by Tad Williams
Time sped. He felt grave-worms eating his flesh, felt himself coming apart deep within the black earth, rendered into innumerable particles that ached to scream without voices to do so, at the same moment, like a rushing wind, he flew laughing past the stars and into the endless places between life and death. For a moment the very door of Mystery swung open and a dark shadow stood beckoning in the doorway…
Long after Elias had sheathed the sword, Guthwulf still lay choking on the steps before the Dragonbone Chair, his eyes burning with tears, his fingers helplessly flexing.
“Now can you understand?” The king said, beaming with pleasure as though he had just given his friend a taste of a singularly splendid wine. “Do you understand why I must not fail?”
The Earl of Utanyeat got slowly to his feet. His clothes were soiled and spattered. He turned wordlessly from his liege lord and staggered across the throne room floor, pushing through the door and into the hallway without looking back.
“Do you see?” Elias shouted after him.
A trio of ravens fluttered down to the windowsill. They stood close together, their yellow eyes intent.
“Guthwulf?” Elias was no longer shouting, but still his voice carried through the silent room like a tolling bell. “Come back, old friend.”
“Look, Binabik!” Simon cried. “What are those birds doing?!”
The troll followed Simon’s pointing finger. The ravens were wheeling madly about the sky overhead, flying in long, looping circles.
“They are upset, perhaps,” Binabik shrugged. “I do not have much knowledge of the ways of such things…”
“No, they’re looking for something!” Simon said, excited. “They’re looking for something! I know it! Just look at them!”
“But they are not leaving the air above us.” Binabik raised his voice as the ravens began to call back and forth, their croaking voices sharp as blades in the still air.
Sludig had reined up his horse, too, and was staring up at the strange exhibition. He narrowed his eyes. “If this is not some deviltry,” he said, “then I am not an Aedonite. The raven was Old One-Eye’s bird, back in the dark days…” He trailed off as he saw something new. “There!” he said, pointing. “Is that not some other bird they are chasing?”
Now Simon could see it too: a smaller gray shape that flitted among the black ones, darting wildly, now this way, now that. At every turn it seemed to find one of the larger birds already there. It was tiring, Simon could see plainly, its loops becoming ever more ragged, its escapes narrower.
“It’s a sparrow!” Simon cried. “Like the ones Morgenes had! They’re going to kill it!”
Even as he spoke, the swooping circle of ravens seemed to sense that the quarry was nearing its limits. The whirling funnel contracted and the croaking voices rose as if in triumph. Then, just when it seemed the hunt was over, the sparrow found an open space and burst free of the black ring, darting unevenly toward a stand of fir trees half a furlong away. The ravens, shrieking, whirled in pursuit.
“I do not think it chance that such a bird should be here,” Binabik said, unscrewing his walking stick to shake free his pouch of darts. “Or that the ravens would be waiting with such patientness just where we are.” He grabbed Qantaqa’s hackles. “Chok, Qantaqa!” he cried. “Ummu chok!”
The wolf sprang away, churning the snow beneath her broad paws. Sludig dug in his heels and his mount leaped after her. Simon, cursing beneath his breath, wrestled for a moment with Homefinder’s reins. By the time he had them sorted out, she had decided to follow Sludig’s horse anyway. Simon clung to her neck as they pounded over the uneven snow, hoof-churned sleet burning his eyes.
The ravens were circling the copse like a swarm of black bees. Binabik, in the lead, vanished among the close-standing trunks. Sludig went just after, his spear now in his hand. Simon had a moment to wonder how the Rimmersman would kill birds with a heavy spear, then the line of trees was looming before him as well. He pulled up on the reins, slowing his horse. He ducked his head beneath a low-hanging branch, but was not fast enough to avoid a clump of snow falling into the loose hood of his cloak and slithering down his neck.
Binabik stood beside Qantaqa at the center of the copse, the hollow tube to his mouth. The troll’s cheeks puffed; a moment later a large black bundle fell down through the branches overhead, flapping in a slow circle on the white ground before it died.
“There!” Binabik said, gesturing. Sludig poked upward with his spear, rattling its point among the tree limbs as Qantaqa gave vent to a sharp, excited bark.
