by Tad Williams
“There must be a hundred of them or more!” Miriamele said in surprise. Dinivan wore a scowling, worried face. Some in the watching crowd were shouting derisively or throwing stones and refuse at the capering dancers, but others stared intently, even fearfully, as if at some animal upon which they feared to turn their backs.
“Too late for repentance!” one of the robed ones screeched, bounding away from his fellows to bob up and down like a jumping jack before the front row of spectators. The crowd eddied away from him as if fearful of some contagion. “Too late,” he shouted. His face, that of a young man with his first beard, split in a grin of glee. “Too late! The dreams told us! The master’s coming!”
Another of the white-clad figures climbed onto a stone in the center of the commons, waving to silence fellow dancers. The watchers murmured as this one threw back a capacious hood, revealing the yellow-haired head of a woman. She would have been very pretty, but for her staring eyes, white-rimmed in the torchlight, and her huge, ghastly smile.
“The fire is coming!” she cried. The other dancers capered and shouted, then quieted. A few in the surrounding crowd called out insults, but quickly fell silent as she turned her burning eyes upon them. “Do not fear you will be left out,” she said, and in the sudden quiet her voice carried clearly. “The fires are coming for everyone—the fires and the ice that will bring the Great Change. The master will spare no one who has not prepared for him.”
“You blaspheme against our true Ransomer, demon-lover!” Dinivan abruptly shouted, standing in his stirrups. His voice was powerful. “You tell these people lies!”
A few in the crowd repeated his words and their murmuring began to grow. The woman in white turned and made a sign to some of the robed ones near her. Several had been kneeling at the stone below her feet, as if in prayer; one of them now rose and walked across the courtyard as she stood staring imperiously outward, her mad eyes fixed on the lowering twilit sky. He returned a moment later with a torch from one of the sconces, which she took and raised above her head.
“What is Usires Aedon,” she screamed, “but a little wooden man on a little wooden tree? What are any of the kings and queens of men but apes raised far above their station? The master will throw down all that stands before him and his majesty shall rise above all the oceans and lands of Osten Ard! The Storm King comes! He brings with him ice to freeze the heart, deafening thunder—and cleansing fire!”
She threw the brand down at her feet. A fierce sheet of flame leaped up around the rock. Some of the other dancers shrieked as their robes caught fire. The crowd pushed back with a shout of surprise as a wall of heat pushed out at them.
“Elysia, Mother of God!” Dinivan’s voice was full of horror.
“So it shall be!” the woman shouted, even as the flames ran up her robe into her hair, crowning her with fire and smoke. She was still smiling, a lost, damned smile. “He speaks in dreams! Doom is coming!” The blaze mounted, obscuring her, but her last words rang out over and over. “The master is coming! The master is coming... !”
Miriamele leaned over her horse’s neck, fighting to keep from being sick. Dinivan rode forward a short way before dismounting to try and help some of those who had been knocked down and trampled in the crowd’s retreat. The princess straightened up, gasping for breath.
Blind to her presence, Cadrach stared at the charnel scene before them. His face, scarlet in the leaping light, was suffused with an unhappy but hungering look—as though an important, terrible thing had come to pass, a thing feared for so long that the waiting had become even worse than the fear.
8
On Sikkihoq’s Back
“Where are we going, Binabik?” Simon leaned in, moving his reddened hands nearer the fire. His gloves steamed on a fir trunk nearby.
Binabik looked up from the scroll he and Sisqi were studying. “For now, it is down the mountains. After that, we will be needing guidance. Now let me continue to look for such guidance, please.”
Simon resisted the unmanly urge to stick out his tongue, but the troll’s rebuff did not really bother him very much. He was in a good mood.
Simon’s strength was returning. He had felt a little more fit each of the two days of hard journeying that had brought them down across Mintahoq, chief mountain of the Trollfells. Now they had left Mintahoq altogether and had crossed over to the flank of her sister-peak Sikkihoq. Tonight, for the first time, Simon had not wanted simply to fall asleep when the party had stopped to make camp. Instead, he had helped find a scanty supply of deadwood to build the fire, then dug snow out of the shallow cave where they would spend the night. It was good to feel himself again. The scar on his cheek pained him, but it was a quiet ache. More than anything else, it helped him to remember.
