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It was only a small show of bravery, but it was something. Now Jiriki and his mother Likimeya rode forward, halting on either side of Yizashi. After a moment's whispered conversation, Likimeya spurred her horse a few paces ahead. Then, startlingly, she began to sing. Her voice, thin at first against the rude piping of the wind, grew slowly stronger. The impenetrable Sithi tongue flowed out, slurring and clicking yet somehow as smooth as warm oil poured from a jar. The song rose and fell, pulsed, then rose again, each time growing more powerful. Although Eolair understood nothing of the words, there was something clearly denunciatory to the roll and swoop of it, something challenging in the cadence. Likimeya's voice chimed like a herald's brazen horn, and as with the call of a horn, there was a ring of cold metal beneath the music. "What goes on here?" whispered Isorn. Eolair gestured for silence. The mist floating before the walls of Naglimund seemed to thicken, as though one dream was ending and another beginning. Something changed in Likimeya's voice. It took a moment before Eolair recognized that the mistress of the Sithi had not altered her song, but rather that another voice had joined it. At first the new thread of melody clung close to the challenge-song. The tone was as strong as Likimeya's, but where hers was metal, this new voice was stone and ice. After some long moments the second voice began to sing around the original melody, weaving a strange pattern like a glass filigree over Likimeya's belling tones. The sound of it made the Count of Nad Mullach's skin stretch and tingle and his body hair lift, even beneath the layers of clothing. Eolair raised his eyes. His heart began to beat even more swiftly. Through the dimming fog, a thin black shadow appeared atop the castle wall, rising into view as smoothly as though lifted by an unseen hand.

It was man-sized, Eolair decided, but the mist subtly distorted its shape, so that one moment it seemed larger, the next smaller and thinner than any living thing. It looked down on them, black-cloaked, face invisible beneath a large hood—but Eolair did not need to see its face to know that it was the source of the high, stone-edged voice. For long moments it only stood in the swirling mist atop the wall, embroidering upon Likimeya's song. Finally, as if by some prior agreement, they both fell still at the same moment. Likimeya broke the silence, calling out something in the Sithi tongue. The black apparition answered, its words ringing like shards of jagged flint, and yet Eolair could hear that the words they spoke were much the same, the differences mainly in rhythm and the greater harshness of the robed creature's speech. The conversation seemed interminable. There was a movement behind him. Eolair flinched; his horse startled, kicking snow. Sky-haired Zinjadu, the lore-mistress, had brought her own mount to where the mortals stood. "They speak of the Pact of Sesuad'ra." Her eyes were fixed on Likimeya and her opposite, 'They speak of old heartbreaks and the mourning songs yet to be sung." "Why so much talk?" asked Isorn raggedly. "The waiting is dreadful." "It is our way." Zinjadu's lips tightened; her thin face seemed carved in pale golden stone. "Although it was not respected when Amerasu was slain. " She offered nothing more. Eolair could only wait in uneasy fear and, ultimately, a kind of horrible boredom as challenge and response were offered. Finally the thing on the wall turned its attention away from Likimeya for a moment; its eyes lit on the count and his few scores of Hernystirinen. With a movement almost as broad as a traveling player's, the black-robed one flung back its hood, revealing a sleet-white face and thin hair just as colorless which rose in the wind, floating like the strands of some sea-plant. "Shu'do-tkzayha!" the Norn said in a tone almost of exultation. "Mortals! They will yet be the death of your family, Likimeya Moon-Eyes!" He, if it was a he, spoke the Westerling tongue with the harsh precision of a gamekeeper imitating a rabbit's death squeal. "Are you so weak that you summoned this rabble to aid you? It is hardly Sinnach's great army!" "You have usurped a mortal's castle," said Likimeya coldly. Beside her Jiriki still sat his horse stiffly, his sharp-boned face empty of any recognizable emotion; Eolair wondered again how anyone could ever feel they knew the Sithi. "And your master and mistress have entered into the disputes of mortals. You have little to crow about." The Norn laughed, a noise like fingernails on slate. "We use them, yes. They are the rats that have dug into the walls of our house—we might skin them for gloves, but we do not invite them in to sup at our table! That is your weakness, as it was Amerasu Ship-Born's.