A black wing skimmed by Simon’s face. The raven struck at the back of Sludig’s head, its claws scrabbling impotently against the metal of his helm. Another one swooped down from above, squawking, whirling about the Rimmersman’s arms as he plied the spear.
Why aren’t I wearing a helmet? Simon thought disgustedly as he raised his hand before his suddenly vulnerable eyes.
The little copse raged with the angry voices of birds. Qantaqa had her front paws up on a tree trunk, shaking her head from side to side as if she had already caught one of them.
Something small and still as a tiny snowball dropped from the tree overhead. Binabik fell to his knees at the Rimmersman’s feet and cupped it in his hands.
“I have it!” he cried. “Let us be going into the open! Sosa, Qantaqa!” He clambered onto the wolfs back, his hand now tucked inside his jacket. He had to duck beneath the onslaught of one of the ravens; the haft of Sludig’s spear whistled through the space his head had just vacated, smacking the bird like a club, shattering it into a puff of dark feathers. A moment later the wolf had earned Binabik out from beneath the trees. Simon and Sludig quickly followed.
Despite the angry voices of the birds behind them, the open ground outside seemed remarkably still to Simon. He turned to look back. Hard yellow eyes stared from the uppermost branches, but the ravens did not follow.
“You saved the bird?” he asked.
“Let us be riding farther away,” Binabik said. “Then we will look to what we have.”
When they stopped, the troll took his hand from beneath his skin jacket. He opened it slowly, as though not sure what he might find there. The bird nestled inside was dead, or nearly so. It lay on its side unstirring, its ragged wounds striped with blood. There was a shred of parchment about its leg.
“I was thinking this could be,” Binabik said, looking over his shoulder. The dark silhouettes of a dozen ravens sat like hunch-shouldered inquisitors in the nearest tree. “I am afraid that we are more late than we should have been.”
His small finger unfurled the parchment. It had been chewed or torn until but a part of it remained. “A fragment, only,” Binabik said sadly.
Simon looked at the tiny runes dotting the ragged strip. “We could go back to the trees and look for the rest,” he said, disliking the idea mightily even as he said it.
The troll shook his head. “I have a sureness that the rest has found its way down a raven gullet—as would this scrap, too, and the messenger, if we had been later still.” He squinted at it. “Few words am I making out, but I feel no doubt it was meant for us. See?” He pointed at a minute squiggle. “The circle and feather of the League of the Scroll. It was sent by a Scrollbearer.”
“Who?” Simon asked
“Patience, Simon-friend. Perhaps the remaining message will tell.” He held the curling strip as flat as he could. “Two bits only can I read,” he said. “This, saying ‘…ary of false messengers,’ and this ‘Make haste. The Storm is spr…’ Then it is signed below with the League’s mark.”
“False messenger,” Simon breathed, dread creeping through him. “That was the dream I had in Geloë’s house. Doctor Morgenes told me to beware the false messenger.” He tried to push away the memory of that dream. In it the doctor had been a charred corpse.
“ ‘Be wary of false messengers’ is then what it is likely meaning,” Binabik said, nodding his head. “ ‘Make haste. The Storm is spr…’
Spreading, I am supposing.”
The great fear Simon had kept suppressed for several days came crawling back. “False messenger,” he repeated helplessly “What can it mean? Who wrote it, Binabik?”
The troll shook his head. He tucked the silver of parchment in his bag and then kneeled, scraping a hole in the snow. “It is a Scrollbearer, and there are not many now alive. It might be Jarnauga, if he still lives. There is also Dinivan in Nabban.” He laid the little gray bird in the hole and tenderly covered it over.
“Dinivan?” Simon asked
“He is the helper of the Lector Ranessin, the head of your Mother Church,” Binabik said. “A very good man.”
Sludig, who had stood silent, suddenly spoke. “The lector is part of your heathen circle?” he said wonderingly. “With trolls and such?”
