by Tad Williams
Only Sludig answered. “It’s no good, I tell you. His eyes are closed. He does not hear you, will not speak at all.”
Simon slapped his hand against the rock and cursed. He felt tears start in his eyes.
“I will help you, Sludig,” he said at last. “I do not know how, but I will.” He sat up. Qantaqa nosed him and whimpered. “Can I bring you something? Food? Water?”
Sludig laughed dully. “No. They feed us, although not to bursting. I would ask for wine. but I do not know when they come for me. I will not go with my head foggy from drink. Only pray for me, please. And for the troll, too.”
“I will do more than that, Sludig, I swear.” He stood up. “You were very brave on the mountain, Simon,” Sludig called quietly.
“I am glad that I knew you.” The stars glittered coldly above the pit as Simon walked away, fighting to stand straight and cry no more.
He walked a while beneath the moon, lost in the swirl of his distracted thoughts, before he realized that he was again following Qantaqa. The wolf, who had paced anxiously beside the edge of the pit while Simon talked to Sludig, now trotted purposefully along the path before him. She did not allow him a chance to catch up as she had on their outward journey, and he was hard pressed to keep to her pace.
The moonlight was just bright enough for Simon to see where he was going, the trail just wide enough to allow for recovery from the occasional misstep. Still, he was feeling decidedly weak. He wondered more than once whether he should just sit down and wait until dawn came, when some-one would find him and return him safely to his cave, but Qantaqa trotted on, full of lupine determination. Feeling that he owed her a sort of loyalty, Simon did his best to follow.
He soon noted with more than a little alarm that they seemed to be climbing above the main trail, angling up Mintahoq’s face along a steeper, narrower pathway. As the wolf led him ever upward, and as they cut across more than a few horizontal paths, the air began to seem thinner. Simon knew he had not climbed so far, that the sensation was due instead to his own flagging wind, but he nevertheless felt himself to be passing out of the realms of safety into the upper heights. The stars seemed very close.
He wondered for a moment if chose cold stars might somehow be the airless peaks of other, incredibly distant mountains, vast bodies lost in darkness, snow-capped heads gleaming with reflected moonlight. But no, that was foolishness. Where could they be standing, that they would not be visible in daylight beneath the bright sun?
In truth, the air might have been no scarcer, but the cold was certainly growing, undeniable and intrusive despite his heavy cloak. Shivering, he decided he should turn around and make his way back down to the main roadway, no matter what moonlight pastime Qantaqa found so enticing. A moment later, he was surprised to find himself stepping up off the path and following the wolf onto a narrow shelf in the mountainside.
The rocky porch, dotted with patches of dimly gleaming snow, stood before a large, black crevice. Qantaqa jogged forward and stopped before it, sniffing. She turned to regard Simon, her shaggy head tipped at an angle, then barked once inquiringly and slipped into blackness. Simon decided there must be a cave hidden in the shadows. He was wondering whether he should follow her—letting a wolf lead him on a foolish hike along the mountainside was one thing, but letting her lead him into a lightless cavern in the middle of the night was another thing entirely—when a trio of small dark shapes appeared out of the blackness of the cliff-face before him, startling Simon so badly that he almost stepped backward off the stone porch.
Diggers! he thought wildly, scrabbling on the barren ground for some weapon. One of the shapes stepped forward, raising a slender spear toward him as if in warning. It was a troll, of course—they were quite a bit larger than the subterranean Bukken, when calmly examined—but still he was frightened. These Qanuc were small but well-armed; Simon was a stranger wandering about at night, perhaps in some sacred place.
The nearest troll pushed back a fur-ringed hood. Pallid moonlight shone on the face of a young woman. Simon could see little of her features but the whites of her eyes, but he was sure her expression was fierce and dangerous. Her two companions moved up beside her, muttering in what seemed like angry voices. He took a step backward down the pathway, feeling carefully for a safe foothold.
“I’m sorry. I’m just going,” he said, realizing even as he spoke that they could not understand him. Simon cursed himself for not having Binabik or Jiriki teach him some words of troll speech. Always regretting, always too late! Would he be a mooncalf forever? He was tired of the position. Let someone else take it on.
