by Tad Williams
He frowned. I should’ve known, he thought sourly. I would recognize Pryrates’ jackal-barking anywhere. Curse the unnatural bastard, can he give the king no peace?
As he debated whether he should knock, he heard the king’s low murmur. A third voice froze Guthwulf’s hand in midair, knuckle poised before the doorframe.
This last voice was high-pitched and sweet, but there was something alien in its tone, something inhuman in its music. It acted on his senses like a plunge in cold water, bringing up the hair on the back of his arms and setting a shiver into his breath. He thought he recognized the words “sword” and “mountains” before the numbing fear overcame him. He stepped back from the door so quickly he almost tumbled down the stairs.
Have those hell-things come here? he wondered. He wiped his sweating palms on his nightshirt and retreated a step down from the landing. What devil’s work is this? Has Elias lost his mind? His soul?
The voices rose in volume, then the door squeaked as someone lifted the inside bolt. All thought of confronting Elias gone, the Earl of Utanyeat knew only that he did not want to be found listening at the keyhole—did not want to meet the thing that spoke so strangely. He looked around distractedly for a place to hide, but the staircase was narrow-He vaulted down the steps in a rush, but had only just reached the outer door when he heard footsteps on the landing above. Guthwulf ducked into the alcove beneath the stairway, pushing himself back into the shadows as the steps creaked. Two figures, one more distinct than the other, paused in the doorway.
“The king is pleased with this news,” Pryrates was saying. The darker shape beside him said nothing. A smear of white face gleamed in the depths of its dark hood. Pryrates stepped through the door, his scarlet garments showing deep violet-blue in the moonlight as he pivoted his baldhead this way and that, looking carefully. A shadow followed him out into the garden.
Anger suddenly rose inside Guthwulf, overwhelming even his unreasoning fear. That the master of Utanyeat should cower under stairs—and from something that the cursed priest treated as companionably as a country uncle!
“Pryrates!” Guthwulf cried, stepping out from beneath the stairway. “I would have a word with you…”
The earl’s slippered feet crunched to a halt on the gravel. The priest stood before him, alone in the middle of the path. The wind sighed in the hedges, but there was no other sound, no other movement but the faint rippling of leaves.
“Earl Guthwulf,” Pryrates said, wrinkling his hairless brow in apparent surprise, “what are you doing out here? And at such an hour.” He looked Guthwulf’s costume up and down. “Have you had trouble sleeping?”
“Yes…no…damn you, priest, that’s not important! I was just on my way to see the king!”
Pryrates nodded. “Ah. Well, I’ve just left His Majesty. He’s just taken his sleeping draught, so whatever you desire to speak of should wait until morning.”
Guthwulf looked up at the mocking moon, then around the courtyard. It was empty but for the two of them. He felt dizzy, betrayed by his own senses. “You were alone with the king?” he asked at last.
The priest stared at him for a moment. “But for his new cupbearer, yes. And a few body-servants in the outer rooms. Why?”
The earl felt the last bit of ground sliding from beneath his feet. “Cupbearer? That is, I just wanted to know…I thought…” Guthwulf struggled to regain his poise. “There’s no guard posted on that door.” He pointed.
“With such a doughty warrior as yourself stalking the gardens,” Pryrates smiled, “there is scarce need for one—but you are correct. I will speak to the chief constable about it. Now, if you’ll excuse me, my lord, I must go to my narrow bed. I have had a long, wearying day of statecraft. Good night.”
With a swirl of his robe, the priest turned and walked away, vanishing in a cluster of shadows at the far side of the courtyard.
The traveler’s spirit came back to him as he rode through the endless snows, but his name did not. He could not remember how he came to be riding the horse, or if the beast was his. Neither did he know where he had been, or what had happened to cause the dreadful pain that ran through his body, twisting and crippling his limbs. He knew only that he must ride on toward a spot behind the horizon, following a curved seam of stars that burned in the northwestern skies at night. He could not remember what place he would find there.