The dragon’s blood had changed him, he realized. Not in a magical way, like in one of Shem Horsegroom’s old stories—he couldn’t understand the speech of animals, or see a hundred leagues. Well, that was not quite true. When the snow had stopped for a moment today, the white valleys of the Waste had leaped into clarity, seeming as near as the folds in a blanket, but stretching all the way to the dark blur of faraway Aldheorte Forest. For a moment, standing quiet as a statue despite the wind biting his neck and face, he had felt as though he did possess magical vision. As in the days when he climbed Green Angel Tower to see all Erkynland spread below him like a carpet, he had felt as if he could reach out a hand and so change the world.
But moments like that were not what the dragon had brought him. Pondering as he waited for his damp gloves to dry, he looked to Binabik and Sisqi, saw the way they touched even when they did not touch, the long conversations that passed between the two of them in the shortest of glances. Simon realized that he felt and saw things differently than he had before Urmsheim. People and events seemed more clearly connected, each part of a much larger puzzle—just as Binabik and Sisqi were. They cared deeply for each other, but at the same time their world of two interlocked with many other worlds: with Simon’s own, with their people‘s, with Prince Josua’s, and Geloë’s... It was really quite startling, Simon thought, how everything was part of something else! But though the world was vast beyond comprehension, still every mote of life in it fought for its own continued existence. And each mote mattered.
That was what the dragon’s blood had taught him, in some way. He was not great; he was, in fact, very small. At the same moment, though, he was important, just as any point of light in a dark sky might be the star that led a mariner to safety, or the star watched by a lonely child during a sleepless night....
Simon shook his head, then blew on his chill hands. His ideas were getting away from him, cavorting like mice in an unlocked pantry. He felt the gloves again, but they were not yet dried. He tucked his hands into his armpits and inched a little nearer the fire.
“Are you of great sureness that Geloë said ‘Stone of Farewell,’ Simon?” Binabik asked. “I have been reading Ookequk’s scrolls for two nights and no luck am I having.”
“‘I told you everything she said.” Simon looked out beyond the lip of the cavern, where the tethered rams huddled, bumping together like an ambulatory snowdrift. “I could not forget. She spoke through the little girl we saved, Leleth, and she said: ‘Go to the Stone of Farewell. That is the only place of safety from the growing storm—safety for a little while, anyway.’”
Binabik pursed his lips, frustrated. He spoke a few quick words of Qanuc to Sisqi, who nodded solemnly. “I have no doubt of you, Simon. We have seen too much together. And I cannot be doubting Geloë, who is the wisest one I know. It is a problem of my poor understanding.” He waved a small hand at the flattened hide before him. “Perhaps I did not bring the correct works.”
“You think too much, little man,” Sludig called from the other side of the cavern. “Haestan and I are showing your friends how to play ‘Conqueror.’ It works nearly as well with your troll throwing-stones as with real dice. Come, play, take your mind off these things for a while.”
>
Binabik looked up and smiled, giving Sludig a wave of his hand. “Why do you not join them in this play, Simon?” he asked. “Surely it would be more interesting than watching my confusion.”
“I’m thinking, too,” Simon said. “I’ve been thinking about Urmsheim. About Igjarjuk and what happened.”
“It was not as you were when young imagining it to be, hmmm?” Binabik said, absorbed in the perusal of his scroll once more. “Things are not always as old songs tell them to be—especially when it is concerning dragons. But you, Simon, acted as bravely as any Sir Camaris or Tallistro.”
Simon felt a pleasant flush. “I don’t know. It didn’t seem like bravery. I mean, what else could I have done? But that isn’t what I was thinking about. I was thinking about the dragon’s blood. It did more than this to me.” He indicated his cheek and the white stripe that now ran through his hair. Binabik did not look up to see his gesture, but Sisqi did. She smiled shyly, her dark, upturned eyes fixed on him as though on a friendly but possibly dangerous animal; a moment later, the troll maiden rose and walked away. “It made me think differently about things,” Simon continued, watching her go. “The whole time you were in that hole, a prisoner, I was thinking and dreaming.”
