The Dragonbone Chair

by Tad Williams

  “Come for refuge, many of them,” Sangfugol said. “Most are off the Frostmarch and out of the Greenwade river valley. Some also from Utanyeat who’ve found Earl Guthwulf’s hand a little too heavy, but mostly they’re folk who’ve been driven from their land by weather or bandits. Or other things—like the Hunën.” He gestured to the completed pyre as they passed. The woodsmen had gone away; the stack of lumber stood mute and significant as a ruined church.

  Atop the battlements they settled down on rough-hewn stone. The sun had scaled high into the sky, beating down past the few remaining clouds. Simon wished he had a hat.

  “Either you or someone else has brought good weather with them.” Sangfugol opened his doublet to the warmth. “It has been the strangest Maia weather of my memory—snow flurries on the Frostmarch, cold rains down into Utanyeat…hail! We had hail a fortnight ago, icestones big as bird’s eggs.” He began to unwrap the food as Simon took in the view. Perched as they were atop the high walls of the inner keep, Naglimund was spread at their feet like a blanket.

  The castle hunched in a steep-sided hollow in the Wealdhelm Hills like something held in an upturned palm. Below the western battlements, across from where they sat, lay the castle’s broad outer wall; beyond that the crooked streets of Naglimund town sloped down to the outwall of the city. Outside the wall lay a nearly limitless expanse of rocky grazing land and low hills.

  On the far side, between the eastern battlements and the stark violet wall of the Wealdhelm, was a long, twisting trail down from the crest of the hills. Dotting the slopes on either side of the pathway were a thousand points of blackly gleaming sunlight.

  “What are those?” Simon pointed. Sangfugol squinted his eyes, chewing.

  “The nails, you mean?”

  “What nails? Those long spikes on the hillside are what I’m asking about.”

  The harper nodded. “The nails. What do you think Naglimund means, anyway? You Hayholt-folk have forgotten your Erkynlandish. ‘Nail-fort’—that’s what it means. Duke Aeswides put them there when he built Naglimund.”

  “When was that? And what are they for?” Staring, Simon let the wind take his bread crumbs and swirl them out over the outer bailey.

  “Sometime before the Rimmersmen came south, that’s all I know,” Sangfugol answered. “But he got the steel from Rimmersgard, all those bars. The Dvernings made them,” he added significantly, but the name meant nothing to Simon.

  “Why, though? It’s like an iron garden.”

  “To keep the Sithi out,” Sangfugol declared. “Aeswides was terrified of them, because this was really their land. One of their great cities, I forget the name, was on the far side of the hills here.”

  “Da’ai Chikiza,” Simon said quietly, staring at the thicket of tarnished metal.

  “That’s right,” the harper agreed. “And the Sithi can’t stand iron, it’s said. Makes them quite ill, even kills them. So Aeswides surrounded his castle with those steel ‘nails’—used to be they were all around the front of the keep as well, but with the Sithi gone they just got in the way: made it hard to bring wagons in on market day, things of that sort. So when King John gave this place to Josua—to keep him and his brother apart as much as possible, I suspect—my master took them all down except the ones there on the slopes. I think they amuse him. He likes old things very much, the prince my master.”

  As they shared the jug of beer, Simon related to the harp player a pared-down version of what had happened to him since they had last met, leaving out some of the more inexplicable things since he had no answer to the questions the harper would surely raise. Sangfugol was impressed, but he was most strongly affected by the tale of Josua’s rescue and Morgenes’ martyrdom.

  “Ah, that villain Elias,” he said at last, and Simon was surprised by the look of real anger that clouded the harper’s face like a storm. “King John should have strangled that monster at birth, or barring that, at least made him general of the armies and let him harry the Thrithings-men—anything but putting him on the Dragonbone Chair to be a plague to us all!”

  “But he is there,” Simon said, chewing. “Do you think he will attack us here in Naglimund?”

  “Only God and the Devil know,” Sangfugol grinned sourly, “and the Devil’s hedging his bets. He may not know yet that Josua is here, although that certainly won’t last long. This keep is a strong, strong place. We have long-dead Aeswides to thank for that, anyway. All the same, strong or no, I can’t imagine Elias standing by for long while Josua builds power here in the north.”

