by Tad Williams
Even with a stomach comfortably full of broiled meat and herbs, it took Simon a long time to fall asleep that night. As he lay on his pallet looking up at the flickering red shadows on the cave ceiling, his mind tumbled with all that had happened, the maddening tale in which he had been caught up.
I’m in a sort of story, just like Jiriki said. A story like Shem used to tell—or is it History, like Doctor Morgenes used to teach me... ? But no one ever explained how terrible it is to be in the middle of a tale and not to know the ending....
He slipped away at last, awakening with a start some time later. Haestan, as always, was snorting and sighing in his beard, deep in slumber. There was no sign of Jiriki. Somehow, the cavern’s curious emptiness told Simon that the Sitha was truly gone, headed down the mountain to return to his home.
Stung by loneliness, even with the guardsman grumbling stuporously away nearby, he found himself crying. He did so quietly, ashamed at this failure of manhood, but he could no more stop the flow of tears than lift great Mintahoq on his back.
Simon and Haestan came to Chidsik ub Lingit at the time Jiriki had told them—an hour after dawn. The cold had worsened. The ladders and thong bridges swayed in the cold wind, unused. Mintahoq’s stone byways had become even more treacherous than usual, covered in many places by a thin skin of ice.
As the two outsiders pressed their way in through a horde of chattering trolls, Simon leaned heavily on Haestan’s fur-cloaked elbow. He had not slept well after the Sitha had gone, his dreams shot through with the shadows of swords and the compelling but inexplicable presence of the small, dark-eyed girl.
The troll folk around them were done up as if for a festival, many in shiny necklaces of carved tusk and bone, the women with their black hair bound up in combs made from the skulls of birds and fish. Men and women both passed skins of some highland liquor back and forth, laughing and gesturing as they drank. Haestan watched this procedure gloomily.
“I talked one of ’em into givin’ me sip o’ that,” the guardsman said. “Tasted like horse piss, did. What I wouldna give for drop o’ red Perdruin.”
At the center of the room, just within the moat of unlit oil, Simon and Haestan found four intricately-worked bone stools with seats of stretched hide, which stood facing the empty dais. Since the milling trolls had made themselves comfortable all around, but had left the seats empty, the interlopers guessed that two of the stools were theirs. No sooner had they seated themselves than the Yiqanuc folk gathered around them stood up. A strange noise rose, echoing from the cavern walls—a sonorous, humming chant. Incomprehensible Qanuc words, like castoff spars floating on an uneasy sea, bobbed to the surface and then slipped back beneath the steady moaning. It was a strange and disturbing sound.
For a moment Simon thought the chanting had something to do with his and Haestan’s entrance, but the dark eyes of the assembled trolls were focused on a door in the far cavern wall.
Through this door at last came not the masters of Yiqanuc, as Simon had expected, but a figure even more exotic than the folk who surrounded him. The newcomer was a troll, or at least of troll size. His small, muscular body was oiled so that it gleamed in the lamplight. He wore a fringed skirt of hide and his face was hidden behind a mask made from a ram’s skull which had been decoratively carved and gouged until the bone was scarcely more than a filigree, a white basket around the black eye holes. Two enormous, curving horns that had been hollowed to near transparency stood out over his shoulders. A mantel of white and yellow feathers and a necklace of curved black claws swung beneath the bony mask.
Simon could not tell if this man was a priest, a dancer, or simply a herald for the royal couple. When he stamped his gleaming foot the crowd roared happily. When he touched the tips of his horns, then raised his palms to the sky, the troll folk gasped and quickly resumed their chanting. For long moments the man capered across the raised dais, as intent on his work as any solemn craftsman. At last he paused as though listening. The murmuring of the crowd stopped. Four more figures appeared in the doorway—three of troll size, one towering over the rest.
Binabik and Sludig were brought forward. One troll guard stood on each side, the heads of their sharp spears remaining at all times near the prisoners’ backbones. Simon wanted to stand and shout, but Haestan’s broad hand fell on his arm, holding him down on his stool.
“Quiet, lad. They be comin’ this way. Wait for ‘em t’get here. We make no show for this rabble.”
