by Tad Williams
“So, Binbinaqegabenik,” he said, “you will not stand and face the justice of your people? I had thought more of you than that, however low your birth.”
“My friends are innocent,” Binabik replied. “I held your daughter as hostage until the Rimmersman Sludig had made it to safety with the others.”
Nunuuika rode forward until her mount stood shoulder to shoulder with her husband’s. “Please credit us with some wisdom, Binabik, even though we are not either of us as clever as your master was. Who sent the guards away?” She peered down at Sisqi. The Huntress’ face was cold, but showed a trace of harsh pride. “Daughter, I thought you were a fool when you determined to marry this wizardling. Now—well, I will say at least that you are a loyal fool,” She turned to Binabik. “Because you have recharmed my daughter, do not think you will escape your sentence. The Ice House is unmelted. Winter has killed the Spring. The Rite of Quickening went unperformed—and instead you return to us with childish tales. Now you are back hatching devil-tricks in your master’s cave that your pet wolf has guarded for you.” Nunuuika was in the grip of a rising fury. “You have been judged, oath-breaker. You will go to the ice cliffs of Ogohak Chasm and you will be thrown over!”
“Daughter, go back to our home,” Uammannaq growled. “You have done great wrong. ”
“No!”Sisqi’s cry caused a stir among the watching trolls. “I have listened to my heart, yes, but listened to what wisdom I have gained as well. The wolf has kept us from Ookequk’s house—but that has not been to Binbiniqegabenik’s benefit.” She pulled the thong-tied scroll from Binabik’s sleeves and thrust it forward. “This I found there. None of us thought to see what Ookequk had left behind.”
“Only a fool hurries to rummage in the effects of a Singing Man,” Uammannaq said, but his expression had subtly changed.
“But Sisqi,” Binabik said, nonplussed, “we do not know what the scroll contains! It could be a spell of great peril, or ...”
“I have a good idea,” Sisqi said grimly. “Do you see whose knot this is?” she asked, handing the scroll to her mother.
The Huntress looked at it briefly and made a dismissive gesture as she handed it to her husband. “It is Ookequk’s knot, yes ...”
“And you know what kind of knot as well, Mother,” Sisqi turned to her father. “Has it been opened?”
Uammannaq frowned. “No ...”
“Good. Father, open it and read it, please.”
“Now?”
“If not now, when? After the one to whom I am pledged has been executed?”
Sisqi’s breath hung in the air after her angry rejoinder. Uammannaq carefully picked the knot and removed the black thong, then slowly unrolled the sheet of hide, beckoning for one of the torch-bearers to move nearer.
“Binabik,” Simon shouted from behind a circle of spear-heads, “what is happening?”
“Stay, all of you, and do nothing for a moment,” Binabik called to him in Westerling. “I will tell you all when I can.”
“Know this,” Uammannaq read,“... That I am Ookequk, Singing Man of Mintahoq, of Chugik, Tutusik. Rinsenatuq, Sikkihoq and Namyet, and all other mountains of Yiqanuc.”
The Herder read slowly, with long, squint-eyed pauses as he puzzled out the sense of the blackened runes.
“Igoon a long journey, and in such times that I cannot know I will come back. So, I lay my death-song on this hide, that it can be my voice when I am gone.”
“Clever, clever, Sisqi, Binabik said quietly as her father’s voice droned, ”it is you who should have been Ookequk’s student, not me! How could you know!?”
She waved a hand to quiet him. “I am a daughter of Chidsik ub Lingit, where all the petitions for judgment come from all the mountains. Do you think I would not recognize the knot used on a death testament?”
“I must warn those who remain after me,”
Uammannaq continued with Ookequk’s words,“... That I have seen the coming of a great cold darkness, the like of which my people have never seen. It is a dreadful winter that will come from the shadow of Vihyuyaq, the mountain of the immortal Cloud Children. It will blast the lands of Yiqanuc like a black wind from the Lands of the Dead, cracking the very stone of our mountains in cruel fingers ... ”
As the Herder read these words, several of the listening trolls cried out, hoarse voices echoing down the night-shrouded mountainside. Others swayed, so that the torchlight flickered.
