by Tad Williams
There was little inspiration in the crumbling ruins of Enki-e-Shao’saye. They seemed only to demonstrate that even the Sithi were bound within the sweep of time, that any work of hands, however exalted, must come at last to ignoble result.
Binabik and Sludig found a clearer path running beside the riverbank and began to make better time, winding their way through the rain-soaked forest. They heard nothing but the sounds of their own passage and were glad of it. Just as the troll had predicted, the land began to slope more acutely, falling away toward the southwest. Despite its swerving course, the river was moving in that direction as well, the water gaining speed and becoming possessed of what almost seemed like enthusiasm. It positively threw itself at its banks, as if desiring to be everywhere at once, the gouts of water that flew up at obstructions in the riverbed seemed to leap higher than they normally should, as though this watercourse, granted a temporary life, labored to prove to some stern riverine deities its fitness for continued survival.
“Almost out of the forest,” Binabik panted from Qantaqa’s bobbing back. “See how the trees are now thinning? See, there is light between them ahead!”
Indeed, the stand of trees just before them seemed poised at the outer-most rim of the earth. Instead of more mottled green foliage, beyond them lay only a wall of fathomless, featureless gray, as though the world’s builders had run short of inspiration.
“You are right, little man,” Sludig said excitedly. “Forest’s end! Now, if we are within a short ride of this sanctuary of yours, we may shake those whoreson giants after all!”
“Unless my scrolls are none of them correct,” Binabik replied as they cantered down the last length of slope. “It is not much distance from forest’s edge to the Stone of Farewell.”
He broke off as they reached the final line of trees. Qantaqa stopped abruptly, head held low, sniffing the air. Sludig reined up alongside. “Blessed Usires,” the Rimmersman breathed.
The slope abruptly fell away before them, dropping at a much steeper angle to the wide valley below. Sesuad’ra loomed there, dark and secretive in its shroud of trees, a bony thrust of stone standing far above the valley bottom. Its height was particularly apparent because it was entirely surrounded by a flat plain of water.
The valley was flooded. The Stone of Farewell, a great fist that seemed to defy the rain-lashed skies, had become an island in a gray and restless sea. Binabik and Sludig were perched at the forest’s edge only a half-league away from their goal, but every cubit of valley floor that lay between was covered by fathoms of floodwater.
Even as they stared, a roar echoed through the forest behind them, distant but still frighteningly close. Whatever magic remained to Enki-e-Shao’saye was too weak to discourage the hungry giants.
“Aedon, troll, we are caught like flies in a honey jar,” Sludig said, a tremor of fear creeping into his voice for the first time. “We are backed against the edge of the world. Even if we fight and stave off their first attack, there is no escape!”
Binabik stroked Qantaqa’s head. The wolfs hackles were up, she whimpered beneath his touch as though she ached to return the challenge floating down the wind. “Peace, Sludig, we must be thinking.” He turned to squint down the precipitous slope. “I fear you are right about one thing. We are never to be leading horses down this grade.”
“And what would we do at the bottom, in any case?” Sludig growled. Rain dribbled from his beard-braids. “That is no mud puddle! This is an ocean! Did your scrolls mention that?!”
Binabik waggled his head angrily. His hair hung in his eyes, pasted to his forehead by the ram. “Look up, Sludig, look up! The sky is full of water, and it is all being dropped down on us, courtesy of our enemy.” He spat in disgust. “This is perhaps become an ocean now, but a week ago it was a valley only, just as the scrolls say.” A worried look crossed his face. “I am wondering if Josua and the rest were caught in low ground! Daughter of the Snows, what a thought! If so, we might as well make our stand in this place—at the world’s end, as you call it. Thorn’s journey will stop here.”
Sludig flung himself down out of the saddle, skidding briefly in the mud. He strode to the lead packhorse and detached the bundled length of the black sword. He hefted it easily, carrying it back to Binabik in one hand. “Your ‘living sword’ seems eager for battle,” he said sourly. “I am half-tempted to see what it can do, though it may turn anvil-heavy on me in midstroke.”
