by Tad Williams
at the city’s far end. Caught up in the press, Simon found his spirits reviving. What should he care for a drunken priest? After all, it was market day!
Today the usual army of marketers and shrill-voiced hawkers, wide-eyed provincials, gamblers, cutpurses, and musicians was swelled by the soldiery of the various missions to the dying king. Rimmersman, Hernystiri, Warinstenner or Perdruinese, their swagger and bright garb caught Simon’s jackdaw fancy. He followed one group of blue and gold clad Nabbanai legionaries, admiring their strut and easy superiority, understanding without language the offhand way they insulted each other. He was edging up closer, hoping for a clear look at the short stabbing-swords they wore scabbarded high on their waists, when one of them—a bright-eyed soldier wearing a thin, dark mustache—turned and saw him.
“Heá, brothers!” he said with a grin, grabbing at one of his fellows’ arms. “Look now! A young sneaking thief, I wager, and one who has his eye on your purse, Turis!”
Both men squared to face Simon, and the heavy, bearded one called Turis gave the youth a grim stare. “Did he touch it, then I would kill,” he growled. His command of the Westerling speech was not as sure as the first man’s; he seemed to lack the other’s humor as well. Three other legionaries had now come back to join the first pair. They gradually closed in until Simon felt like a winded fox.
“What’s here, Gelles?” one of the new arrivals asked Turis’ companion. “Hue fauge? Did this one steal?”
“Nai, nai…” Gelles chuckled, “I was but having sport with Turis. Skinny-one here did nothing.”
“I have my own purse!” Simon said indignantly. He untied it from his belt and waved it in the soldiers’ smirking faces. “I am no thief! I live in the king’s household! Your king!” The soldiers all laughed.
“Heá, listen to him!” Gelles shouted. “Our king he says, so very bold!”
Simon could see now that the young legionary was drunk. Some—but not all—of his fascination turned to disgust.
“Heá, lads,” Gelles waggled his eyebrows. ” ‘Mulveiz-nei cenit drenisend,’ they say—let us beware this pup, then, and let him sleep!” Another round of hilarity followed. Simon, red-faced, secured his purse and turned to go.
“Goodbye, castle-mouse!” one of the soldiers called mockingly. Simon did not turn or speak, but hurried away.
He had gone past one of the fire-cairns and out from under the Main Row awnings when he felt a hand upon his shoulder. He whirled, thinking that the Nabban-men had returned to insult him further, but instead found a plump man with a weather-hardened pink face. The stranger wore the gray robe and tonsure of a mendicant friar.
“Your pardon, my young lad,” he said, with a Hernystirman’s crackling burr, “I only wished to find out if you were safe, then, if those goirach-fellows had done you harm.” The stranger reached out to Simon and patted him, as if searching for damage. His heavylidded eyes, fitted round about with wrinkles marking the curves of a frequent smile, nevertheless held something back: a deeper shadow, troubling but not frightening. Simon realized he was staring, almost against his will, and shied back.
“No, thank you. Father,” he said, startled into the patterns of formality. “They were just making sport of me. No harm.”
“Good that is, very good…Ah, forgive me, I have not introduced myself. I am Brother Cadrach ec-Crannhyr, of the Vilderivan Order.” He pulled a small, self-deprecatory smile. His breath smelled of wine “I came with Prince Gwythinn and his men. Who might you be?”
“Simon. I live in the Hayholt ” He made a vague gesture toward the castle
The friar smiled again, saying nothing, then turned to watch a Hyrkaman walk by, dressed in bright, disparate colors and leading a muzzled bear on a chain When the duo had passed, Cadrach returned his small, sharp eyes to Simon.
“There are some that say the Hyrkas can talk to animals, have you heard? Especially their horses. And that the animals understand perfectly.” The friar gave a mocking shrug, as if to show that a man of God naturally would not believe such nonsense.
