With a bow to the skull on the Oathstone, he called his court down. “We must find the sacred boughs to lay on them now,” he said. “And build them a bone-house as they once had, that some of the Sinyi—or iynisin, I do not know which—destroyed. For these are the ancient peoples who lived in this holy place before the elves did, and they require honor.”

The Seneschal advised which leaves were best to place and how; Kieri felt the gratitude of the bones as one and then another had eye-holes and earholes touched with green under the sun. Then with a bow to the skull once more, Kieri led the procession back to the palace.

The procession was silent until they were within the palace walls; then Sier Halveric said, “So … the Oathstone is not from the elves?”

“Apparently not,” Kieri said.

“Did you know about this?”

“What happened to me at Midwinter suggested that something lay beneath the mound. I had thought to have it excavated, but with Arian’s miscarriage and the Lady’s death, I had not done that yet. The Kuakkgani said there was something very old and the answer would come at Midsummer.”

“Were those people murdered?”

“Not all of them, surely. They had a settlement of some sort and a bone-house. I am sure people lived here before elves came, and their sacred place was taken over.”

“By the Lady.”

“I am not sure of that,” Kieri said. “She said no … and we know she had traitors within her company.”

Sier Halveric nodded. “I would like to hold her blameless, sir king, in spite of all we know.”

“So would I, as she was my grandmother. But unless we find proof … what can we think but that she is at least tainted with suspicion?”

Construction of the bone-house began immediately after the end of the Midsummer festivities. Kieri insisted it must be completed by the Autumn Evener, but the simple structure stood ready to receive its guests well before that. The Seneschal spent time with each skeleton, then told Kieri where it should go. The oldest skull, the one Kieri had found at Midwinter, rested on the Oathstone.

“I wonder what other secrets the elves left us,” Sier Davonin said after the dedication of the bone-house. “Patterns that let enemies into the palace, a pretty hill to cover an ugly crime…”

“We are not likely to learn them all,” Kieri said. “And some, I hope, were not so dire.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Vérella, Tsaia