had mostly survived intact, although he took care to step over the piles of wet leaves that threatened to tip him back down to the plaza. He followed the path, up and up, looking over his shoulder once to see the palace spread below him; from here, the plaza and all its strange human activity was hidden, but Ygseril still spread its dead branches like a silver cloud. Like old times. The silent times.
Eventually, at the top of the hill, he came to the old orchard and the building that nestled at its heart. The ground was thick with grass and the puckered corpses of old apples. In the summer, he imagined this place would shake with the sound of wasps, but on this cold day it was silent, with just the half-hearted wind for company. Aldasair walked through the trees, stepping over fallen branches, until he stood at the door. This was a strange building, he had always thought; it did not match the organic, spiralling architecture of the palace, or even the sprawling houses that circled it. This place looked more like a beehive, rounded and simple, with large circular windows now thick with dirt. It was older than everything else. Aldasair looked down at his feet, his hand resting on the door. He couldn’t remember how he knew that – some distant lesson or conversation, back when his people had lived.
The door was stiff to open, and he had to lean into it before it stuttered across the stone floor, revealing a single, shadowed room. Circles of dirty light hung in a ring around him, while at the apex of the concave ceiling, the delicate pyramid of leaded glass that he remembered from his childhood had long since been smashed, leaving black twists of lead scratching at the sky. The circular room was ringed with long concentric steps, and that was where they were kept.
‘I put mine on the highest platform I could.’ Aldasair took a breath, smelling damp and rotten leaves. ‘So they could see the moon at night.’
In his memory, the steps were polished stone, shining and clean. Now they were thick with mould and moss, dead leaves and even, he realised, the tiny skeletal remains of various small animals. They must have crept in through the broken skylight, seeking food and shelter, and then found they were unable to get out. It wasn’t a reassuring thought.
His eyes adjusting to the gloom, Aldasair walked over to one of the steps. There were tiny mounds all over them, little pockets of shadow – it was almost possible to see what they had been, once, if you squinted.
He had just lifted his hand, daring himself to pick one of them up, when a footfall behind him caused his heart to leap into his throat. He spun round to see a figure blocking out the weak daylight coming in the door.
‘Sorry!’ Bern the Younger held up his hands. ‘I didn’t mean to startle you.’
Aldasair clenched his fists at his sides. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘I was curious. Not always my most useful trait, my father says, but there you go.’ He stepped into the room fully, his head turning to try and take in everything at once. ‘What is this place?’
‘Did you follow me up the hill?’
Bern cleared his throat. His wild yellow hair had been tied back in a tail, and despite the gloom, Aldasair could clearly see the faint blush that crept across his cheeks. ‘You could say that. I mean, you could say that because it would be true. I saw you on the far side of the gardens, and you had such a look on your face—’
‘I didn’t hear you. I should have heard you coming.’
Bern the Younger grinned. It was such an incongruous expression in this broken, ancient place that Aldasair found he had to look away.
‘I’m a hunter. It’s my job to move quietly.’
‘Are you saying you were hunting me?’
‘By the stones, no!’ Bern raised his hands again, looking genuinely alarmed. ‘I am not good at this. Speaking to you people, I mean. I was curious, Aldasair. I didn’t know what could be up this hill, that you were so determined to reach. Forgive me.’ When Aldasair didn’t answer, Bern nodded around at the steps. ‘So, what is this place?’
‘We called it the Hill of Souls.’ Outside, the day brightened, filling the room with a soft glow. Dust danced in the shaft of light from the hole in the roof. ‘It was—’ Aldasair stopped. ‘It’s difficult to remember the words for these things, sometimes. It was something we did every season, and it was important.’
‘A tradition,’ said Bern. ‘We have many of those in Finneral. Mostly, I’ll be honest with you, to do with stones. Or drinking.’
‘A tradition. Yes, that’s what it was.’ Aldasair closed his eyes, trying to remember. ‘The youngest of us, the children. Those who were no more than fifty or sixty years old—’ Bern made an odd noise, which Aldasair ignored. ‘They would make charms in the shapes of the war-beasts, to honour them. Those who had fallen, their spirits returning to Ygseril. And then we would have a ceremony, with lights, and special food, and place them on the top of the Hill of Souls, so they could look from Ygseril’s branches and see the lights burning here, and know they weren’t forgotten. That they would never be forgotten.’ Aldasair opened his eyes, his head spinning with the memories; he could taste the soul-cakes, could smell the fresh clay. It had all been yesterday, hadn’t it?
‘A festival day for your children.’ Bern looked serious, one hand tugging at the stones in his beard.