Simon did not reply. He, of course, had also heard such tales related about the wild Hyrkamen. Shem Horsegoom swore the stories were pure truth. The Hyrkas were often seen at market, where they sold beautiful horses at outrageous prices, and befuddled the villagers with tricks and puzzles. Thinking about them—especially their less-than-honest reputation—Simon put a hand down and grabbed his leather purse, reassuring himself by the feel of the coins inside
“Thank you for your help, Father,” he said at last—although he could not actually remember the man doing anything helpful. “I must go now. I have spices to buy.”
Cadrach looked at him for a long moment, as if trying to remember something, a clue to which might be hidden in Simon’s face. At last he said: “I would like to ask you a favor, young man.”
“What?” Simon said suspiciously
“As I mentioned, I am a stranger in your Erchester. Perhaps you would be good enough to guide me around for a short while, just to help me. You could then go on your way, having done a good turn.”
“Oh.” Simon felt somewhat relieved. His first impulse was to say no—it was so rarely that he got an afternoon to himself at the market. But how often did you get to talk with an Aedonite monk from pagan Hernystir? Also, this Brother Cadrach did not seem like the type who only wanted to lecture you about sin and damnation. He looked the man over again, but the monk’s face was unreadable.
“Well, I suppose so—certainly. Come along… do you want to see the Nascadu-dancers in Battle Square
?”
Cadrach was an interesting companion. Although he talked freely, telling Simon of the cold journey from Hernysadharc to Erchester with Prince Gwythinn, and made frequent jests about the passersby and their various exotic costumes, still he seemed restrained, watching always for something even as he laughed at his own stones. He and Simon wandered the market for a good part of the afternoon, looking at the tables of cakes and dried vegetables that stood against the shop walls of Main Row, smelling the warm smells of the bread bakers and chestnut vendors. Noting Simon’s wistful gaze, the friar insisted they stop and buy a rough straw basket of roasted nuts, which he kindly paid for, giving the chapfaced chestnut man a half-fithing piece nimbly plucked from a pocket in his gray cassock. After burning fingers and tongues trying to eat the nut meats they conceded defeat and stood watching a comical argument between a wine merchant and a Juggler blocking his wine-shop doorway while they waited for their purchase to cool.
Next they halted to watch a Usires Play being enacted for a gaggle of shrieking children and fascinated adults. The puppets bobbed and bowed, Usires in his white gown being chased by the Imperator Crexis wearing goat-horns and a beard, and waving a long, barbheaded pike. At last Usires was captured and hung upon the Execution Tree; Crexis, his voice high and shrill, leaped about poking and tormenting the tree-nailed Savior. The children, wildly excited, shouted abuse at the capering Imperator.
Cadrach nudged Simon. “Do you see?” he asked, pointing a thick finger toward the front of the puppet-stage. The curtain that hung from the stage to the ground billowed, as if in a strong breeze. Cadrach nudged Simon again.
“Would you not say that this is a fine representation of Our Lord?” he asked, never once taking his eyes from the flapping cloth. Above, Crexis jigged and Usires suffered. “While man plays out his show, the Manipulator remains unseen, we know Him not by sight, but by the ways His puppets move. And occasionally the curtain stirs, that hides Him from His faithful audience. Ah, but we are grateful even for just that movement behind the curtain—grateful!”
Simon stared; at last Cadrach looked away from the puppet show and met his gaze. A strange, sad smile crimped the corner of the friar’s mouth; for once the look in his eyes seemed to match the expression on his face.
“Ah, boy,” he said, “and what should you know of religious matters, anyway?”
They strolled for some while longer before B
rother Cadrach at last took his leave with many thanks to the young man for his hospitality. Simon continued to walk aimlessly long after the monk was gone, and the patches of sky that could been seen through the roof-tenting were filmed with early darkness before he remembered his errand.
At the spice-merchant’s stall he discovered that his purse was gone.
His heart thumped triple-time as he thought back in panic. He knew that he had felt it swinging on his belt when he and Cadrach had stopped to buy chestnuts, but could summon no memories of having it later in the afternoon. Whenever it had disappeared, though, it was definitely gone now—along with not just his own fithing piece, but also the two pennies entrusted to him by Judith!
