by Tad Williams
Simon remembered her calm, strong grip and thought how unlikely that was. He smiled dazedly, shaking his head. “I have never…” He couldn’t make the words come. “How far have we come?”
She seemed to find this a surprising question and thought hard for a moment. “Quite far into the forest,” she said at last. “Quite far in.”
“Did you make the winter go away by magic?” he asked, turning in a stumbling circle. On all sides the snow was gone. The morning light knifed down through the trees and splashed on the crush of damp leaves underfoot. A spider web quivered, afire in a column of sunlight.
“The winter has not gone away,” she said. “We have gone away from the winter.”
“What?”
“The winter you speak of is false—as you know. Here, in the forest’s true heart is a place the storm and cold have not penetrated.”
Simon thought he understood what she was saying. “So you are keeping the winter away by magic.”
Aditu frowned. “That word again. Here the world dances its true dance. That which would change such a truth is ‘magic’—dangerous magic—or so it seems to me.” She turned away. obviously tiring of the subject. There was little of imposture in Aditu’s character, at least when it was a matter of her time being wasted in niceties. “We are almost there now, so there is no need to rest. Are you hungry or thirsty?”
Simon realized that he was ravenous, as if he had not eaten for days. “Yes! Both.”
Without another word, Aditu slipped between the trees and vanished, leaving Simon standing alone by the stream. “Stay,” she called, her voice echoing so that it seemed to come from every side at once. A few moments later she reappeared with a reddish sphere held delicately in each hand. “Kraile,” she said. “Sunfruits. Eat them.”
The first sunfruit proved sweet and full of yellowy juice, with a spicy aftertaste that made him quickly bite into the second. By the time he had finished both, his hunger was pleasantly blunted.
“Now, come,” she said. “I would like to reach Shao Irigú by noon today.”
“What’s ‘Shao Irigú’—and what day is it today, anyway?”
Aditu looked annoyed, if such a mundane expression could be said to exist on so exotic a face. “Shao Irigú is the Summer Gate, of course. As for the other, I cannot do all the measurements. That is for those like First Grandmother. I think you have a moon-span you call ‘Ahn-ee-tool’?”
“Anitul is a month, yes.”
“That is as much as I can say. It is that ‘month,’ by your reckoning.”
Now it was Simon’s turn to be annoyed: he could have told her that much himself—although months did tend to sneak past when one was on the road. What he had been hoping to discover, in a roundabout way, was how long it had taken them to get here. It would have been easy to ask straight out, of course, but somehow he knew that the answer Aditu gave him would not be very satisfying.
The Sitha-woman moved forward. Simon scrambled after her. Despite his irritation, he more than half-hoped she would ask for his hand again, but that part of the journey seemed to be over. Aditu picked her way down the slope beside the stream without looking back to see if he was following.
Nearly deafened by the cheerful cacophony of birds in the trees overhead, bewildered by all that had happened, Simon opened his mouth to complain about her evasions, then stopped suddenly in his tracks, shamed by his own short-sightedness. His weariness and crossness abruptly fell away, as though he had sloughed off a heavy blanket of snow dragged with him out of winter. This was a wild sort of magic, whatever Aditu said! To have been in a deadly storm—a storm that covered all the northern world, as far as he could tell—and then to follow a song into sunlight and clear skies! This was as good as anything Simon had ever heard in one of Shem Horsegroom’s stories. This was an adventure even Jack Mundwode never had. Simon the scullion was going to the Kingdom of the Fair Folk!
He hastened after her, chortling. Aditu looked back at him curiously.
As the weather had changed during their strange journey, so, too, had the vegetation: the evergreens and low shrubs in which Simon had been snowbound and lost had given way to oak and birch and white ash, their interlaced branches bound with flowering creepers, making an overhead canopy colorful as a stained glass ceiling but far more delicate. Ferns and wood sorrel blanketed the stones and fallen trees, covering Aldheorte’s floor with a bumpy counterpane of green. Mushrooms crouched hiding in pools of shadow like deserting soldiers, while other pale but oddly beautiful fungi clung to the trunks of trees like the steps of spiraling stair-cases. The morning sun sprinkled all with a light like fine silver and gold dust.
