by Tad Williams
Haestan shook his head, looking up at the flurrying snow. “No, lad. Seems it wants t‘go where we’re goin’. Thinks it be goin’ home, mayhap.”
Simon smiled to hear them both talking about a sword as though it were a dog or a horse. Still, there was an undeniable tension to the thing, like a spider still in a web, or a fish hanging suspended in the cold darkness of a river bottom. He looked at it again. The sword, if it was alive, was a wild thing. The blackness of it devoured light, leaving only a thin residue of reflection, sparkling crumbs in a miser’s beard. A wild thing, a dark thing.
“It’s going where we’re going,” Simon said, then considered for a moment. “But that’s not going to be home. Not my home.”
As he lay that night in a narrow cavern which was little more than a nick in Sikkihoq’s muscular stone back, Simon dreamed of a tapestry. It was a moving tapestry, hanging on a wall of absolute blackness. In it, as in the religious pictures of the Hayholt’s chapel, a great tree stood, arms rising to heaven. This tree was white and smooth as Harcha marble. Prince Josua hung upon it head down, like Usires Aedon Himself in His suffering.
A shadowy figure stood before Josua, driving nails into him with a great, gray hammer. Josua did not speak or cry out, but his followers all around were moaning. The prince’s eyes were wide with patient suffering, like the carved face of Usires that had hung on the wall of Simon’s boyhood home in the servant’s quarters.
Simon could not bear to see any more. He thrust himself through into the tapestry itself and ran at the shadow-figure. As he ran, he felt a weighty something dangling in his hand. He lifted his arm to swing it, but the murky thing reached up and caught his hand, pulling Simon’s weapon away. He had been holding a black hammer. But for its color, it was the twin of the gray.
“Better,” the thing said. It hefted the ebony mallet in its other shadowy hand and began once more to drive nails. This time Josua screamed with each blow, screamed and screamed ...
... Simon awakened to find himself shivering in darkness, the raspy breathing of his traveling companions all around him, vying with the wind that moaned as it searched the mountain passes outside the cavern. He wanted to waken Binabik, or Haestan, or Sludig—anybody who could speak to him in his own tongue—but could not find any of them in the dark, and knew even in his fear that he should not startle the others awake.
He lay down once more, listening to the crooning wind. He was afraid to go back to sleep, afraid he would hear those awful screams once more. He strained to see in the darkness so he would know his eyes were open, but there was nothing.
Some time before light returned, exhaustion overmatched his fretting mind and he at last fell asleep. If more dreams troubled him, he did not remember them on awakening.
They were three more days on heart-freezingly narrow trails before they made their way down out of Sikkihoq’s heights. On the mountain’s shoulders they no longer had to travel single file, so as they came down onto a broad shelf of snow-dotted granite the company stopped to celebrate. It was a rare hour of afternoon sunlight. The light had broken through the cobweb of clouds and the wind for once seemed playful instead of predatory.
Binabik rode Qantaqa ahead to scout the terrain, then turned the wolf loose to hunt. She was gone into a tumble of white-mantled boulders in an instant. Binabik walked back to the rest of the party, a broad smile on his face.
“It is good to be off the cliffs for a time,” he said, sitting next to Simon, who had removed his boots and was rubbing blood back into his white toes. “There is little time for thinking of anything else but balancing when one rides on such narrow and endangering trails.”
“Or walks on them,” Simon said, looking critically at his toes.
“Or walks,” Binabik agreed. “I will be returning in a moment.” The little man got up and walked across the gently curving stone to where most of the trolls sat in a circle on the ground, passing around a drinking skin. Several of them had taken off their jackets to sit bare-chested in the thin sunlight, brown skins acrawl with tattoos of birds, bears, and sinuous fish. The rams had been unsaddled and turned loose to graze on such scanty fodder as they might find, moss and clumps of scruffy brush that had taken root in rocky crevices. One of the troll men watched over them as shepherd, although his heart did not seem to be in the job. He poked the ground disconsolately with his crook-spear as he watched the skin go around the circle. One of his fellows, pointing and laughing at his misery, at last stumped over and shared the bag with him.