“My student, Binbinaqegabenik, I will bring with me on my journey. In the time that remains I will instruct him in the small things and long stories that may help our people in this foul time. There are other ones beyond Yiqanuc who have prepared lamps against this coming darkness. I go to add my light to theirs, small as it may shine against the storm that threatens. If I cannot return, young Binbinaqegabenik will come in my stead. I ask you to honor him as you would me, for he is eager in his learning. One day he may grow to be a greater Singing Man than I.
“Now I end my death song. I give my farewell to mountain and sky. It has been good to be alive. It has been good to be one of the Children of Lingit, and to live my life on the beautiful mountain Mintahoq. ”
Uammannaq lowered the scroll, blinking. A low wail bubbled up among the watchers in response to the Singing Man Ookekuq’s final song.
“He did not have enough time,” Binabik murmured. Tears welled in his eyes. “He was taken away too quickly and told me nothing—or at least not enough. Oh, Ookequk, how we will miss you! How could you have left your people with no wall between them and the Storm King but an untrained weanling like Binabik!” He dropped to his knees and touched his forehead to the snow.
An awkward silence fell, pierced only by the lamenting wind.
“Bring the lowlanders,” Nunuuika said to the spearmen, then turned a stiff, painful glance on her daughter. “We will all go to the House of the Ancestor. There is much to think about.”
Simon awakened slowly, and stared at the inconstant shadows on the craggy ceiling of Chidsik ub Lingit for a long time while he tried to remember where he was. He felt a little better now, more clearheaded, but the scar on his cheek stung like fire.
He sat up. Sludig and Haestan were leaning against the wall a short distance away, sharing a skin of some drink and a muttered conversation. Simon untangled himself from his cloak and looked around for Binabik. His friend was near the center of the room, squatting before the Herder and Huntress as if in supplication. For a moment Simon was fearful, but others squatted there too, Sisqinanamook among them. As he listened to the rise and fall of guttural voices, he decided it seemed more a council than a judgment. Other small groups of trolls were discernible here and there in the deep shadows, crouched in little circles throughout the vast stone room. A few scattered lamps burned like bright stars in a sky full of thunderheads.
Simon curled up again, wriggling to find a smooth place on the floor. How terribly strange, to be in this place! Would he ever have a home again, a place where he would wake up every morning in the same bed, unsurprised to find himself there?
He drifted slowly back into half-sleep, into a dream of cold mountain passes and red eyes.
“Simon-friend!” It was Binabik, gently shaking him. The troll looked drawn, the circles under his eyes visible even in the half-light, but he was smiling. “It is time for waking.”
“Binabik,” Simon said groggily, “what is happening?”
“I have brought for you a bowl of tea and some tidings. It appears I am no longer bound for an unfortunate plunging,” the troll grinned. “No longer are Sludig and myself to be thrown into Ogohak Chasm.”
“But that’s wonderful!” Simon gasped. He felt his heart ache inside him, a fierce wrench of released tension. He leaped to embrace the small man and his sudden lunge toppled the troll. The tea puddled on the stone.
“You have been too long in the company of Qantaqa,” Binabik laughed, extricating himself. He looked pleased. “You have gained her liking for the giving of exuberant greeting
s.”
Other heads in the room turned to watch this strange spectacle. Many Qanuc tongues muttered in amazement at the mad and lanky lowlander who hugged trolls as if he were a clansman. Simon saw the stares and ducked his head in embarrassment. “What have they said?” he asked. “Can we go?”
“Put with simpleness: yes, we can go.” Binabik sat down beside him. He was carrying his bone walking stick, recovered from Ookequk’s cave. He proceeded to examine it as he spoke, frowning at the numerous toothmarks Qantaqa had added. “But much there is to be decided. Ookequk’s scroll has convinced the Herder and Huntress on the truth of my tellings.”
“But what is there to decide?”