“And what did you think?” Binabik asked.
“It’s hard to say. About the world and how old it is. About how small I am. Even the Storm King is small, in a way.”
Binabik inspected Simon’s face. The troll’s brown eyes were serious. “Yes, he is perhaps small beneath the stars, Simon—as a mountain is small in comparing to the whole world. But a mountain is bigger than we, and if it falls on us, we will still be very dead in a very big hole.”
Simon fluttered his hand impatiently. “I know, I know. I’m not saying that I’m not afraid. It’s just... it’s hard to say.” He struggled for the proper words. “It’s like the dragon’s blood taught me another language, another way to see things when I think. How can you explain another language to someone?”
Binabik started to reply, then stopped, staring just over Simon’s shoulder. Alarmed, Simon turned, but nothing was there but the oblique stone of the cavern and a patch of gray, white-flecked sky.
“What’s wrong? Are you ill, Binabik?
“I have it,” the troll said simply. “I knew there was something of familiarity in it. But it was a confusion of language. They are translating differently, you see.” He bounced up onto his feet and trotted over to his bag. A few of his fellow trolls looked up. One started to say something, but broke off, deterred by Binabik’s fixed expression. A few moments later the little man returned with an armful of new scrolls.
“What’s going on?” Simon asked.
“It was language—the difference between tongues. You said: Stone of Farewell. ”
“That’s what Geloë told me,” he answered defensively.
“Of course. But Ookequk’s scrolls are not in the language you and I are now speaking. Some are copied from original Nabbanai, some are in Qanuc-tongue, and some few in the original speech of the Sithi. I was looking for ‘Stone of Farewell,’ but in Sithi language, it would be named ‘Leavetaking Stone’—a small difference, but one that makes much differentness in the finding of it. Now wait.”
He began to read swiftly through the scrolls, his lips moving as he followed the movement of his stubby finger from one line to another. Sisqi returned, bearing two bowls of soup. One she sat beside Binabik, who was too preoccupied to do more than nod his thanks. The other bowl she offered to Simon. Not knowing what else to do, he bowed his head as he took it.
“Thank you,” he said, wondering if he should call her by name.
Sisqinanamook started to say something in reply, then stopped as if she could not remember the appropriate words. For a moment she and Simon stared at each other, an inclination toward friendship hindered by their inability to converse. At last, Sisqi bowed in return, then snuggled in next to Binabik, asking him a quiet question.
“Chash,” he replied, “that is correct,” then went silent again, searching. “Ho ho!” he cried at last, thumping his palm on his hide-suited leg. “This is the answer. We have found it!”
“What?” Simon leaned in. The scroll was covered with strange marks, little drawings like the feet of birds and the tracks of snails. Binabik was pointing at one symbol, a square with rounded corners, full of dots and slashes.
“Sesuad‘ra,” the little man breathed, stretching the word out as if examining fine cloth. “Sesuad’ra—Leavetaking Stone. Or, as Geloe spoke it, the Stone of Farewell. A Sithi thing it is, as I guessed.”
“But what is it?” Simon stared at the runes, but could not imagine getting meaning from it as he could from Westerling script.
Binabik squinted at the scroll. “It is the place, this is saying, where covenant was broken when the Zida‘ya and Hikeda’ya—the Sithi and the Norns—split asunder to be going their separate ways. It is a place of power and of great sorrow.”
“But where is it? How can we go there if we don’t know where it is?”
“It was once being part of Enki-e-Shao’saye, the Summer-City of the Sithi. ”
“Jiriki told me about that,” Simon said, suddenly excited. “He showed it to me in the mirror. The mirror he gave me. Maybe we could find it there!” He fumbled in his pack, searching for Jiriki’s gift.
“No need, Simon, no need!” Binabik laughed. “A fool I would truly be—and the poorest apprentice Ookequk could ever be having—if I did not know of Enki-e-Shao’saye. It was one of the Nine Cities, great in beauty and lore.”
“Then you know where the Stone of Farewell is?”