‘Yes,’ Aldasair went back to the steps, smiling, ‘when there were no spaces left for the charms, we would take them back and we would bury them somewhere so that they could return to Ygseril’s roots. The place had to be secret.’ Reaching out, he brushed away a clump of old leaves, revealing a small, misshapen lump of clay. ‘There must be thousands of them, buried all over Ebora.’
‘You have been doing this a long time?’
‘For as long as anyone remembers.’ Aldasair touched the twisted piece of clay. It crumbled under his finger, and his stomach turned over. ‘Not any more, though, of course. Not for – not for a very long time.’
Bern joined him, and began sweeping away the debris with the side of one large hand, revealing more of the charms. Here was the snaking shape of a dragon, its horned head turned inwards to rest on its own flank; here was a great fox, its long snout chipped at the end; a griffin, one of its wings in pieces next to it. Others had not survived so well; damp had softened their edges and paint had flaked away, leaving suggestions of shapes, half-seen ghosts.
‘Your children made these?’
‘Yes, the youngest ones. I looked forward to it each season. We all did. Talking about which war-beast we would honour, and why. Some honoured the same war-beast every season, others made figures of those who had won the most battles, attained the most glory. Some of us just liked certain shapes.’ He paused. It was difficult to talk this much at once. ‘I remember the last time I came here. I was nearly too old to be included, and the first instances of the crimson flux had started. I felt like it was the end of something, that day. I didn’t realise it was the end of everything.’
Aldasair stopped, his face hot. He had said too much. Bern was looking thoughtfully at the charms, his green eyes serious for once, and then he turned to look at Aldasair.
‘It’s not the end. Things are changing already, don’t you see?’ One corner of his mouth lifted in a faintly bitter smile. ‘You rarely see people working together as they are now, and stone of my heart, I think that means something. All of this,’ he gestured at the room with its animal corpses and dead leaves, ‘it can be what it was, again. There will be more Eboran children. We should tidy this up, so it is ready for them.’
Despite himself, Aldasair found himself smiling. ‘The Hill of Souls is just a memory, and there are so many other things that need mending. But I appreciate the thought.’
Bern sighed. ‘There is a lot of sadness here.’ The look he gave Aldasair was so frank he had to turn away. ‘All of you, so sad. But change is coming, my friend, I can feel it in the stone.’
Outside, the wind picked up, sweeping into the room and dancing dried leaves around their feet. Aldasair thought of the tarla cards and how they had spoken to him with words that had claimed to know the future – and how he no longer had time to listen to them.
‘Change is coming,’ he said. ‘But what kind of change?’
Later, Aldasair found himself wandering the corridors of the palace again. He hadn’t thought of the Hill of Souls in decades, but now that he had, random memories kept floating to the surface, like frogs disturbed on the bottom of a pond: himself and Tormalin arguing over which war-beast they would make, competing to see who could make the better one; the sight of the Hill when the lights had been lit, a beacon like a great eye, looking out over Ebora; his mother burning the soul-cakes and laughing over it, even though he knew it embarrassed her.
The idea that it could all be as it was . . . Bern had seemed so earnest, but he was also human; humans were used to their lives being fast, everything changing overnight. No human had spent a hundred years in silence, watching as everything slowly fell apart.
Without realising it, Aldasair had walked to the doors of the Hall of Roots. It was the deep heart of the evening now, and outside in the plaza people were cooking food and talking, but inside the palace the silence was still as thick as fog. He raised his hand, meaning to knock at the door, or perhaps just rest his hand against it, when it suddenly swung open, revealing Hestillion’s face. She stared at him as if she’d never seen him before, and then neatly stepped out into the corridor, slamming the door behind her.
‘What do you want?’
Aldasair opened his mouth, and closed it again. Hestillion’s eyes were wild, her mouth a thin colourless line, while the tops of her cheeks sported two bright blotches of pink. Seeing him struggling for words, she hissed with impatience.
‘What are you doing here, Aldasair?’
‘Our guests.’ He cleared his throat. ‘They want to know when they will see Ygseril. They are here to help, after all.’
She reached up and pushed a strand of hair away from her forehead. ‘Of course. That is why they are here. And they will, they will help him, I’m sure of it. But I need more time.’
‘More time? For what?’
She shook her head, irritated again, as though he had asked the wrong question.
‘I must do all I can, first.’
Aldasair raised his eyebrows. He was thinking of the incident with the wine merchant’s boy, so many years ago. ‘What are you doing? What have you done?’
‘Oh nothing, don’t give me that look. Go and look after our guests, and let me do what I need to do. Please. Trust your cousin, Aldasair.’
With that, she opened the door and slipped back into the Hall of Roots, making certain to shut it firmly behind her. Aldasair stared at it for some time, trying to make sense of her words, and her mood. He had never seen Hestillion so flustered.
Eventually, he turned and walked away, heading towards the lights and noise of the plaza with what he would later identify as relief.