He searched the market vainly until the sky-holes had gone black as an old kettle. The snow that he had barely felt before seemed very cold and very wet as he returned, empty-handed, to the castle.
Worse than beating—as Simon discovered when he came home without spices or money—was the look of disappointment that sweet, fat, flour-dusted Judith gave him. Rachel also used this most unfair of gambits, punishing him with nothing more painful than an expression of disgust at his childishness and a promise that he would “work fingers to the nubbin” earning the money back. Even Morgenes, whom Simon went to half in hope of sympathy, seemed faintly surprised at the youth’s carelessness. All in all, although spared a thrashing, he had never felt lower or more sorry for himself.
Sunday came and went, a dark, slushy day in which most of the Hayholt’s staff seemed to be at chapel saying a prayer for King John—that, or telling Simon to go away. He had exactly the kind of scratchy, irritable, kick-things-across-the-floor sort of feeling that could usually be soothed by visiting Morgenes or trekking out of doors to do some exploring. The doctor, however, was busy—locked in with Inch, working on something that he said was large, dangerous, and likely to catch fire; Simon would not be needed for anything. The weather outside was so cold and dismal that even in his misery he could not convince himself to go a-roving. Instead, he spent the endless afternoon with the chandler’s fat apprentice Jeremias, tossing rocks from one of the turrets of the Inner Bailey wall and arguing in a desultory way as to whether the fish in the moat froze during the winter or, if not, where they went until Spring’s arrival.
The chill outside—as well as the different kind of chill in the servants’ quarters—still prevailed Moonday when he arose, feeling weedy and unpleasant. Morgenes also seemed in a damp and unresponsive mood, and so when Simon had finished his chores in the doctor’s chambers he filched some bread and cheese from the pantry larder and went off to be by himself.
For a while he moped by the Hall of Records in the Middle Bailey, listening to the dry, insectlike sounds of the Writing-Priests, but after an hour he begin to feel as though it was his own skin on which the scribes’ pens were scratching and scratching and scratching…
He decided to take his dinner and climb the stairs of Green Angel Tower, something he had not done since the weather had begun to turn. Since Barnabas the sexton would as gladly chase him off as go to Heaven, he resolved to bypass the chapel route to the tower entirely, taking instead his own secret path to the upper floors. Tying his meal securely in his handkerchief, he set out.
Walking through the seemingly endless halls of the Chancelry, passing continuously from covered passage to open courtyard and back under cover again—this part of the castle was dotted with small, enclosed yards—he superstitiously avoided looking up at the tower. Eminently slender and pale, it dominated the southwestern corner of the Hayholt like a birch tree in a rock garden, so impossibly tall and delicate that from ground level it almost appeared to be standing on some far hillside, miles and miles beyond the castle’s wall. Standing beneath he could hear it shudder in the wind, as though it were a lute string tight-cinched on some celestial peg.
The first four stories of Green Angel Tower looked no different than any of the other hundreds of varied structures of the castle. Past masters of the Hayholt had cloaked its slim base in granite outwalls and battlements—whether out of legitimate desire for improved security or because the alienness of the tower was unsettling, no one could know. Above the level of the encircling bailey wall the armoring stopped; the tower thrust nakedly upward, a beautiful albino creature escaping its drab cocoon. Balconies and windows in strangely abstract patterns were cut directly into the stone’s glossy surface, like the carved whalefish teeth Simon often saw at market. At the tower’s pinnacle shimmered a distant flare of copper-gold and green: the Angel herself, one arm outstretched as if in a gesture of farewell, the other shading her eyes as she stared into the eastern distance.
The huge, noisy Chancelry was even more confounding than usual today. Father Helfcene’s cassocked minions dashed back and forth from one chamber to another, or huddled for shivering discussions in the chill, snowflecked air of the courtyards. Several, bearing rolled papers and distracted expressions, tried to commandeer Simon for errands to the Hall of Records, but he bluffed his way through, protesting a mission for Doctor Morgenes.