“Enki-e-Shao‘saye was at the southeast edge of the great forest Aldheorte.” Binabik frowned. “So it is not near, obviously. Many weeks of journeying we will have. Where the city was standing is on the far side of the forest from us, above the flat lands of the High Thrithings.” His expression brightened. “But we are knowing now our destination. That is good. Sesuad’ra.” He savored the word again reflectively. “I have never seen it, but words of Ookequk come to me. It is a strange and grim place, as legend speaks.”
“I wonder why Geloë chose it?” Simon said.
“Perhaps there was no other choosing she could make.” Binabik turned his attention to his cold soup.
The rams, understandably enough, did not like to walk with Qantaqa behind them. Even after several days, the smell of the wolf still troubled them deeply, so Binabik continued to ride ahead. Qantaqa picked her way deftly along the steep, narrow trails, the ram-riders following after, talking or singing quietly among themselves, keeping their voices low so as not to wake Makuhkuya, the avalanche goddess. Simon, Haestan, and Sludig trooped along at the rear, trying to stay out of the hoof-ruts and thereby keep the snow from creeping in over the tops of their well-oiled boots.
Where Mintahoq was rounded like an old man bent by years, Sikkihoq was all angles and steep sides. The troll-paths clung to the mountain’s back, winding far out to swing around icy columns of rock, then passing out of the sunlight in the mountain’s own shadow, following the inside line of a vertical crevice that dropped away beyond the path into mist and snow.
Trudging down the narrow trails hour after hour, constantly wiping the fluttering snow from his eyes, Simon found himself praying they would reach the bottom soon. Returning strength or no, he was not meant for mountain life. The thin air hurt his lungs and made his legs feel heavy and weak as sodden loaves of bread. When he tried to sleep at the end of the day, his muscles were so painfully tight they almost seemed to hum.
The very heights in which they traveled also disturbed him. He had always thought of himself as a fearless climber, but that had been before he left Hayholt for the wide world. Now, Simon found it much easier to keep his eyes fastened to the back of Sludig’s brown boots as they lifted and fell than to look elsewhere. When his gaze swung away to the leaning masses of stone above them or the empty depths below, he found it difficult to remember level ground.
Somewhere, he reminded himself, there were places where a person could turn and walk in any direction without risking a death-fall. He had lived in such a place, so they must still exist. Somewhere mile after flat mile lay like a deep carpet, waiting for Simon’s feet.
They had stopped at a wider place to rest. Simon helped Haestan take off his pack, then watched as the guardsman slumped down onto a snow-dampened stone, breathing so heavily that he soon surrounded himself with a fog of vapors. Haestan slipped his hood off for a moment, then shivered as the high wind struck him. He quickly pulled it back on. Ice crystals glimmered in his dark beard.
“S’cold, lad,” he said. “Bitter.” He suddenly looked old.
“Do you have a family, Haestan?” Simon asked.
The guardsman paused for a moment as if taken aback, then laughed. “Of sorts. I’ve a woman, a wife, but no little‘uns. First baby died, we’ve gotten none since. I’ve not seen her since ’fore winter.” He shook his head. “She be safe, though. Gone t‘live with folk in Hewenshire—Naglimund be too dangerous, told her. War comin’.” He shook his head. “Now if y’r witch woman speaks true, war’s over an’ Prince Josua lost.”
“But Geloë said he escaped,” Simon put in hurriedly.
“Aye, that be somethin’.”
They sat in silence for a while, listening to the wind among the rocks. Simon looked down at the sword Thorn lying atop Haestan’s pack, gleaming blackly, dotted with melting snowflakes. “Is the sword too heavy for you? I could carry it for a while.”
Haestan considered him for a moment before grinning. “Y‘r welcome to it, Simon-lad. Y’should have sword, what with that first manly beard an’ all. Thing is, hard t‘say if it be any good as a sword, if y’take my meaning. ”
“I know. I know how it changes.” He remembered Thorn in his own hands. At first it had been cold and heavy as an anvil. Then, as he stood poised, balanced on the cliffs edge staring into the dragon’s milky blue eyes, it had become light as a birch-staff. The glossy blade had seemed inspirited, as though it breathed. “It’s almost like it’s alive. Like an animal or something. Is it heavy for you now?”