The Dragonbone Chair

by Tad Williams

  Jarnauga nodded, as a master at a pupil. “That was her name among the first men in the west, long before Hern built the Taig at Hernysadharc. Thus do bits and pieces of older truth survive in the stories children hear in their beds, or soldiers and hunters share around a campfire. But Hidohebhi was her Sithi name, and she was more powerful than either of her children. In the killing of her, which itself became a long and famous story, Ineluki’s brother Hakatri was horribly wounded, burned by the worm’s terrible fires. There was no cure for his injuries or their unending pain in all of Osten Ard, but neither did he die. At last the king had him put in a boat with his most trusted servant, and they passed away over the ocean toward the West, where the Sithi hoped there was a land beyond the setting sun, a place without pain, where Hakatri might be whole again.

  “Thus Ineluki, despite the great deed of slaying Hidohebhi, became his father’s heir under the shadow of Hakatri’s fall. Blaming himself, perhaps, he spent long years in the pursuit of knowledge that likely should have been barred to man and Sithi alike. At first he may have thought that he could make his brother well, bring him back from the uncharted west…but as with all such quests, soon the search became its own reason and reward, and Ineluki, he whose beauty had once been the silent music of the palace of Asu’a, became more and more a stranger to his people, a searcher in dark places.

  “So it was that when the men of the north rose up, pillaging and slaying, to encircle Asu’a at last in a ring of poisonous iron, Ineluki was the one who set his mind to defeating the trap.

  “In the deep caverns below Asu’a, lit by cunning mirrors, grew the witchwood gardens, the place where the Sithi tended the trees whose strange wood they used as the southern men used bronze, and as the northerners used iron. The witchwood trees, whose roots, some say, reached down into the very center of the earth, were tended by gardeners as sacred as priests. Every day they spoke the old spells and performed the unchanging rituals that made the witchwood thrive, as the king and his court in the palace above sank more and more into despair and forgetfulness.

  “But Ineluki had not forgotten the gardens, nor had he forgotten the dark books he had read, and the shadowy paths he had walked in search of wisdom. In his chambers, where none of the others came anymore, he began a task that he thought would be the saving of Asu’a and the Sithi.

  “Somehow, causing himself great pain, he procured black iron, which he gave to the witchwood trees as a monk waters his vines. Many of the trees, no less sensitive than the Sithi themselves, sickened and died, but one survived.

  “Ineluki wove this tree ’round with spells, with words older perhaps than the Sithi, and charms that reached down farther even than the witchwood’s roots. The tree grew strong again, and this time poisonous iron ran through it like blood. The caretakers of the sacred garden, seeing their charges blighted, fled. They told Iyu’unigato the king, and he was concerned, but seeing as he did the end of all things, would not stop his son. What use was witchwood now, with bright-eyed men all around, and deadly iron in their hands?

  “The growing of the tree sickened Ineluki, even as it did the gardens themselves, but his will was stronger than any illness. He persevered, until at last it was time to reap the sought-for harvest. He took his dreadful planting, the witchwood all shot through with baleful iron, and went up into the forges of Asu’a.

  “Haggard, sick to madness, yet full of grim resolve, he watched the master smiths of Asu’a flee before him and did not care. By himself he heated the forge fires hotter than they had ever been; alone he chanted the Words of Making, all the while wielding the Hammer That Shapes, which none but the High Smith had ever held before.

  “Alone in the red-lit depths of the forge he made a sword, a terrible gray sword whose very substance seemed to breathe dismay. Such hideous, unholy magics did Ineluki call up during its forging that the very air of Asu’a seemed to crackle with heat, and the walls swayed as though struck by giant fists.

  “He took the new-forged sword, then, into his father’s great hall, thinking to show his people the thing that would save them. Instead, so terrible was his aspect, and so distressing was the gray sword, shining with an almost unbearable light, that the Sithi ran in horror from the hall, leaving only Ineluki and his father Iyu’unigato.”

  In the deepening hush that surrounded Jarnauga’s words, a quiet so profound that even the fire seemed to have stopped sputtering, as though it, too, held its breath, Simon felt the hairs on his neck and arms stand upright, and a strange dizziness creep though him.

  A…sword! A gray sword! I can see it so clearly! What does it mean? Why does the thought stick in my head? He scratched hard at his scalp with both hands, as though in his pain he might shake the answer loose.