He stopped only seldom for sleep: the ride itself was a kind of waking dream, a long white tunnel of wind and ice that seemed never-ending. Ghosts attended him, a vast crowd of homeless dead walking at his stirrups. Some of these were of his own making—or so it seemed from the reproach written on their pale faces—others were the importuning spirits for whom he had killed. But none of them held any power over him now. Without his name, he was as much a phantom as were they.
So they traveled together, the unnamed man and the nameless dead; a lone rider and a whispering, insubstantial horde that accompanied him like foam carried on before an ocean wave.
Each time the sun died and the star-crescent bloomed in the shimmering northwest sky, he made a slash with his knife in the leather of his saddle. Sometimes when the sun vanished, the wind filled the dark sky with sleet and the stars did not appear. Still, he marked his saddle. Seeing the pale weal’s in the oil-darkened leather reassured him, proved that something could change in this eternal sameness of mountains and stones and snowy plain, and suggested that he was not merely crawling in a pointless circle like a blind insect on the rim of a cup. The only other measure of time’s passage was his hunger, which now shouted above even the most terrible of his other pains. And that, too, was a queer comfort. To starve was to live. Dead, he might find himself condemned to join the throng of whispering shades that surrounded him, doomed to flitter and sigh in this lifeless waste forever. While he lived, there was at least a faint, cold hope—although what it was that he might hope for he could not quite recall.
There were eleven slashes on the saddle when his horse died. One moment they were striding forward, breasting a drift of new snow; the next moment his mount sank slowly to its knees, quivering, then toppled over, a silent spray of white thrown up all around. After a while he pulled himself free, his pain a voice as distant as the stars he followed. He clambered to his feet and began, unsteadily, to walk. Two more suns rose and fell as he trudged on. Even his ghosts disappeared at last, scrubbed away by the howling snows. He thought the weather might be getting colder, but could not remember for certain what cold was.
When the next sun climbed, it was into a freezing, slate-gray sky. The wind had subsided and the swirling snows had dropped back down into feathery drifts. Before him, looming jagged and severe as a shark’s tooth against the horizon, stood the mountain. A grim crown of iron-gray clouds hung about its shadowed peak, fed by smokes and steam that issued from cracks along its icy flanks. Seeing it, he fell forward onto his knees and uttered a silent prayer of thanks- He still did not know his name, but he knew that this was what he sought.
When another darkness and light had passed, he found himself nearing the mountain’s shadow, walking in a land of icy hills and dark dales. Mortal men and women lived here, pale-haired, suspicious-eyed, huddling in clan-houses made of muddied stone and heavy black beams. He did not pass through their bleak villages, though he thought them dimly familiar. When the inhabitants hailed him and approached, coming no closer than superstition allowed, he ignored them and stumbled on.
Another day of painful trudging carried him beyond the dwellings of the pale-haired folk. Here the mountain blocked the sky so that even the sun seemed small and remote, and a kind of perpetual evening covered the land. Sometimes staggering, sometimes crawling, he climbed the steps of the old, old road through the hills at the mountain’s foot, through the silvery, frost-veiled ruins of a long-dead city. Pillars like broken bones pushed up through the snowy crust. Arches like the long-vacant eyes of skulls loomed against the mountain’s shadowed ridges.
His strength was fadi
ng at last, so near to his goal. The crumbling, icy road ended at a great gate in the face of the mountain, a gate taller than a tower, made of chalcedony quartz, shining alabaster, and witchwood, hung on hinges of black granite and graven with strange shapes and stranger runes. It was before this gate that he stopped, the last dregs of life leaking from his tortured frame. As the final blackness began to descend on him, the mighty gate opened. A flock of white figures came forth, beautiful as ice in the sun, terrible as winter. They had watched him come. They had witnessed his every failing step across the white wilderness. Now, their unfathomable curiosity somehow satisfied, they brought him at last into the fastness of the mountain.
The nameless traveler awakened in a great pillared chamber within the mountain’s blue-lit heart. Smoke and vapor from the titan well at the chamber’s center rose to mix with the snow that flurried beneath the impossibly high ceiling. For a long while he could only lie staring up at the swirling clouds. When he could move his eyes further, he saw before him a great throne of black rock, covered all over with a patina of frost. Upon this seat was a white-robed figure whose silver mask glowed like an azure flame, reflecting the light that spilled from the great well. He was suddenly filled with exaltation, but also with horrible, horrible shame.