“No,” Binabik said shortly, “My people are not fond of running from a fight, but neither is it time for us to be singing Croohok death-songs and be going happily to glorious defeat. Our quest is not yet given over.”
Sludig glowered. “Then what do you say, troll? Shall we fly to that far rock?”
The little man hissed in frustration. “No, but first we can look for some other way for getting down.” He gestured at the river thundering past them, which disappeared down the steep wooded slope. “This is not the only waterway. It could be that others will lead us down in a more gradual path to the valley.”
“And then what?” Sludig demanded. “Swim?”
“If necessary.” As Binabik spoke, the hunting cry of their pursuers rose again, setting the horses to milling and bumping in panic. “Take the horse, Sludig,” Binabik said. “There is still chance we may win free.”
“If so, you are a magical troll indeed. I will name you a Sithi and you can live forever.”
“Do not joke here,” Binabik said. “Do not mock.” He slid from Qantaqa’s back, then whispered something in the wolfs ear. With abound, she was away through the dripping vegetation, tracking eastward along the face of the slope. Sludig and the troll followed as best they could, cutting a trail that the horses could follow.
Qantaqa, swift as a racing shadow now that the weight other rider had been lifted from her back, soon found an angled traverse down the cliffside.
Despite the sticky, treacherous footing, they were able to make their way slowly down from the high promontory, gradually approaching the lowest edge of the forest, now the shore of a wind-tormented sea.
The forest did not come to a sudden ending, but rather disappeared into the rain-rippled water. In some places the tops of submerged trees still protruded above the surface, little islands of rippling leaves. Naked branches thrust up from the gray flood beside them like the hands of drowning men.
Sludig’s horse pulled up just at the water’s edge and the Rimmersman vaulted down to stand ankle-deep in muddy water. “I am not sure I seethe improvement, troll,” he said, surveying the scene. “At least before we were on high ground.”
“Cut branches,” Binabik said, clambering through the mud toward him. “Long ones, as many as you can be finding. We will build a raft.”
“You are mad!” Sludig snapped.
“Perhaps. But you are the strong one, so you must be the cutter. I have rope in the packs for binding the limbs together, and I can do that. Hurry!”
Sludig snorted, but set himself to work. Within moments his sword was smacking dully against wood.
“If my axes had not been lost on this foolish quest,” he panted, “I could build you a whole longhouse in the time it will take me to chop a tree with this poor blade.”
Binabik said nothing, intent on lashing together the rough spars Sludig had already knocked loose. When he had finished with what was available, he went searching for loose wood. He discovered another tributary nearby that dropped down into a narrow gulley before emptying at last into the greater flood. A treasure trove of loose limbs had accumulated in the narrowest spot. Binabik grabbed them up by the armful, hurrying back and forth between the river and the place where Sludig labored.
“Qantaqa cannot swim so far,” Binabik grunted as he carried the last useful batch. His eyes had drifted to the distant bulk of Sesuad’ra. “But I cannot be leaving her to find her own way. There is no way for knowing how long this storm will last. She might never find me again.” He dumped the wood, frowning, then bent to his knots onc
e more, his fingers threading loops of slender cord around the damp wood. “I cannot make this raft big enough for all three, not and take that of our belongings which we must be saving. There is no time.”
“Then we will take turns being in the water,” Sludig said. He shuddered, staring at the rain-pocked flood. “Elysia, Mother of God, but I hate the thought of it.”
“Clever Sludig! You are right. We need only make it big enough for one of us to rest while the other two are swimming, and we will go into the water one after the other.” Binabik allowed himself a thin smile. “You Rimmersmen have not lost all your seagoing blood, I see.” As he redoubled his efforts, a furious groan rolled through the woods. They looked up, startled, to see a massive white shape on the promontory only a few short furlongs away.
“God curse them!” Sludig moaned, hacking frenziedly at a slender trunk. “Why do they pursue us! Do they seek the sword?”
Binabik shook his head. “Almost done,” he said. “Two more long ones I am needing.”