  “When the Erl-king at last saw what his son had made, he must have felt his heart turn to ice in his chest, for the blade Ineluki held was no mere weapon, but a blasphemy against the earth that had yielded both iron and witchwood. It was a hole in the tapestry of creation, and life leaked away through it.

  “ ‘Such a thing should not be,’ he told his son. ‘Better that we should go into the forgetful void, better that the mortals gnaw on our bones—better even that we had never lived at all than such a thing should ever be made, let alone used.’

  “But Ineluki was maddened with the power of the thing, and horribly tangled in the spells that created it. ‘It is the one weapon that will save us!’ he told his father. ‘Otherwise these creatures, these insects, will swarm over the face of the land, destroying as they go, obliterating beauty they cannot even see or comprehend. It is worth any price to prevent that!’

  “ ‘No,’ said Iyu’unigato, ‘No. Some prices are too great. Look at you! Even now it has worn your mind and heart away. I am your king, as well as your sire, and I command you to destroy it, before it devours you utterly.’

  “But to hear his father demand such a thing, the unmaking of what he had nearly died a-forging—and only done, as he thought, to save his people from final darkness—drove Ineluki past all caring. In that moment he lifted the sword and struck his father down, killing the king of the Sithi.

  “Never before had such a thing been done, and when Ineluki saw Iyu’unigato lying before him he wept and wept, not only for his father, but also for himself, and his people. At last he lifted the gray sword up before his eyes. ‘From sorrow have you come,’ he said, ‘and sorrow you have brought with you. Sorrow shall be your name.’ Thus he named the blade Jingizu, which is the word in Sithitongue.”

  Sorrow—a sword named Sorrow…Simon heard it in his mind as an echo, bouncing back and forth through his thoughts until it seemed it would drown out Jarnauga’s words, the storm outside, everything. Why did it sound so terribly familiar? Sorrow…Jingizu…Sorrow…

  “But the story does not end there,” the northerner said, his voice gaining strength even as its spell flung a pall of unease over the listening company. “Ineluki, more maddened than ever by what he had done, nevertheless took up his father’s crown of white birchwood and proclaimed himself king. So stunned were his family and folk by the murder that they had no stomach to resist him. Some actually welcomed the change in secret, five in particular who, like Ineluki, had been angered by the idea of passive surrender to the surrounding mortals.

  “Ineluki, with Sorrow in his hand, was a force unbridled. With his five servants—whom the terrified and superstitious northerners named the Red Hand for their number and fire-colored cloaks—Ineluki took the battle outside the walls of Asu’a, for the first time in almost three years of siege. Only the sheer numbers, the iron-wielding thousands of Fingil’s horde, prevented the night-terror that Ineluki had become from breaking the siege. As it was, if the other Sithi had rallied behind them it could be that Sithi kings would still walk the battlements of the Hayholt.

  “But Ineluki’s people had no will left to fight. Frightened of the new king, horrified by his murder of Iyu’unigato, they instead took advantage of the mayhem caused by Ineluki a
nd his Red Hand to flee Asu’a, led by Amerasu the queen and Shima’onari, son of Ineluki’s dragon-doomed brother Hakatri. They escaped into the dark but protective ways of Aldheorte forest, hiding from the blood-mad mortals and their own king.

  “Thus it was that Ineluki found himself left with little more than his five warriors in the guttering skeleton of Asu’a. Even his powerful magics had proved too little at the end to withstand the sheer numbers of Fingil’s army. The northern shamans spoke their weirds, and the last protective magics fell away from the age-old walls. With pitch and straw and torches the Rimmersmen set the delicate buildings to burning. As the smoke and licking flames rose, the northerners routed out the last of the Sithi—those who had been too weak or timid to flee, or who had felt too much loyalty to their immemorial home. In those fires Fingil’s Rimmersmen did terrible deeds; the remaining Sithi had little strength left to resist. Their world had come to an end. The cruel murders, the heartless tortures and ravishings of unresisting victims, the laughing destruction of a thousand exquisite and irreplaceable things—with all these Fingil Redhand’s army put his crimson stamp on our history, and left a stain that can never be removed. Doubtless those who had fled to the forest heard the screams and shuddered, and wept to their ancestors for justice. “In this last, most fatal hour Ineluki took his Red Hand and climbed to the summit of the tallest tower. He had decided, it seems clear, that what the Sithi could no longer inhabit would never be the home of men.