Binabik approached Sisqi, who was sitting with some of the hunting maidens. He bent to say something, then rubbed her face with his own. She laughed, pushing him away, but her cheeks reddened. Watching, Simon felt a faint tremor of jealously at his friend’s happiness, but swallowed it down. Someday maybe he, too, would find someone. He thought sadly of Princess Miriamele, who stood far above any scullion. Nonetheless, she was only a girl, like those with whom Simon had bumblingly conversed in the Hayholt in what seemed far-gone days of old. When he and Miriamele had stood side by side at the bridge in Da’ai Chikiza, or before the giant, there had been no difference between them. They had been friends, facing danger together and equally.
But I didn’t know then that she was above me. Now I do, and that is the difference. But why? Am I different? Is she? Not truly. And she kissed me! And that was after she was the princess again!
He felt a curious mixture of elation and frustration. Who was to say what was right, anyway? The order of the world seemed to be changing, and where was the law written that a heroic kitchen boy could not stand proudly before a princess—who was at war with her father the king, after all?
A moment of grand daydreaming followed. Simon envisioned himself entering a great city as a hero, riding on the back of a proud horse, the sword Thorn held before him as in a picture of Sir Camaris he had once seen. Somewhere, he knew, Miriamele was watching and admiring. The day-dream foundered as he suddenly wondered what city he might enter heroically into. Naglimund, by Geloë’s word, had fallen. The Hayholt, Simon’s only home, was banned to him utterly. The sword Thorn was no more his than Simon himself was Sir Camaris, the blade’s most famous owner—and what was most important, he realized as he stared at his blistered heels, he had no horse at all.
“Here, friend Simon,” Binabik said, rousing him out of this doleful reverie, “I have secured you a draught of hunt-wine.” He held out a skin bag, smaller than the one being passed around the circle nearby.
“I already drank some,” Simon asked, sniffing suspiciously. “It tasted—well, Haestan said it tasted like horse piss and I think he’s right.”
“Ah. It is seeming that Haestan has changed his mind about kangkang.” Binabik chuckled, tilting his head in the direction of the drinking-circle. The Erkynlander and Sludig had joined the trolls; Haestan was even now taking a healthy swallow from the bag. “But this is not kangkang,” Binabik said, pressing the bag into Simon’s hand. “It is hunt-wine. The men of my folk are not allowed to drink it—except for those, like myself, who are using it sometimes for the purposes of medicine. Our huntresses drink when they must be awake all the night away from our caves. It is good especially for tired and hurting limbs and such.”
“I feel fine,” Simon said, looking doubtfully at the drinking skin.
“That is not being the point of my giving.” Binabik was becoming exasperated. “Be understanding that it is rare for anyone to get this hunt-wine. We sit here now celebrating luck in having come a difficult journey with no losses or woundings. We are celebrating a little sun and hoping for some small luck on the rest of our journey. Also, it is a sort of gift, Simon. Sisqinanamook wished you to have it.”
Simon looked up to the troll maiden, who sat in laughing conversation with her fellow huntresses. She smiled and hoisted her spear as if in salute.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t understand.” He lifted the bag and took a swig. The sweet, oily fluid slid down his throat. He coughed, but a moment la
ter felt its soothing warmth in his stomach. He took another swallow, then held some in his mouth, trying to decide what the taste reminded him of.
“What’s it made from?” he asked.
“Berries from the high meadows of Blue Mud Lake, where my tribesmen will be going. Berries and teeth.”
Simon wasn’t sure he had heard correctly. “Berries and what?”
“Teeth.” Binabik grinned, showing his own yellow ones. “Teeth of the snow bear. Made into a powder, of course. That is for strongness and quietness on the hunt.”
“Teeth ...” Simon, remembering that this was a gift, thought for a moment before saying anything more. There wasn’t really anything wrong with teeth—he had a mouthful himself. The hunt-wine did not taste bad at all, and made for a comforting tingle in his belly. He carefully lifted the skin and took a final swallow. “Berries and teeth,” he said, handing the bag back. “Very good. How do you say thank you in Qanuc?”