“I’m just going,” he repeated. “I was following the wolf. Following…the…wolf.” He spoke slowly, trying to make his voice sound friendly despite his tightened throat. One misunderstanding and he might be plucking one of those wicked-looking spears out of his midsection.
The troll woman watched him. She said something to one of her companions. The one addressed took a few steps toward the shadowed cave-mouth. Qantaqa growled menacingly from somewhere within the echoing depths and the troll quickly scuttled away again.
Simon took another step back down the path. The trolls watched him in silence, their small dark forms poised and watchful, but they made no move to hinder him. He turned his back on them slowly and helped himself down the trail, picking his way among the silvered rocks. After a moment the three trolls, Qantaqa, and the mysterious cave were all out of sight behind him.
He made his way downslope alone in dreaming moonlight. Halfway back to the main trail he had to stop and sit, elbows on trembling knees. He knew that his exhaustion and even his fear would eventually recede, but he could imagine no cure for such loneliness.
“I am truly sorry, Seoman, but there is nothing to be done. Last night Reniku, the star we call Summer-Lantern, appeared above the horizon at sundown. I have stayed too long. I can remain no longer.”
Jiriki sat cross-legged atop a rock on the cave’s vast porch, staring down into the mist-carpeted valley. Unlike Simon and Haestan, he wore no heavy clothing. The wind plucked at the sleeves of his glossy shirt.
“But what will we do about Binabik and Sludig?” Simon flung a stone into the depths, half-hoping it would wound some fog-hidden troll below. “They’ll be killed if you don’t do something!”
“There is nothing I could do, in any circumstance,” Jiriki said quietly. “The Qanuc have a right to their justice. I cannot honorably interfere.”
“Honor? Hang honor, Binabik won’t even speak! How can he defend himself?”
The Sitha sighed, but his hawkish face remained impassive. “Perhaps there is no defense. Perhaps Binabik knows he has wronged his people.”
Haestan snorted his disgust. “We dunna even know th’ little man’s crime.”
“Oath-breaking, I am told,” Jiriki said mildly. He turned to Simon. “I must go, Seoman. The news of the Norn Queen’s Huntsman attacking the Zida’ya has upset my people very much. They wish me home. There is much to discuss.” Jiriki brushed a strand of hair from his eye. “Also, when my kinsman An’nai died and was buried on Urmsheim, a responsibility fell upon me. His name must now be entered with full ceremony in the Book of Year-Dancing. I, of all my people, can least shirk that responsibility. It was, after all, Jiriki i-Sa’onserei and no other who brought him to the place of his death—and it was much to do with me and my willfulness that he went.” The Sitha’s voice hardened as he clenched his brown fingers into a fist. “Do you not see? I cannot turn my back on An’nai’s sacrifice.”
Simon was desperate. “I don’t know anything about your Dancing Book—but you said that we would be allowed to speak for Binabik! They told you so!”
Jiriki cocked his head. “Yes. The Herder and Huntress so agreed.”
“Well, how will we be able to do that if you are gone? We can’t speak the troll-tongue and they can’t understand ours.”
Simon thought he saw a look of bewilderment flit briefly across the Sitha’s imperturbable
face, but it passed so swiftly he was not sure. Jiriki’s flake-gold eyes caught and held his gaze. They scared at each other for long moments.
“You are right, Seoman,” Jiriki said slowly. “Honor and heritage have pincered me before, but never quite so neatly.” He dropped his head down and stared at his hands, then slowly lifted his eyes to the gray sky. “An’nai and my family must forgive me. J’asu pra-peroihin! The Book of Year-Dancing must then record my disgrace.” He took a deep breath. “I will stay while Binabik of Yiqanuc has his day at court.”
Simon should have exulted, but instead felt only hollowness. Even to a mortal, the Sitha prince’s unhappiness was profoundly apparent; Jiriki was making some terrible sacrifice that Simon could not understand. But what else could be done? They were all caught here on this high rock beyond the known world, all prisoners—at least of circumstance. They were ignorant heroes, friends to oath-breakers…
A chill dashed up Simon’s backbone. “Jiriki!” he gasped, waving his hands as if to clear a way for the sudden inspiration.
Would it work? Even if it did, would it help?
