by Tad Williams
“Pryrates…” the king began.
“Please, your majesty, please. It is only a moment now.”
Horribly, a part of Pryrates’ thought had not left Simon’s mind, some clinging tag-end that the priest had not pulled back: he could almost taste the alchemist’s quivering expectancy as Pryrates pulled up Breyugar’s head, could sense the priest responding to the low murmuring of the hooded ones. And now he felt something deeper, too, a chill wedge of horror driving into his raw and sensitive mind. Some inexplicable other was there in the night—a terrible something’ else. It hovered over the hilltop like a choking cloud, and burned inside the seated figure on the wagon like a hidden black flame; it dwelt also in the bodies of the standing stones, infusing them with its greedy attention.
The sickle rose. For a moment the flashing crimson curve of the blade was a second moon against the sky, an old, red crescent moon. Pryrates cried out in a high-pitched language Simon could not understand.
“Aí Samu’sitech’a!—Aí Nakkiga!”
The sickle descended and Breyugar sagged forward. Purplish blood pumped from his throat, spattering down onto the coffin. For a moment the Lord Constable twitched violently beneath the priest’s hand, then went limp as an eel; the dark flow continued to drizzle on the black lid. Enmeshed in the bizarre intermixture of thought, Simon helplessly experienced Pryrates’ panicky exhilaration. Behind that he felt the something-else—a cold, dark, horribly vast thing. Its ancient thoughts sang with obscene joy.
One of the soldiers was throwing up; but for the flabby numbness that unmanned and silenced him, Simon would have done the same.
Pryrates pushed the count’s body aside; Breyugar tumbled in a disordered heap, oyster-pale fingers curled toward the sky. The blood smoked on the dark box, and the blue light flickered more brightly. The line it described around the edge became more pronounced. Slowly, dreadfully, the lid began to open, as if forced up from within.
Holy Usires Who loves me. Holy Usires Who loves me—Simon’s thoughts were a rush, a panicked tangle—help me, help me help it’s the Devil in that box, he’s coming out help save me oh help…
We have done it…we have done it!—other thoughts, foreign, not his—Too late to turn back. Too late.
The first step—the coldest, most terrible thoughts of all—How they will pay and pay and pay…
As the lid tilted up the light within burst forth, throbbing indigo touched with smoky gray and sullen purple, a terrible bruised light that pulsed and glared. The lid fell open, and the wind tightened its pitch as if frightened, as if sickened by the radiance of the long black box. At last what was inside could be seen.
Jingizu, a voice whispered in Simon’s head. Jingizu…
It was a sword. It lay inside the box, deadly as an adder; it might have been black, but a floating sheen mottled the blackness, a crawling gray like oil on dark water. The wind shrieked.
It beats like a heart—the heart of all sorrow…
Calling, it sang inside Simon’s head, a voice both horrible and beautiful, seductive as claws gently scraping his skin.
“Take it. Highness!” Pryrates urged through the hiss of the wind. Enthralled, helpless, Simon suddenly wished he had the strength to take it himself. Could he not? Power was singing to him, singing of the thrones of the mighty, the rapture of desire fulfilled.
Elias took a dragging step forward. One by one the soldiers around him stumbled back, turning to run sobbing or praying down the hill, lurching into the darkness of the girdling trees. Within moments only Elias, Pryrates, and hidden Simon-remained on the hilltop with the hooded ones and their sword. Elias took another step; now he stood over the box. His eyes were wide with fear; he seemed stricken by wrenching doubt, his lips working soundlessly. The unseen fingers of the wind plucked at his cloak, and the hill grasses twined about his ankles.
“You must take it!” Pryrates said again, and Elias stared at him as though seeing the alchemist for the first time. “Take it!” Pryrates’ words danced frantically through Simon’s head like rats in a burning house.
The king bent, reaching out his hand. Simon’s lust turned to sudden horror at the wild, empty nothingness of the sword’s dark song.
It’s wrong! Can’t he feel it?! Wrong!