“Mistress,” he cried as remembrance came flooding back, “destroy me, mistress! Destroy me, for I have failed you!”
The silver mask tilted toward him. A wordless chant arose in the shadows of the chamber, where eyes glittered down at him from a crowd of watchers, as if the ghosts that had accompanied him through the waste had come now to judge him and witness his undoing.
“Be silent,” said Utuk’ku. Her terrible voice seized him with invisible hands, laying a spell of chill that reached down into his very heart, making him stone. “I will find out what I wish to know.”
After his dreadful wounds and his hideous journey across the snows, his pain had become so general that he had forgotten there was any other kind of sensation. He had worn his torment as unheedingly as he had his namelessness, but that had been pain only of the body. Now he was reminded—as were most who visited Stormspike—that there were agonies that far outstripped any corporeal injuries, and suffering that was unmitigated by the possibility of death’s release.
Utuk’ku, the mountain’s mistress, was old beyond comprehension and had learned many things. She could, perhaps, have gained the knowledge she sought from him without inflicting terrible torture. If such mercy was possible, she chose not to exercise it.
He screamed and screamed. The great chamber echoed.
The icy thoughts of the Queen of the Norns crept through him, wrenching at his very being with cold, heedless claws. It was an agony beyond anything, beyond fear, or imagination. She emptied him, and he was a helpless witness. All that had happened, all his experiences, leaped from him, his inmost thoughts and private self ripped out and exhibited; it felt as though she had slit him open like a fish and pulled free his struggling soul.
He saw again the pursuit up Urmsheim Mountain, his quarry’s discovery of the sword they had sought, his own battle with the mortals and Sithi. He witnessed once more the coming of the snow-dragon and his own terrible wounding, how he had been crushed and bloodied, buried beneath blocks of centuried ice. Then, as if he observed a stranger, he watched a dying creature struggling across the snows toward Stormspike, a nameless wretch who had lost his quarry, lost his company, and had even lost the hound-helm that marked him as the first mortal ever to be Queen’s Huntsman. At last, the spectacle of his shame faded.
Utuk’ku nodded again, her silver mask seeming to stare into the tumult of fogs above the Well of the Breathing Harp. “It is not for you to say whether or not you have failed me, mortal,” she said at last. “But know this: I am not unpleased. I have learned many useful things today. The world still spins, but it spins toward us.”
She raised a hand. The chant swelled in the shadows of the chamber. Something vast seemed to move in the depths of the Well, setting the vapors to dancing. “I give you back your name, Ingen Jegger,” Utuk’ku said. “You are still the Queen’s Hunter.” From her lap she lifted a new helm of gleaming white shaped like the head of a questing hound, eyes and lolling tongued worked in some scarlet gem, the serried teeth daggers of ivory in the gaping jaw. “And this time I will give to you a quarry such as no mortal has ever hunted!”
A billow of radiance leaped in the Well of the Harp, splashing the high pillars; a roar as of thunder rang through the chamber, so deep it seemed to set the underpinnings of the mountain itself to shaking. Ingen Jegger felt his spirit surge. He made a thousand silent promises to his wonderful mistress.
“But first you must sleep deeply and be healed,” the silver mask said, “for you have crossed farther into the realms of death than mortals may usually go and yet return. You will be made stronger, for your coming task will be a hard one.”
The light abruptly vanished, as though a dark cloud had rolled over him.
The forest was still deep in night. After the shouting, the silence seemed to ring in Deornoth’s ears as burly Einskaldir helped him to his feet.
“Usires on the Tree, look there,” the Rimmersman said, panting. Still stunned, Deornoth looked around, wondering what he had done that would make Einskaldir stare so strangely.
“Josua,” the Rimmersman called, “come here!”
The prince slid Naidel back into its sheath and stepped forward. Deornoth could see the other members of the company pressing in.
“For once they have not just struck and melted away.” Josua said grimly. “Deornoth, are you well?”
