Page 244 of The Priory of the Orange Tree

Margret stopped her horse and dismounted.

“This is where Galian Berethnet was born.” She hunkered down to brush away some of the snow. “Where a young seamstress gave birth to a son, and his brow was marked with hawthorn ash.”

Her gloved hands revealed a slab of marble, set deep into the earth.

HERE STOOD BERETHNET HEARTH

BIRTHPLACE OF KING GALIAN OF INYS

HE WHO IS SAINT OVER ALL VIRTUDOM

“I heard tell that Galian had no earthly remains,” Ead recalled. “Is that unusual?”

“Yes,” Margret admitted. “Very. The Inyscans should have preserved the remains of a king. Unless—”

“Unless?”

“Unless he died in a way his retainers wanted to conceal.” Margret climbed back into her saddle. “No one knows how the Saint perished. The books say only that he joined Queen Cleolind in the heavens and built Halgalant there, as he had built Ascalon here.”

She made the sign of the sword over the slab before they spurred their horses on.

The haithwood was dread itself in the north. As it came into sight, Ead understood why. Before the Nameless One had taught the Inyscans to fear the light of fire, this forest had taught them to fear the dark. The bulk of its trees were ancient giantswoods, pressed close enough to form a black curtain wall. To look at it was suffocating.

They rode up to it at a trot and tethered their horses. “Can you find the coney-hole?” Ead kept her voice low. She knew they were alone, but this place unsettled her.

“I imagine so.” Margret detached the lantern and tools from her saddle. “Just stay close to me.”

The woods beyond consumed all light. Ead retrieved one of the saddle lanterns before she interlocked their fingers and, together, they took their first step into the haithwood.

Snow crunched beneath their riding boots. The canopy was dense—giantswoods never shed their fur of needles—but the snowfall had been heavy enough to leave a deep covering.

As they walked, Ead found herself filled with a profound sense of desolation. It might have been the cold as well as the all-consuming dark, but the fireplace at Serinhall now seemed as far away as the Burlah. She set her chin deep into the fur collar of her cloak. Margret stilled now and then, as if to listen. When a twig snapped, even Ead tensed. Beneath her shirt, the jewel was growing colder.

“There used to be wolves here,” Margret said, “but they were hunted to extinction.”

If only to keep Margret occupied, Ead asked, “Why is it called the haithwood?”

“We thinkhaithwas the word the Inyscans used for the old ways. The worship of nature. Hawthorns, especially.”

They trudged through the snow for an age without speaking. Loth and Margret had been brave children.

“This is it.” Margret approached a snowdrift at the foot of a knotted oak. “Lend me a hand, Ead.”

Ead crouched beside her with one of the spades, and they dug. For a time, it seemed Margret had misremembered—but suddenly, their spades broke through the snow, into a hollow.

Ead dislodged the snow from its edges. The coney-hole was by now too small even for a child. They scooped with the spades and their hands until it was big enough to admit them. Margret was eyeing the opening nervously. “I will go first,” Ead offered. She kicked loose soil from the hole and slid in, leaving the lantern at the entrance.

It was barely wide enough inside for a well-fed coney, let alone a woman. Ead lit her magefire and pushed herself forward on her belly. She crawled until the tunnel, just as Margret had promised, simply dropped away, into a well of darkness. Unable to turn around, Ead had no choice but to go into it headfirst.

The drop was short and bruising. As she straightened, her magefire flared, unveiling a tunnel with sandstone walls and an arched ceiling, just high enough to stand in.

Margret joined her. She held up her lantern in one hand and a tiny knife in the other.

The walls of the tunnel had alcoves chiseled into them, though only the stumps of candles remained. There was a chill in this secret burrow, but nothing close to the ice on the surface. Margret was still shivering in the swathes of her cloak.

Before long they reached a chamber with a low ceiling, where two iron vats flanked another slab, cut from blackstone. Margret bent to sniff one.

“Eachy oil. A vat this large would burn for a season,” she said. “Someone has been tending to this place.”

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