  “But I thought Prince Josua didn’t want to be king,” Simon said.

  “And he doesn’t. But Elias is not the type to understand that. Ambitious men never believe others aren’t the same. He’s also got Pryrates whispering words of snaky advice in his ear.”

  “But haven’t Josua and the king been enemies for years? Since long before Pryrates came?”

  Sangfugol nodded. “There has been no shortage of trouble between them. They loved each other once, were closer than most brothers—or so I’m told by Josua’s older retainers. But they fell out, and then Hylissa died.”

  “Hylissa?” Simon asked.

  “Elias’ Nabbanai wife. Josua was bringing her to Elias, who was still a prince, at war then for his father in the Thrithings. Their party was waylaid by Thrithings raiders. Josua lost his hand trying to defend Hylissa, but to no avail—the raiders were too many.”

  Simon let out a long breath, “So that’s how it happened!”

  “It was the death of any love between them…or so people say.”

  After thinking for a while on Sangfugol’s words, Simon stood and stretched; the sore spot on his ribs gave him a warning twinge. “So what will Prince Josua do now?” he asked.

  The harper scratched at his arm and stared down at the commons yard. “I can’t even guess,” Sangfugol said. “Prince Josua is cautious, and slow to action; anyway, they don’t usually call me in to discuss strategy.” He smiled. “There is talk that important emissaries are arriving, and that sometime within a sennight Josua will call a formal Raed.”

  “A what?”

  “Raed. It’s an old Erkynlandish term for council, more or less. People in these parts tend to cling to the older ways. Out in the country, away from the castle, most of them still use the old speech. A Hayholt man like yourself would probably need a local interpreter.”

  Simon would not be distracted by talk of rustic foibles. “A council, you said—a…a Raed? Would that be a council of…war?”

  “These days,” the musician replied, and his face was again somber, “any council at Naglimund will be a council of war.”

  They walked along the battlements.

  “I’m surprised,” Sangfugol said, “that with all the services you have rendered to my master he has not yet called you for an audience.”

  “I’ve only just got out of bed this morning,” Simon said. “Besides, he may not even have known it was me…in a dark clearing, with a dying giant and all.”

  “I suppose you’re right,” the harper said, clinging to his hat, which was doing its best to take to the gusting winds.

  Still, Simon thought, if Marya took him the message from the princess, I should hope she would mention her companions. I never would have thought she was the kind of girl to just forget us.

  He had to be fair, though: what girl suddenly saved from the damp and dangerous wilderness would not prefer to spend her time with the gentlefolk of the castle instead of a stringy scullion?

  “You haven’t by any chance seen the girl Marya who came with us?” he asked.

  Sangfugol shook his head. “People are coming in at the gates every day. And not just the ones fleeing the outlying farms and villages, either. The outriders for Prince Gwythinn of Hernystir came in last night, horses in a lather. The prince’s party should be here this evening. Lord Ethelferth of Tinsett has been here for a week with two hundred men. Baron Ordmaer brought a hundred Utersall men just after. Other lo
rds are coming in with their musters from all around. The hunt is afoot, Simon—though the Aedon only knows who’s hunting who.”

  They had reached the northeastern turret. Sangfugol tipped a salute to the young soldier who was walking sentry. Beyond his graycloaked shoulder rose the bulk of the Wealdhelm, the massive hills seeming close enough to reach out and touch.

  “Busy as he is,” the harper said suddenly, “it doesn’t seem right that he shouldn’t have seen you yet. Do you mind if I put in a word for you? I’m to attend him at dinner tonight.”

  “I would certainly like to see him, yes. I was…very frightened for his safety. And my master gave a great deal so that Josua could return here, to his home.”

  Simon was surprised to notice a faint touch of bitterness in his own voice. He hadn’t meant it to sound that way, but still, he had gone through a lot to get here, and it had been him and no other who had found Josua, trussed and hanging like a pheasant over a cotsman’s doorway.

