by Tad Williams
He lay down on his bed of branches, bending his knees and pulling his long legs up against his body so that they would benefit as much as possible from being wrapped in his cloak, then began to pull the remaining branches over himself. He tried his best, with clumsy, sticky fingers, to weave them together so that there were no large exposed areas, and ended by reaching awkwardly up through the hemlock blanket to drag the last few branches over his head. He then turned his face sideways so that it was mostly hidden in his hood. The position was miserably uncomfortable and unnatural in the extreme, but he could feel his own warm breath whispering in the pocket of the hood; for this little while at least, he stopped shivering.
He had been so exhausted when he lay down that Simon expected to be asleep in a matter of moments, despite the tickling branches and his cramped legs. Instead, he found himself growing gradually more wakeful as the first hour of night wore on. The cold, while not as sharply biting as when he had earlier walked through the forest into the teeth of the wind, nevertheless sneaked through his meager shelter and seeped down into his bones and flesh. It was a dull and relentless sort of cold, patient as stone.
The chill was bad enough, but though the thunder of his breathing and the drumbeat of his heart were loud in his ears, he could hear other, stranger noises as well. He had forgotten how differently the night forest sounded when no friend slept nearby. The wind moaned achingly through the trees; other sounds seemed ominously stealthy, yet were loud enough to be heard even above the lamenting wind. After all the horrors he had seen, he harbored no idle hopes that the night was innocent of dangers—surely he was hearing damned souls crying in the storm, and lumbering Hunën prowling the forest in search of warm blood!
As the night marched on, Simon felt black dread rising once more. He was all alone! He was a lost, doomed fool of a mooncalf who should never have dabbled in the affairs of his betters! Even if he survived the night, even if he was spared the clutches of some gibbering, faceless nightwalker, it would only be to starve in the daylight! Certainly he could last a few days, perhaps weeks if he was lucky, but from what Binabik had told him it was many leagues to the Stone of Farewell—and that was assuming that he knew how to get there at all, and could find his way through Aldheorte’s unsympathetic depths to do so. Simon knew he did not possess the woodcraft to survive a long exile in the wild: he was no Jack Mundwode, not even close. Similarly, there was almost no chance that anyone who could help would pass through this remote part of the northeastern forest, especially in such hellish weather.
Worst of all, his friends were long gone. In the middle of the afternoon he had suddenly found himself in a fit of panicky shouting, repeating their names over and over again until his throat felt rough as a butcher’s block. At the last, just before his voice gave out, he thought he had been screaming the names of the dead. That was the most frightening thought of all, a path that ran very close to the abyss: shout for the dead today, speak to them tomorrow, join them soon after—in a living death of irredeemeable madness if nothing else, and that might be worse than actually dying.
He lay beneath the branches and shivered, but no longer from only the chill. Darkness rose within him and Simon struggled against it. He didn’t want to die yet, that he knew—but did it matter? There seemed to be nothing he could do about it one way or the other.
But I will not die here, he decided at last, pretending for a moment he had been offered some choice. He felt for his own desperation and began to smooth it down and push it back, quieting it like a frightened horse. I’ve touched dragon blood. I won a Sithi White Arrow. It all means something, doesn’t it?
He didn’t know if it did all mean something, but he suddenly wanted very much to live.
I won’t die yet. I want to see Binabik again, and Josua ... and Miriamele. And I want to see Pryrates and Elias suffer for what they did. I want a home again, a warm bed—oh,merciful Usires, if you really are real, let me have a home again! Don’t let me die in the cold! Let me find a home... a home... let me find a home... !
Sleep was conquering him at last. He seemed to hear his own voice echoing down an old stone well. At last he slid away from cold and painful thoughts into a warmer place.
He survived that night and six more nights after it, each followed by a morning of terrible, frigid stiffness, of solitude and increasing hunger.
The unseasonal cold had killed many of Spring’s children in the womb, but some plants had managed to bud and flower in the brief, false season of warmth before the deadly winter returned to stay. Binabik and the Sithi had both given him flowers to eat, but Simon had no idea if there were right or wrong kinds of flowers. He ate what few he could find. They did not fill him up, but neither did they kill him. Patches of bitter yellow grass—very bitter—had survived beneath some of the snow hummocks as well, and he made full use of all he could find. Once, in a moment of starved unreason, he even tried to eat a handful of fir needles. They tasted astoundingly dreadful, and the sap and his own froth made a sticky, half-frozen mess of his downy beard.
One day, when his longing for something solid to eat had become a maddening obsession, a chill-baffled beetle wandered across his path. Rachel the Dragon had held a very firm line on the almost incalculable filthiness of such vermin, but Simon’s stomach had become a far more powerful force than even Rachel’s training. He could not let this opportunity pass.
Despite his hollow gut, the first one proved very difficult. When he felt the tiny legs moving within his mouth, he gagged and spit the beetle into the snow. Its aimless kicking made him want to be sick, but a moment later he snatched it up again, then chewed and swallowed it as quickly as he could. The beetle’s texture was that of a delicate, slightly flexible nutshell, the taste little more than a musty tang. When an hour had passed with none of Rachel’s dire predictions coming to pass, Simon began to watch the ground carefully in hope of a few more such slow-moving morsels.
