by Tad Williams
“Surely he didn’t mean it.” He licked the juice of a just-devoured pear from his fingers, then peevishly flung the core across the grassy verge. Beside him, Jiriki was toying with the stem that remained from his own. This was Simon’s fifteenth evening in Jao é-Tinukai’i—or was it the sixteenth? “Stay here until I die? That’s madness!” He had not, of course, told Jiriki of his failed attempt at escape, but neither could he pretend to be satisfied with his captivity.
Jiriki made what Simon had come to recognize as an unhappy face, a subtle thinning of the lips, a hooding of his upturned, feline eyes. “They are my parents,” the Sitha said. “They are Shima‘onari and Likimeya, Lords of the Zida’ya, and what they decide is as unchangeable as the wheel of seasons.”
“But then why did you bring me here? You broke that rule!”
“There was no rule to break. Not truly.” Jiriki twitched the stem once more between his long fingers, then flicked it into the pond. A tiny circle spread to show where it had fallen. “It was always an unspoken law, but that is different than a Word of Command. It is traditional among the Dawn Children that we may do what we please unless it goes against a Word of Command, but this business of bringing a mortal here cuts to the heart of the things that have divided our people since time out of mind. I can only ask you to forgive me, Seoman. It was a risk, and I had no right to gamble with your life. However, I have come to believe that for once—and hear me, only this once—you mortals may be right and my folk may be wrong. This spreading winter threatens many things beside the kingdoms of the Sudhoda’ya.”
Simon lay back, staring up at the brightening stars. He tried to smother the feeling of desperation that rose inside him. “Might your parents change their minds?”
“They might,” Jiriki said slowly. “They are wise, and would be kind if they could. But do not let your hopes rise too high. We Zida’ya never hasten to decisions, especially difficult ones. What might seem to them a reasonable time to ponder could be years, and such waiting is hard for mortals to bear.”
“Years!” Simon was horrified. He suddenly understood the beast that would gnaw off its own leg to escape a trap. “Years!”
“I am sorry, Seoman.” Jiriki’s voice was hoarse as though with great pain, but his golden features still showed little emotion. “There is one hopeful sign, but do not read too much into it. The butterflies remain.”
“What?”
“At the Y ásira. They gather when great decisions are to be made. They have not flown, so there are things still unresolved.”
“What things?” Despite Jiriki’s warning, Simon felt a surge of hope.
“I do not know.” He shook his head. “Now is the time for me to stay away. At this moment, I am not my father’s and mother’s favored voice, so I must wait before I go to them again to make my arguments. Fortunately, First Grandmother Amerasu seems to have concerns about my parents’ actions—my father’s, especially.” He smiled wryly. “Her words carry great weight.”
Amerasu. Simon knew that name. He inhaled deeply of the night. Suddenly it came back to him: a face more beautiful and yet undeniably more ancient than even those of Jiriki’s ageless parents. Simon sat up.
“Do you know, Jiriki, I saw her face once in the mirror—Amerasu, the one you call First Grandmother.”
“In the mirror? In the dragon-scale mirror?”
Simon nodded. “I know I wasn’t supposed to use it unless I was calling for your help, but what happened... it was an accident.” He proceeded to describe his strange encounter with Amerasu and the terrifying appearance of silver-masked Utuk’ku.
Jiriki seemed to have entirely forgotten the crickets, despite the splendor of their song. “I did not forbid you to use the mirror, Seoman,” he said. “What is surprising is that you were able to see anything but natural reflection. That is odd.” He made an unfamiliar gesture with his hand. “I must talk to First Grandmother about this. Very odd.”
“May I come?” Simon asked.
“No, Seoman Snowlock,” Jiriki smiled. “No one goes to see Amerasu the Ship-Born without her invitation. Even Root and Bough—what you would call her nearest kin—must ask very respectfully for such a favor. You do not know how astonishing it is that you saw her in my mirror. You are a menace, manchild. ”
“A menace? Me?”
The Sitha laughed. “Your presence is what I refer to.” He touched Simon lightly on the shoulder. “You are without precedent, Snowlock. Completely unknown and unforeseen.” He rose. “I will move on this. I am anxious myself for something to do.”