The white figure on the hillside above quickly became several figures, a pack of furious ghosts that raised their long arms against the storming sky. The giants’ voices rolled and boomed across the water, as though they threatened not just the puny creatures below, but the Stone of Farewell itself, squatting in serene insolence just beyond their reach.
“Done,” Binabik said, tying the last knot. “Let us move it to the water. If it is not floating, you will have that fight you so desire, Sludig.”
It did float, once they had pushed it out past the tangle of drowned undergrowth. Above the storm came the dull crackling of vegetation being smashed aside as the giants came pushing their way down the muddy hillside. Sludig carefully tossed Thorn onto the damp logs. Binabik hastened back to loot the saddlebags. He dragged one leather sack over unopened, and flung it out to Sludig, who stood waist-deep in the murky water. “Those things are belonging to Simon,” the troll called. “They should not be lost.” Sludig shrugged, but pushed the bag on beside the wrapped sword.
“What about the horses?” Sludig shouted. The howl of their pursuers was growing louder.
“What can we do?” Binabik said helplessly. “We must set them free! “He drew his knife and slashed the bridle-traces from Sludig’s mount, then rapidly cut the belly-straps of the packhorses as well, so that their burdens slid down onto the muddy turf.
“Hurry, troll!” Sludig cried. “They are very close!”
Binabik looked around, his face screwed up in desperate thought. He bent and rifled one last saddlebag, pulling a few articles out before pelting down the slope once more and out into the water.
“Get on,” growled Sludig.
“Qantaqa!” Binabik shouted. “Come!”
The wolf snarled as she turned to face the ruckus of the oncoming giants. The horses were rushing in all directions, whinnying with fright. Suddenly, Sludig’s mount broke away through the trees toward the east and the others swiftly followed. The giants were now quite plain, a few hundred paces up the hill and descending rapidly, their leathery black faces gaping as they howled their hunting song. The Hunën carried great clubs which they whickered back and forth like hollow reeds, smashing a path-way through the knotted trees and shrubbery.
“Qantaqa!” Binabik shouted, panic in his voice. “Ummu ninit! Ummu sosa!”
The wolf turned and bounded toward them, breasting the water then paddling furiously. Sludig pushed off, taking a few more steps down the submerged slope until his feet no longer touched the bottom. Before theywere thirty cubits from the water’s edge, Qantaqa had caught them. She scrambled over Sludig’s back onto the raft, setting it rocking treacherously and almost sinking the Rimmersman.
“No, Qantaqa!” Binabik cried,
“Let her be!” Sludig gurgled. “Reach down and paddle!”
The first giant burst from the forest behind them, howling with rage. His shaggy head twisted from side to side as if he sought some other angle to head off his prey’s escape. When none was apparent, he strode forward into the water. He went several steps before he suddenly fell forward with a splash, disappearing from view for a moment beneath the water. When he surfaced an instant later he was thrashing madly, dirty white fur festooned with branches. He raised his chin and barked thunderously at the storm, as though demanding help. His fellows swarmed on the shore behind him, hooting and groaning with frustrated bloodlust.
The first giant swam awkwardly and unhappily back to the shallows. He stood up, streaming with water, and reached down an apelike arm to pull loose a massive tree limb thick as a man’s leg. Grunting, he flung it through the air. The limb hit the water beside the raft with a tremendous splash, tearing Sludig’s cheek with a jutting branch and nearly upsetting the crude boat. Stunned, Sludig foundered. Binabik disentangled himself from Qantaqa and leaned forward, hooking the toes of his boots into gaps between the beams of the pitching raft. The little man clutched the Rimmersman’s wrist with both hands until Sludig recovered. The giants hurled more missiles, but none came as close as the first. Their thwarted bellows seemed to rumble across all the flooded valley.
Cursing giants and rafts equally. Sludig pushed off with his long Qanucspear until they at last floated free of clinging branches. He began to kick, pushing the raft and its unlikely cargo out across the chill gray water toward the shadowy stone.
