by Tad Williams
The prince said no more, but sat lost in thought. Watery sunshine broke through the clouds on the horizon, bringing a little color to the drab garden.
“You sound as though you thought much of her,” the old man said gently.
“Oh, I loved her.” Josua’s voice was matter-of-fact, his eyes still firmly fixed on the tangled mockfoil. “I burned for love of her. I prayed to God to take the love away, even though I knew that I would be but a husk, the living core of me scooped out. Not that my prayer did any good. And I think she loved me, too; I was her only friend, she often said. No one else knew her as I did.”
“Did Elias suspect?”
“Of course. He suspected anyone who as much as stood near her at court pageants, and I was with her constantly. But always honorably,” he added hurriedly, then stopped. “Why should I be so earnest about that, even now? Usires forgive me, I wish we had betrayed him!” Josua’s teeth were clenched. “I wish she were my dead lover, instead of only my brother’s dead wife.” He stared accusingly at the knob of scarred flesh protruding from his right sleeve. “Her death lies on my conscience like a great stone—it was my fault! My God, we are a haunted family.”
He broke off at the clatter of footsteps on the path.
“Prince Josua! Prince Josua, where are you?”
“Here,” the prince called distractedly, and a moment later one of his guards stumbled into view around a hedge-wall.
“My prince,” he gasped, bending a knee, “Sir Deornoth says you must come at once!”
“Are they onto the walls again?” Josua asked, standing and shaking dew from his wool cloak. His voice still sounded distant.
“No, sire,” the guard said, his mustached mouth opening and closing in excitement as though he were a whiskered fish. “It’s your brother—I mean the King, sire. He’s pulling back. The siege is ending.”
The prince gave Jarnauga a puzzled, worried glance as they hurried up the path behind the excited guard.
“The High King has given over!” Deornoth shouted as Josua made his way up the steps, cloak billowing in the wind. “See! He turns tail and runs!”
Deornoth turned and gave Isorn a comradely smack on the shoulder. The duke’s son grinned, but Einskaldir beside him glared fiercely at the young Erkynlander, lest he should think to try anything so foolish on him.
“What now, what?” Josua said, pushing up beside Deornoth on the sagging curtain wall. Directly below them lay the shattered ruins of a miner’s box, evidence of a futile attempt to drop the curtain wall by tunneling beneath it. The wall had dipped a few feet, but held: Dendinis had built for the ages. The miners, even as they had set fire to the wooden pillars shoring their tunnel, had been felled by the few stones they had themselves shaken loose.
In the distance lay Elias’ camp, an anthill of scurrying activity. The remaining siege-engines had been toppled and shattered so that they would benefit no one else; the rows and rows of tents had vanished, as if swept up and carried away by gale winds. Thin sounds—the distant cry of drovers, the crack of whips—floated up as the High King’s wagons were loaded.
“He is retreating!” Deornoth said happily. “We have done it!”
Josua shook his head. “Why? Why should he? We have whittled away a bare fraction of his troops.”
“Perhaps he realizes now how strong Naglimund is,” Isorn said, squinting.
“Then why not wait us out?” the prince demanded. “Aedon! What goes on here? I can believe Elias himself might go back to the Hayholt—but why not leave even a token siege in place?”
“To lure us out,” Einskaldir said quietly. “Onto open ground.” Scowling, he rubbed a rough thumb over the blade of his knife.
“It could be,” the prince said, “but he should know me better.”
“Josua…” Jarnauga was looking out beyond the decamping army, into the morning haze cloaking the northern horizon. “There are strange clouds away to the north.”
The others stared, but could see nothing but the dim beginnings of the Frostmarch.
“What sort of clouds?” the prince asked at last. “Storm clouds. Very strange. Like none I have ever seen south of the mountains.”
The prince stood at the window listening to the murmur of the trailing wind, his forehead pressed against the cold stone frame. The spare courtyard below was moonpainted, and the trees swayed.
Vorzheva extended a white arm from beneath the fur coverlet.
“Josua, what is it? It is cold. Shut the window, and come back to your bed.”
