by Tad Williams
The trolls looked the tall guardsman up and down in alarm, then ducked at their mounts and rode on hurriedly, disappearing around the mountain face. “Gave them some gossip,” Haestan chuckled.
“Binabik told me about his home,” Simon said, “but it was hard to understand what he was saying. Things are never quite what you think they’re going to be, are they?”
“Only th’ good Lord Usires knows all answers,” Haestan nodded. “Now, if y’would see y’r small friend, we’d best move on. Walk careful now—and not so close t’edge, there.”
They made their way slowly down the looping path, which alternately narrowed and widened as it traversed the mountainside. The sun was high overhead, but hidden in a nest of soot-colored clouds, and a biting wind swooped along Mintahoq’s face. The mountaintop above was white-blanketed in ice, like the high peaks across the valley, but at this lower height the snow had fallen more patently. Some wide drifts lay across the path, and others nestled among the cave mouths, but dry rock and exposed soil were also all around. Simon had no idea if such snow was normal for the first days of Tiyagar-month in Yiqanuc, but he did know that he was mightily sick of sleet and cold. Every flake that swooped into his eye felt like an insult; the scarred flesh of his cheek and jaw ached terribly.
Now that they had left what seemed like the populous section of the mountain, there were not many troll folk to be seen. Dark shapes peered out of the smoke of some of the cave-mouths, and two more groups of riders passed by heading in the same direction, slowing to stare, then bustling along as hastily as had the first troop.
The pair passed a gaggle of children playing in a snowdrift. The young trolls, barely taller than Simon’s knee, were bundled up in heavy furjackets and leggings; they looked like little round hedgehogs. Their eyes grew wide as Simon and Haestan trudged past, and their high-pitched thatter was stilled, but they did not run or show any sign of fear. Simon liked that. He smiled gently, mindful of his pained cheek, and waved to them.
When a loop of the path led them far out toward the northward side of the mountain, they found themselves in an area where the noise of Mintahoq’s inhabitants disappeared entirely and they were alone with the voice of wind and fluttering snow.
“Don’t like this bit m’self,” Haestan said.
“What’s that?” Simon pointed up the slope. On a stone porch far above stood a strange egg-shaped structure made of carefully ordered blocks of snow. It gleamed faintly, pink-tinged by the slanting sun. A row of silent trolls stood before it, spears clutched in their mittened hands, their faces harsh in their hoods.
“Don’t point, lad,” Haestan said, gently pulling at Simon’s arm. Had a few of the guards shifted their gazes downward? “It be somethin’ important, y’r friend Jiriki said. Called ‘Ice House.’ Th’ little folk be all worked up over it right this moment. Don’t know why—don’t want t’know, either.”
“Ice House?” Simon stared. “Does someone live there?”
Haestan shook his head. “Jiriki didna say.”
Simon looked to Haestan speculatively. “Have you talked with Jiriki much since you’ve been here? I mean, since I wasn’t around for you to talk to?”
“Oh, aye,” Haestan said, then paused. “Not much, in truth. Always seems like…like he’s thinkin’ on something’ grand, d’ye see? Some-thin’ important. But he’s nice enough, in’s way. Not like a person, quite, but not a bad’un.” Haestan thought a bit more. “He’s not like I thought magic-fellow ’d be. Talks plain, Jiriki does.” Haestan smiled. “Does think well on ye, he does. Way he talks, un’d think he owed ye money.” He chuckled in his beard.
It was a long, wearying walk for someone as weak as Simon: first up, then down, back and forth over the face of the mountain. Although Haestan put a steadying hand under his elbow each time he sagged, Simon had begun to wonder if he could go any farther when they trudged around an outcropping that pushed out into the path like a stone in a river and found themselves standing before the wide entranceway of the great cavern of Yiqanuc.
The vast hole, at least fifty paces from edge to edge, gaped in the face of Mintahoq like a mouth poised to pronounce a solemn judgment. Just inside stood a row of huge, weathered statues: round-bellied, humanlike figures, gray and yellow as rotted teeth, stoop-shouldered beneath the burden of the entranceway roof. Their smooth heads were crowned with ram’s horns, and great tusks pushed out between their lips. So worn were they by centuries of harsh weather that their faces were all but featureless. This gave them, to Simon’s startled eye, not a look of antiquity, but rather of unformed newness—as if they were even now creating themselves out of the primordial stone.