Different than his great hunger, and in some ways worse, was the continuing cold: when he could find and devour a fistful of lutegrass, his hunger was for a moment made less, and when he had hiked the first morning hour, his muscles stopped aching for a short time ... but after that initial moment when he first crawled into his forest-bed, he was never warm again. When he ceased moving even for a few short moments he began to shiver uncontrollably. The chill was so relentless that it began to seem that it pursued him like an enemy. He cursed at it weakly, swinging his arms through the air as though the malevolent cold was something he could strike, as he had struck at the dragon Igjarjuk, but cold was everywhere and nowhere; it had no black blood to spill.
There was nothing that Simon could do but walk. So, during all the painful hours of daylight, from the time his cramped limbs forced him from his makeshift bed each morning to the hour when the sun finally withdrew from the sodden gray sky, he walked almost ceaselessly southward. The rhythm of his shuffling feet became as much a part of the cycle of life as the rise and fall of the wind, the passage of the sun, the settling of snowflakes. He walked because it kept him warm; he walked south because he dimly remembered Binabik saying that the Stone of Farewell stood in the grasslands south of Aldheorte. He knew he could never survive a journey through the entire forest, a passage across a vast nation of trees and snow, but he had to have some destination: the endless tramping was easier if all he had to do was let the occluded sun pass from his left to his right.
He also walked because when he stood still the cold began to bring strange, frightening visions. Sometimes he saw faces in the contorted trunks of trees and heard voices speaking his name and the names of strangers. Other times the snowy forest seemed a thicket of towers; the sparse greenery was transformed into leaping flames and his heart tolled in his ears like a doomful bell.
But most importantly, Simon walked because there was nothing else he could do. If he did not keep moving, he would die—and Simon was not ready to die.
“Bug now, don’t run, don’t flitter
Ta
ste bitter, don’t care, don’t care
Bug stay, happy day, tasty bite
Don’t fight ...”
It was late morning, the seventh day since his awakening. Simon was stalking. A spotted brown and gray beetle—larger and possibly more succulent than the small black variety which he had made a staple of his diet—was picking its way across the trunk of a white cedar. Simon had snatched at it once, some twenty ells back, but this beetle had wings—and surely that proved its tastiness, since it had to work so hard to remain uneaten!—and had gone humming away most ungracefully. It had not flown far. A second attempt had also failed, which had led to this most recent landing place.
He was singing to himself; whether he sang out loud or not, he didn’t know. The beetle didn’t seem to mind, so Simon kept it up.
“Beetle sleep, don’t creep, trust me
Stand still, stand still, tasty crumb
Here I come, through the snow, don’t go ...”
Simon, his eyes screwed down in a hunter’s squint, was moving as slowly as his trembling, ill-nourished body would permit. He wanted this bettle. He needed this beetle. Feeling a shiver beginning to well up inside of him, a shiver that would spoil his careful approach, he lunged. His palms slapped eagerly against the bark, but when he brought his cupped hands up to his face to peer within he saw that he held nothing.
“What do you want it for?” someone asked. Simon, who had carried on more than a few conversations with strange voices during these last days, had already opened his mouth to reply when his heart suddenly began hammering in his chest. He whirled, but no one was there.
Now it’s begun, the going-mad has begun ... was all he had time to think before someone tapped him on his shoulder. He spun again and almost fell down.
“Here. I caught it.” The beetle, curiously lifeless, hovered in the air before him. A moment later he saw that it hung from the fingers of a white-gloved hand. The hand’s owner stepped out from behind the cedar tree. “I don’t know what you will do with it. Do your people eat these things? I had never heard that.”
For a brief instant he thought Jiriki had come—the golden-eyed face was framed by a cloud of pale lavender hair, Jiriki’s own odd shade, and feathered braids hung beside each up-slanting cheekbone—but after a long, staring instant he realized it was not his friend.
The stranger’s face was very slender, but still slightly rounder than Jiriki’s. As with the prince, the alien architecture made some of this Sitha’s expressions seem cold or cruel or even faintly animalistic, yet still strangely beautiful. The newcomer seemed younger and more unguarded than Jiriki: her face—he had just realized that the stranger was female—changed swiftly from expression to expression even as he watched, like an exchange of subtle masks. Despite what seemed the fluidity and energy of youth, Simon saw that deep in the cat-calm, golden eyes, this stranger shared with Jiriki the ancient Sithi light.
“Seoman,” she said, then laughed whisperingly. Her white-clad finger touched his brow, light and strong as a bird’s wing. “Seoman Snowlock.”
Simon was quivering. “Wh ... wh ... who... ?”
“Aditu.” Her eyes were faintly mocking. “My mother named me Aditu no-Sa’onserei. I have been sent for you.”
“S-sent? B-b-by... ?”
Aditu tilted her head to one side, stretching her neck sinuously, and regarded Simon as someone might an untidy but interesting animal that crouched on the doorstep. “By my brother, manchild. By Jiriki, of course.” She stared as Simon began to sway gently from side to side. “Why do you look so strange?”