“Jiriki,” he said again, more quietly this time, “I believe I have thought of something that will let you do what you need to and help Binabik and Sludig, too.” Haestan, hearing the tightness in Simon’s voice, put down the stick he had been carving and leaned forward. Jiriki raised an expectant eyebrow.
“You will only need to do one thing,” Simon said. “You must go with me to see the king and queen—the Herder and the Huntress.”
After they had spoken to Nunuuika and Uammannaq, gaining the pair’s grudging acceptance of their proposal, Simon and Jiriki walked back in mountain twilight from the House of the Ancestor. The Sitha wore a faint smile.
“You continue to surprise me, young Seoman. This is a bold stroke. I have no idea if it will help your friend, but it is a beginning, nevertheless.”
“They would never have agreed if you hadn’t asked, Jiriki. Thank you.”
The Sitha made a complicated gesture with his long fingers. “There is still a brittle respect between the Zida’ya and some of the Sunset Children—chiefly the Hernystiri and the Qanuc. Five desolate centuries cannot so easily overwhelm the millennia of grace. Still, things have changed. You mortals—Lingit’s children, as the trolls say—are in ascendancy. It is not my people’s world any longer.” His hand reached out, touching lightly on Simon’s arm as they walked. “There is also a bond between you and me, Seoman. I have not forgotten that.” Simon, trudging along at the side of an immortal, could think of no reply.
“I ask only that you understand this: my kin and I are now very few. I owe you my life—twice, in fact, to my great distress—but my obligations to my people greatly outweigh even the value of my own continued existence. There are some things that cannot be wished away, young mortal. I hope for Binabik’s and Sludig’s survival, of course…but I am Zida’ya. I must take back the story of what happened on the dragon-mountain: the treachery of Utuk’ku’s minions and the passing of An’nai.”
He stopped suddenly and turned to face Simon. In the violet-tinged evening shadows, with his hair blowing, he seemed a spirit of the wild mountains. For a moment, Simon perceived Jiriki’s immense age in his eyes, and felt he could almost grasp that great ungraspable; the vast duration of the prince’s race, the years of their history like grains of sand on a beach.
“Things are not so easily ended, Seoman,” Jiriki said slowly, “even by my leaving. It is a very unmagical wisdom that tells me we shall meet again. The debts of the Zida’ya run deep and dark. They carry with them the stuff of myth. I owe you such a debt.” Jiriki again flexed his fingers in a peculiar sign, then reached into his thin shirt and produced a flat, circular object.
“You have seen this before, Seoman,” he said. “It is my mirror—a scale of the Greater Worm, as its legend has it.”
Simon took it from the Sitha’s outstretched palm, marveling at its surprising lightness. The carved frame was cool beneath his fingers. Once this mirror had shown him an image of Miriamele; another time, Jiriki had produced the forest-city of Enki-e-Shao’saye from its depths. Now, only Simon’s own somber reflection stared back. murky in the half-light.
“I give it to you. It is has been a talisman of my family’s since Jenjiyana of the Nightingales tended fragrant gardens in the shade of Sení Anzi’in. Away from me, it will no longer be anything but a looking glass.” Jiriki raised his hand. “No, that is not quite true. If you must speak with me, or have need of me—true need—tell the mirror. I will hear and know.” Jiriki pointed a stern finger at the speechless Simon. “But do not think to summon me in a puff of smoke, as in one of your folk’s goblin stories. I have no such magical powers. I cannot even promise you I will be able to come. But if I hear of your need, I will do what is in my power to help. The Zida’ya are not totally without friends, even in this bold young world of mortals.”
Simon’s mouth worked for a moment. “Thank you,” he said at last. The small gray glass suddenly seemed a thing of great weight indeed. “Thank you.”
Jiriki smiled, showing a stripe of white teeth. Again he seemed what he was among his own folk—a youth. “And you have your ring, as well.” He gestured at Simon’s other hand, to the thin gold band with its fish-shaped sign. “Talk of goblin stories, Seoman! The White Arrow, the black sword, a golden ring, and a Sithi seeing-glass—you are so weighted down with significant booty that you will clank when you walk!” The prince laughed, a trill of hissing music.
Simon stared at the ring, saved for him from the wrack of the doctor’s chambers, sent on to Binabik as one of Morgenes’ final acts. Grimy with the oil of the gloves Simon had been wearing, it sat unflatteringly on a dirt-blackened finger.