  The tone of the remark had not escaped Sangfugol, either; the look he turned on Simon was compounded of sympathy and amusement.

  “I understand. I would advise, however, that you do not put it to my prince in quite that manner. He is a proud, difficult man, Simon, but I am sure he hasn’t forgotten you. Things have been, as you know, rather difficult of late in these parts, almost as harrowing as your own journey.”

  Simon lifted his chin and stared out at the hills, at the strange shimmer of the wind-ruffled trees. “I know,” he said. “If he can see me, it will be an honor. If he cannot…well, that is what will be.”

  The harper grinned lazily, playful eyes drooping at the comers. “A proud and fair speech. Come now, let me show you the Nails of Naglimund.”

  It was truly an astonishing sight in broad daylight. The field of shining poles, starting within a few ells of the ditch below the eastern wall of the castle, slanted up the slope and away for perhaps a quarter of a league, right up to the feet of the hills. They were arranged in symmetrical rows, as though a legion of spearmen had been buried there, leaving only their weapons protruding above the dark soil to show how conscientiously they stood their guard. The road that meandered down from a gaping cavern in the hill’s western face wound back and forth between the rows as sinuously as the track of a serpent, stopping at last before the Naglimund’s heavy eastern gate.

  “And whatever-was-his-name did all this because he was frightened of the Sithi?” Simon asked, bewildered by the strange, silverydark crop that stretched before him. “Why not just put them at the top of the wall?”

  “Duke Aeswides was his name. He was Nabban’s governor here, and he was breaking precedent to place his castle on Sithi lands. As to why not on the walls, well, I suppose he feared they could find some way to get over a single wall—or beneath, perhaps. This way they would need to go through them. You have not seen the half, Simon—these things used to sprout on every side!” Sangfugol swung his arm in an encompassing gesture.

  “What did the Sithi do?” Simon asked. “Did they try and attack?”

  Sangfugol frowned. “Not as I’ve ever heard. You should really ask old Father Strangyeard about that. He the archivist and historian of the place.”

  Simon smiled. “I’ve met him.”

  “Interesting old scuffer, isn’t he? He told me once that when Aeswides built this place, the Sithi called it…called it…damn! I should know these old stories, being a balladeer. Anyway, the name they had for it meant something like Trap that Catches the Hunter’…as if Aeswides had just walled himself in or some such: that he had made his own trap.”

  “And did he? What happened to him?”

  Sangfugol shook his head, and nearly lost his hat again. “Damn me if I know. Probably got old and died here. I don’t think the Sithi paid much attention to him.”

  It took them an hour to complete the circuit. They had long ago emptied the jar of beer Sangfugol had brought to wash down their meal, but the harper had prudently brought a skin of wine as well, thus saving them from a dry hike. They were laughing; the older man was teaching Simon a bawdy song about a Nabbanai noblewoman when they reached the main gate and the winding stairs back down to the ground. As they emerged from the gatehouse they found themselves in a milling crowd of workmen and soldiers; most of the latter were off duty, to judge by the disarray of their dress. Everyone was shouting and shoving; Simon quickly found himself crushed between a fat man and a bearded guardsman.

  “What’s happening?” he called to Sangfugol, who had been pulled a short distance away by the movement of the crowd.

  “I’m not sure,” the other called back. “Perhaps Gwythinn of Hernysadharc has arrived.”

  The fat man turned his red face up to Simon. “Naow, it ain’t,” he said cheerfully. His breath stank of beer and onions. “It’s that giant, the one what the prince has killed.” He pointed toward the pyre, which still stood naked at the edge of the commons.

  “But I don’t see the giant,” Simon said.

  “They’re just a-fetching him,” the man said. “I just came with the others, to make sure of seeing. My sister’s son was one of the beaters what helped catch the devil-beast!” he added proudly.

  Now another wave of sound passed through the crowd: somebody up front could see something, and the word was hurrying back to those who could not. Necks were craned, and children were lifted to the shoulders of patient, dirty-faced mothers.

