by Tad Williams
“Which was nothing.” Hakatri’s face was pale and damp with perspiration after one of his bouts of intense suffering.
“All the more reason not to risk journeying a long way across the freezing north,” Ineluki told him. “The queen says that nothing like what happened to you has ever happened before, and she is the oldest of us all by many, many Great Years. She says we would learn nothing new in Hikehikayo.”
“Queen Utuk’ku seems to have shown you much favor, my lord,” I said.
“I am not one of those who hate her, Armiger.” His tone was hard, grudging. I think if Hakatri had not been there, his brother might have spoken to me much more sharply. “She has her own people to protect, her own lands to defend.”
My master roused himself a little. “Remember, her people are our people, brother.”
But that was all he found the strength to say, and we did not travel on to Hikehikayo.
* * *
• • •
Halfway through our journey back across the seemingly endless Snowfields we had to stop for two full days because my master’s suffering became so terrible that he could not bear even to have his litter carried. In the middle of the second night, with only myself and one of our Asu’a healers present, Hakatri sat up, gasping in pain, and cried out, “She is behind the veil, too! Her tracks are everywhere!” He grabbed my hand with such desperate strength that I could not use it without pain for the rest of the day, but those were the only words he spoke that I could understand. Afterward he fell into a fit, thrashing and moaning until my heart nearly broke.
When Hakatri could be carried again we continued back across the Snowfields, but when we reached Great Redwash he came up from his swoon like a deep-diving swimmer and declared that we would not go home but instead turn southwest toward the city of Mezutu’a. I protested, but he said, “I promised Enazashi’s heir that I would come to Silverhome to make my apology for taking the witchwood tree from his grove. Who knows if I will ever be well enough again? Honor demands I take this opportunity.”
A part of me shuddered—after all, “honor” had led us to this terrible situation in the first place, though it had been Ineluki’s honor, not my master’s. Still, I no longer had much faith in its value at all. When I said this to the healer who had accompanied us from Asu’a, though, she looked at me as though I had suddenly begun to speak a foreign tongue: she simply could not grasp what I was saying. “I do not like your master’s choice, of course,” she said. “I am running out of what I need to make the salve that helps him, so I wish we could return directly to Asu’a. But we cannot take away from him the little he has left.”
“Do you mean his life?” I said, trying to keep my anger down but not entirely succeeding. “Because the more he travels, the more I fear for his survival.”
She only shook her head. Like the other healers, she was kind and compassionate, but it was one of the times I felt I did not understand my master’s people at all.
This time, because of my master’s frailty, we did not enter Mezutu’a from Skyglass Lake and the Fernlight Passage but followed the ancient Silver Way up into the mountains to the city’s proud Southern Gate, with my master still in his curtained litter. Word of our return had spread, and after we were admitted to Silverhome the streets of the underground city filled with citizens eager to see us. Ineluki seemed to enjoy the attention and the crowds, but my master barely opened the curtains on his litter. He was in dreadful pain, I could tell, but determined to do what he had promised.
We carried Hakatri at last to the Site of Witness, where Enazashi was holding court in the shimmering glow of the Shard; I saw no sign of Kai-Unyu, his supposed co-ruler. The lord of Mezutu’a’s narrow features were set in hard, unhappy lines as he watched Hakatri’s litter being carried down the steps toward the center of the vast chamber. His heir Yizashi watched too, features carefully empty of emotion, although it was not difficult to guess that what he had allowed Hakatri and Ineluki to do in Enazashi’s witchwood grove had been the subject of many hard words between father and son.
“So, Lord Hakatri, you return to us at last,” Enazashi said when the litter had been set down at the foot of the daïs. “I told you I would give you no assistance in trying to kill the worm. You took what you wanted anyway. Do you come now to beg forgiveness, or to boast about your great deed?”