He did not turn. “The wind goes everywhere,” he said quietly. “There is no keeping it out, and there is no staying it when it wishes to depart.”
“It is too late at night for your riddles, Josua,” she said, yawning and running fingers through her inky hair, so that it spread upon the sheet like black wings.
“It is perhaps too late for many things,” he replied, and went to sit on the bed beside her. His hand gently stroked her long neck, but still he looked out toward the window. “I am sorry, Vorzheva. I am…confusing, I know. I have never been the right man—not for my tutors, not for my brother, or my father…and not for you. I sometimes wonder if I was born out of my time.” He lifted his finger to trace her cheek, and her warm breath was on his hand. “When I see the world as it has been presented to me, I feel only a deep loneliness.”
“Lonely!?” Vorzheva sat up. The fur robe fell away; her smooth ivory skin was banded in moonlight. “By my clan, Josua, you are a cruel man! Still you punish me for my mistake in trying to help the princess. How can you share my bed and call yourself lonely? Go away, you moping boy, go sleep with one of those cold northern girls, or in some monk’s den. Go then!”
She struck at him, and he caught her arm. She was strong despite her slenderness, and she slapped him twice with her other hand before he could roll atop her and pinion her.
“Peace, lady, peace!” he said, and then laughed, although his face stung. Vorzheva scowled and struggled. “You are right,” he said. “I have done you insult, and I ask your apology. I sue for peace.” He leaned down and kissed her on the neck, and then again on her anger-reddened cheek.
“Come nearer and I will bite you,” she hissed. Her body trembled against his. “I was frightened for you when you went to battle, Josua. I thought you would die.”
“I was no less frightened, my lady. There is much in the world to fear.”
“And now you feel you are alone.”
“One can be lonely,” the prince said, offering his lip to be bitten, “in the highest and best of company.”
Her arm, now free, closed around his neck to pull him closer. The moonlight silvered their intertwined limbs.
Josua dropped his bone spoon back into the soup bowl, and angrily watched the small eddies wash back and forth across the surface. The dining hall hummed with the rush of many voices.
“I cannot eat. I must know!”
Vorzheva, eating in silence, but with her usual good appetite, shot him a disquieted glance down the table.
“Whatever is happening, my prince,” Deornoth said shyly, “you must have your strength.”
“You will need it to speak to your people. Prince Josua,” Isorn commented around a mouthful of bread. “They are upset and puzzled. The king is gone. Why no celebration?”
“You know damnably well why not!” Josua snapped, then raised his hand to his temple in pain. “Surely you can see it is some trap—that Elias would not give up so easily?”
“I suppose,” said Isorn, but did not seem convinced. “That does not mean the people who have been crowded in the inner keep like cattle—” he gestured with a large hand at the milling folks pressed around the prince’s table on all sides, most sitting on the floor or against the walls of the dining halls, chairs too precious for any but the noblest,—“that they will understand. Take it from one who spent a hellish winter snowbound in Elvritshalla.” Isorn bit off another great hunk of bread.
Josua sighed and turne
d to Jarnauga. The old man, his serpent tattoos strangely mobile in the lanternlight, was deep in conversation with Father Strangyeard.
“Jarnauga,” the prince said quietly. “You said you wished to talk to me of a dream you had.”
The old Rimmersgarder excused himself from the priest. “Yes, Josua,” he answered, leaning close, “but perhaps we should wait until we might speak privately.” He cocked an ear to the clamor of the dining hall. “Then again, no one could eavesdrop in here even if he sat under your chair.” He showed a frosty smile.
“I have had dreams again,” he said at last, eyes jewel-bright beneath his brows. “I have no power to summon them, but they sometimes come unbidden. Something has happened to the company sent to Urmsheim.”
“Something?” Josua’s face was shadowed, slack.
“I only dreamed,” Jarnauga said defensively, “but I felt a great rupture—pain and terror—and I felt the boy Simon calling out…calling out in fear and anger…and something else…”
“Could what has happened to them be the cause of the storm you saw this morning?” the prince asked leadenly, as if hearing bad news long expected.
