by Tad Williams
The one who had entered the hold made very little noise, picking carefully between the stacks of provisions. Miriamele’s speeding heart seemed to jump in her breast as the footsteps came to a sudden halt just a few cubits away. She held her breath in her straining lungs until it seemed she would burst. The sound of the surf was as loud in her ears as the bellowing of a bull, but a strange musical humming floated beneath it like the drowsy murmur of bees. Then the drone abruptly stopped.
“Why do you hide here?” a voice asked, a dry finger touched her face. Miriamele’s pent-up breath flew out explosively and her eyes snapped open. The voice exclaimed “Ah, but you are only a child!”
The one who bent over her had pale golden skin and large, wide-set dark eyes that peered from beneath a fringe of white hair. She seemed aged and frail; her hooded robe could not hide the slightness of her frame
“A Niskie!” Miriamele gasped, then lifted her hand to her mouth.
“Why should that surprise you?” the other said, thin brows arching. Her skin was netted with fine wrinkles, but her movements were precise. “Where better to find a Niskie than on a deep-water ship? No, the question, stranger-girl, is why are you here?” She turned toward the shadows where the monk still hid. “And that question also goes for you, man. Why are you skulking in the hold?”
When there was no immediate answer from either stowaway, she shook her head. “Then I suppose I must call for the ship’s master.
“No, please,” Miriamele said. “Cadrach, come out. Niskies have sharp ears.” She smiled in what she hoped was a conciliatory manner. “If we had known it was you we would not have bothered. It is foolish to try to hide from a Niskie.”
“Yes.” Their discoverer nodded, pleased. “Now tell me who are you?”
“Malachias…” Miriamele stopped, realizing that her gender had already been identified. “Marya, that is. That’s me. Cadrach is my companion.” The monk, crawling out from a bulky fold of sailcloth, grunted.
“Good.” The Niskie smiled in tight-lipped satisfaction. “My name is Gan Itai. Eadne Cloud is my ship. I sing the kilpa down.”
Cadrach was staring. “Sing the kilpa down? What does that mean?”
“You said you were well-traveled,” Miriamele broke in. “Everyone knows that you can’t take a boat out to deep sea without a Niskie to sing the songs that keep the kilpa away. You know what kilpa are, don’t you?”
“I have heard of them, yes,” Cadrach said shortly. He turned his curious gaze back to Gan Itai, who rocked back and forth, listening. “You are of the Tinukeda’ya, are you not?”
The Niskie’s mouth widened in a toothless grin. “We are Navigator’s Children, yes. Long ago we came back to the sea, and by the sea we stayed. Now, tell Gan Itai what you do on this ship.”
Miriamele looked at Cadrach, but the monk seemed absorbed in thought. The torchlight showed his pale face beaded with sweat. Whether from the shock of discovery or something else, the fog of his drunkenness seemed to have burned away. His small eyes were troubled but clear. “We cannot tell all,” the princess answered. “We have done no wrong, but our lives are in danger, so we are hiding.”
Gan Itai narrowed her long eyes and pursed her lips meditatively “I must tell the ship’s master you are here,” she said at last. “If that is wrong, I am sorry, but I owe first allegiance to Eadne Cloud. Stowaways are always reported. No harm must come to my ship.”
“We wouldn’t hurt the ship,” Miriamele said desperately, but the Niskie was moving swiftly toward the ladder, her nimbleness belying her apparent frailty.
“I regret, but I do what I must. Ruyan’s Folk have laws that cannot be overthrown.” She shook her head and disappeared through the hatchway. A splash of dawn-lit sky showed briefly before the hatch door thumped down once more.
Miriamele slumped back against a barrel. “Elysia save us. What will we do? What if this boat belongs to enemies?”
“As far as I am concerned, it is boats themselves which are the enemies.” Cadrach shrugged fatalistically. “My hiding us on one was foolish-ness beyond understanding. As to discovery…” he waved his plump hand dismissively. “It was inevitable once the boat actually put to sea, but anything is better than staying in the Sancellan Aedonitis.” He wiped sweat from his face. “Ah, me, my stomach feels dreadful. As a wise man stated, ‘There are three kinds of people—the living, the dead, and those at sea.’.” His expression of disgust changed to one of contemplation. “But Niskies! I have met the living Tinukeda’ya! Bones of Anaxos, but the world is full of odd tales!”