Eolair rode east from his ancestral home of Nad Mullach beneath night skies a-flicker with strange lights. The countryside around his captured stronghold had proved less hospitable than he had hoped. Many of his people had already been driven away by the misfortunes of war and the terrible weather, and those who remained were reluctant to open their doors to a stranger—even if that stranger claimed to be the ruling count. Occupied Hernystir was a land held prisoner more by fear than by enemy soldiers.
Few others were abroad by night, which was when Eolair did most of his traveling. Even Skali of Kaldskryke’s men, despite their conquerors’ crowns, seemed reluctant to stir forth, as if taking on the character of those they had conquered. In this grim summer of snow and restless spirits, even the war’s victors bowed before a greater power.
Eolair was more than ever certain that he must find Josua, if the prince still lived. Maegwin might have sent him on this quest because of some odd or spiteful notion, but now it seemed laughably apparent that the north of Osten Ard had fallen beneath a shadow of more than human origin, and that the riddle of the sword Bright-Nail might very well have something to do with it. Why else would the gods have arranged that Eolair should be in that monstrously strange city beneath the ground, or that he should meet its even stranger denizens? The Count of Nad Mullach was a pragmatist by nature. His long years of service to the king had hardened his heart to fantasy, but at the same time his experience of diplomacy had also made him mistrustful of excessive coincidence. To suggest that there was no overriding supernatural element to the summer-that-was-winter, the reappearance of creatures out of legend, and the sudden importance of forgotten but near-mythical swords was to close one’s eyes to a reality as plain as the mountains and the seas.
Also, despite all his endless days in the court of Erkynland, Nabban, and Perdruin, and for all his cautious words to Maegwin, Eolair was a Hernystirman. More than any other mortal men, the Hernystiri remembered.
As Eolair rode into Erkynland, across bleak Utanyeat toward the battle site of Ach Samrath, the storm grew stronger. The snow, however unseasonable, had until now fallen only moderately, as it might in the early days of Novander. Now the winds were rising, changing the flat country-side into a flurrying landscape of white nothingness. The cold was so fierce that he was forced to abandon night riding altogether for a few days, but he worried little about being recognized—the roads and countryside were all but deserted even at gray, blustery noon. He noted with sour satisfaction that Utanyeat—the earldom of Guthwulf, one of High King Elias’ favorites—was as storm-wounded as any of Hernystir. There was some justice, after all.
Trek
king endlessly through white emptiness, he found himself thinking often of his people left behind, but especially of Maegwin. Although in some ways she had become almost as wild and intractable as a beast since the death of her father and brother, he had always felt great affection toward her. That was not yet gone, but it was hard not to feel betrayed by her treatment of him, no matter how well he thought he understood its cause. Still, he could not bring himself to hate her. He had been a special friend to her since she had been a little girl, making a point of speaking with her whenever he was at court, letting her show him the Taig’s gardens, as well as the pigs and chickens to which she gave names, and which she treated with the same annoyed fondness a mother might show her reckless children.
As she grew, becoming as tall as a man—but none the less comely for it—Eolair had watched her also become steadily more reserved, only occasionally showing the flashes of girlishness which had so delighted him before. She seemed to turn inward, like a rosebush balked by an over-hanging roof that coiled in on itself until its own thorns rubbed its stems raw. She still reserved special attention for Eolair, but that attention was more and more confusing, more and more made up of awkward silences and her angry self-recriminations.
For a while he had thought she cared for him as more than just a friend of her family and distant kinsman. He had wondered whether two such solitary folk could ever find their way together—Eolair, for all his easy speech and cleverness, had always felt that the best part of himself was hidden far beneath the surface, just as his quiet hill-keep at Nad Mullach stood remote from the bustle of the Taig. But even as he had finally begun to think in earnest about Maegwin—even as his admiration for her honesty and for her impatience with nonsense had begun to ripen into something deeper—she had turned cold to him. She seemed to have decided that Eolair was only another of the legion of idlers and flatterers that surrounded King Lluth.