I could see the angry flush on Ineluki’s face even by the Shard’s inconstant, glimmering light. “You said you would give us no soldiers to help us, Enazashi,” he said, and did not hide the bitterness he felt. “We took no soldiers. We took a tree—a single tree.”
“You took a sacred tree of the Garden Root from my grove—stole it! And worse, you made my son your accomplice. For that alone I should banish you from the Silverhome lands forever, yet here you sit, unashamed. Your brother will not even show me his face, though I am told he was the leader of the company.”
“How do you dare—!” Ineluki cried, and a rustle of dismay went through the room. I saw several Silverhome guards reach for their weapons.
“Stop,” called Hakatri from inside the curtained litter, and though he did not speak loudly—could not, at that time—Ineluki was startled into silence. Even Enazashi seemed to pause, as if waiting to see what would happen next. The curtain trembled, then slowly drew back. My master clambered out of the litter to stand swaying beside it, his robes rumpled and damp with perspiration.
“Lord Enazashi is right,” he said.
All around the great chamber the members of the Silverhome Clan stared in wide-eyed surprise. It was not my master’s obvious frailty that startled them so much as his visible wounds, I think, those ghastly burns on his neck and arms that were still bright and red even after the change of many moons. It was also clear by his panting breaths and quivering limbs that he had expended a huge amount of strength simply to leave the litter, but even the most observant of the Mezutu’ans would not have guessed from his stolid face the agony in which he spent each day. His brother knew. The other servants and I knew, too, and we were all amazed that Hakatri was standing at all.
“My lord,” he said to Enazashi, “I have done wrong to you, and I admit it. I did not plunder your grove for my own gain, but I still regret the necessity that made me a thief and made you a victim.”
His brother Ineluki clearly did not agree. Ineluki’s pride was also his curse, I had heard some of his fellows say, and at that moment I could see him struggling with it. His better nature, or at least his more cautious nature, won out: he stayed silent.
“That is all well and good,” said Enazashi. “But the story does not change. You came into my grove and took one of the sacred witchwood trees without permission, in darkness and secrecy. And you made my son your accomplice. If this were Nakkiga, that would bring a judgment of death.”
Ineluki’s eyes bulged at this, but Hakatri stared at him and his younger brother somehow remained silent.
“Your son was given a difficult, even desperate choice to make, S’hue Enazashi,” said my master. “He let his conscience guide him, as did I. And as you will.”
“What does that mean?” The master of Mezutu’a narrowed his eyes.
Hakatri began to walk toward the daïs. Each step was slow and difficult, and everyone present could see the perspiration beginning to bead on his face as he struggled forward. Ineluki turned away, whether in shame or sympathy I could not tell, as Hakatri at last reached the first step of the daïs, a short distance from Lord Enazashi’s feet. He swayed as if he would fall then, and Yizashi reached toward him, but my master waved him away.
Hakatri bent first one knee, then the other, gasping with pain at every movement, though he tried his best to hide it. Sweat was dripping down his cheeks as he lowered himself to the step. It was a terrible spectacle, like watching some great beast pierced by many arrows finally giving up its life. With a final, muffled groan, Lord Hakatri dropped to his
knees before Enazashi. When he spoke, his obvious suffering made it hard to understand him. “I . . . am yours, Lord Enazashi. We are all of . . . of the Garden, and that means we must honor all that we share. I have . . . wronged you. If you would take my . . . life for my crime . . . against you, it . . . is yours.”
I was so horrified by my master’s agony that I did not notice for long moments that Enazashi was staring down at him, and that the lord of Mezutu’a’s eyes were red as if with welling tears.
“Someone help Lord Hakatri back into his seat.” Enazashi’s voice sounded nearly as unsteady as my master’s. “By the Garden that birthed us all, you are forgiven, son of Year-Dancing House. You are forgiven.”
Part Four
The Gray Lands
“Only a few moons ago, it was your brother who refused to go back to Asu’a,” I said to Hakatri, “and you called him stubborn. Now Ineluki is returning, but you will not.” I had never spoken to my master in such a way, but I was frightened for him. “I do not understand this, my lord.”