Before Miriamele could ask him what that meant, they heard the sound of heavy boots on the deck overhead. Deep voices spoke, then the hatch door creaked up and the opening was abruptly filled with torchlight and long shadows.
Maegwin sat in a crumbling ancient arena, in the midst of a mysterious stone city hidden deep in the heart of a mountain, face to face with four creatures out of the legends of ancient days Before her stood a great, shining stone that had spoken to her as though it were a person. Still, she was unutterably disappointed.
“The Sithi,” she murmured quietly. “I thought the Sithi would be here.”
Eolair looked at her with seeming dispassion, then turned back to the saucer-eyed dwarrows once more. “This is very strange. How do you know the name of Josua Lackhand?”
Yis-fidri seemed uncomfortable. The earth-dweller’s bony face bobbed at the end of his slender neck like a sunflower on its stem. “Why do you seek the Sithi? What do you want with our old masters?”
Maegwin let out a sigh.
“It was only a thin hope,” Eolair said quickly. “The Lady Maegwin thought they might help us, as they aided our people in days past. Hernystir has been invaded.”
“And this Handless Josua of whom the Sithi spoke—is he the invader, or is he one of Hern’s children, like you?” Yis-fidri and his fellows leaned forward solemnly.
“Josua Lackhand is no Hernystirman, but neither is he an invader. He is one of the chiefs in the great war that rages on the surface.” Eolair spoke carefully. “Our people have been invaded by Josua's enemies. Thus, it could be said Josua fights for us—if he still lives.”
“Josua is dead,” Maegwin said dully. The weight of earth and stone around her pressed down, squeezing out her breath. What was the point in all this blather? These spindly creatures were not the Sithi. This was not the city of banners and sweet music she had seen in her dreams. Her plans had come to nothing.
“That may not be so, my lady,” Eolair said quietly. “When I was last afield, I heard rumors that he still lived, rumors that had more than a slight sound of truth to them.” He turned back to the patient dwarrows. “Please tell us where you heard Josua’s name. We are not your enemies.”
Yis-fidri was not so easily swayed. “And does this Handless Josua fight for our old masters the Sithi, or against them?”
Eolair pondered before speaking. “We mortals know nothing of the Sithi and their battles. Josua is probably as ignorant as we.”
Yis-fidri pointed to the gleaming, shimmering chunk of stone at the center of the arena. “But it was the First Grandmother of the Zida’ya—the Sithi—who spoke to you through the Shard!” He sounded perversely pleased as though he had caught Eolair in a pointless fib.
“We did not know whose voice it was. We are strangers here, and we are strangers to your…your Shard.”
“Ah.” Yis-fidri and the others huddled and spoke in their own tongue, the words flying back and forth like rippling chimes. At last they straightened.
“We will trust you. We believe that you be honorable folk,” Yis-fidri said. “Even if we did not, you have seen now where the last dwarrows live. Unless we make an end to you, we can only hope you will not reveal us to our former masters.” He laughed sadly, his dark gaze nervously roaming the shadows. “And we are not folk who can compel others by force. We are weak, old…” The dwarrow struggled to compose himself. “No more is saved by holding knowledge back. So, all ou
r people can now return to this place the Site of Witness.”
Yis-hadra, the one Yis-fidri had named as his wife, lifted her hand. She beckoned into the darkness at the top of the great bowl, then called out in the musical dwarrow-tongue.
Lights appeared and came drifting silently down the aisles of the arena, perhaps three dozen in all, each a gleaming rose crystal clutched in the hands of a dwarrow. Their large heads and wide, solemn eyes made them seem distorted children, grotesque but not frightening.
Unlike Yis-fidri’s foursome, these new dwarrows seemed afraid to approach Maegwin and Eolair too closely. Instead, they passed slowly down the stone pathways and seated themselves here and there among the hundreds upon hundreds of benches, faces turned toward the gleaming Shard, thin fingers clutching their crystals. Like a dying galaxy, the vast, gloomy bowl was pricked with dim stars.
“They were cold,” Yis-fidri whispered. “They are happy to come back to the warmth.”