The stream had cut a gentle gorge in its passage, winding down into a valley whose bottom was obscured by close-leaning trees. As Simon and Aditu picked their way carefully over the slippery rocks that lined the gorge, the stream filled the air around them with fine spray. The water-course splashed into a series of narrow ponds that grew successively larger down the hillside, each one spilling over into the one below. The ponds were overhung by aspen and drooping willows, the surrounding stones slickly furred in rich green moss.
Simon sat down on one to rest his ankles and catch his breath.
“We will be there before too much longer,” Aditu said, almost kindly.
“I’m fine.” He stretched out his legs before him, staring critically at his cracked boots. Too much snow had ruined the leather—but why should he worry about that now? “I’m fine,” he repeated.
Aditu sat down on the stone beside him and looked up to the skies. There was something quite marvelous about her face, something that he had never seen in her brother, despite the distinct familial resemblance:
Jiriki had been very interesting to look at, but Simon thought that Aditu was lovely.
“Beautiful,” he murmured.
“What?” Aditu turned to look at him questioningly, as though she did not know the word.
“Beautiful,” Simon repeated. “Everything is very beautiful here.” He cursed himself for a coward and took a deep breath. “You are beautiful, too, Lady,” he finally added.
Aditu stared at him for a moment, her golden eyes puzzled, her mouth creased in what seemed a tiny frown. Then she abruptly burst into a peal of hissing laughter. Simon felt himself redden.
“Don’t look so angry.” She laughed again. “You are a very beautiful Snowlock, Seoman. I am glad you are happy.” Her swift touch on his hand was like ice on a hot forehead. “Come,” Aditu said, “we will go on now.”
The water, uninterested in their doings, continued on its own way, belling and splashing beside them as they made their way down toward the valley. Scrambling over the rocks as he struggled to keep up with light-stepping Aditu, Simon wondered if just this once he might actually have said the right thing. She certainly didn’t seem angry at his forwardness. Still, he resolved to continue thinking carefully before he spoke. These Sithi were damnably unpredictable!
When they had nearly reached level ground, they stopped before a pair of towering hemlocks whose trunks seemed vast enough to be the columns upholding Heaven. Where these mighty trees thrust up between their smaller neighbors into unshadowed sunshine, tangled nets of flowering creepers grew like an arbor between the two trunks, trailing blossom-laden vines that hung almost to the ground and quivered in the wind. The grumble of bees was loudest from the flowers, but they swarmed every-where among the creepers,’ stolid laborers in gold and black, wings glistening.
“Stop,” Aditu said. “Do not so lightly pass through the Summer Gate.”
Despite the power and beauty of the great hemlocks, Simon was surprised. “This is the gate? Two trees?”
Aditu looked very serious. “We left all monuments of stone behind when we fled Asu’a the Eastward-Looking, Seoman. Now, Jiriki bade me tell you something before you entered Shao Irigú. My brother said that no matter what may occur later, you have been given the rarest of all honors. You have been brought to a place in which n
o mortal has ever set foot. Do you understand that? No mortal has ever walked in beneath this gate.”
“Oh?” Simon was startled by her words. He looked around quickly, fearing he might see some disapproving audience. “But…but I just wanted someone to help me. I was starving…”
“Come,” she said, “Jiriki will be waiting.” Aditu took a step forward, then turned. “And do not look so worried,” she smiled. “It is a great honor, it is true, but you are Hikka Staja—an Arrow-Bearer. Jiriki does not break the oldest rules for just anyone.”
Simon was passing beneath the great trees before he understood what Aditu had said. “Break the rules?”
Aditu was moving quickly now, almost skipping, swift and sure-footed as a deer as she made her way along the path that stretched downhill from the Summer Gate. The forest here seemed just as wild but more accommodating. Trees as old and grand as these could never have known the touch of an axe, yet they stopped just short of the path; their hanging branches would not brush the head of any but the tallest traveler.