“I do not think so. Urmsheim is in a range farther east, behind Drorshull lake and across the Wastes.”
“Are they alive?”
“I have no way of knowing. It was a dream, and a short, strange one at that.”
They walked later in silence on the high castle walls. The wind had rolled the clouds away, and the moon turned the deserted town below to bone and parchment. Staring out in to the black northern sky, Josua exhaled steamily.
“So even the faint hope of Thom is gone.” “I did not say so.” “You had no need. And I suppose you and Strangyeard are no nearer to discovering what has become of Fingil’s sword Minneyar?”
“Sadly, no.” “Then what more needs to be done to assure our downfall. God has played a cruel joke on…” Josua broke off as the old man clenched his arm.
“Prince Josua,” he said, gazing squint-eyed at the horizon, “you convince me never to taunt the gods, even those who are not your own.” He sounded shaken, old for the first time.
“What do you mean?”
“You asked what more could be done to us?” The old man snorted in bitter humor. “The storm clouds, that black storm in the north? It is moving toward us—and very swiftly, too.”
Young Ostrael of Runchester stood shivering on the curtain wall and reflected on what his father had once said.
“ ’Tis good t’serve thy prince. Tha’ll see a bit o’th’ world as soldier, boy.” Firsfram had told him, folding his leathery farmer’s hand over his son’s shoulder, even as his mother, red-eyed, silently watched. “Maybe an’ tha’ll go t’Southern Islands, or down Nabban-way, an’ get thasel’ out o’ this be-damned Frostmarch wind.”
His father was gone now. He’d disappeared last winter, dragged off by wolves during that terrible cold Decander…wolves or something else, for no trace of him was ever found. And Firsfram’s son, the southern life still untasted, stood on a wall in the freezing wind, and felt the cold penetrating his very heart.
Ostrael’s mother and sisters huddled below, with hundreds of the other dispossessed, in makeshift barracks inside Naglimund’s heavy stone keep. The walls of the keep provided far better shelter from the wind than did Ostrael’s high perch, but even stone walls, no matter how thick, could not keep out the dreadful music of the approaching storm.
His eyes were drawn, fearfully but irresistibly, up to the dark blot roiling on the horizon, spreading as it came like gray ink poured into water. It was a smear, a blank space, as if something had rubbed away the stuff of reality. It was a spot where the very sky seemed to tilt, funneling the clouds downward into a slow-swirling mass like the tail of a whirlpool. From time to time bright prickles of lightning leaped across the top of the storm. And always, always, there was the horrible sound of drumming, distant as a spatter of rain on a thick roof, insistent as the chattering of Ostrael’s teeth.
The hot air and fabled sun-dotted hills of Nabban seemed more and more to Firsfram’s son like the Book-stories told by priests, a bit of imaginary comfort to drag one along, to hide the terror of inescapable death.
The storm came on, throbbing with drums like a hive of wasps.
Deornoth’s lantern guttered in the stiff wind and nearly flickered out; he shielded it with his cloak until the flame grew steady once more. Beside him, Isorn Isgrimnurson stared out into the cold, lightning-scratched darkness.
“God’s Tree! It’s black as night,” Deornoth groaned. “Just past noon, yet I can scarcely see at all.”
Isorn’s mouth opened, a dark slash in his pale, lantern-lit face, but no sound came out. His jaw worked.
“All will be well,” Deornoth said, frightened himself by the strong young Rimmersman’s fear. ” ‘Tis just a storm—some evil, petty trick of Pryrates’…” Even as he said it he felt sure it was a lie. The black clouds that masked the sun, dragging night to the very gates of Naglimund, brought with them a dread that pressed on his very being like a weight, like the stone lid of a casket. What magician’s summoning was this, what mere wizardry, that could push an icy spear of horror right into his very guts?
The storm trudged toward them, a clot of darkness spreading far beyond the castle walls on either side, looming above the highest battlements, shot through with the blue-white flicker of lightning. The huddled town and countryside leaped into relief for a moment, then vanished again in the murk. The throbbing of drumbeats echoed against the curtain wall.