“Chidsik Uh Lingit,” a voice said beside him, “—the House of the Ancestor.” Simon jumped a little and turned in surprise, but it was not Haestan who had spoken. Jiriki stood beside him, staring up at the blind stone faces.
“How long have you been standing there?” Simon was shamed to have been so startled. He turned his head back to the entranceway. Who could guess that the tiny trolls would carve such giant door-wardens?
“I came out to meet you,” Jiriki said. “Greetings, Haestan.”
The guardsman grunted and nodded his head. Simon wondered again what had passed between the Erkynlander and the Sitha during the long days of his illness. There were times when Simon found it very hard to converse with veiled and roundabout Prince Jiriki. How might it be for a straightforward soldier like Haestan, who had not been trained, as Simon had, on the maddening circularities of Doctor Morgenes?
“Is this where the king of the trolls lives?” he asked aloud.
“And the queen of the trolls, as well, “Jiriki nodded. “Although they are not really called a king and queen in the Qanuc language. It would be closer to say the Herder and Huntress.”
“Kings, queens, princes, and none of them are what they are called,” Simon grumbled. He was tired and sore and cold. “Why is the cave so big?”
The Sitha laughed quietly. His pale lavender hair fluttered in the sharp wind. “Because if the cave were smaller, young Seoman, they would doubtless have found another place to be their House of the Ancestor instead. Now we should go inside—and not only so that you can escape the cold.”
Jiriki led them between two of the centermost statues, toward flickering yellow light. As they passed between pillar-like legs, Simon looked up to the eyeless faces beyond the polished bulges of the statues’ great stonebellies. He was reminded again of the philosophies of Doctor Morgenes.
The Doctor used to say that no one ever knows what will come to them—“don’t build on expectation,” he said that all the time. Who would ever have though someday I would see such things as this, have such adventures? No one knows what will come to them…
He felt a twinge of pain along his face, then a needle of cold in his gut. The Doctor, as was so often the case, had spoken nothing but the truth.
Inside, the great cavern was full of trolls and dense with the sweetly-sour odors of oil and fat. A thousand yellow lights blazed.
All around the craggy, high-ceilinged stone room, in wall-niches and in the very floor, pools of oil bloomed with fire. Hundreds of such lamps, each with its floating wick like a slender white worm, gave the cavern alight that far outshone the gray day outside. Hide-jacketed Qanuc filled the room, an ocean of black-haired heads. Small children sat pickaback, like seagulls floating placidly atop the waves.
At the room’s center an island of rock protruded above the sea of trollfolk. There, on a raised stone platform hewn from the very stuff of the cavern floor, two smallish figures sat in a pool of fire.
It was not exactly a pool of pure flame, Simon saw a moment later, but a slender moat cut into the gray rock all the way around, filled with the same burning oil that fueled the lamps. The two figures at the center of the ring of flames reclined side by side in a sort of hammock of ornately-figured hide bounded by thongs to a frame of ivory. The pair nested unmoving in the mound of white and reddish furs. T
heir eyes were bright in their round, placid faces.
“She is Nunuuika and he is Uammannaq,” Jiriki said quietly, “—they are the masters of the Qanuc…”
Even as he spoke, one of the two small figures gestured briefly with a hooked staff. The vast, packed horde of troll folk drew back to either side, pressing themselves even closer together, forming an aisle that stretched from the stone platform to the place where Simon and his companions stood. Several hundred small, expectant faces turned coward them. There was much whispering. Simon stared down the open length of cavern floor, abashed.
“Seems clear enough,” Haestan growled, giving him a soft shove. “Go on, then, lad.”
“All of us,” Jiriki said. He made one of his oddly-articulated gestures to indicate that Simon should lead the way.
Both the echoing whispers and the scent of cured hides seemed to increase as Simon made his way toward the king and queen…—Or the Herdsman and Huntress, he reminded himself. Or whatever.