As Elias’ hand neared the sword, the wail of the wind subsided. The four hooded figures stood motionless before the wagon; the fifth seemed to sink into deeper shadow. Silence fell on the hilltop like a palpable thing.
Elias grasped the hilt, lifting the blade out of the coffin in one smooth movement. As he held it before him the fear was suddenly wiped from his face, and his lips parted in a helpless, idiot smile. He lifted the sword high; a blue shimmer played along the edge, marking it out from the blackness of the sky. Elias’ voice was almost a whimper of pleasure.
“I…will take the master’s gift. I will…honor our pact.” Slowly, the blade held before him, he sank to one knee. “Hail to Ineluki Storm King!”
The wind sprang up anew, shrieking. Simon reeled back from the flapping, whirling hill-fire as the four robed figures lifted their white arms, chanting: “Ineluki, aí! Ineluki, aí!”
No! Simon’s thoughts flurried, the king…all is lost! Run, Josua!
Sorrow…Sorrow on all the land…
The fifth hooded shape began to writhe atop the wagon. The black robe fell away, and a shape of fire-crimson light was revealed, flapping like a burning sail. A ghastly, heart-gnawing fear beat outward from the thing as it began to grow before Simon’s terror-fixed eyes—bodiless and billowing, larger and larger until the empty, wind-snapping bulk of it loomed over all, a creature of howling air and glowing redness.
The Devil is here! Sorrow, his name is sorrow…! The king has brought the Devil! Morgenes, Holy Usires, save me save me save me!
He ran mindlessly down through black night, away from the red thing and the exulting something-else. The sound of his flight was lost in the screaming wind. Branches tore at his arms and hair and face like claws…
The icy claw of the North…the ruins of Asu’a.
And when he fell at last, tumbling, and his spirit fled from such horror, fled away into deeper darkness, it seemed that in the final instant he could hear the very stones of the earth moaning in their beds beneath him.
PART TWO
Simon Pilgrim
15
A Meeting at the Inn
The first thing Simon heard was a humming noise, a dull buzz that pushed insistently against his ear as he struggled toward wakefulness. Half-opening an eye, he found himself staring at a monstrosity—a dark, indistinct mass of squirming legs and glittering eyes. He sat up with a startled yelp and a great flailing of arms; the bumblebee that had been guilelessly exploring his nose leaped away in a whir of translucent wings to search for a less excitable perch.
He lifted a hand to shade his eyes, startled by the vibrant clarity of the world around him. The daylight was dazzling. The spring sun, as if on imperial procession, had scattered gold on all sides across the grassy downs; everywhere he looked the gentle slopes were rich with dandelions and long-stemmed marigolds. Bees hurried among them, nipping from flower to flower like little doctors discovering—much to their surprise—all their patients getting well at the same time.
Simon slumped back down into the grass, clasping his hands behind his head. He had slept a long while: the rich sun was almost straight overhead. It made the hairs on his forearms glow like molten copper; the tips of his ragged shoes looked so far away he could almost imagine them the peaks of distant mountains.
A sudden cold sliver of memory pierced his drowsiness. How had he gotten here? What…?
A dark presence at his shoulder brought him quickly onto his knees; he turned to see the tree-mantled mass of Thisterborg looming behind him, not half a league away. Every detail was stunningly clear, a pattern of precise edges; but for the troubling throb of memory it might have seemed comfortable and cool, a placid hill rising through encircling trees, banded with
shade and bright green leaves. Along its crest were the Anger Stones, faint gray points against the blue sky.
The vivid spring day was now corrupted by a mist of dream—what had happened last night? He had fled the castle, of course—those moments, his last with Morgenes, were burned into his very heart—but after? What were these nightmarish memories? Endless tunnels? Elias? A fire, and white-haired demons?
Dreams—idiot, bad dreams. Terror and tiredness and more terror. I ran through the graveyard at night, fell down at last, slept and dreamed.
But the tunnels, and…a black casket? His head still hurt, but there was also an odd sense of numbness, as if ice had been laid on an injury. The dream had seemed so real. Now it was distant, slippery and meaningless—a dark pang of fear and pain that would drift away like smoke if he allowed it to—or, at least, he hoped it would. He pushed the memories down, burying them as deeply as he could, and closing his mind over them like the lid of a box.
