by Tad Williams
“No other Queen’s Hunter has ever been granted such a responsibility,” she had told him as the indigo light of the Well filled the Chamber of the Harp. As she spoke, the groans of the Singing Harp—a great, translucent and ever-changing thing cloaked by the mists of the Well—had made the very stones of Stormspike shudder. “We have brought you back from the outlands of Death’s Country.” Utuk’ku’s glittering mask threw back the Well’s blue radiance so fiercely that her face was obscured, as though a flame burned between shoulders and crown. “We have also given you weapons and wisdom no other Queen’s Hunter has ever had. Now we offer you a task of terrible difficulty, a task like no one, mortal or immortal, has ever faced.”
“I will do it, Lady,” he had said, and his heart had throbbed within him as though it would burst from joy.
Standing now on the royal roadway, Ingen Jegger looked at the ruins of the old city that lay all about him, skeletal litter on the lower slopes of the great ice-mountain. When the huntsman’s progenitors were scarcely more than savages, he thought, ancient Nakkiga had stood beneath the nightsky in her full beauty, a needle-forest of alabaster and white witchwood, a chalcedony necklace around the mountain’s throat. Before the huntsman’s people had known fire, the Hikeda’ya had built pillared chambers within the very mountain itself, each chamber blazing with a million crystalline facets of glittering lamplight, a galaxy of stars burning in the darkness of the earth.
And now he, Ingen Jegger, was their chosen instrument! He wore the mantle no mortal had ever borne! Even to one of his training, of his horrifying discipline, it was a maddening thought.
The wind gentled. His steed made a noise of impatience, a large pale shape beside him in the flurrying snow. He stroked the horse with his gloved hand. letting his touch rest on its powerful neck, feeling the quick pulse of life. He put a boot into the stirrup and lifted himself into the saddle, then whistled for Niku’a. A few moments later the great white hound appeared on a rise nearby. Nearly as large as the huntsman’s horse, Niku’a filled the night with his steaming breath, the dog’s short fur was pearled with mist so that it glowed like moonlit marble.
“Come,” Ingen Jegger hissed. “Great deeds be before us!” The road stretched before him, leading down from the heights and into the unsuspecting lands of sleeping men. “Death is behind us.”
He spurred his horse forward. The hooves fell on the icy road like hammers.
“…And so in a way I am blinded to your brother’s machinations.” The voice in Simon’s head was growing more and more faint now, withering like a rose lingered past its season. “I have been forced to my own stratagems—and poor, weak games they seem when placed against the swarms of Nakkiga and the enduring, deathless hatred of the Red Hand. Worst of all, I do not know what I am fighting, although I believe I am now discerning the first faint shapes. If I have even a glimmer of the truth, it is horrible. Horrible.
Ineluki’s game has begun. He was the child of my loins, I cannot shirk my responsibility. Two sons I had, Hakatri. Two sons I have lost.”
The woman’s voice was only a whisper, the merest breath, but still Simon could feel its bitterness. “The eldest are always the loneliest, my quiet one, but no one should be left behind for so long by those whom they had loved.
And then she was gone.
Simon awakened slowly out of the extended darkness that had held him. His ears seemed to echo strangely, as though the absence of the voice to which he had listened so long left a greater emptiness. When he opened his eyes, light flowed in, dazzling him, when he closed them, rings of bright color spun before his shuttered lids. He assayed a more careful view of the world and found that he was in a tiny forest dell blanketed in new-fallen snow. Pale morning light streamed down through the over-hanging trees, silvering the naked branches and speckling the forest floor.
He was very cold. He was also completely alone.
“Binabik!” he cried. “Qantaqa!” A moment later he added. “Sludig!” as an afterthought. There was no reply.