Binabik smiled a tiny smile. “Not the lector. Father Dinivan, his helper. And it is not a ‘heathen circle,’ Sludig, but a band of those who wished the preserving of important knowledge—for just such times as these are.” He frowned. “I am thinking of who else it might be who was writing this message to us—or to me, rather, for it is my master’s arts that likely drew the bird here to me. If not one of the two I mentioned, then I cannot be saying, for Morgenes and my master Ookequk are dead. There are no other Scrollbearers I know of, unless new ones have been chosen.”
“Could it be Geloë?” Simon asked
Binabik thought for a moment, then shook his head. “She is one of the wisest of the wise, but she has never been a true Scrollbearer, and I am doubting she would use the League’s rune in place of her own.” He mounted up onto Qantaqa’s back “We will think of the meaning of this warning as we ride. There are many messengers who have led us to this place, and many others we will doubtlessly be meeting in days and weeks to come. Which are false? It is a puzzle of great difficulty.”
“Look, the ravens are flying!” Sludig cried Simon and Binabik turned to see the birds swarm up from the stand of trees like smoke, swirling in the gray sky before wheeling away into the northwest, their disdainful voices echoing.
“They have done what they were sent for doing,” Binabik said “Now they are headed back to Stormspike, do you suppose?”
Simon’s cold fear deepened. “You mean…the Storm King sent them after us?”
“I have little doubt that they were meant to keep that message from our eyes,” Binabik said. leaning forward to pick his walking stick from the ground.
Simon turned to follow the flight of the vanishing ravens. He almost expected to see a dark figure looming on the northern horizon, a burning red gaze in a faceless black head.
“Those storm clouds on the horizon look very dark,” Simon said. “A lot darker than they did before.”
“The lad’s right.” Sludig glowered. “That’s an ugly storm gathering.”
Binabik sighed. His round face was grim, too. “The last part of the message we all of us understand. The storm is spreading, in more than one way only. We have a long journeying ahead over open and unprotected country. We will need to go with all the speed that we can be making.”
Qantaqa started ahead. Simon and Sludig spurred their horses forward. Prompted by something he did not understand, Simon looked back once more, although he knew what he would see.
The ravens, now little more than black specks on the wind, were fading from sight into the dark swell of the gathering storm.
13
The Stallion Clan
The Prince’s company came out at last onto the plains after nearly a month in the vast, ancient forest. As they broke through the last line of trees the grasslands opened before them, a floor of uneven turf shrouded by morning mist, merging seamlessly with the gray horizon.
Father Strangyeard sped his pace to catch up with Geloë. The witch woman was striding purposefully out onto the flatland, wet stems falling before her approach.
“Valada Geloë,” Strangyeard said breathlessly, “ah, this is a marvelous book Morgenes has written. Marvelous! Valada Geloë, have you read this passage?” He tried to juggle the loose pages, stumbled over a tussock, and only barely retained his balance. “I think there is something here of importance. Ah, how silly of me, how foolish—there are many things of importance. What a marvelous book!”
Geloë put her hand on Leleth’s shoulder, bringing the child to a halt. The little girl did not look up, but stood where she had stopped, staring out into the mists.
“Strangyeard, you will do yourself an injury,” Geloë said brusquely. She looked at him expectantly. “Well?”
“Oh, dear,” the archivist said. He tugged at his eyepatch self-consciously, almost losing his armful of pages in the process. “I didn’t want you to stop walking. I can read and still keep up.”
“I repeat: you will do yourself an injury. Read.”
Before Strangyeard could do so, they were interrupted by new arrivals.
“Praise God,” Isorn cried. He and Deornoth struggled out of the trees upslope. “We are out of the cursed forest and on open ground!” The pair carefully set down the litter they had been dragging, glad to rest Sangfugol’s weight for a moment. Under the witch woman’s ministrations, the harper was healing well and swiftly from what should have been a fatal corruption of his blood, but he still could not walk more than a few hours at a time.
Geloë turned to look back. “Praise God all you wish,” she warned, “but we may regret the loss of those sheltering trees before long.”
The rest of the party limped down out of the woods. Prince Josua was helping Towser, who walked dazed and unspeaking, the old man’s eyes were rolled up, as though he contemplated a distant heaven hidden behind the fog-blanketed sky. Vorzheva and Duchess Gutrun walked a little way behind them.