“You think I should return home?” he demanded. “Return to what? A life that is barely a life? I cry out in my tormented sleep until no one else in my house can rest. I cannot hold my wife in my arms because the pain is too great, and my child—” I had never seen Hakatri so despairing. “Do you know what Briseyu said when we spoke through the Witness last night? That our daughter Likimeya wants to know when her true father will finally come back. My own daughter no longer recognizes me, I am so altered by this dragon-curse, and you want me to return to Asu’a!” His teeth were clenched against the agony of his wounds, but he was angry, too. “Will you now also turn away from me, Pamon?”
I was shocked that he had shared the private words of his wife, something I could never have imagined, and even more wounded that he should question my loyalty, but I knew it was only his suffering that made him chide me. “I will never turn away from you, my lord. You chose me and raised me up when no one else of your folk would have given me a second look. But that does not mean I will stay silent when I fear you are making a dreadful mistake.” But in truth, it was only in this strange new world in which we found ourselves that I dared to question him. Some things had changed, it could not be argued.
Lord Ineluki was leaving Silverhome to ride back to Asu’a, along with several of those who had accompanied us this far. I did not blame him for departing, since he could do nothing to make Hakatri better, and it must have been particularly terrible for him as the maker of that terrible, fateful oath, to watch his brother’s continual suffering. The two brothers saying their farewells was one of the saddest things I have ever witnessed: they had so much love for each other, and yet could not embrace. As Ineluki struggled for words, Hakatri stopped him.
“Do not fear for me, brother,” my master said. “If Unbeing itself could not destroy our people, a few spatters of worm’s blood will not take my life away. We will see each other again.” So saying, he raised his hand in parting.
Ineluki bowed his head and kept his face expressionless as he mounted Bronze. As he rode away, he did not look back.
Hakatri and I, along with a half-dozen retainers and guards to carry my master’s litter, made a slow journey out of the mountains that hid Mezutu’a and down to the coast, coming at last to the harbor town of Da-Yoshoga, Lady Ona’s and Sholi’s former home. It was inhabited by many Zida’ya, a few pale-skinned Hikeda’ya, and a surprising number of mortal men and women—those folk, however, called the place “Crannhyr.” Tinukeda’ya lived there too, of course, as they still do in most port towns, north or south, and as I had gathered from the women at Ravensperch, the old Niskie families of Da-Yoshoga, though they were fewer than in the past, were proud of their heritage and took a leading role in the trade that was the town’s main activity.
But though the port was a busy one, few Zida’ya ships called there, so we bought passage on a merchant ship out of the kingdom of Nabban. Despite the uneasiness of its mortal crew at our presence, we voyaged with them south along the coast to the broad, rocky island of Kementari, which had been one of the greatest residences of my master’s folk. The famous city of the same name was only ruins now—it had been thrown down by the same shaking earth that had destroyed Jhiná-T’seneí. As we made our way inland from the largely derelict harbor, we could see the disheveled remains of wide ceremonial roads and the tumbled stones of what had once been proud walls. Their legendary facing of striped sardonyx—which had once made the city walls gleam so brightly that the approach to Kementari had been called “the Dazzling Way”—had long since been plundered.
This once proud, now gutted metropolis was not one of the cities given to the Tinukeda’ya to rule by Jenjiyana, but when Hakatri and I came there, the remnant of my folk and of my master’s folk were still living together in relative harmony. The Hikeda’ya who had lived beside them during Kementari’s greatest days were gone, though. They had fled soon after its walls and palaces fell, heeding Utuk’ku’s demand for all her clansfolk to join her in Nakkiga. The Zida’ya and Tinukeda’ya who still remained in Kementari’s ruins spoke bitterly of how the Hikeda’ya had claimed the city’s Master Witness, an object called the Breathing Harp, and carried it away with them to their new home. This outrage had taken place many Great Years in the past, but as we sat with Kementari’s leaders in the empty stone shell of what had been the Temple of Witness, those who remained mourned as though it had just happened.