“Many things. If I go with you to take Thorn back to Josua, then my people are again without a Singing Man. But I am thinking I must accompany you. If Naglimund has fallen truly, then we should be following the words of Geloë. She may be the last one of great wisdom that remains. Besides, it is seeming more certain that our only hope is in the getting of the other two swords, Minneyar and Sorrow. Not for nothing should your gallantry on the dragon-mountain be.”
Binabik gestured at Thorn, which stood against the wall near where Haestan and Sludig sat. “If the Storm King’s rising is unchecked,” he said, “then no use there will be my staying on Mintahoq, since none of the craft Ookequk taught me will keep away the winter we fear.” The little man made a broad gesture. “So, ‘when the snowslide takes your house,’ as we troll folk say, ‘do not stay to hunt for potshards.’ I have told my people they should be moving down-mountain, to the spring hunting grounds—even though there will be no spring there, and small hunting.”
He stood, tugging down the hem of his thick jacket. “I wanted you to know that there was no danger now to Sludig and myself.” He smirked. “A bad joke. We are all, it is obvious, in terrible danger. But the danger is not from my own people any longer.” He laid a small hand on Simon’s shoulder. “Sleep again, if you can. We will likely leave at dawn. I will go and speak to Haestan and Sludig, then there is much planning still ahead this night.” He turned and walked across the cave. Simon watched his small form pass in and out of the shadows.
A great deal of planning has been done already, he thought grumpily, and I have not been invited to much of it. Someone always has a plan, and I always wind up walking along while someone else decides where to go. I feel like a wagon—an old, falling-apart wagon at that. When do I get to decide things for myself?
He thought about this as he waited for sleep.
As it turned out, the sun had risen high in the gray sky before the final arrangements were finished—a span of time Simon was more than happy to spend sleeping.
Simon, his companions, and a large number of trolls trooped out onto the byways of Mintahoq, following the Herder and Huntress in the strangest parade Simon had ever seen. As they wound in and out through Mintahoq’s most populous sections, hundreds of trolls stopped on the swinging bridges or came dashing out of their caves to watch the company pass, standing amazed beneath the swirling smokes of their cooking fires. Many clambered down the thong ladders and joined the procession.
Much of the journey was uphill, and the vast crowd strung out along the narrow track made the going slow. It seemed quite a long while before they made their way around to the northern face. As they trudged on, Simon found himself slipping into a kind of numbed dreaminess. Snow flurried in the gray void beyond the pathway; Yiqanuc’s other peaks stood up along the valley’s far side like teeth.
The march stopped at last on a long stone porch atop a promontory that stood out above the northern part of Yiqanuc’s valley. Another path hugged the mountainside below them, then the rock walls of Mintahoq fell sharply away, down into white obscurity touched with patches of bright sunsplash. Staring down, Simon was stuck by a memory of dream, of a dim white tower lapped by flames. He turned away from the unsettling view to find the rocky ledge on which he stood dominated by the tall, egg-shaped snow-building he had seen his first day out of the cave. Closer this time, he could clearly see the marvelous care with which the triangular blocks of snow had been cut and fitted together, the bold carvings that seemed to slice down into the blocks themselves, so that the Ice House was as multifaceted as a cut diamond, its walls alive with hidden interior angles, prisms that reflected cyan and pink.
The row of armed trolls who guarded the Ice House stood respectfully to one side as Nunuuika and Uammanaq moved past them to stand between the pillars of tight-packed snow that framed the door. Simon could see nothing of the Ice House’s interior but a blue-gray hole beyond the doorway. Binabik and Sisqi took places on the icy step below, mittened hands clasped. Qangolik the Spirit Caller clambered up beside them.
Though Qangolik’s face was hidden by his ram-skull mask, Simon thought the muscular troll seemed rather subdued. The Spirit Caller, who had pranced like a courting bird before the judgment in Chidsik ub Lingit, now slumped like a weary harvest hand.
As the Herder lifted his crook-spear and spoke, Binabik translated for his lowlander companions.
‘Strange days are upon us.” Uammannaq’s eyes were deep-shadowed.