In the throne room antechamber he halted, pretending to admire the vast mosaics while he waited for the last of the Chancelry priests to hurry through to the chapel beyond. When his moment came, he levered the door open and slid through into the throne room.
The huge hinges creaked, then went silent. Simon’s own footsteps echoed and reechoed, then stopped, fading at last into the deep, breathing quiet. No matter how many times he snuck through this room—for several years he had been, as far as he knew, the only castle resident who dared enter it—it never seemed less than awe-inspiring.
Just last month, after King John’s unexpected rising, Rachel and her crew had finally been allowed past the forbidden threshold; they had indulged themselves with a two-week assault on years of dust and grit, on broken glass and birds’ nests and the webs of spiders long since gone to their eight-legged ancestors. But even thoroughly cleaned, with its flagstones mopped, its walls washed down, and some—but not all—of the banners shed of their armor of dust, despite relentless and implacable tidying, the throne room emanated a certain age and stillness. Time here seemed bound only to the measured tread of antiquity.
The dais stood at the great room’s far end, in a pool of light that poured down from a figured window in the vaulted ceiling. Upon it the Dragonbone Chair stood like a strange altar—untenanted, surrounded by bright, dancing motes of dust, flanked by the statues of the Hayholt’s six High Kings.
The bones of the chair were huge, thicker than Simon’s legs, polished so that they gleamed dully like burnished stone. With a few exceptions they had been cut and fitted in such a way that, although their size was evident, it was difficult to guess in which part of the great fire-worm’s mighty carcass they had once sheltered. Only the chair back, a great seven-cubit fan of curving yellow ribs behind the king’s velvet cushions, reaching far above Simon’s head, could be seen immediately for what it was—that and the skull. Perched atop the back of the great seat, jutting far enough to serve as an awning—if more than a thin film of sunlight ever penetrated the shadowed throne room—were the brain-case and jaws of the dragon Shurakai. The eye-holes were broken black windows, the teeth curving spikes as long as Simon’s hands. The dragon’s skull was the color of old parchment, and webbed with tiny cracks, but there was something alive about it—terribly, wonderfully alive.
In fact, there was an astonishing and holy aura about this entire room that went far beyond Simon’s understanding. The throne of heavy, yellowed bones, the massive black figures guarding an empty chair in a high, deserted chamber, all seemed filled with some dread power. All eight inhabitants of the room, the scullion, the statues, and the huge eyeless skull, seemed to hold their breath.
These stolen moments filled Simon with a quiet, almost fearful, ecstasy. Perhaps the malachite kings but waited with black, stony patience for the boy to touch a blasphemous commoner’s hand to the dragonbone seat, waited…waited…and
then, with a horrible creaking noise, they would come to life! He shivered with nervous pleasure at his own imaginings and stepped lightly forward, surveying the dark faces. Their names had been so familiar once, when they had been strung-together nonsense in a child’s rhyme, a rhyme Rachel—Rachel? Could that be right?—had taught him when he was a giggling ape of four years or so. Could he remember them still?
If his own childhood seemed so long ago, he suddenly wondered, how must it feel to Prester John, who wore so many decades? Mercilessly clear, as when Simon remembered past humiliations, or soft and insubstantial, like stories of the glorious past? When you were old, did your memories crowd out your other thoughts? Or did you lose them—your childhood, your hated enemies, your friends?
How did that old song go? Six kings…
Six Kings have ruled in Hayholt’s broad halls
Six masters have stridden her mighty stone walls
Six mounds on the cliff over deep Kynslagh-bay
Six kings will sleep there until Doom’s final day
That was it!
Fingil first, named the Bloody King
Flying out of the North on war’s red wing
Hjeldin his son, the Mad King dire
Leaped to his death from the haunted spire
Ikferdig next, the Burned King hight
He met the fire-drake by dark of night
Three northern kings, all dead and cold
The North rules no more in lofty Hayholt