It’s not as though I don’t have enough things to worry about…
The bright sun of Belthainn Day had smoothed some of the kinks from his muscles, but he was still sore…and very hungry. He clambered stiffly to his feet and brushed the clinging grass from his tattered, mud-smeared clothes. He stole another look at Thisterborg. Did the ashes of a great fire still smolder among the stones there? Or had the shattering events of the day before pushed him for a while into madness? The hill stood, impassive; whatever secrets might lurk beneath the cloak of trees, or nestle in the crown of stones, Simon did not want to know. There were already too many hollows that needed filling.
Turning his back on Thisterborg, he faced across the downs to the dark breakfront of the forest. Staring across the vast expanse of open land, he felt a deep sorrow welling up within him, and pity for himself. He was so alone! They had taken everything from him, and left him without a home or friends. He slapped his hands together in anger and felt the palms sting. Later! Later he would cry; now he had to be a man. But it was all so horribly unfair!
He breathed in and out deeply, and looked again to the distant woods. Somewhere near that thin line of shadow, he knew, ran the Old Forest Road
. It rolled for miles along Aldheorte’s southern perimeter, sometimes at a distance, sometimes sidling up close to the old trees like a teasing child. In other places it actually passed beneath the forest’s eaves, winding through dark bowers and silent, sun-arrowed clearings. A few small villages and an occasional roadhouse nestled in the forest’s shadow.
Perhaps I can find some work to do—even to earn a meal, anyway. I feel hungry as a bear…a just-woken bear, at that. Starved! I haven’t eaten since before…before…
He bit his lip, hard. There was nothing else to do but start walking.
The touch of the sun felt like a benediction. As it warmed his sore body, it seemed also to cut a little way through the clinging, troubling pall of his thoughts. In a way he felt newborn, like the colt Shem had brought him to see last spring, all shaky legs and curiosity. But the new strangeness of the world was not all innocent; something strange and secretive lurked behind the bright tapestry laid out before him; the colors were almost too bright, the scents and sounds over-sweet.
He was soon uncomfortably aware of Morgenes’ manuscript tucked into his waistband, but after he had tried carrying the sheaf of parchment in his sweating palms for a few hundred paces he gave up and slipped it back under his belt. The old man had asked him to save the thing, and save it he would. He pushed his shirttail behind it to ease the rubbing.
When he tired of searching patiently for places to ford the small streams that webbed the meadows he took off his shoes. The smell of the grasslands and the moist Maia air, untrustworthy indicators though they were, nevertheless went some way toward keeping his thoughts from straying toward the black, hurting places; the feel of mud between his toes helped, too.
Before long he reached the Old Forest Road
. Instead of continuing along the road itself, which was wide and muddy and scored with the rain-filled ruts of wagon wheels, Simon turned west and accompanied its passage atop the high grass bank. Below him white asphodels and blue gillyflowers stood abashed and unprotected between the wheel marks, as though surprised in the midst of a slow pilgrimage from one bank to the other. Puddles caught the sky’s afternoon blue, and the humble mud seemed studded with shining glass.
A furlong away across the road the trees of Aldheorte stood in endless formation like an army asleep on its feet. Darknesses so complete that they might have been portals into the earth gaped between some of the trunks. In other places were things that must be woodcutter’s huts, noticeably angular against the forest’s graceful lines.
Walking, staring at the interminable forest porch, Simon tripped over a berry-bush and painfully scratched both his feet. As soon as he realized what he had stumbled over, he stopped cursing. Most of the berries were still green, but enough had ripened that his cheeks and chin were thoroughly stained with berry juice when he continued on some minutes later, chewing contentedly. The berries were not quite sweet yet, but still they seemed the first serious argument he had found in a long time for the benevolent ordering of Creation. When he finished, he wiped his hands on his ruined shirt.