They followed this winding path for no little way, traveling on a rise just a short distance above the floor of the valley. The forest was so thick-shrouded with trees on either side of the path that Simon could never see more than a stone’s throw before him, and began to feel as though he stood in one place while an endless succession of mossy trunks marched past him. The air had become positively warm. The wild river—which, judging from its noisy voice, snaked a parallel course along the valley floor not a hundred cubits away—filled the forest air with delicate mist. The sleepy hum of bees and other insects washed over Simon like a healthy swallow of Binabik’s hunt-liquor. He had almost forgotten himself entirely, and was dreamily following Aditu by sheer repetition of left foot, right foot, left foot, when the Sitha-woman drew him to a halt. To their left the curtain of trees fell away, revealing the valley floor.
“Turn,” she said, suddenly whispering. “Remember, Seoman, you are the first of your kind to see Jao é-Tinukai’i—the Boat on the Ocean of Trees,”
It was nothing like a boat, of course, but Simon understood the name in an instant. Stretched between treetop and ground, and from trunk to trunk and bough to bough, the billowing sheets of cloth in a thousand diverse colors resembled at first sight nothing so much as exquisite sails—indeed, for that first moment the entire valley floor seemed in truth a vast and incredible ship.
Some of these expanses of brilliantly gleaming cloth had been stretched and tented to make roofs. Others twined about the trunks of trees, or spanned from bough to ground to form translucent walls. Some simply heaved and snapped in the wind, bound to the highest branches with shiny cords and allowed to wave. The whole city undulated with every shift of the wind, like a seaweed forest on the ocean floor bowing gracefully with the tide.
The cloth and binding cords mirrored with subtle differences the hues of the forest all around, so that in places the additions were barely discernible from that which had grown naturally. In fact, as Simon peered closer, overwhelmed with Jao é-Tinukai’i’s subtle and fragile beauty, he saw that in many places the forest and city appeared to have truly been shaped as one, so that they blended together with unearthly harmony. The river which meandered along the center of the valley floor was more subdued here, but still full of relentless, ringing music; the rippling light it reflected onto the city’s shifting facades added to the illusion of watery depth. Simon thought he could also see the silvery tracks of other streams weaving in and out through the trees.
The forest floor between the houses—if such they were—was covered with thick greenery, mostly springy clover. This grew like a carpet everywhere but on the paths of dark earth that had been lined with shimmering white stone. A few of the gracefully haphazard bridges that spanned the waterway were also constructed of this same stone. Beside these paths, strange birds with fanlike, iridescent tails of green and blue and yellow strutted or flapped unsteadily back and forth between earth and the lowest branches of the surrounding trees, all the while uttering harsh and somewhat foolish-sounding cries. There were other flashes of incandescent color among the upper branches, birds as brilliantly-feathered as the fantails but considerably more mellifluous of voice.
Warm, gentle winds lifted an essence of spices and tree sap and summergrass to Simon’s nose; the avian choir fluted a thousand different songs that somehow fit together like a terrifyingly beautiful puzzle. The marvelous city stretched away before him into the sunlit forest, a Heaven more welcoming than any he had ever envisioned.
“It’s…wonderful,” Simon breathed.
“Come,” Aditu said. “Jiriki awaits you in his house.”
She beckoned. When he didn’t move, she gently took his hand and led him. Simon stared around in delight and awe as they followed a cross-trail down off the rise and onto the outermost path of the valley floor. The rustling of silken folds and the murmuring river blended their melodies together beneath the birdsong, creating a new sound that was altogether different, but still infinitely satisfying.
There was a long time of looking, smelling, and listening before Simon ever began thinking once more. “Where is everyone?” he asked at last. In all of the city within his sight, a space easily twice the size of Battle Square
back in Erchester, he could not see a single living soul.
“We are a solitary folk, Seoman,” Aditu said. “We stay largely to ourselves, except at certain times. Also, it is midday now, when many of our people like to leave the city and go out walking. I am surprised we saw no one near the Pools.”
Despite her reasonable words, Simon thought he sensed something troubling the Sitha, as though she herself was not quite sure she spoke the truth. But he had no way of knowing: expressions or behaviors that meant something definite among those with whom Simon had grown up were almost useless as standards by which to judge any of the Sitha he had met. Nevertheless, he felt fairly sure that something was troubling his guide, and that it might very well be the emptiness Simon had noticed.