The air in the cavern suddenly seemed stiflingly thick. As he struggled to get a deep breath he stumbled and would have fallen had not Haestan caught at the back of his cloak. When he reached the dais he stood for a moment staring at the floor, struggling with dizziness, before looking up to the figures on the platform. The lamplight glared into his eyes. He felt angry, although he didn’t know at whom. Hadn’t he more or less just gotten out of bed today for the first time? What did they expect? That he would leap right out and slay some dragons?
The startling thing about Uammannaq and Nunuuika, he decided, was that they looked so much alike, as though they were twins. Not that it wasn’t instantly obvious which was which: Uammannaq, on Simon’s left, had a chin beard that hung from his chin, knotted with red and blue thongs into a long braid. His hair was braided as well, held in intricate loops upon his head with combs of black, shiny stone. As he worried a this beard gently with small, thick fingers, his other hand held his staff of office, a thick, heavily carved ram-rider’s spear with a crook at one end.
His wife—if that was the way things worked in Yiqanuc—held a straight spear, a slender, deadly wand with a stone point sharpened to translucency. She wore her long black hair high on her head, held in place with many combs of carved ivory. Her eyes, gleaming behind slanting lids in a plump face, were flat and bright as polished stone. Simon had never had a woman look at him in quite that cold and arrogant way. He remembered that she was called Huntress, and felt out of his depth. By contrast, Uammannaq seemed far less threatening. The Herder’s heavy face seemed to sag in loose lines of drowsiness, but there was still a canny edge to his glance.
After the brief moment of mutual inspection, Uammannaq’s face creased in a wide yellow grin, his eyes nearly disappearing in a cheerful squint. He lifted his two palms toward the companions, then pressed his small hands together and said something in guttural Qanuc.
“He says you are welcome to Chidsik Ub Lingit and to Yiqanuc, the mountains of the trolls,” Jiriki translated. Before he could say more, Nunuuika spoke up. Her words seemed more measured than Uammannaq’s, but were no more intelligible to Simon. Jiriki listened to her carefully. “The Huntress also extends her greetings. She says you are quite tall, but unless she is very mistaken in her knowledge of the Utku people, you seem young for a dragon-slayer, despite the white in your hair. Utku is the troll word for lowlanders,” he added quietly.
Simon looked at the two royal personages for a moment. “Tell them that I’m pleased to have their welcome, or whatever should be said. And please tell them that I didn’t slay the dragon—likely only wounded it—and that I did it to protect my friends, just as Binabik of Yiqanuc did for me many other times.”
When he finished the long sentence he was momentarily out of breath, bringing a rush of dizziness. The Herder and Huntress, who had been watching curiously as he spoke—both had frowned slightly at the mention of Binabik’s name—now turned expectantly to Jiriki.
The Sitha paused for a moment, considering, then rattled off a long stream of thick trollish speech. Uammannaq nodded his head in a puzzled way. Nunuuika listened impassively. When Jiriki had finished, she glanced briefly at her consort, then spoke again.
Judging by her translated reply, she might not have heard Binabik’s name at all. She complimented Simon on his bravery, saying that the Qanuc had long held the mountain Urmsheim—Yijarjuk, she called it—as a place to be avoided at all costs. Now, she said, perhaps it was time to explore the western mountains again, since the dragon, even if it had survived, had most likely disappeared into the lower depths to nurse its wounds.
Uammannaq seemed impatient with Nunuuika’s speech. As soon as Jiriki finished relaying her words the Herder responded with some of his own, saying that now was hardly the time for such adventures, after the terrible winter just passed, and with the evil Croohokuq—the Rimmersmen—so malevolently active. He hastened to add that of course Simon and his companions, the other lowlander and the esteemed Jiriki, should stay as long as they wished, as honored guests, and that if there was anything he or Nunuuika could grant them to ease their stay, they had only to ask.
Even before Jiriki finished converting these works to the Westerling speech, Simon was shifting his weight from one foot to the other, anxious to respond.
“Yes,” he told Jiriki, “there is something they can do. They can free Binabik and Sludig, our companions. Free our friends, if you would do us a favor!” he said loudly, turning to the fur-swaddled pair before him, who regarded him with incomprehension. His raised voice caused some of the trolls crowded around the stone platform to murmur uneasily. Simon dizzily wondered if he had gone too far, but for the moment was beyond caring.