As the road, with Simon for company, began to mount a long track of rising ground, definite evidence of human habitation finally appeared. Here and there in the southerly distance the rough spines of split-wood fences pushed up from the high grass; beyond these weathered boundary wardens were indistinct figures moving in the slow rhythms of planting, putting down the spring peas. Somewhere nearby, others would be moving deliberately down the rows plying the weed hooks, doing their best to save the fruits of a bad year. The younger folk would be up on the cottage roofs, turning back the thatch, beating it down firmly with long sticks and pulling off the moss that had grown during the rains of Avril. He felt a strong urge to head out across the fields toward those calm, ordered farms. Someone would surely give him work, take him in…feed him.
How stupid can I be? he thought. Why don’t I just walk back to the castle and stand shouting in the commons yard?! Country folk were notoriously suspicious of strangers—especially these days, with rumors of banditry and worse drifting down from the north. The Erkynguard would be looking for him, Simon felt sure. These isolated farms would be very likely to remember a red-haired young man who had recently passed by. Besides, he was in no hurry to speak to strangers, anyway—not so close to the Hayholt. Perhaps he would be better off in one of the inns that bordered the mysterious forest—if one would have him.
I do know something about working in kitchens, don’t I? Someone will give me work…won’t they?
Topping a rise, he saw the road before him intersected by a dark swath, a crease of wagon tracks that emerged from the forest and meandered south across the fields; a woodsman’s road, perhaps, a route from the woodchopper’s harvesting-place to the farmlands west of Erchester. Something dark stood, angular and erect, at the meeting point of the two roads. A brief twinge of fear passed through him before he realized that it was too tall an object to be someone waiting for him. He guessed it to be a scarecrow, or a roadside shrine to Elysia, the Mother of God—crossroads were infamously strange places, and the common folk often mounted a holy relic to keep away loitering ghosts.
As he neared the crossing he decided that he had been right about it being a scarecrow—the object seems to be hanging from a tree or pole, and swayed softly, breeze-blown. But as he came closer he saw it was no scarecrow. Soon he could no longer convince himself that it was anything other than what it was; the body of a man swinging from a crude gibbet.
He reached the crossroad. The wind subsided; thin roadway dust hung about him in a brown cloud. He stopped to stare helplessly. The road grit settled, then leaped into swirling motion once more.
The hanged man’s feet, bare and swollen black, dangled at the height of Simon’s shoulder. His head lolled to one side, like a puppy picked up by th
e neck-scruff; the birds had been at his eyes and face. A broken shingle of wood with the words “M THE KINGS LAND” scratched upon it bumped gently against his chest; in the road below lay another piece. On it was scrawled: “POACHED FRO.”
Simon stepped back; an innocent breeze twisted the sagging body so that the face tipped away to stare sightlessly across the fields. He hurried across the lumber-road, tracing the four-pointed Tree on his chest as he passed through the thing’s shadow. Normally such a sight would be fearful but fascinating, as dead things were, but now all he could feel was sick terror. He himself had stolen—or helped to steal—something far greater than this poor sneak thief could ever have dreamed of: he had stolen the king’s brother from the king’s own dungeon. How long would it be until they caught him, as they had caught this rook-eaten creature? What would his punishment be?
He looked back once. The ruined face had swung again, as if to watch his retreat. He ran until a dip in the road had blocked the crossing from view.
It was late afternoon when he reached the tiny village of Flett. It was truthfully not much of a village, just an inn and a few houses crouching beside the road within a stone’s-throw of the woods. No people were about except a thin woman standing in the doorway of one of the rude houses, and a pair of solemn, round-eyed children that peered out past her legs. There were, however, several horses—farm nags, mostly—tied to a log before the town’s inn, the Dragon and Fisherman. As Simon walked slowly past the open door, looking cautiously all around, men’s loud voices rolled out from the beery darkness, frightening him. He decided to wait and try his luck later, when there might be more customers stopping off the Old Forest Road
for the night, and his dirty, tattered appearance would be less notable.
He followed the road a little farther. His stomach was rumbling, making him wish he had saved some of his berries. There were only a few more houses and a little one-room cottage-church, then the road swerved up and under the forest’s eaves and Flett, such as it was, ended.