“We have known that something was wrong. We live too closely with the mountain, which is of the bones of the earth, not to sense the unease in the lands around us. The Ice House is still here. It has not melted.” The wind rose, whistling, as if to underscore his words. “Winter will not leave. At first we blamed Binabik. The Singing Man or his apprentice has always sung the Rite of Quickening; Summer has always come. But now we are told that it is not failure to perform the Rite that keeps Summer hidden. Strange days. Things are different.” He shook his head heavily, his beard wagging.
“We must break with tradition,” Nunuuika the Huntress added. “The word of the wise should be law to those of less wisdom. Ookequk has spoken as if he were here among us. Now we know more of the thing that we feared, but could not name. My husband speaks truly: strange days are upon us. Tradition served us, but now it shackles us. Thus, Huntress and Herder declare that Binbinaqegabenik is free from his punishment. We would be fools to kill one who has been striving to protect us from the storm of which Ookequk spoke. We would be worse than fools, it is now clear, to kill the only one who knew Ookequk’s heart.”
Nunuuika paused, waiting for Binabik to complete his reinterpretation, then continued, passing her hand across her forehead in some ritual gesture. “The Rimmersman Sludig is an even stranger problem. He is no Qanuc, so he was not guilty of oath-breaking, as we declared Binabik. But he is of an enemy people, and if the tales of our farthest-ranging hunters are true, Rimmersmen in the east have grown even more savage than before. However, Binabik assures us that this Sludig is different, that he fights the same fight as Ookequk. We are not sure, but in these days of madness we cannot say it is not so. Thus, Sludig is also declared freed from punishment and may leave Yiqanuc as he wishes—the first Croohok so pardoned since the Battle of Huhinka Valley in my great-grandmother’s day, when the snows ran red with blood. We call on the spirits of high places, pale Sedda and Qinkipa of the Snows, Morag Eyeless, bold Chukku, and all the rest, to protect the people if our judgment is faulty.”
When the Huntress had finished, Uammannaq stood beside her and made a broad gesture, as though to break something in two and cast it away. The watching trolls chanted one sharp syllable, then lapsed into excited whispering.
Simon turned and clasped Sludig’s hand. The northerner smiled tightly, jaw set behind his yellow beard. “The little people speak rightly,” he said. “Strange times indeed.”
Uammannaq raised his hand to still the murmur of conversation. “The lowlanders shall now leave. Binbinaqegabenik, who if he returns will be our next Singing Man, may go with them to take this strange, magical object—” he pointed to Thorn, which Haestan held propped on the ground before him, “—to the lowlanders, who he says can use it to frighten away the winter.
“We shall send with them a party of hunters, led by our daughter Sisqina
namook, who shall be their escort until they leave the lands of the Qanuc. The hunters will then go to the spring city by Blue Mud Lake and prepare for the coming of the rest of our clans.” Uammannaq made a gesture and one of the other trolls stepped forward with a skin bag that had been covered nearly completely in delicate tracings of colored embroidery. “We have gifts we wish to give you.”
Binabik brought his friends forward. The Huntress presented Simon with a sheath of supple hide, the leather subtly tooled and studded with stone beads the color of a spring moon. The Herder then gave him a knife to put in it, a beautiful pale blade made from a single piece of bone. The handle was wrought with smoothed carvings of birds.
“A magical lowlander sword is very good for fighting snow-worms,” Nunuuika told him, “but a humble Qanuc knife is easier to hide and easier to use in close quarters.”
Simon thanked them politely and stepped aside. Haestan was given a capacious drinking skin decorated with ribbons and stitchery, filled to the stopper with Qanuc liquor. The guardsman, who had drunk enough of the sour stuff during the previous evening to finally develop a bit of taste for it, bowed, mumbled some words of gratitude, then withdrew.
Sludig, who had come to Yiqanuc as a prisoner but was now leaving more or less as a guest, received a spear with a viciously sharp head hewn from shiny black stone. The haft was uncarved, since it had been hurriedly constructed—the trolls did not use spears of a length that would have been appropriate—but it was nicely balanced and could double as a walking stave.
“We hope you also appreciate the gift of your life,” Uammannaq said, “and will remember that the justice of the Qanuc is stern but not cruel.”