“Were you ... in my dreams?” he asked plaintively.
She continued to watch curiously as he abruptly sat down in the snow beside her bare feet.
“Certainly I have boots,” Aditu said later. Somehow she had built a fire, scraping away the snow and stacking the wood right beside the spot where Simon had crumpled, then igniting it with some swift movement of her slender fingers. Simon stared intently into the flames, trying to make his mind work properly once more. “I just wanted to take them off so I could approach more quietly.” She eyed him blandly. “I did not know what it was that could make such a blundering noise, but it was you, of course. Still, there is something fine about the feel of snow on the skin.”
Simon shuddered, thinking of ice against bare toes. “How did you find me?”
“The mirror. Its song is very powerful.”
“So ... so if I had lost the mirror, you w-wouldn’t have found me?”
Aditu looked at him solemnly. “Oh, I would have found you eventually, but mortals are frail creatures. There might not have been much of interest left to find.” She flashed her teeth in what he guessed was a smile. She seemed both more and less human than Jiriki—almost childishly flippant at times, but in other ways far more exotic and alien than her brother. Many of the traits Simon had observed in Jiriki, the feline grace and dispassion, seemed even more pronounced in his sister.
As Simon rocked back and forth, still not absolutely sure he was awake and sane, Aditu reached inside her white coat—which, with her white breeches, had made her all but indistinguishable against the snow—and removed a package wrapped in shiny cloth. She handed it to him. He poked clumsily at the wrappings for some time before he was able to expose what was inside: a loaf of golden-brown bread that seemed oven-fresh, and a handful of fat pink berries.
Simon had to eat his meal in very small bites to avoid making himself ill; even so, each less-than-a-mouthful seemed like time spent in paradise.
“Where did you find these?” he asked through a faceful of berries.
Aidtu looked at him for a long time, as if debating some important decision. When she spoke, it was with what seemed an air of carelessness. “You will soon see. I will take you there—but such a thing has never happened before.”
Simon did not pursue this cryptic last remark. Instead, he asked: “But where are you taking me?”
“To my brother, as he asked me to,” Aditu said. She looked solemn, but a wild light gleamed in her eyes. “To the home of our people—Jao é-Tinukai’i.”
Simon finished chewing and swallowed. “I will go anywhere there is a fire. ”
21
Prince of Grass
“Say nothing,” Hotvig murmured, “but look to the redcoat there by the fence.”
Deornoth followed the Thrithings-man’s subtle gesture until his gaze lit on a roan stallion. The horse regarded Deornoth warily, stepping from side to side as though he might bolt at any moment.
“Ah, yes.” Deornoth nodded his head. “He is a proud one.” He turned. “Did you see this one, my prince?”
Josua, who was leaning against the gate at the far side of the paddock, waved his hand. The prince’s head was wrapped in linen bandages, and he moved as slowly as if all of his bones were broken, but he had insisted on coming out to assist in claiming the fruits of his wager. Fikolmij, apoplectic with rage at the idea of watching Josua picking thirteen Thrithings horses from the March-thane’s own pens, had sent his randwarder Hotvig in his place. Instead of mirroring his thane’s attitude, Hotvig seemed rather taken with the visitors and with Prince Josua in particular. On the grasslands a one-handed man did not often kill an opponent half again his size.
“What’s the red’s name?” Josua asked Fikolmij’s horsekeeper, a wiry, ancient man with a tiny wisp of hair on the top of his head.
“Vinyafod,” this one said shortly, then turned his back.
“It means ”Wind-foot” ... Prince Josua.” Hotvig pronounced the title awkwardly. The randwarder went and slipped a rope about the stallion’s neck, then led the balking animal to the prince.
Josua smiled as he looked the horse up and down, then boldly reached up and pulled at its lower lip, exposing the teeth. The stallion shook his head and pulled away, but Josua grabbed the lip again. After a few nervous head-shakes, the horse at last allowed himself to be examined, the only sign of anxiety his blinking eyes. “Well, he is certainly one
we shall take east with us,” Josua said, “—although I doubt that will please Fikolmij.”
“It will not,” Hotvig said solemnly. “If his honor was not held up before all the clans, he would kill you just for coming near these horses. This Vinyafod was one that Fikolmij demanded specially as part of Blehmunt’s booty when Fikolmij became leader of the clans.”
Josua nodded solemnly. “I don’t want the March-thane so angry that he follows and murders us, pledge or no pledge. Deornoth, I give you leave to pick the rest; I trust your eye better than mine. We will take Vinyafod, that is certain—as a matter of fact, I think I will claim him for my own. I am tired of limping from here to there. But as I said, let us not cull the herd so thoroughly that we force Fikolmij to dishonor himself.”
“I will choose carefully, sire.” Deornoth strode across the paddock. The horsekeeper saw him coming and tried to sidle away, but Deornoth hooked the old man’s elbow and began asking questions. The keeper was hard-pressed to pretend he could not understand.
Josua watched with a faint smile on his face, shifting his balance from one foot to another to spare his aching body. Hotvig watched the prince from the corner of his eye for a long time before he spoke.