Binabik told him.
“Guyop!” Simon called to Sisqi, who smiled and nodded her head as her companions burst into high-pitched laughter once more, hiding their faces in the fur of their hoods.
For a while Simon and Binabik sat quietly side by side, enjoying the warmth. Simon felt the hunt-wine creeping pleasantly through his veins, so that even the daunting lower slopes of Sikkihoq that still awaited them began to look friendly. The mountain fell away below into a rumpled quilt of snow-covered hills, leveling out at the bottom into the tree-spiked monotony of the Waste.
As he turned to survey the terrain, Simon’s attention was caught by Namyet, one of Sikkihoq’s sister mountains, which in the momentary clarity of the bright afternoon seemed to loom only a stone’s throw away on his left side. Namyet’s skirts were creased with long blue vertical shadows. Her white crown sparkled in the sun.
“Do trolls live there, too?” he asked.
Binabik looked up and nodded. “Namyet is also one of the Yiqanuc mountains. Mintahoq, Chugik, Tutusik, Rinsenatuq, Sikkihoq and Namyet, Yamok, and the Huudika—the Gray Sisters—those are the troll-country. Yamok, which means Little Nose, is the place where my parents died. That is her, out beyond Namyet, do you see?” He pointed at a dim angular shape limned by the sun.
“How did they die?”
“In dragon snow, as we call it on the Roof of the World—snow that freezes on its top, then breaks through without warning, jaws closing swiftly. Like a dragon’s jaws are closing. As you know.”
Simon scuffed at the ground with a stone, then looked up, squinting at the faint outline of Yamok in the east. “Did you cry?”
“With certainty—but in my own secret place. And you ... but no, you were not knowing your parents, were you?”
“No. Doctor Morgenes told me about them. A little. My father was a fisherman and my mother was a chambermaid.”
Binabik smiled. “Poor yet honorable forebears. Who could ask for more, as a place from which to make a starting? Who would be born into the tight restricting of royal blood? Who could think to be finding their true selves when all around are bowing and kneeling?”
Simon thought of Miriamele, and even Binabik’s betrothed, Sisqinanamook, but said nothing.
After a while, the troll stretched and pulled his pack closer. He rummaged in it for a few moments, at last producing a clinking leather bag. “My knuckle bones,” he said as he spilled them gently out onto the stone. “We will be seeing if they are now a more truthful guide than at the last questioning.” He began humming quietly to himself as he scooped them up in his palms. For long moments he held the handful of bones before him, eyes closed in concentration while he muttered a song. At last he dropped them to the ground. Simon could see no discernible pattern in the jumble.
“Circle of Stones,” Binabik said, as calmly as though it were written on the bones’ yellowed smoothness. “That is where we are standing, so to speak. It means, I am thinking, a council meeting. We are searching for wisdom, for help in our journeying.”
“The bones you ask for help tell you that you’re looking for help?” Simon grunted. “That’s not much of a trick.”
“Silence, foolish lowlander,” Binabik said mock-severely. “There is more to the bones than you understand. The reading of them is not so simple.” He hummed and cast again. “Torch at the Cave-Mouth,” he said, but cast again without pause for explanation. He frowned and sucked his lip as he surveyed the scatter. “The Black Crevice. That is the second time only I have ever seen that patterning, and both have been in the time we have been together. It is an ominous throw.”
“Explain, please,” Simon said. He pulled his boots back on, testing his toes by wiggling.
“The second throwing, Torch at the Cave-Mouth, means we must look for an advantage in the place we go—Sesuad’ra, I make that, Geloë’s Stone of Farewell. That is not proving we will find luck there, but it is our chance for advantage. The Black Crevice, the last throwing, I have told you of before. The third throw is that which should be feared, or that which we need being aware of. The Black Crevice is a strange, rare pattern that could mean treachery, or could mean something coming from elsewhere ...” He broke off, staring absently at the littered bones, then swept them back into his bag.