  Simon looked around. Sangfugol had disappeared. He stood up on tiptoe, and found that only a few in the throng were as tall as he. Beyond the pyre he saw the bright silks of a tent or awning, and before it the flashing colors of some of the castle’s courtiers, sitting on stools and talking, waving their sleeves as they gestured, like a branch full of brilliant birds. He scanned the faces for a glimpse of Marya—perhaps she had already found a noble lady to attach herself to: surely it was not safe for her to go back to the princess at the Hayholt, or wherever she was. None of the faces was hers, however, and before he could look for her elsewhere in the assemblage a line of armored men appeared in one of the archways of the inner wall.

  Now the crowd was murmuring in earnest, for the first half-dozen soldiers were followed by a team of horses pulling a high wooden cart. Simon felt a moment of hollowness in his stomach but dismissed it: was he to go all queasy every time a wagon creaked by?

  As the wheels ground to a halt, and the soldiers gathered around to unload the pale thing humped high on the bed of the cart, Simon caught a glimpse of crow-black hair and white skin over where the nobles stood, beyond the stacked timbers; when he looked closer, hoping it was Marya, the laughing courtiers had closed in again and there was nothing to see.

  It took eight straining guardsmen to lift the pole on which the giant’s body hung like a deer from the king’s hunting preserve, and even so they still had to slide it from the wagon to the ground before they could get their shoulders comfortably under the bar. The creature had been trussed at knees and elbows; huge hands wagged in the air as its back bumped along the ground. The crowd, which had pushed forward eagerly, now began to fall back with exclamations of fear and disgust.

  The thing looked more manlike now, Simon thought, than when it had loomed upright before him in the forest of the Stile. With the skin of its dark face gone slack in death, the menacing snarl erased, it wore the puzzled expression of a man given unfathomable news. As Strangyeard had said, it wore a garment of rough cloth around its waist. A belt of some reddish stones hung dragging in the dust of the commons.

  The fat man beside Simon, who had been exhorting the soldiers to march faster, turned a merry eye his way.

  “Do you know what he was a-wearing ’round his neck?” he shouted. Simon, hemmed in on both sides, shrugged. “Skulls!” the man said, as pleased as if he had given them to the dead giant himself. “Wearing ’em as a necklace, he was. Giving ’em an Aedonite burial, the prince is—even though it’s anyone’s guess whose they be.” He turned back to the spectacle again.

&n
bsp; Several other soldiers had climbed to the top of the pyre, and were helping the bearers move the massive creature into place. When they had wrestled it into place, lying on its back at the summit, they supped the pole out from between its crossed arms and legs and scrambled down in a group. As the last man leaped down to the ground, the great body slipped forward a little way, and the sudden movement made a woman scream. Several children began to cry. A gray-cloaked officer shouted an order; one of the soldiers leaned forward and thrust a torch deep into the bundles of straw that had been laid around the edges. The flames, strangely colorless in the late afternoon sun, began to bend around the straw, reaching upward toward more substantial food. Wisps of smoke twined around the form of the giant, and some current of air bent his shaggy fur like dry summer grass.

  There! He had seen her again, beyond the pyre! Trying to push forward, he received a sharp elbow to the ribs from someone fighting to retain their choice viewpoint. He stopped, frustrated, and stared at the spot where he thought he had spotted her.

  Then he saw, and he realized it was not Marya. This black-haired woman, wrapped in a somber, exquisitely-sewn green cloak, was perhaps twenty years older. She was certainly beautiful, though, with ivory skin and wide, uptilted eyes.

  As Simon stared, she in turn watched the burning giant, whose hair was beginning to curl and blacken as the fire climbed the mound of pine logs The smoke rose like a curtain, obscuring her from Simon’s view, he wondered who she was, and why—as the Naglimunders all around shouted and waved their fists at the pillar of smoke—she looked into the blaze with such sad, angry eyes

  31

  The Councils of the Prince

  Although he had been quite hungry while walking the castle walls with Sangfugol, when Father Strangyeard came by to take him to the kitchens—belatedly fulfilling his earlier promise—Simon found that his appetite had fled The stench of the afternoon’s burning was still in his nostrils; he could almost feel the clinging smoke as he walked behind the castle archivist