“It has been many years since I have seen the Thrithings,” Josua said, “even this tamer part. I had almost forgotten its beauty.” He closed his eyes in thought for a moment, then opened them once more to gaze out toward the indistinct horizon. “It is like no other land in all of Osten Ard—some call it ‘God’s tabletop.’ ”
“If this is indeed God’s tabletop,” Sangfugol said with a weak smile, “my prince. He uses us for dice. Aedon save me, I am meant to sing of Jack Mundwode and his naughty bandits, not ape their forest-traipsing.” He struggled out of the litter. “I need to get out of this thumping, bouncing torture device and sit down—no, the grass is fine for me. I fear my sore leg more than the wet.”
“Some gratitude,” Isorn said, smiling. “I think I shall show you what thumping really is, harper.”
“Very well,” Josua said. “We shall rest. No one stray far, and if you go more than a stone’s throw, take someone with you.”
“So we have escaped the forest,” Deornoth sighed. “If only Einskaldir could have seen it.” He thought of the Rimmersman’s grave in one of the quiet glades of Shisae’ron, a simple mound marked only by his helmet and Strangyeard’s wooden Tree. Even Geloë’s healing skills had not been enough to save him from the terrible wounds he had received leading their escape from the Norns. Now, fierce Einskaldir would be forever in a place of timeless calm. “He was a stern bastard, bless him.” Deornoth shook his head. “He never gave up, either—but I don’t think he believed we would ever get away.”
“We wouldn’t have, if not for him,” Isorn said. “He’s another mark on the list.”
“List?”
“The list of what is owed to our enemies—to Skali and Elias and all the rest.” Isorn’s broad face was grim. “We owe them a blood feud. Someday, they will pay for what they did. And when it happens, Einskaldir will be watching in heaven. And laughing.”
Deornoth could think of nothing to say. If Einskaldir could watch battles from heaven, he would be laughing. For all his piety, it seemed a shame that Einskaldir had missed the old pagan days of Rimmersgard, and would instead be forced to spend his eternity in the quieter environs of Aedon’s paradise.
As the others milled about, Vorzheva said a quiet word to Duchess G
utrun, then walked down the short slope and onto the damp meadow.
She moved as if in a kind of dream, her eyes fixed on nothing, her track aimless and elliptical as she made her way through the damp grasses.
“Vorzheva,” Josua called, his voice sharper than usual, “do not go alone. The mist is very thick and you would soon be out of sight.”
“She would have to go very far before she would be out of earshot, Prince Josua,” said Duchess Gutrun, leading Towser with a gentle hand on his elbow.
“That may be,” Josua said, “but I would prefer we were not stumbling through the fog, shouting our presence to any listening ears. Surely you have not so soon forgotten our escort from Naglimund.”
Gutrun shook her head in dismay, conceding the point. Vorzheva, seemingly oblivious to the discussion, was now only a dim upright shape slipping through the mists like a ghost.
“Damn her frowardness,” Josua said grimly, staring after her.
“I will go with her.” Geloë turned to Gutrun “Keep the child close to you, please.” She pointed Leleth in the general direction of the duchess, then strode off after the fast-fading Vorzheva.
Josua watched her go, then laughed unhappily. “If this is the way I command a kingdom of nine or ten,” he told Deornoth, “then my brother can rest easily on the Dragonbone Chair. People used to beg to do my father John’s bidding.”
Even his queen? Deornoth wondered, but he did not say it. He watched the dark shape of Geloë catch up to the wraith that was Vorzheva. If you have a proud and headstrong woman, you would be better off not to judge your success by her obedience.
“Please, my lord,” he said instead, “do not speak ill of yourself. You are hungry and tired and cold. Let me build a fire.”
“No, Deornoth.” Josua rubbed the stump of his wrist as though it hurt. “We will not stay so long.” He turned to look back at the forest fringe and the gaping shadows that lined it. “We must move farther before we do more than pause to rest. We will stop somewhere that puts us in open ground on all sides. At least then, even though we are exposed, anything that stalks us will be exposed as well.”