  “That day he spoke words more terrible than any he had spoken before, more baleful by far than even those which had helped bind the substance of Sorrow. As his voice boomed out above the conflagration, Rimmersmen fell screaming in the courtyard, faces blackening and with blood running from their eyes and ears. The chanting rose to an intolerable pitch, and then became a vast scream of agony. A huge flash of light turned the sky white, followed a moment later by a darkness so complete that even Fingil, in his tent a mile away, thought he had been struck blind.

  “But, in some way, Ineluki had failed. Asu’a still stood, and still burned, although now much of Fingil’s army lay waning and dying on the ground at the tower’s base. In the tower top itself, strangely untouched by smoke or flame, the wind sifted six piles of gray ash, scattering them slowly across the floor.”

  Sorrow…Simon’s head was whirling, and he had difficulty drawing breath. The torchlight seemed to be flickering wildly. The hillside. I heard the wagon wheels…they brought Sorrow! I remember it was like the Devil in a box…the heart of all sorrow.

  “So Ineluki died. One of Fingil’s lieutenants, as he breathed his last breath minutes later, swore that he had seen a great form billowing out of the tower, crimson as coals in a fire, writhing like smoke, grasping at the sky like a huge red hand…”

  “Nooooo!” Simon shouted, leaping up. A hand reached up to restrain him, then another, but he shook them off as though they were cobwebs. “They brought the gray sword, the horrible sword! And then I saw him! I saw Ineluki! He was…he was…‘

  The room was wobbling back and forth, and staring faces—Isgrimnur, Binabik, the old man Jarnauga—loomed up before him like fish leaping in a pond. He wanted to say more, to tell them all about the hillside and the white demons, but a black curtain was being pulled before his eyes, and something was roaring in his ears…

  Simon ran in dark places, and his only companions were words in the emptiness.

  Mooncalf! Come to us! There is a place here prepared for you!

  A boy! A mortal child! What did it see, what did it see?

  Freeze his eyes and carry him down into shade. Cover him with clinging, stinging frost.

  A shape loomed before him, an antler-headed shadow massive as a hill. It wore a crown of pale stones, and its eyes were red fires. Red was its hand, too, and when it clutched and lifted him the fingers burned like fiery brands. White faces flickered up all around, wavering in the darkness like candle flames.

  The wheel is turning, mortal, turning, turning…Who are you to stop it?

  A fly he is, a little fly…

  The crimson fingers squeezed, and the fiery eyes glowed with dark and infinite humor. Simon screamed and screamed, but was answered only by pitiless laughter.

  He awoke from a strange swirl of chanting voices and clutching hands to find his dream mirrored in the circle of faces that bent over him, pale in the torchlight as a fairy ring of mushrooms. Beyond the blurry faces the walls seemed lined with points of glinting light, mounting up into the darkness above.

  “He’s waking up,” a voice said, and suddenly the glimmering points came clear as rows of pots hanging on racks. He was lying on the floor of a pantry.

  “Doesn’t look good,” said a deep voice nervously. “I’d best get him some more water.”

  “I’m sure he’ll be fine if you want to go back inside,” the first voice replied, and Simon felt himself squinting and goggling until the face that went with it was no longer a blur. It was Marya—no, it was Miriamele, kneeling beside him; he couldn’t help noticing how the hem of her dress lay crumpled beneath her on the dirty stone floor.

  “No, no,” the other said: Duke Isgrimnur, pulling nervously at his beard.

  “What…happened?” Had he fallen and struck his head? He reached up to fell gingerly around, but the soreness was general, and there was no lump.

  “Keeled over, you did, boy,” Isgrimnur grunted. “Shouting about…about things you saw. I carried you out here, fair busted a gut doing it, too.”

  “And then stood there staring at you lying on the floor,” said Miriamele, her voice stern. “It’s a good thing I was coming in.” She looked up at the Rimmersman. “You fight in battles, don’t you? What do you do when somebody’s wounded—stare at them?”

  “That’s different,” the Duke said defensively. “Bandage ’em if they’re bleeding. Carry ’em back on their shields if they’re dead.”