Simon untangled himself from his cloak and clambered unsteadily to his feet. He shook off a coating of powdery snow, then stood for a moment rubbing his head to clear the shadows. The dingle mounted up steeply on either side of him; judging by the array of torn branches piercing his shirt and breeches, he had tumbled down from above. He felt himself gingerly, but other than the long, healing wound on his back and some ugly toothmarks on his leg, he seemed only bruised and scraped and very, very stiff. He grabbed a protruding root in his hand and clambered painfully up the side of the dell. His legs were trembling as he scrambled over the edge and stood up. A monotonous profusion of snow-robed trees stretched away in all directions. There was no sign of his friends or his horse; in fact, there was no sign of anything but endless white forest.
Simon tried to remember how he had come to this place, but drew only a shuddering memory of the last mad hours in Skodi’s abbey, of a hateful, icy voice that had plagued him, and of riding into blackness. Afterward there had been a gentler, sadder voice that had spoken long in his dreams.
He looked around, hoping at least to find a saddlebag, but with no luck. His empty scabbard was tied to his leg; after some searching, he finally spotted the bone knife from Yiqanuc lying at the bottom of the dingle. With many a self-pitying curse, Simon climbed back down to retrieve it. He felt a little better to have something sharp close to hand, but it was a very tiny consolation. When he reached the top once more and looked around at the inhospitable expanse of wintery woods, a sense of desertion and fear crept over him that had been absent for a long while. He had lost everything—everything! The sword Thorn, the White Arrow, the things that he had won, all were gone! And his friends were gone, too.
“Binabik!” he screamed. Echoes fled and vanished. “Binabik! Sludig! Help me!” Why had they deserted him? Why?
He shouted for his friends again, over and over as he stumbled back and forth across the forest clearing.
His voice hoarse, his many cries unanswered, Simon slumped down on a rock at last and fought back tears. Men shouldn’t cry just because they were lost. Men didn’t do that sort of thing. The world seemed to shimmer a little, but it was only the fierce cold that made his eyes sting so. Men shouldn’t cry, no matter how terrible things had gotten…
He put his hands in his cloak pocket to ease the chill and felt the rough carvings o Jiriki’s mirror beneath his fingers. He lifted it out. Gray sky was reflected there, as though the looking glass were full of clouds.
He held the scale of the Greater Worm before him. “Jiriki,” he murmured, breathing on the shiny surface as though his own warmth might lend the thing a kind of life. “I need help! Help me!” The only face that looked back was his own, wearing a pale scar and a sparse red beard. “Help me.”
Snow began to fall once more.
19
Children of the Navigator
Miriamele awakened slowly and unpleasantly. The pounding in her head was not helped at all by the side-to-side swaying of the floor, and she was unhappily reminded of a particular Aedonmansa supper at the palace in Meremund when she was nine years of age. An indulgent servant had allowed her to drink three goblets of wine; the wine had been watered, but Miriamele had still become very ill, throwing up all over her new Aedontide frock and spoiling it beyond reclamation.
That long-ago bout of stomach-sickness had been preceded by just such a sway as she was now feeling, as though she were aboard a boat rocking up and down in the midst of the ocean. The morning following her drunken adventure she had remained in bed with a horrific headache—a pain almost as bad as the one she was experiencing now. What grotesque indulgence had led her to this dreadful pass?
She opened her eyes. The room was fairly dark, the roofbeams over-head heavy and crudely cut. The mattress on which she was lying was impossibly uncomfortable, and the room would not stop its terrible tilting. Had she been so drunk that she had fallen and struck her head badly? Perhaps she had split her crown and was eve
n now dying…?
Cadrach.
The thought came to her suddenly. In fact, she remembered, she hadn’t been drinking or doing anything of the sort. She had been waiting in Father Dinivan’s workroom, and…and…
And Cadrach had struck her. He had said they could not wait any longer. She had said they would. Then he had said something else and hit her on the head with something heavy. Her poor head! And to think that for a foolish moment she had regretted trying to drown him!
Miriamele struggled to her feet, holding her head between her hands as though to keep the pieces together. It was just as well she was bent double: the ceiling was so low that she could not have stood up. But the swaying! Elysia, Mother of God, it was worse than being drunk! It seemed mad that being cuffed on the head could make things veer and wobble so. It was indeed just like being on a ship…
She was on a ship, and a ship under sail at that. The realization came suddenly from a subtle amalgam of clues: the movement of the floor, the faint but definite creaking of timbers, the thin, saltier-than-usual scent o fthe air. How had this happened?