A large wildcat strode imperiously onto the pathway before them. For a startled moment, Simon felt his heart speed to a frenzied pace. Despite the creature’s size, Aditu did not break stride, walking toward it as calmly as if it were not there. With a flip of its stubby tail, the wildcat abruptly bounded away and vanished into the undergrowth, leaving only the bouncing fronds of a fern to show it had existed at all.
Clearly. Simon realized, birds were not the only creatures who roamed unhindered through Jao é-Tinukai’i. Beside the path, the coats of foxes—seldom seen at night, let alone bright noon—glimmered like flames in the tangled brush. Hares and squirrels stared incuriously at the pair as they passed. Simon felt quite sure that if he leaned down toward any of them they would move unhurriedly out of his fumbling reach, discommoded for a moment but utterly unafraid.
They crossed a bridge over one of the river-forks, then turned and followed the watercourse down a long corridor of willows. A ribbon of white cloth wound in and out among the trees on their left, wrapped about trunks and looped over branches. As they passed farther down the row of willow sentries, the initial ribbon was joined by another. These two snaked in and out, crossing behind and before each other as though engaged in a kind of static dance.
Soon more white ribbons of different widths began to appear, woven into the growing pattern in knots of fantastic intricacy. These weavings at first made up only simple forms, but soon Simon and Aditu began to pass increasingly complex pictures that hung in the spaces framed by the willow trunks: blazing suns, cloudy skies overhanging oceans covered with jagged waves, leaping animals, figures in flowing robes or filigreed armor, all formed by interlaced knots. As the first plain pictures became entire tapestries of tangled light and shadow, Simon understood that he watched an unfolding story. The ever-growing tapestry of knotted fabric portrayed people who loved and fought in a gardenlike land of incredible strangeness, a place where plants and creatures thrived whose forms seemed obscure even tho
ugh precisely rendered by the unknown weaver’s masterful, magical hands.
Then, as the tapestry eloquently showed, something began to go wrong. Only ribbons of white were used, but still Simon could almost see the dark stain that began to spread through the people’s lives and hearts, the way it sickened them. Brother fought brother, and what had been a place of unmatched beauty was blighted beyond hope. Some of the people began building ships…
“Here,” Aditu said, startling him. The tapestry had led them to a whirlpool swirl of pale fabric, an inward-leading spiral that appeared to lead up a gentle hill. On the right, beside this odd door, the tapestry leaped away across the river, trembling in the bright air like a bridge of silk. Where the taut ribbons of the tapestry vaulted the splashing stream, the knots portrayed eight magnificent ships at sea, cresting woven waves. The tapestry touched the willows on the far side and turned, winding backup the watercourse in the direction from which Simon and Aditu had come, stretching away from tree to tree until it could no longer be seen.
Aditu’s hand touched his arm and Simon shivered. Walking in some-one else’s dream, he had forgotten himself. He followed her through the doorway and up a set of stairs carefully cut into the hillside, then paved with colorful smooth stones. Like everything else, the corridor through which they walked was made of rippling, translucent cloth: the walls were white near the door, gradually darkening to pale blue and turquoise. In her white clothes Aditu reflected this shifting light, so that as she walked before him, she, too, seemed to change color.
Simon trailed his fingers along the wall and found that it was as exquisitely soft as it looked, but curiously strong; it slid beneath his hand as smoothly as gold wire, yet was warm to the touch as the down of a baby bird and quivered with the wind’s every breath.
The featureless corridor soon opened up into a large, high-ceilinged room that, but for the instability of its walls, looked much like a room in any fine house. The turquoise hue of the cloth near the entrance shaded imperceptibly into ultramarine. A low table of dark wood stood near one wall, with cushions scattered all around it. On the table sat a board painted in many colors; Simon thought it a map until he recognized it as a place to play the game called shent, which he had seen Jiriki do in his hunting lodge. He remembered Aditu’s challenge. The pieces, he guessed, were in the intricate wooden box sitting beside it on the table top. The only other item on the table was a stone vase containing a single branch from a flowering apple tree.