Simon, who had never been good at waiting, was left alone with the pond, the crickets, and the unreachable stars.
It all seemed so strange. One moment he had been fighting for his life, perhaps even for the survival of all Osten Ard, struggling against bone-weariness and dark magic and terrible odds; a moment later he had been snatched out of winter and dropped headlong into summer, out of hideous danger and into... boredom.
But, Simon realized, it was not even so simple as that. Just because he had been removed from the world did not mean that the problems he had left behind were solved. On the contrary: somewhere out there, living or dead in the snowy woods beyond Jao é-Tinukai’i, was his horse Homefinder and its terrible burden—the sword Thorn, for which Simon and his friends had crossed hundreds of leagues and shed precious blood. Men and Sithi alike had died to find that blade for Josua. Now, with the sword perhaps lost in the forest, Simon had been imprisoned as offhandedly as Rachel had once locked him in one of the Hayholt’s dark pantries for some trifling misdeed.
Simon had told Jiriki about the lost sword, but the Sitha had only shrugged, infuriatingly placid. There was nothing to be done.
Simon looked up. He had wandered far up the riverbank in the stillness of early afternoon; Jiriki’s house, with its tapestry of knots, had fallen out of sight behind him. He sat down on a stone and watched a white egret stilt out into one of the river’s shallow backwaters, bright eye staring obliquely, pretending disinterest to allay the fears of any wary fish.
He was sure that at least three weeks had passed since he had come to the valley. For the last few days his imprisonment had seemed almost a sort of terribly dull joke, one that had gone on too long and now threatened to spoil everyone’s enjoyment.
What can I do?! In frustration, he scrabbled up a twig from the dirt and sent it spinning out onto the water. There’s no way to leave!
Thinking back on the grand failure of his first escape and the other confirming experiments that had followed, Simon made a noise of disgust and threw another twig out onto the river. Every attempt to find his way out had left him back in the center of Jao é- Tinukai’i.
How could I have been such a mooncalf? he thought sourly. Why should I think it would be so easy to walk away from here, when Aditu and I had to walk clear out of winter to arrive? The stick whirled for a moment, spinning like a weathervane, then was sucked under by the gentle current.
That’s me, he thought. That’s what I’ll be like as far as these Sithi-folk are concerned. I’ll be around for a little while, then before they even realize I’m getting old, I’ll be dead. The thought brought a lump of terror into his throat. Suddenly, he wanted nothing more than to be around his own short-lived kind—even Rachel the Dragon—rather than these soft-spoken, cat-eyed immortals.
Filled with restlessness, he sprang up from the riverbank, kicking his way through the reeds as he pushed back toward the path. He almost bumped into someone: a Sitha-man, dressed only in a pair of thin, loose-fitting blue breeches, who stood in the undergrowth and gazed out toward the river. For a moment, Simon thought this stranger had been spying on him, but the fine-boned face showed no expression at Simon’s approach. The Sitha continued to stare out past him as the youth walked by. The stranger was singing quietly to himself, a breathy melody of sibilances and pauses. His attention was fixed on a tree growing out of the riverbank, half-submerged in the current.
Simon could n
ot restrain a grunt of irritation. What was wrong with these people? They wandered around like sleepwalkers, said things that made no sense—even Jiriki sometimes talked mysterious, circular nonsense, and the prince was by far the most direct of this tribe—and they all looked at Simon as though he were an insect. When they bothered to notice him at all.
Several times Simon had encountered Sithi who he was certain were Ki’ushapo and Sijandi, the pair who had accompanied Jiriki and Simon’s company north from the Aldheorte to the base of Urmsheim, but the Sithi showed no recognition, made no sign of greeting. Simon could not swear beyond any doubt that the faces were theirs, but something in the way they steadfastly avoided his eye assured him that he was correct.
