“A good climb,” Koriadde agreed.
“Surely not to the very top? Can one climb so high?” asked Featherreed admiringly. She offered the prince the bowl of nikisi seeds.
“Almost all the way.” The prince’s dark eyes had gone quiet with memory. He stirred a palmful of seeds with one fingertip, but did not taste any. He said softly, “There is a great hollow there, cut into the rock where the spray breaks against the cliff. One can see halfway to Ankanne. The Laodd looks small under your feet, like a townhouse, and the townhouses look like toys. From that height, the bridges across the rivers might be made of quills and golden thread, and the ships coming into the harbor of gull’s feathers and paper.”
“I would be afraid to be so high!” exclaimed the young keiso. “But you describe it so well I can see it from this very room. How beautiful it must be!”
“The Seriantes princes make that climb when they are twelve years of age,” said a deep voice from the door. Taudde saw without surprise that Mage Ankennes stood there. He felt he had known of the mage’s arrival before Ankennes had even laid a hand on the door, if not quite consciously. It seemed to him now that the whole of Cloisonné House reverberated with the mage’s arrival. That Ankennes’s words fell as he spoke them into the ordinary world and yet echoed as well into a different world lying just aslant of the visible and ordinary. Yet, in this house, the mage himself seemed somehow more ordinary and less threatening than ever before. Taudde eyed him covertly, trying to decide whether the mage was doing something himself deliberately to create this impression or whether it was caused by something about the house itself.
Then the mage’s words distracted him completely, for the mage was continuing, “The hollow of which Prince Tepres speaks is not merely a natural hollow. It is the tomb of the kings of Lirionne. Young princes make that climb in order to become acquainted with mortality. There are steps carved into the face of Kerre Taum, but even so that is not an easy climb. Customarily, a prince’s father or an older brother will accompany the boy. I believe it was Prince Rette who escorted you, was it not, eminence?”
“So it was,” the prince said equably, showing no visible reaction to the mention of the Seriantes tomb or his deceased brother who now occupied a niche within it. Yet, though his outward tone was calm, there was a sudden tightness to the undertones of his voice. Everyone else in the room had gone noticeably still.
“Sometimes the thoughts prompted by Kerre Taum are dark ones.”
“So you have said to my father,” Prince Tepres said, his tone at last acquiring an edge. “On more than one occasion, I believe. If his answers do not please you, Mage Ankennes, do not look to me for satisfaction.”
“The heart of the mountains is the heart of darkness, as I think the dead on Kerre Taum would tell you. Though the dead have no speech, their bones speak a language more true than any that passes the tongues of the living—”
“Enough, I say!” snapped the prince, straightening. “That is all past. Do not speak of the dead.”
The mage stopped, bowing his head in what appeared perfectly ordinary and polite apology and acquiescence.
Taudde did not understand why Ankennes should make such strange and daring comments. He did not believe for a moment that the mage had so little self-control that he could not resist baiting the Seriantes prince. He was certain Ankennes did nothing without reason.
Did Ankennes wish to draw attention to himself and away from Miennes? Or perhaps away from Taudde? Or perhaps… it occurred to Taudde that if Ankennes wished to encourage the prince in fear or bitterness or hatred of his father, he might do worse than refer to his dead brothers. Though Taudde could not guess why the mage should bother, when he expected the prince to very shortly follow his brothers to the Seriantes tomb… perhaps he intended to achieve all those results, or something else entirely. Taudde could easily believe the mage subtle enough to have half a dozen goals in mind for every word he spoke.
Summer Pearl said gravely, with a practiced grace that suggested keiso also learned to smooth over incipient quarrels, “Memories at times clamor as loudly as the Nijiadde River crashing over the cliffs. And the approach of winter draws out memories we should perhaps rather let sleep.”
The prince gave the older keiso a sharp glance and, after a moment, inclined his head. He did not smile, but he leaned an elbow on the table, his manner easing. He said, “ ‘The season of falling leaves, and falling winds, and falling mists; memories, too, come down and linger with the cold.’ ”