“So what does it all mean?”
“Ah, Simon-friend,” the troll sighed, “the bones are not simply answering questions, even at the best of times. At a troubled hour like the one we are living, the understanding becomes more difficult still. I must think long about these throws. I must perhaps sing a song of slight differentness, then cast again. This is the first throwing in a long while that I have not seen The Shadowed Path—but I cannot be thinking that our path is any less shadowy. There, you see, is the danger of trying to take simple answers from the bones.”
Simon stood up. “I don’t understand much of what you’re saying, but I wish we did have a few simple answers. It would make things much easier.”
Binabik smiled as one of his folk approached. “Simple answers to life’s questioning. That would be a magic beyond any I have ever been seeing.”
The new troll, a stocky, tuft-bearded herder Binabik introduced as Snenneq, threw a distrustful look up at Simon, as though his very height was an affront to civilized behavior. He conversed excitedly with Binabik in Qanuc for a short time, then trudged away. Binabik sprang up and whistled for Qantaqa.
“Snenneq says the rams are acting skittishly,” Binabik explained. “He wanted to know where Qantaqa was, if she had been at stalking their mounts.” A moment later the wolfs gray form appeared on a crag half a furlong away, head tilted questioningly. “She is down the wind from us,” the little man said, shaking his head. “If the rams are restless, it is not Qantaqa’s scent that is so making them.”
Qantaqa sprang down from the rocky outcropping. A few moments later she was at her master’s side, butting his ribs with her large, broad head.
“She herself seems disturbed,” Binabik said. He kneeled to scratch the wolf’s belly, his arms disappearing into her thick fur up to the shoulder. Qantaqa did indeed seem distracted, standing still only a moment before lifting her snout to the breeze. Her ears flicked like the wings of an alighting bird. She made a low rumbling noise before butting Binabik with her head again. “Ah,” he said, “a snow bear, perhaps. This must be a season of hungering for them. We should move to a lower place—we may be in less danger when we are leaving Sikkihoq’s heights.” He called to Snenneq and the rest of his fellows. They began striking the makeshift camp, resaddling their rams and stowing the drinking skins and food bags.
Sludig and Haestan approached. “Ho, lad,” Haestan said to Simon, “back to our boot leather again. Now you know what’s like t‘be soldier. March, march, march, ’til feet freeze and lungs go limp.”
“I never did want to be a foot soldier,” Simon said, shouldering his pack.
The friendly weather did not hold. By the time they made camp that night near the edge of the long flat shelf, the stars had disappeared. The company’
s cookfires were the only light beneath a wild and snow-spread sky.
Dawn lightened the dark horizon to a stony gray that oddly mirrored the granite below their feet. The traveling party made their way carefully down from the shelf and onto another series of narrow trails that wound back and forth across the mountain face in steep switchbacks. By midday they had come to another relatively level place, a long, down-sloping talus hill, a vast refuse heap of boulders and smaller stones left by the passage of some ancient glacier. The footing was treacherous: even the rams had to pick their way carefully, sometimes choosing to leap from one large stone to another rather than walk across the loose rubble. Simon, Haestan, and Sludig followed behind. Their trudging footsteps occasionally freed a fist-sized stone to bound down the slope, eliciting bleats and annoyed stares from the saddled rams. Such terrain was also hard on the knees and ankles. Before they had gone far down the slope, Simon and his companions stopped to wind rags about their boots for support.
Snow fluttered all around, not a heavy fall, but enough to dust the tops of the larger stones with pale powder and fill the crevices between the smaller rocks like mortar. As Simon looked back up the long disordered slope, the upper reaches of Sikkihoq loomed through the mist and squall like a dark shadow in a doorway. He was amazed by how far they had come, but on turning found himself disheartened in equal measure by the length of descent that still remained before they would reach the doubtful comforts of the Waste below.
Haestan saw his expression and offered Simon the beribboned wineskin that had been the trolls’ gift to the guardsman. “Two more days t’flat ground, lad,” he said, smiling sourly. “Have some.”