“I still don’t know what the writing inside means,” he said. On a whim, he twisted it off and handed it to the Sitha. “Binabik couldn’t read it either, except for something about dragons and death.” He had a sudden thought. “Does it help the person wearing it to slay dragons?” It was an oddly depressing idea, especially since he didn’t think he’d actually managed to slay the ice-worm. Had it only been a magical spell after all? As here covered his strength, he found himself more and more proud of his bravery in the face of the terrible Igjarjuk.
“Whatever happened on Urmsheim was between you and ancient Hidohebhi’s child, Seoman. There was no magic.” Jiriki’s smile had disappeared. He shook his head solemnly, passing the ring back. “But I cannot tell you more about the ring. If the wise man Morgenes did not provide for your understanding when he sent it to you, then I will not presume to tell. I have perhaps already burdened you unfairly during our short acquaintance. Even the bravest mortals grow sick with too much truth.”
“You can read what it says?”
“Yes. It is written in one of the languages of the Zida’ya—although, interestingly for a mortal trinket, one of the more obscure. I will tell you this, however. If I understand its meaning, it does not concern you now in any direct fashion, and knowing what it said would not help you in any palpable way.”
“And that’s all you’ll tell me?”
“For now. Perhaps if we meet again, I will have more understanding of why it was given to you.” The Sitha’s face was troubled. “Good fortune to you, Seoman. You are an odd boy—even for a mortal,…”
At that moment they heard Haestan’s shout and saw the Erkynlander striding up the path toward them, waving something. He had caught a snow hare. The fire, he called happily, was ready for cooking.
Even with a stomach comfortably full of broiled meat and herbs, it took Simon a long time to fall asleep that night. As he lay on his pallet looking up at the flickering red shadows on the cave ceiling, his mind tumbled with all that had happened, the maddening tale in which he had been caught up.
I’m in a sort of story, just like Jiriki said. A story like Shem used to tell—or is it History, like Doctor Morgenes used to teach me…? But no one ever explained how terrible it is to be i
n the middle of a tale and not to know the ending…
He slipped away at last, awakening with a start some time later. Haestan, as always, was snorting and sighing in his beard, deep in slumber. There was no sign of Jiriki. Somehow, the cavern’s curious emptiness told Simon that the Sitha was truly gone, headed down the mountain to return to his home.
Stung by loneliness, even with the guardsman grumbling stuporously away nearby, he found himself crying. He did so quietly, ashamed at this failure of manhood, but he could no more stop the flow of tears than lift great Mintahoq on his back.
Simon and Haestan came to Chidsik ub Lingit at the time Jiriki had told them—an hour after dawn. The cold had worsened. The ladders and thong bridges swayed in the cold wind, unused. Mintahoq’s stone byways had become even more treacherous than usual, covered in many places by a thin skin of ice.
As the two outsiders pressed their way in through a horde of chattering trolls, Simon leaned heavily on Haestan’s fur-cloaked elbow. He had not slept well after the Sitha had gone. his dreams shot through with the shadows of swords and the compelling but inexplicable presence of the small, dark-eyed girl.
The troll folk around them were done up as if for a festival, many in shiny necklaces of carved tusk and bone, the women with their black hair bound up in combs made from the skulls of birds and fish. Men and women both passed skins of some highland liquor back and forth, laughing and gesturing as they drank. Haestan watched this procedure gloomily.
“I talked one of ’em into givin’ me sip o’ that,” the guardsman said. “Tasted like horse piss, did. What I wouldna give for drop o’ red Perdruin.”
At the center of the room, just within the moat of unlit oil, Simon and Haestan found four intricately-worked bone stools with seats of stretched hide, which stood facing the empty dais. Since the milling trolls had made themselves comfortable all around, but had left the seats empty, the interlopers guessed that two of the stools were theirs. No sooner had they seated themselves than the Yiqanuc folk gathered around them stood up. A strange noise rose, echoing from the cavern walls—a sonorous, humming chant. Incomprehensible Qanuc words, like castoff spars floating on an uneasy sea, bobbed to the surface and then slipped back beneath the steady moaning. It was a strange and disturbing sound.