Both the troll and the fair-haired Rimmersman were considerably thinner than when Simon had last seen them. Sludig’s bushy-bearded face was pink and peeling, as though he had been too much in the sun. Binabik was paler than he had been, his once-brown skin now the color of porridge; his eyes seemed sunken, surrounded by shadows.
The pair walked slowly, the troll head down, Sludig looking defiantly around the room until he saw Simon and Haestan, to whom he offered a grim smile. As they stepped over the moat into the inner circle, the Rimmersman reached out and patted Simon’s shoulder, then grunted in pain as one of the guards following close behind pricked his arm with a spear point.
“Had I but a sword,” Sludig murmured, stepping forward and gingerly seating himself on one of the stools. Binabik took the seat at the far end. He had not yet raised his eyes to meet those of his companions.
“Take more than swords, friend,” Haestan whispered. “They be small, but stern—an’ look at th‘Usires-cursed numbers of ’em!”
“Binabik!” said Simon urgently, leaning across Sludig. “Binabik! We’ve come to speak for you!”
The troll looked up. For a moment it seemed he might say something, but his dark eyes were distant. He gave the slightest, gentlest shake of his head, then returned his gaze to the cavern floor. Simon felt rage burning inside him. Binabik must fight for his life! He was sitting like old Rim the plow-horse, waiting for the killing blow to fall.
The growing buzz of excited voices was abruptly stilled. Another trio of figures appeared in the doorway, moving slowly forward: Nunuuika the Huntress and Uammannaq the Herder, in full ceremonial trappings of fur and ivory and polished stones. Another troll followed them on silent, soft-booted feet—a young woman, her large eyes expressionless, her mouth set in a firm line. Her shuttered stare flicked across the line of stools, then away. The man with the ram horns danced before the three-some until they reached the dais and ascended to their divan of hides and fur robes. The unfamiliar troll woman sat just before the royal pair, one step below the top. The capering herald—or whatever he was: Simon still could not decide—thrust a taper into one of the wall lamps, then touched it to the ring of oil, which caught with a blazing huff. Flames raced around the circle, trailing black smoke. A moment later the smoke dissipated upward into the shadowy reaches of the cavern ceiling. Simon and the others were surrounded by a ring of fire.
The Herder leaned forward, lifting his crooked spear, and waved it at Binabik and Sludig. As he spoke the crowd chanted again, just a few words before they fell silent, but Uammannaq kept speaking. His wife and the young female looked on. The Huntress’ eyes seemed to Simon piercingly unsympathetic. The attitude of the other was harder to discern.
The speech went on for some time. Simon was just beginning to wonder if the lords of Yiqanuc had broken their promise to Jiriki when the Herder broke off, waving his spear at Binabik, then gesturing angrily to Binabik’s companions. Simon looked at Haestan, who raised his eyebrow as if to say: wait and see.
“This is a strange thing, Simon.”
It was Binabik who spoke, his eyes still fixed on the ground before him. His voice seemed to Simon as fine a thing to hear as birdsong or rain upon the roof. Simon knew he was beaming like a fool, but for the moment he did not care.
“It seems,” Binabik continued, his voice scratchy from disuse, “that you and Haestan are guests of my masters, and that I must render these proceedings into a speech you can understand, since no one else here speaks both tongues.”
“We c
anna’ speak for you if canna’ be understood,” Haestan said softly.
“We’ll help you, Binabik,” Simon said emphatically, “but your silence will help nobody.”
“This, as I said, is a strangeness,” Binabik rasped. “I am condemned for dishonor, yet for honor’s sake I must translate my wrongs for outsiders, since they are honored guests.” A hint of a grim smile played at the corners of his mouth. “Esteemed guest, dragon-slayer, meddler in other people’s affairs—somehow I am sensing your hand in this, Simon.” He squinted for a moment, then extended a stubby finger as if to touch Simon’s face. “You wear a brave scar, friend.”
“What have you done, Binabik? Or what do they think you’ve done?”
The little man’s smile evaporated. “I have broken my oath.”