It hurt me to see these sad remains of what had been one of the famously beautiful Nine Cities, and I know it hurt my master too. Where once a great population had lived, trading up and down the mainland coast in their swift ships, now only a thousand or so hung on, more than a few of them recent mortal settlers. Kementari and its citizens had once thrived because of the spices and beautiful fabrics that passed through its port; now they survived only because of the goats and sheep that grazed the hills at the center of the island and the farm steadings that grew grain and root vegetables. Despite this, the Zida’ya of Kementari were still so proud of their ancient heritage that though my master desperately wished to help them, he could not do it openly. He made instead a secret gift to the governors of the island—a sizable part of the gold we had brought so we could trade in the mortal lands. We left it behind in their plundered Temple of Witness so it would not be discovered until we were gone. I hope that it helped them, especially my own Tinukeda’ya folk, most of whom eked out a meager living netting fish from their small boats or quarrying the rocky island’s bones. As we made our way back down the broken and disrupted stones of the road that led to the port, I heard the calls of fisher-folk, both my own people and mortal men, and could not help remembering Ineluki’s warning that soon the mortals would replace my master’s folk everywhere.
From Kementari we took ship again and made our way south, and on a warm morning early in the Tortoise Moon we arrived in the busy port of Nabban itself, the heart of the great mortal kingdom.
As I observed the teeming life of the broad harbor, big ships floating at anchor like sleeping ducks as hundreds of smaller boats darted in and out among them like water-striders, I was astounded by Nabban’s size and the nearly impossible task before us. I had never seen mortals in such numbers, never realized that so many mortals existed in all of the world, let alone squeezed into one city spread over a few hills. There might indeed be healers capable of helping us in such a vast place, but how would we find them?
Lord Hakatri was one of the most widely known of his folk, so more than a few Nabbanai dignitaries waited to greet us when we landed. The general style of their dress was not greatly different from the Hernsmen and other northern mortals, but they wore tailored capes instead of rough cloaks, and the cloth of their garments looked much richer and more colorful. Many also wore hats of shaped and dyed wool, some in forms I found quite puzzling, since they offered no protection against sun or rain and instead seemed created purely to amuse.
The nobles who greeted us at the dock told my master he was invited to the Sancellan for an audience with the Imperator—their strange word for king, I assumed—but though Hakatri thanked them with all ceremony, he told them he was too unwell at present and would have to put the honor off until he had recovered, and that he had come to Nabban in search of a cure for his wounds.
The dignitaries who welcomed us obviously spread the word of my master’s poor health, because within a day of our arrival our place of lodging near the port was all but overrun with dozens upon dozens of Nabban-folk offering to help Lord Hakatri. A few were mortal philosophers and practical healers, and these my master bade me bring to him, but most of those who appeared before our doors each morning were either novelty-seekers only interested in meeting an actual Zida’ya lord, or fraudulent healers offering concoctions of common herbs, animal blood, graveyard dirt, and even less savory ingredients, foolish nostrums far more likely to kill an infirm person than to help. I put in hours before noon each day ferreting out the one or two individuals worth taking to my master from the army of frauds and simpletons who clamored to see him. In the end, though, even the most gifted thinkers of the greatest mortal city had nothing new to offer him.
Being Hakatri’s gatekeeper was not all my duty in Nabban, nor even half. With Ineluki returned to Asu’a and just a few servants now remaining to take care of my master’s most basic needs, I was the only one left who could soothe him when his agonies were at their worst, and we spent many nights sitting up together when the pain would not let him sleep. Sometimes we talked, but other times my master could not even do that, and then I read to him from his favorite poets, Tuya and Benhaya-Shonó, or from Diritu’s Chronicles of History in the New Land as he lay on his bed, shivering.