He peered at some of the closer ones. They were carved out of translucent bone, or maybe stone. The light actually came from inside the vessels. Some were filled with luminous moths, some with glowjellies, and some with a tiny Sunstone fragment. Tal wasn't sure what this meant, but fewer than forty in a hundred ships were lit by Sunstones.
"Once, nearly every clan had a Sunstone," said the Mother Crone. "Now it is as you see."
"How do you know?" asked Tal. Then he looked at the girls, moving ships from one tile to the next.
"You mean this… Reckoner actually shows where all the ships are right now, and whether they've got a Sunstone?"
"And the conditions of the Ice," Milla added, staring at the table with rapt attention. "Among other things."
"But how?" Tal asked, alarmed. If there really were that many ships, there were far more Icecarls than he'd suspected. And they must have powerful magic to know where every ship was!
"What one Crone sees, all may see, waking or sleeping," said the Mother Crone. "And all clans have at least one Crone. We Icecarls are not without power, Tal. Remember that when you return to the Castle."
"I'll remember," said Tal quickly. But he wasn't really concerned with Icecarl magic. He'd just heard words that were much more magical to him than Crones who could see through one another's eyes.
When you return to the Castle.
"But when can I go? And how do I get there?"
"This ship is not the only ruin that can be found on the Mountain of Light," the Mother Crone answered. "There was once a road that went from base to crown. Most of it has long since crumbled, and it no longer goes anywhere near the top. But even ruined, it will make your way easier, until you can enter the Castle by other ways."
"Other ways?"
Tal didn't like the sound of that. It made getting back to the Castle sound difficult, but even worse was the thought that the Icecarls might know secret ways into his home. To cover up how disturbed he was, he scratched under his eye, covering his expression with his hand.
"I am not sure exactly what or where these ways are, but I know they exist," said the Mother Crone. She walked away from the Reckoner and went to one of the cabinets, her fingers gently touching items on several shelves. Tal and Milla followed her, Milla still half watching the girls who moved the ships and tiles.
"Ah, this is it," said the old woman, taking a small and very dusty bag of Selski hide off the shelf and handing it to Tal. "Open it."
Tal opened the bag, sneezing as dust billowed from inside. There were two objects in there: a thin rectangle of bone no larger than his hand, and a magnifying glass with a gold rim.
"Long ago," the Mother Crone began, "when I was a little older than one of these young Shield Maidens, a man was found near the Ruin Ship - a man without a shadow. He had lost it, he said, and perhaps he had, though we noticed that he was afraid of all shadows, as if his own might return. He called himself a Chosen, from the Castle of Seven Towers, though he would say no more. We did not ask him to explain, for he was not the first stranger to come down the Mountain of Light. The memory of the Crones is long.
"He stayed with us for many sleeps, carving away at that bone, using this glass to keep his work smaller and more secret. He never said exactly what it was, but I think it is a map, showing a way into your Castle."
Tal looked at the tablet of bone with more interest, and raised the magnifying glass to his eye. It was a strong one, so even in the bad light he could make out tiny drawings etched into the surface. There were characters there, too, writing so fine that it must have been carved with the sharpest of needles. Tal needed better light to see what it said, though the alphabet was the one commonly used in the Castle, not the more complex runes used in the spirit world of Aenir.
"Did he tell you his name?" asked Tal. "What happened to him?"
"We called him Longface, for when he first came his eyebrows and much of his hair had been burned off, so that his forehead was tall and as smooth as his chin. After he finished that carving he grew weak, and could not be healed. We gave him to the Ice."
Tal shuddered. The Icecarls were too keen to put anyone weak or useless out onto the Ice. Tal had seen no old Icecarls, except for the Crones.
"You may have Longface's map," said the Mother Crone, "and any other supplies you need. Milla will have to rest for several days before you can go on, but after that, you are free to leave. If Milla returns with her Sunstone, we will know that the time has come for Icecarls and Chosen to meet. If not, we shall look for other ways to find our knowledge… and our Sunstones."
There was no menace in her voice, but Tal felt that this was a veiled threat. At first, he wasn't worried about it. The Icecarls were fierce and the Crones obviously had powers he did not understand, but they could never stand up to the Light magic of the Chosen and the strength of their Spiritshadows.