Maegwin jumped, startled after the long quiet. The realization came to her abruptly that here beneath the world’s crust there were no birds singing, no rustling of wind-tossed trees, the city seemed almost constructed of silence.
Eolair looked around at the ring of solemn eyes before turning back to Yis-fidri. “But you and your people seemed afraid of this place.”
The dwarrow looked embarrassed. “The voices of our old masters frighten us, yes. But the Shard is warm and great Mezutu’a’s halls and streets are cold.”
The Count of Nad Mullach took a deep breath. “Please, then If you believe we mean you no harm, explain to us how you know Josua’s name.
“Our Witness—the Shard. As we told you. The Sithi have called to us here at the Site of Witness, asking of this Josua, and of the Great Swords. The Shard was long silent, but lately it has begun speaking to us again, for the first time in recent memory.”
“Speaking?” Eolair asked. “As it spoke to us? What is the Shard?”
“Old, it is One of the oldest of all the Witnesses.” Yis-fidri’s worried tone returned. His cohorts wagged their heads, narrow faces uneasy. “Long has it been silent. None did speak to us.”
“What do you mean?” The count looked at Maegwin to see if she shared his puzzlement. She avoided his eyes. The Shard pulsed with gentle, milky light as Eolair tried again. “I am afraid I cannot understand you. What is a Witness?”
The dwarrow considered carefully, looking for words to explain some-thing that had never before needed explaining.
“In days long past,” he finally said, “we and others of the Gardenborn did speak through the particular objects that could act as Witnesses: Stones and Scales, Pools and Pyres. Through these things—and through some others, like Nakkiga’s great Harp—the world of the Gardenborn was tied together with strands of thought and speech. But we Tinukeda’ya had forgotten much even before mighty Asu’a fell, and had grown far apart from those who lived there…those who we had once served.”
“Asu’a?” Eolair said. “I have heard that name before…”
Maegwin, only half-listening, watched the coruscating colors of the Shard dart like bright fish below the crystal’s surface. On the benches all around, the dwarrows watched, too, their faces grim, as though thei rhunger for its radiance shamed them.
“When Asu’a fell,” Yis-fidri continued, “the seldom-speaking became silence. The Speakfire in Hikehikayo and the Shard here in Mezutu’a were voiceless. Do you see, we dwarrows had lost the Art of their using. Thus, when the Zida’ya spoke to us no more, we Tinukeda’ya could no longer master the Witnesses, even to speak among ourselves.”
Eolair pondered. “How did you forget the art of using these things?” he asked at last. “How could it be lost among even such few as there are of you?” He gestured to the silent ones sitting around the stone bowl. “You are immortal, are you not?”
Yis-fidri’s wife Yis-hadra threw back her head and moaned, startling both Maegwin and the count. Sho-vennae and Imai-an, Yis-fidri’s other two companions, joined her.
Their lament turned into a kind of eerie, sorrowful song that rose to the cavern ceiling and echoed in the darkness above. The other dwarrows turned to watch, heads slowly swaying like afield of gray and white dandelions.
Yis-fidri lowered his heavy lids and cupped his chin in trembling fingers. When the moaning had died away, he looked up.
“No, Hern’s Child,” he said slowly, “we are not immortal. It is true we are far longer-lived than you mortals be, unless your race has much changed. But unlike Zida’ya and Hikeda’ya—our old overlords, Sithi and Norn—we do not live on and on, eternal as the mountains. Nay, Death comes for us as for your folk, like a thief and a reaver.” Anger touched his face “Mayhap our once-masters were of somewhat different blood since back in the Garden of our old stories, whence came all the Firstborn; mayhap then we are just of shorter-lived stock. Either that, or there was in truth some secret kept from us, who were after all deemed only their servers and vassals.” He turned to his wife and gently touched her cheek. Yis-hadra hid her face against his shoulder, her long neck graceful as a swan’s. “Some of us died, some left, and The Art of the Witnesses has escaped us.”
Eolair shook his head, confused. “I am listening carefully, Yis-fidri, but I fear I still do not understand all the riddles in what you say. The voice that spoke to us from the stone—the one you called the grandmother of the Sithi—said that Great Swords are being sought. What does Prince Josua have to do with any of this?”