“Seoman,” Jiriki said, “I promised myself that I would not mistranslate or interfere in your speech with the lords of Yiqanuc, but I ask you now as a favor to me, do not ask this of them. Please.”
“Why not?”
“Please. As a favor. I will explain later; I ask you to trust me.”
Simon’s angry words spilled out before he could control them. “You want me to desert my friend as a favor to you? Haven’t I already saved your life? Didn’t I get the White Arrow from you? Who owes the favors here?”
Even as he said it he was sorry, fearing that an unbreachable barrier had suddenly grown between himself and the Sitha prince. Jiriki’s eyes burned into his. The audience began to fidget nervously and mutter among themselves, sensing something amiss.
The Sitha dropped his gaze. “I am ashamed, Seoman. I ask too much of you.”
Now Simon felt himself sinking like a stone into a muddy pool. Too fast! It was too much to think about. All he wanted was to lie down and not know anything.
“No, Jiriki,” he blurted out, “I’m ashamed. I’m ashamed of what I said. I’m an idiot. Ask the two of them if I can speak to them tomorrow. I feel sick.” Suddenly the dizziness was horribly real; he felt the whole cavern tilt. The light of the oil lamps wavered as though in a stiff wind. Simon’s knees buckled and Haestan caught his arms, holding him up.
Jiriki turned quickly to Uammannaq and Nunuuika. A rumble of fascinated consternation ran through the trollish throng. Was the red-crested, storklike lowlander dead? Perhaps such long thin legs were not capable of bearing weight for long, as some had suggested. But then, why were the other two lowlanders still standing upright? Many heads were shaken in puzzlement, many whispered guesses exchanged.
“Nunuuika, keenest of eye, and Uammannaq, surest of rein: the boy is still sick and very weak.” Jiriki spoke quietly. The multitude, cheated, by his soft speech, leaned forward. “I ask a boon, on the primeval friendship of our people.”
The Huntress inclined her head, smiling slightly. “Speak, Elder Brother,” she said.
“I have no right to interfere in your justice, and will not. I do ask that the judgment of Binabik of Mintahoq not go forward until his companions—including the boy Seoman—have a chance to speak in his behalf. And that the same be granted also for the Rimmer
sman, Sludig. This I ask of you in the name of the Moon-woman, our shared root.” Jiriki bowed slightly, using only his upper body. There was no suggestion of subservience.
Uammannaq tapped the shaft of his spear with his fingers. He looked to the Huntress, his expression troubled. At last he nodded. “We cannot refuse this, Elder Brother. So shall it be. Two days, then, when the boy is stronger—but even if this strange young man had brought us Igjarjuk’s toothy head in a saddlebag, that would not change what must be. Binabik, apprentice of the Singing Man, has committed a terrible crime.”
“So I have been told,” Jiriki replied. “But the brave hearts of the Qanuc were not the only thing that gained them the esteem of the Sithi. We loved the kindness of trolls as well.”
Nunuuika touched the combs in her hair, her gaze hard. “Kind hearts must never overthrow just law, Prince Jiriki, or all Sedda’s spawn—Sithi as well as mortals—will return naked to the snows. Binabik shall have his judgment.”
Prince Jiriki nodded and made another brief bow before turning away. Haestan half-carried the stumbling Simon as they walked back across the cavern, down the gauntlet of curious trolls, back out into the cold wind.
2
Masks and Shadows
The fire popped and spat as snowflakes drifted down into the flames to boil away in an instant. The surrounding trees were still striped with orange, but the campfire had burned down almost to embers. Beyond this fragile barrier of firelight, mist and cold and dark waited patiently.
Deornoth held his hands closer to the embers and tried to ignore the vast living presence of Aldheorte Forest all around, the twining branches that blotted the stars overhead, the fog-shrouded trunks swaying somberly in the cold, steady wind. Josua sat across from him, facing away from the flames toward the unfriendly darkness; the prince’s angled face, red-washed by rippling firelight, was contorted in a silent grimace. Deornoth’s heart went out to his prince, but it was too difficult to look at him just now. He turned his eyes away, kneading his chilled fingers as though he could rub away all suffering—his, his master’s, and that of the rest of their pitiful, lamed flock.