It was hard to make out anything in the near-blackness, but as far as Miriamele could tell she was surrounded by casks and barrels. She was in the hold of a ship, that was certain. As she squinted into the darkness, another sound began to make itself heard, something that had been there all along, but was only now becoming clear.
Someone was snoring.
Miriamele was immediately filled with a mixture of rage and fear. If it was Cadrach, she would find him and strangle him. If it was not Cadrach—Merciful Aedon, who could say how she had wound up on this boat, or what the mad monk might have done that had made them both fugitives? If she revealed herself, it might be to a stowaway’s death sentence. But if it was Cadrach—oh, she so wanted to catch hold of his flabby neck…!
She hunkered down between a pair of casks; the sudden movement sent a stabbing pain down the back other neck. Slowly and quietly, she began to crawl toward the source of the rasping noise. Whoever was burring and mumbling so did not seem apt to be sleeping lightly, but there was no sense taking unnecessary risks.
A sudden thumping from overhead set her cowering both from possible discovery and the painful noise itself. When nothing followed but softer repetitions, Miriamele decided it was only the normal business of the ship going on above. She continued to stalk her snoring prey through the rows of close-stacked barrels.
By the time she was a few cubits away from the snorer, she no longer felt even the slightest doubt—she had heard that sodden, drunken rumble too many nights to mistake it.
At last she crouched over him. Feeling with her hand, she located the empty jug curled in the crook of his arm with which he’d besotted himself. Above that, she felt Cadrach’s unmistakable round face, the wine-sour breath piping wetly in and out of his open mouth as he snored and muttered. The feel of him filled her with fury. It would be so easy just to crack his sodden skull with the plundered jar, or topple one of the leaning barrel towers to crush him like a bug. Hadn’t he plagued her since she had met him? He had stolen from her and sold her to her enemies like a slave, and now he had struck her and dragged her by force out of God’s house. Whatever else she was, whatever her father had become, she was still a princess of the blood of King Prester John and Queen Ebekah. No drunkard of a monk had a right to lay hands on her! No man! No one.
Her anger, which had been curling and spiraling higher within her like the flames of a wind-tortured fire, blazed up and then abruptly vanished. Tears choked her; sobs thudded painfully in her chest-Cadrach stopped snoring. His slurred, querulous voice rose from the darkness before her. “My lady?”
For a moment she did not move; then, sucking in a fierce gasp of breath, she struck out at the invisible monk. She made only the most incidental contact, but it was enough to locate him in the darkness. Her next blow landed stingingly on something. “You whoreson rogue!” she hissed, then struck again.
Cadrach let out a muffled cry of pain, scrambling away from her so that her fingers struck nothing but the hold’s damp floorboards. “Why…why do you…?” he muttered. “Lady, I saved your life!”
“Liar!” she spat, and burst into tears once more.
“No, Princess, it is surely the truth. I’m sorry I hit you, but I had no choice.”
“Damnable liar!”
“No!” His voice was surprisingly firm. “And keep quiet. We dare not be discovered. We must stay down here until we can sneak off at nightfall.”
She sniffled angrily and wiped her nose on the back of her sleeve. “Dullard!” she said. “Fool! Sneak where? We’re at sea!”
There was a moment of silence. “We can’t be…” the monk said weakly. “We can’t be…”
“Can’t you feel that up-and-down dipping? You never did know anything about boats, you treacherous little man. That’s no rocking at anchor in the harbor. That’s sea-swell.” Her anger was ebbing, leaving her empty and stupefied. She fought its going. “Now, if you don’t tell me how we wound up on this boat and how we’re going to get off, I’m going to make you wish you had never left Crannhyr—or wherever you truly came from.”