  “Well, that’s clever,” Miriamele snapped, but Simon saw a secret smile tug at her lips. “And if they’re not bleeding or dead, I suppose you just step over them? Never mind.” Isgrimnur closed his mouth and tugged at his beard.

  The princess continued to wipe Simon’s forehead with her dampened handkerchief. He couldn’t imagine what good it was doing, but for the moment he was content to just he back and be tended to. He knew that soon enough he would have to explain himself to somebody.

  “I…I knew I recognized you, boy.” Isgrimnur said at last. “You were the lad at Saint Hoderund’s, am I right? And that troll…I thought I saw…”

  The pantry door opened wider. “Ah! Simon! I hope you are feeling more of yourself now.”

  “Binabik,” Simon said, straining to sit up. Miriamele gently but firmly leaned on his chest, forcing him back down. “I did see it, I did! That was what I couldn’t remember! The hillside, and the fire, and…and…”

  “I know, friend Simon, I was understanding many things when you stood up—not all things, however. There is still much unexplained in this fiddle.”

  “They must think I’m a madman,” Simon groaned, pushing the princess’ hand away, but nevertheless enjoying the moment of contact. What was she thinking? Now she was looking at him like a grown girl looked at a troublesome younger brother. Damn girls and women both!

  “No, Simon,” Binabik said, crouching down beside Miriamele to look him over carefully. “I have been telling many stories, our adventuring together not least among them. Jarnauga has confirmed much that my master was hinting at. He also received one of Morgenes’ last messages. No, you are not thought mad, although I think still many are doubting the real danger. Baron Devasalles especially, I am thinking.”

  “Ummm,” Isgrimnur scuffed a boot on the floor. “If the lad’s hale, I think I’d better go back in. Simon, was it? Yes, well…you and I, we’ll talk more.” The duke maneuvered his considerable bulk out of the narrow pantry and clumped off down the hall.

  “And I will be going in, too,” Miriamele said, briskly chasing the worst of the dust
from her dress. “There are things that should not be decided before I have been heard, whatever my uncle thinks.”

  Simon wanted to thank her, but could think of nothing to say while lying on his back that would not make him feel more ridiculous than he presently did. By the time he decided to throw over his pride, the princess had gone in a swirl of silks.

  “And if you are recovered to sufficiency, Simon,” Binabik said, extending a small, blunt hand, “then there are things we must hear in the council hall, for I am thinking Naglimund has never seen a Raed quite the like of this one.”

  “First of all, young one,” Jarnauga said, “while I believe all that you have told us, you must know that it was not Ineluki you saw on that hillside.” The fires had burned down to dreaming coals, but not a soul had left the hall. “If you had seen the Storm King, in the form he must now wear, it would have left you a blasted, mindless shell lying beside the Anger Stones. No, what you saw—beside the pale Norns and Elias and his liegemen—was one of the Red Hand. Even so, it seems miraculous to me that you came away from such a night-vision whole in heart and mind.”

  “But…but…” As he began to remember what the old man had been saying just before the wall of forgetfulness had crumbled, spilling the memories of that horrible night—Stoning Night, the doctor had called it—Simon was again puzzled and confused. “But I thought you said Ineluki and his…Red Hand…were dead?”

  “Dead, yes; their earthly forms burnt away utterly in the last scorching moments. But something survived: there was someone or something that was able to recreate the sword Sorrow. Somehow—and it did not need your experience to tell me, for this is indeed why the League of the Book was made—Ineluki and his Red Hand survived: as living dreams or thoughts, perhaps, shades held together only by hate, and by the terrible runes of Ineluki’s last casting. But somehow the darkness that was Ineluki’s mind at the very ending did not die-“King Ealhstan Fiskerne came three centuries later to the Hayholt, the castle that stood upon the bones of Asu’a. Ealhstan was wise, and a seeker after knowledge, and he found things in the ruins beneath the Hayholt that made him aware that Ineluki had not been completely unmade. He formed the League of which I am a member—and we are dwindling fast now, with the loss of Morgenes and Ooqequk—so that old knowledge would not be lost. Not only knowledge of the Sithi’s dark lord, but other things, too, for those were evil times in the north of Osten Ard. Over the years it was discovered, or rather guessed at, that somehow Ineluki, or his spirit or shade or living will, had become manifest again among the only ones who might welcome him.”