After the journey across the northern waste, both Jiriki’s kinsman An‘nai and the Erkynlandish soldier Grimmric had died on the dragon-mountain Urmsheim, beneath the icy waterfall known as the Uduntree. They had been buried together, mortal and immortal, something which Jiriki had said was unprecedented, a binding between their two races unknown for centuries. Now Simon, a mortal, had come to forbidden Jao é- Tinukai’i. Ki‘ushapo and Sijandi might not approve of his being here, but they knew he had saved their prince Jiriki, and they knew Simon was Hikka Staja, an Arrow-Bearer—so why should they avoid him so completely? If Simon was wrong in his identification, it should still be simple enough for the real pair to seek him out, since he was the only one of his kind among their folk. Were they so angry at his being here that they could not even greet him? Were they in some way embarrassed for Jiriki, that the prince should have brought such a creature to their secret valley? Then why did they not say so, or say something? At least Jiriki’s uncle Khendraja’aro made his dislike of mortals plain and public.
Thinking of these slights put Simon in a foul humor. He muddled his way up the stream bank, fuming. It took all his restraint not to turn back to the river-watching Sitha and shove his handsome, alien face into the mud.
Simon struck out across the valley, not with any idea of escape this time, but rather to walk off some of his restless irritation. His stiff-legged strides carried him past several more Sithi. Most walked by themselves, although a few strolled in unspeaking pairs. Some looked at him with unblinking interest, others did not seem to notice him at all. One group of four sat quietly listening to the singing of a fifth, their eyes intent on the delicate gliding movements of the singer’s hands.
Merciful Aedon, he grumbled to himself, what are they thinking about all the time? They’re worse than Doctor Morgenes! Although the doctor, too, had been prone to long silences, unbroken but for his distracted, tuneless humming, at least at the end of a day he would unstop a jug of beer and teach Simon some history, or make suggestions about his apprentice’s rather blobby handwriting.
Simon kicked a fir cone and watched it roll. He did have to admit that the Sithi were beautiful. Their grace, the flowing line of their garments, their serene faces, all made him feel like some mud-covered mongrel bumping against the table linens of a great lord’s house. Though his captivity infuriated him, sometimes a cruel inner voice whispered that it was only justice. He had no right to be in this place, and having come, an urchin like Simon should never be allowed to return and sully the immortals with his tales. Like Jack Mundwode’s man Osgal in the story, he had gone down into a fairy-mound. The world could never be the same.
Simon’s pace slowed from an angry march to a slouch. Before long, he began to hear the steady ringing of water on stone. He looked up from his grass-stained boots to discover that he had wandered right across the valley into the shade of the hills. A stirring of hope made itself felt inside him. He was near the Pools, as Aditu had called them; the Summer Gate stood nearby. It seemed that by not thinking about finding his way out, he had been able to do what he had failed so miserably to accomplish in days past.
Trying to imitate the degree of not-caring that had brought him this far, Simon wandered off the path, angling toward the sound of splashing water, staring up into the overarching trees with what he hoped was suitable nonchalance. Within a few steps he had left the sunlight and entered the cool shadow of the hills, where he made his way up grass-tangled slopes carpeted in shy blue gilly-flowers and white starblooms. As the song of falling water grew louder he had to restrain himself from breaking into a run; instead, he stopped to rest against a tree, precisely as if he were in the middle of a contemplative walk. He stared at the stripes of sunshine lancing down through the leaves and listened to his own gradually slowing breath. Then, just when he had nearly forgotten where he was going—did he only fancy that he could hear the rush of water suddenly increase?—he started up the hill once more.
As he reached the summit of this first slope, certain that he would see the bottommost of the Pools before him, he found himself standing instead on the rim of a circular valley. The valley’s upper slopes were covered by a host of white birch trees whose leaves were just now turning summer-yellow. They rattled softly in the breeze, like bits of golden parchment. Beyond the birches, the next level of the valley was thickly grown with silvery-leaved trees that trembled as the wind continued its sweep down toward the valley floor.
At the base of the circular valley, in the depths within the ring of silver leaves, lay a vegetative darkness that Simon’s eyes could not pierce. Whatever things grew there also took the wind in their turn: a sort of clattering whisper arose from the valley’s shadowed deeps, a sound that might have been the scraping of breeze-blown leaves and branches, or just as easily the hiss of a thousand slim knives being drawn from a thousand delicate sheaths.