The knight shook his head, still confused. “My head hurts,” he said. What were they all looking at?
“It…it had a knife to my throat,” Father Strangyeard said, wonderingly. “Sir Deornoth saved me.”
Josua bent toward Deornoth, but surprised him by continuing downward until he crouched on one knee. “Aedon save us,” the prince said softly.
Deornoth looked down at last. On the ground by his feet was the crumpled, black-garbed form of the Norn with whom he had struggled. The moonlight played over the corpselike face, spatters of blood in dark relief against the white skin. A wickedly slender knife was still clutched in the Norn’s pallid hand.
“My God!” Deornoth said, and swayed.
Josua leaned nearer to the body. “You struck a strong blow, old friend,” he said, then his eyes widened and he sprang up. Naidel whicked out of its scabbard once more.
“He moved,” Josua said, striving to keep his voice level. “The Norn is alive.”
“Not long,” Einskaldir said, raising his axe. Josua’s hand shot out, so that Naidel lay between the Rimmersman and his intended victim.
“No.” Josua motioned the others back. “It would be foolish to kill him.”
“It tried to kill us!” Isorn hissed. The duke’s son had just returned, bearing a torch he had lit with his flint-stone. “Think of what they did to Naglimund.”
“I do not speak of mercy, “Josua said, dropping the tip of his sword to rest on the Norn’s pale throat. “I speak of the chance to question a prisoner.”
As if from the pricking of his flesh, the Norn stirred. Several in the company gasped.
“You are too close, Josua!” Vorzheva cried. “Step away!”
The prince turned a cold look on her but did not move. He lowered Naidel’s point a little, pushing it against the prisoner’s breastbone. The Norn’s eyes fluttered open as he sucked a great rasp of breath past his blooded lips.
“Ai, Nakkiga,” the Norn said hoarsely, flexing his spidery fingers, “O’do ’tke stazho…”
“But he’s heathen, Prince Josua,” Isorn said. “He can’t speak a human tongue.”
Josua said nothing, but prodded again. The Norn’s eyes caught the torchlight, throwing back a strange violet reflection. The slitted gaze slid up the blade of the sword balanced on his slender chest until it settled at last on the prince.
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nbsp; “I speak,” the Norn said slowly. “I speak your tongue.” His voice was high and cold, brittle as a glass flute. “Soon it will be spoken only by the dead.” The creature sat up and swiveled his head, looking carefully all around him. The prince’s sword followed each movement. The Norn seemed jointed in strange places, his motions fluid where a mortal’s would be awkward, but elsewhere full of unexpected hitches. Several of those watching started away, frightened that the stranger was strong enough to move without show of pain, despite the bleeding ruin that had been his nose and the marks he bore of numerous other wounds.
“Gutrun, Vorzheva…” Josua spoke without looking away from the prisoner. Beneath the web of drying blood, the Norn’s face seemed to glow like a moon. “You, too, Strangyeard,” the prince said. “The harper and Towser are alone. Go see to them and start a fire. Then make ready to depart. There is no use in our trying to hide now.”
“There never was, mortal man,” said the thing on the ground.
Vorzheva visibly bit back a response to Josua’s command. The two women turned away. Father Strangyeard followed after them, making the sign of the Tree and clucking worriedly.
“Now, hell-wight, speak. Why do you follow us?” Though his tone was harsh, Deornoth thought he saw a sort of fascination on the prince’s face.
“I will tell you nothing.” The thin lips parted in a smirk. “Pitiful, short-lived things. Are you not yet used to dying with your questions unanswered?”
Infuriated, Deornoth stepped forward and kicked at the thing’s side with his booted foot. The Norm grimaced, but showed no other sign of pain. “You are a devil-spawn, and devils are masters of lies,” Deornoth snarled. His head hurt fiercely, and the sight of this grinning, bony creature was almost too much to bear. He remembered them swarming through Naglimund like maggots and felt his gorge rising.
“Deornoth…” Josua said warningly, then addressed the prisoner once more. “If you are so mighty, why do your fellows not slay us and be done with it? Why waste your time on ones so much lower than you?”