As the lightning flashed once more, momentarily counterfeiting the stolen daylight, Deornoth saw something that caused him to turn and grasp Isorn’s broad arm so tightly the Rimmersman winced.
“Get the prince,” Deornoth’s voice was hollow.
Isorn looked up, his superstitious fear of the storm overcome by the strangeness of Deornoth’s manner. The young knight’s face had gone slack, empty like a meal bag, even as his fingernails drew an unnoticed rill of blood from Isorn’s arm.
“What…what is it?”
“Get Prince Josua,” Deornoth repeated. “Go!”
The Rimmersman, with a backward glance at his friend, made the sign of the Tree and staggered along the battlement toward the stairs.
Numb, heavy as lead, Deornoth stood and wished that he had been killed at Bullback Hill—even that he had died in disgrace—rather than see what was before him.
When Isorn returned with the prince and Jarnauga, Deornoth was still staring. There was no need to ask what he saw, for the lightning illuminated all.
A great army had come to Naglimund. Within the storm’s swirling mist stood a vast forest of bristling spears. A galaxy of bright eyes gleamed in the darkness. The drums rolled again, like thunder, and the storm settled over castle and town, a great, billowing tent of rain and black clouds and freezing fog.
The eyes gazed up at the walls—thousands of shining eyes, all full of fierce anticipation. White hair streamed in the wind, narrow white faces turned upward in their dark helms, staring at the walls of Naglimund. Speartips glinted blue in another flash of skyfire. The invaders peered silently upward like an army of ghosts, pale as blindfish, ethereal as moonsheen. The drums pulsed. In the mist, other, longer shadows stalked: giant shapes cloaked in armor, carrying great gnarled clubs. The drums pulsed again, then fell silent.
“Merciful Aedon, give me rest,” Isorn prayed. “In Your arms will I sleep, upon Thy bosom…”
“Who are they, Josua?” Deornoth asked quietly, as if merely curious.
“The White Foxes—the Norns,” the prince answered. “They are Elias’ reinforcements.” He lifted his hand wearily, as if to block the spectral legion from his sight. “They are the Storm King’s children.”
“Your Eminence, please!” Father Strangyeard tugged at the old man’s arm, gently at first, then with increasing force. The old man clung to the bench like a whelk, a small shape in the darkness of the herb garden.
The throbbing, percussive sound of the storm intensified. The archive-master felt a panicky urge to run—somewhere, anywhere.
“This is…it is no natural twilight. Bishop. You must come inside, now. Please.”
“I knew I should not have stayed. I told Prince Josua not to resist the rightful king,” Anodis added plaintively. “God is angry with us. We must pray to be shown the rightful path—we must remember His martyrdom on the Tree…“He waved his hand convulsively, as though swatting at flies.
“This? This is not God’s doing,” Strangyeard replied, a scowl on his usually pleasant face. “This is the work of your ‘rightful king’—he and his pet warlock.”
The bishop paid him no need. “Blessed Usires,” he babbled, crawling away from the priest toward the shadowy tangle of the mockfoil bed, “Your humble supplicants repent of their sins. We have thwarted Your will, and in doing so have drawn Your just wrath…”
“Bishop Anodis!” cried Strangyeard in nervous exasperation, taking a step to follow him, then halting in surprise. A dense, swirling cold seemed to descend over the garden. A moment later, as the archive-master shuddered in the deepening chill, the sound of drumming stopped.
“Something…” A frosty wind napped Strangyeard’s hood in his face.
“O, yea, we have sinned m-m-mightily in our haughtiness, we puny men!” Anodis sang out, rattling through the mockfoil. “We p-pray…we…p-p-pray…?” he trailed off, his voice rising curiously.
“Bishop?”
There was a shudder of movement in the depth of the mockfoil. Strangyeard saw the old man’s face appear, mouth agape. Something seemed to catch at him; dirt began to gout up all around, further obscuring events in the shadowy vegetation. The bishop screamed, a thin, keening sound.