Simon let out his pent-up breath. The scent of the valley rose up to him, musty and bittersweet. He caught the smell of growing things, a pungent odor like mown grass, but also a deep and intoxicating spiciness reminiscent of the bowls of hippocras Morgenes had mulled on cold evenings. He took another whiff and felt strangely drunken. There were other scents, too, a dozen, a hundred—he could smell roses growing against an old stone wall, stable muck, rain puffing on dusty ground, the salty tang of blood, and the similar but by no means identical odor of sea-brine. He shivered like a wet dog and felt himself drawn a few steps down the slope.
“I am sorry. You may not go there.”
Simon whirled to see a Sitha-woman standing on the hilltop behind him. For a moment he thought it was Aditu. This one wore a wisp of cloth around her loins and nothing else. Her skin was red-golden in the slanting sunlight.
“What... ?”
“You may not go there.” She spoke his mortal tongue carefully. There was no ill humor on her face. “I am sorry, but you may not.” She took a step forward and looked at him curiously. “You are the Sudhoda’ya who saved Jiriki. ”
“So? Who are you?” he asked sullenly. He didn’t want to look at her breasts, her slim but well-muscled legs, but it was nearly impossible not to. He felt himself growing angry.
“My mother named me Maye’sa,” she said, making each word too precisely, as if Simon’s language were a trick she had learned but never before performed. Her white hair was streaked with gold and black. Staring at her long, coiled tresses—a safe place to let his eyes rest—Simon suddenly realized that all the Sitha had white hair, that the myriad of different rainbow colors that made them seem like outlandish birds were just dyes. Even Jiriki, with his odd, heather-flower shade—dyes! Artifice! Just like the harlot-women that Father Dreosan had ranted about during his sermons in the Hayholt chapel! Simon felt his anger deepening. He turned his back on the Sitha-woman and started downward into the valley.
“Come back, Seoman Snowlock,” she called. “That is the Year-Dancing Grove. You may not go there.”
“Stop me,” he growled. Maybe she would put an arrow in his back. He had seen Aditu’s terrifying facility with a bow just a few mornings before, when Jiriki’s sister had put four arrows side by side into a tree limb at fifty paces. He had little doubt that others of her sex were just as competent, but at this moment he cared little. “Kill me if you wa
nt to,” he added, then wondered if such a remark might strain his luck.
Half-hunching his shoulders, he strode down the slope into the whispering birches. No arrow came, so he risked a backward look. The one called Maye’sa still stood where he had left her. Her thin face seemed puzzled.
He began to run down the hillside, past row after row of white, papery-barked trunks. After a moment, he noticed that the slope was leveling off. When he found himself beginning to run uphill he stopped, then walked until he found a spot from which he could look about and discover where he was. The entirety of the great bowl still lay beneath him, but he had somehow moved around the valley’s rim from the spot where the Sitha-woman stood, watching.
Swearing in fury, he started down the slope once more, but experienced the same feeling of leveling, swiftly followed by the resumption of an upward slant. He had gotten no closer to the bottom—he was still, as far as he could tell, only a third of the way through the ring of birch trees.
Attempts to turn away from the uphill slope also met with failure. The wind sighed in the branches, the birch leaves rustled, and Simon felt himself struggling as though in a dream, making no headway despite all his exertions. At last, in a paroxysm of frustration, he closed his eyes and ran. His terror turned into a moment of heady exhilaration as he felt the ground sloping away beneath his feet. Tree branches slapped at his face, but some peculiar luck kept him from striking any of the hundreds of trunks that lay in the path of his headlong flight.
When he stopped and opened his eyes, he was back at the top of the hillside once more. Maye’sa stood before him, her gauzy bit of skirt fluttering in the restless breeze.
“I told you, you may not go into the Year-Dancing Grove,” she said, explaining a painful truth to a child. “Did you think you could?” Stretching her sinuous neck, she shook her head. Her eyes were wide, inquisitive. “Strange creature.”