Yis-fidri raised his hand. “Come with us to a better place for speaking. I fear that your presence has bewildered some of our folk It has been beyond the lives of most of us since Sudhoda’ya were among us.” He stood up with a creak of leather, unfolding his spindly limbs like a locust climbing a stalk of wheat. “We will continue in the Pattern Hall.” His expression became apologetic “Also, Hern’s Folk, I am tired and hungry.” He shook his head. “I have not talked so much in a long age.”
Imai-an and Sho-vennae stayed behind, perhaps to explain to their shy fellows what sort of creatures the mortals were. Maegwin saw them gather the other dwarrows together in a solemn group at the center of the giant bowl, huddling near the inconstant light of the Shard. Only an hour before she had been brimming with anticipation and excitement, but now Maegwin was glad to see the arena disappearing behind them. Wonder had turned to unease. A structure like the Site of Witness should stretch beneath an open sky filled with stars, as did the circuses of Nabban or the great theater of Erchester, not crouch beneath a firmament of dead black basalt. Anyway, there was no help for the Hernystiri here.
Yis-fidri and Yis-hadra led them through Mezutu’a’s deserted byways, crystal rods glowing in the murk like swamp-ghosts as they wound through the narrow streets, across broad, echoing squares and over icicle-slender bridges with only shadowed emptiness below.
The lamps that Maegwin and Eolair had brought down to the subterranean city had guttered and gone out. The soft, roseate glow of the dwarrow’s batons cast the only light Mezutu’a’s lines seemed softer now than they had by lamplight, the city’s edges gentler, rounded as though by wind and rain. But Maegwin knew that here in the deeps of the earth no such weather had troubled the ancient walls
She found her thoughts straying even from such wonderfully strange sights as these, returning instead to the trick that had been played upon her. The Sithi were not here. In fact, if the remaining Peaceful Ones were calling for the help of a diminished tribe like the dwarrows, they were probably in worse straits than Maegwin’s own folk.
So here was the end of her hope of assistance—at least of earthly aid. There would be no rescue for her people, unless she herself could think of some way. Why had the gods sent Maegwin such dreams, only to dash them to pieces? Had Brynioch, Mircha, Rhynn and the rest truly turned their back on the Hernystiri? Many of her people, crouched in the cave above, already thought it dangerous even to fight back against Skali’s invading army—as though the gods’ will was so clearly aga
inst Lluth’s tribe that to resist would be to insult the minions of heaven. Was that the lesson, both of her dreams about the lost Sithi and the actuality of Yis-fidri’s frightened folk? Had the gods brought her here only to show her that the Hernystiri, too, would soon diminish and fade, as the proud Sithi and crafty dwarrows had themselves been brought low?
Maegwin straightened her shoulders. She could not let such qualms frighten her. She was Lluth’s daughter…the king’s daughter. She would think of something. The error was in relying on the fallible creatures of earth, men or Sithi. The gods would send to her. They would—they must—give her some further sign, some plan, even in the midst of her despair.
Her sigh drew a curious glance from Eolair “Lady? Are you sick?”
She waved away his concerns.
“Once all this city was full-lit,” Yis-fidri announced suddenly, waving an elongated hand. “The mountain-heart all be sparkled, yes.”
“Who lived here, Yis-fidri?” the count asked.
“Our people. Tinukeda’ya. But most of our kind are long gone. A few are here, and some few lived in Hikehikayo in the northern mountains, a smaller city than this.” His face twisted “Until they were made to leave.”
“Made to leave? By what?”
Yis-fidri shook his head, palpating his long chin with his fingers. “That would be a great wrong to say. Unkind it would be to bring our evil on Hern’s innocent children. Fear not. Our few remaining folk there fled, leaving the evil behind them.”
His wife Yis-hadra said something in the fluttering dwarrow tongue.
“True, that is true,” Yis-fidri said regretfully. He blinked his vast eyes. “Our people have left those mountains behind. We hope that they have left the evil behind as well.”
Eolair looked at Maegwin in a way she supposed was somehow significant. The talk had mostly slipped past her, immersed as she was in the greater problems of her unhomed people. She smiled sadly, letting the Count of Nad Mullach know that his laboring after such fruitless details did not go unnoticed or unappreciated, then lapsed back into silent contemplation once more.