Nunuuika said something sharp. Binabik looked up and nodded. “The Huntress says I have had time enough to explain. Now my crimes must be dragged out into the light for inspecting.”
With Binabik rendering the proceedings into the Westerling tongue, everything seemed to happen much more quickly. Sometimes it seemed he repeated what was spoken word for word, other times long speeches would be dispatched in a quick summation. Although Binabik seemed to regain a little of his familiar energy as he went about the business of translating, there was no mistaking the perilousness of his situation.
“Binabik, apprentice to the Singing Man, great Ookequk, you are held as an oath-breaker.” Uammannaq the Herder leaned forward, twisting his thin beard fretfully, as though he found the proceedings upsetting. “Do you deny this?”
There was a long silence after Binabik finished translating the Herder’s question. After a moment, he turned from his friends to face the lords of Yiqanuc. “I have no denial,” he said at last. “I will offer the full truth, though, if you will be hearing it, Sharpest of Eye and Surest of Rein.”
Nunuuika leaned back on her cushions. “There will be time for that.” She turned to her husband. “He does not deny it.”
“So,” Uammannaq responded heavily, “Binabik is charged. You, Croohok,” he swiveled his round head toward Sludig, “are accused of being of an outlaw race who have attacked and injured our people since time out of mind. That you are a Rimmersman no one can deny, so your charge remains as spoken.”
As the Herder’s words were translated, Sludig began an angry retort, but Binabik raised a hand to silence him. Surprisingly, Sludig complied.
“There can be no real justice between old enemies, it seems,” the northerner murmured to Simon. His fierce glare became an unhappy frown. “Still, there are trollkind who have had less chance at the hands of my kinsmen than I have here.”
“Let those who have reason to accuse now speak,” Uammannaq said.
A certain expectant stillness filled the cavern. The herald stepped forward, his necklaces rattling and shivering. From the eyes of his ram skull he looked at Binabik with undisguised contempt, then lifted his hand and spoke in a thick, harsh voice.
“Qangolik the Spirit Caller says that the Singing Man Ookekuq did not appear at the Ice House on the Winter Lastday, as has been the law of our people since Sedda gave us these mountains,” Binabik translated. His own voice had taken on some of the unpleasant tone of his accuser’s. “Qangolik says that Binabik, the Singing Man’s apprentice, also did not come to the Ice House.”
Simon could almost feel the hatred flowing between his friend and the masked troll. There seemed little doubt that there was some rivalry or dispute of long standing between the two.
The Spirit Caller continued. “Since Ookequk’s apprentice did not come to his duty—to sing the Rite of Quickening—the Ice House still has not melted. Because the Ice House is unmelted, Winter will not leave Yiqanuc. Through his treachery, Binabik has doomed his people to a bitter season. The summer will not come and many will die.
“Qangolik calls him oath-breaker.”
There was a rush of angry talk through the cavern. The Spirit Caller had already squatted down once more before Binabik finished putting his words into Westerling.
Nunuuika looked about with ritual deliberateness. “Does anyone else here accuse Binbinaqegabenik?”
The unknown young woman, whom Simon had nearly forgotten in the furor of Qangolik’s words, got up slowly from her seat on the topmost step. Her eyes were demurely lowered and her voice was quiet. She spoke for only a few brief moments.
Binabik did not immediately explain her words, though they set off a great rustle of whispering among the gathered trolls. He wore an expression Simon had never seen before on his friend’s face: complete and utter unhappiness. Binabik stared at the young woman with grim fixedness, as though he watched some terrible event that it was nevertheless his duty to remember and later report in detail.
Just when Simon thought Binabik had been silenced again, this time perhaps forever, the troll spoke—flatly, chronicling the receipt of an old and now insignificant wound.
“Sisqinanamook, youngest daughter of Nunuuika the Huntress and Uammannaq the Herder, also accuses Binabik of Mintahoq. Though he placed his spear before her door, when nine times nine days had passed and the appointed day of marriage came, he was gone. Neither did he send any word or explanation. When he returned to our mountains, he came not to the home of his people, but traveled with Croohok and Utku to the shunned peak Yijarjuk. He has brought shame on the House of the Ancestor and on his once-betrothed.