“Oh, gods of my people,” Cadrach groaned, “I have been a fool. They must have cast off while we were asleep…”
“While you were asleep, drunkenly asleep. I had been beaten senseless!”
“Ah, you speak the truth, my lady. I wish you didn’t. I did drink myself into forgetfulness, princess, but there was much to forget.”
“If you mean hitting me, I won’t let you forget.”
There was another silence in the darkness of the hold. The monk’s voice, when it came at last, was strangely wistful. “Please, Miriamele. Princess. I have done wrong many times, but in this I did only what I thought best.”
She was indignant. “What you thought best! Of all the arrogance…!”
“Father Dinivan is dead, Lady.” His words spilled out swiftly. “So is Ranessin, Lector of Mother Church. Pryrates killed them both in the very heart of the Sancellan Aedonitis.”
She tried to speak, but something seemed stuck in her throat. “They’re…?”
“Dead, Princess. By tomorrow morning the news will be traveling like wildfire all across the face of Osten Ard.”
It was hard to think about, hard to understand. Sweet, homely Father Dinivan, who had blushed like a boy! And the lector, who was going to make everything right, somehow. Now, nothing would be right. Nothing ever again.
“Are you telling the truth?” she asked at last.
“I wish I were not, Lady. I wish this were only another of my long index of falsehoods, but it is not. Pryrates rules Mother Church, or as good as. Your only true friends in Nabban are dead, and that is why we are hiding in the hold of a ship that was floating at anchor in the docks below the Sancellan…”
The monk found it hard to finish, but the odd catch in his voice finally convinced her beyond any doubting. The darkness in the ship’s belly seemed to grow. In the immeasurable time that followed, when it seemed that all the tears she had held back since leaving home came welling up at once, Miriamele felt as though that black shroud of despair had grown to enfold all the world.
“So where are we?” she asked at last. Clasping her knees, she rocked slowly back and forth in countermotion to the swaying of the ship.
Cadrach’s mournful voice whispered out of the darkness. “I do not know, my lady. As I told you, I brought us to a boat that was anchored beneath the Sancellan. It was dark.”
Miriamele strove to compose herself, grateful that no one could see her tear-reddened face. “Yes, but whose ship? What did it look like? Whose mark was on the sail?”
“I know little of boats, Princess, you know that. It is a boat, a large one. The sails were furled. I think there was a bird of prey painted on the bow, but the lamps burned very low.”
“What bird?” she asked urgently.
“A fish hawk, I think, or some such. Black and gold.”
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br /> “An osprey.” Miriamele sat up straight, drumming her fingers agitatedly against her leg. “That is the Prevan House. I wish I knew how they stood, but it has been so long since I lived here! Perhaps they are supporters of my late uncle and would take us to safety.” She smiled wryly—for her own benefit only, since the darkness hid her from the monk. “But where would that be?”
“Believe me, Lady,” Cadrach said fervently. “At this moment, the coldest, darkest, inner chambers of Stormspike would be safer for us than the Sancellan Aedonitis. I told you, Lector Ranessin has been thrown down and murdered! Can you imagine how Pryrates’ power must have grown that he would slay the lector right in God’s own house?”
Miriamele’s fingers suddenly stopped drumming. “That was an odd thing to say. What do you know of Stormspike and its inner chambers, Cadrach?”
The uneasy truce that shock and horror had built seemed suddenly very foolish. Miriamele’s quick-flaring anger masked a sudden fear. Who was this monk, who knew so much and acted so oddly? And here she was once more, trusting him, trapped in a dark place into which he himself had led her. “I asked you a question.”
“My lady,” Cadrach said, hesitant as he searched for words “There are many things…”
He broke off suddenly. A wrenching noise echoed through the hold, bright torchlight stabbed down as the hatch door rose. Blinking, the princess and Cadrach threw themselves among the piled casks, squirming for shelter like earthworms in a shovel-turn of soil. Miriamele caught a brief glimpse of a cloaked figure climbing backward down the ladder. She curled herself back against the inner wall of the hold and drew her legs up before her, hiding her face beneath her down-dropping hood.