But as he thought about it, Tal looked out at the Reckoner again, and all the ships. There were an awful lot of them, perhaps close to five hundred. Spread all over the world, fortunately… but they greatly outnumbered the Chosen. If they could get into the Castle…
"Milla doesn't have to come," he said. "I could bring a Sunstone back."
"You would return here?" asked the Mother
Crone, with a faint hint of a smile. "I think it best if Milla does go with you and finds a Sunstone herself."
"Sure," said Tal unhappily. He'd gotten used to traveling with Milla when she was wounded - and quiet. He wasn't sure about traveling with her once she was healthy. He never knew what she was going to do, and he suspected that she would still like to kill him. In her mind, he had never been more than a trespasser who'd come up with a good excuse to save himself.
Still, she had sworn an oath. He could probably trust her - at least until they got to the Castle. Then Tal would have a whole new set of troubles…
CHAPTER
FOUR
For the next four days and five sleeps, Tal tried to roam around the Ruin Ship. But whenever he went to open a hanging curtain or go through a doorway, one of the Shield Maiden cadets would pop up from behind, or in front, or from around the corner and politely lead him back to somewhere he'd already been.
Eventually he worked out that he was only allowed to be in the small sleeping chamber he'd been assigned, the Hall of the Reckoner, the Cadets' Feasting Hall where he had his meals (though he never saw anything he'd call a feast), and some of the time, the room where Milla had been ordered to stay in bed.
The only combat skill Milla could practice in bed was her bad temper. Since Tal was the only person she could practice on and get away with it, he found that visiting her was not much fun. But there was simply nothing else to do, except watch the ships and tiles get moved around on the Reckoner, and that was about as boring as the lecture on the basics of light that retired Lector Jannem gave every year.
On the positive side, though she was cross at being ordered to bed, Milla was bored, too, and sometimes she would actually answer Tal's questions. The Shield Maiden cadets wouldn't speak to him at all, unless it was to stop him from going somewhere or doing something he wasn't allowed to do.
"How come there are no men
here?" Tal asked Milla on the second day, after he'd ducked a pillow she'd thrown at him. He handed it back to her, noting that her face had lost its sickly gray tinge and was returning to its normal, surprisingly delicate paleness. All the Icecarls were very pale, much more so than the Chosen.
Most Icecarls had the same color hair, too, like sunshine mixed with white ash. Tal's hair was the color of dirt, settling just above his shoulders. He felt that cutting his hair short would be an admission that he was no longer a proper Chosen.
"No men where?" snarled Milla.
"Here, the Ruin Ship."
"I told you," snapped Milla, "it is the chief place of the Shield Maidens. It is not like a normal clan ship. There are no families, no children, no hunters, no Selski. The only men who come here would be either lost hunters, messengers… or a Sword Thane."
"A Sword Thane?" asked Tal, suddenly interested.
"Women who wish to serve all the clans become Shield Maidens," explained Milla. "But men do not work so well together, so those who wish to be lawgivers and protectors become Sword Thanes."
"What do you mean?" asked Tal.
"Everyone knows this." Milla frowned. "Some clans prefer a Sword Thane, though they can be unreliable and hard to find. It makes a better saga, I suppose."
"Prefer a Sword Thane for what?"
"Trouble!" spat Milla. "When you have trouble, you send for the Shield Maidens, but sometimes a Sword Thane finds you and the trouble first."
"But aren't Shield Maidens heroes?" Tal inquired. "I mean, you killed the Merwin. Doesn't that make you a hero which makes you a Sword Thane?"
"I wish to be a Shield Maiden, so I must try to be a hero," Milla repeated. "But only a man can be a Sword Thane. All Sword Thanes are heroes but not all heroes are Sword Thanes."
"What?" asked Tal. He was getting confused. "So what do you call a man who's a hero but not a Sword Thane? What if he uses an ax or a spear?"
Milla didn't answer. She picked up the Merwin horn sword that never left her side and readied it to throw like a spear. Tal didn't stay to be a target, or for further explanation about Shield Maidens and Sword Thanes. He disappeared around the corner, and did not visit Milla again till she was up and final preparations were being made for their departure.