“Sisqinanamook calls him oath-breaker.”
Thunderstruck, Simon stared at Binabik’s dejected face as the troll droned his translation. Marriage! All the while Simon and the little man had been fighting their way to Naglimund and making their way across the White Waste, Binabik’s people had been waiting for him to fulfill his marriage oath. And he had been betrothed to a child of the Herder and Huntress! He had never given the slightest hint!
Simon looked more closely at Binabik’s accuser. Sisqinanamook, although as small to Simon’s eye as all of her folk, seemed actually a little taller than Binabik. Her glossy black hair was plaited on either side of her face, the two braids joining beneath her chin into one wide plait interlaced with a sky-blue ribbon. She wore little jewelry, especially when compared with her formidable mother, the Huntress. A single deep blue gem sparkled on her forehead, held in place by a slender black leather thong.
She had a flush of color in her brown cheeks. Although her gaze was clouded as though by anger or fright, Simon thought he sensed a strong-willed, defiant tilt to her jaw, a sharpness to her eye—not her mother Nunuuika’s blade-edged glance, but the look of someone who made up her own mind. For a moment, Simon felt he could see her as one of her own would—not a gentle, pliant beauty, but a comely and clever young woman whose admiration would not be easy to win.
He abruptly realized that this was the one who had stood before Qantaqa’s cave last night—the one who had menaced him with her spear! Something indefinable in the angle of her face told him so. Remembering, he knew she was a huntress after all, just like her mother.
Poor Binabik! Her admiration might not be easy to gain, but Simon’s friend had won her over, or so it seemed. However, the wit and determination that Binabik must have so admired was now bent against him.
“I have no disagreement with Sisqinanamook, daughter of the Line of the Moon,” Binabik finally replied. “That she ever accepted the spear of so unworthy a one as the Singing Man’s apprentice was to me astonishing.”
Sisqinanamook curled a lip at this speech, as if in disgust, but Simon did not think her contempt seemed altogether convincing.
“Great is my shame,” Binabik continued. “Nine times nine nights, in truth, my spear stood before her door. I did not come to be married when those nights were through. There is no word I can speak that will be mending the hurt, or be making less of my fault. A choice there was to be made, as is the way of things once the Walk of Manhood or Womanhood has been walked. I was in a strange land and my master was dead. I made my choosing; had I the same to decide once mor
e, I say with regret, I would make this same choosing again.”
The crowd was still buzzing with shock and perturbation as Binabik finished interpreting what he had said for his companions. As he finished, he turned back to the young woman standing before him and said something to her, quietly and rapidly, calling her “Sisqi” instead of her full name. She swung her face away quickly, as if she could not stand to look at him. He did not translate his last speech, but sadly turned back to her mother and father.
“And what,” Nunuuika asked scornfully, “might you have had to decide about? What choice could have turned you into an oath-breaker-you, who had already climbed far beyond the snows to which you were accustomed, whose betrothal-spear had been chosen by one high above you?”
“My master Ookequk made a promise to Doctor Morgenes of the Hayholt, a very wise man of Erkynland. With my master dead, I felt it was my place to keep his promise.”
Uammannaq leaned forward, his beard wagging with surprise and anger. “You thought a promise to a lowlander more important than wedding a child of the House of the Ancestor—or the bringing of summer? Truly, Binabik, those who said you had learned madness at fat Ookequk’s knee were right! You turned your back on your people for ... for Utku?”
Binabik shook his head helplessly. “It was more than that, Uammannaq, Herder of the Qanuc. My master had fears of grave danger, not just to Yiqanuc but to all the world below the mountains as well. Ookequk feared a winter coming far worse than any we have experienced, one that would leave the Ice House hard-frozen for a thousand black years. And it was far more than only evil weather that Ookequk foresaw. Morgenes, the old man in Erkynland, shared his fears. It was because of these dangers that the promise seemed important. Because of this, too—because I believe my master’s worries are justified—I would again break my oath if I had no other choice.”