by Tad Williams
“Will she live?” Viyeki asked his master quietly. “She is the best of her order that we have.”
“And she was the only one who could have made the fire speak,” said Yaarike, shaking his head. “That was a magister’s trick, but she managed it. I am impressed that she still lives, although that may not be true for long. Still, even if she recovers she will be useless to us until she can be healed from this effort back in Nakkiga.” He turned to the Singers now lifting Tzayin-Kha’s body and wrapping it in a heavy blanket. Viyeki could feel the heat still coming off her at several paces’ distance. “Go, now, all of you,” Yaarike told them. “Get her away while the mortals are still in confusion. Thanks to Tzayin-Kha’s efforts, General Suno’ku has carved us an escape route, but it will close very quickly.”
As the Singers hurried out, carrying the steaming body of their leader like a holy relic, Yaarike nodded to Viyeki. “Now that all our Builders are out, we must go, too,” he said.
As they made their way up the narrow stairs toward the ground level of the roofless hall, Viyeki marveled at his master’s balance. Neither of them had eaten at all, or slept for more than a few moments in days, and Yaarike was old enough to have been alive when the Hikeda’ya first took Nakkiga Mountain for their own, but he climbed like a youth. Viyeki could only hope to have half his master’s vigor when he reached the same age. If he reached a greater age at all, which had seemed unlikely for some time now.
“Your idea was clever, Viyeki-tza,” Yaarike said from the near-darkness above, his voice pitched low. “I thought Suno’ku would balk at it, but she is rare for her order, and even more for her age. I admit she surprises me—I was impressed that she would abandon that cumbersome wagon and her ancestor’s coffin.” He laughed quietly. “Even better, though, your idea amused me.”
Yaarike rarely handed out praise. Even though they were now only a few paces away from angry mortals with arrows and axes, Viyeki was full of pride. “Thank you, High Magister.” Still, he was puzzled, too. “I only meant to frighten the Northmen. You say it amused you?”
“It is one thing to win a battle that you should lose. It is another to pour salt in the wounds you inflict. It is scant compensation for the Storm King’s failure, but I wish I could have seen the mortals’ faces as the sarcophagus came down on them. Do you think they thought it was General Ekisuno himself, come to burn them all—?”
Viyeki heard the soft rustle of the magister’s garments suddenly cease. He reached out a hand to touch his master’s elbow, letting him know he was behind him.
The magister turned and took his hand. He made the finger-sign “Silence” against Viyeki’s palm, then the brushing symbol that meant “Wait.”
A moment later Yaarike said, “They have gone out of the castle again. By the Garden, those mortals are as noisy as cattle. How did they ever defeat us in the past?” He led Viyeki up the crumbling steps and into the night air, his tread slow and cautious.
“Should we not hurry, Magister?”
“There will be no escape at all if we are caught. Save your haste until we need it.” Yaarike struck out toward the far side of the ruins, heading at an angle toward the hilltop that towered over the Tangleroot Castle ruins.
Viyeki could hear the shrieks of wounded mortals from the slopes below and was filled with contempt. Foul brutes. Could they not even bear their injuries with dignity? “Do we know where to join Suno’ku and the rest?” he asked.
Yaarike did not turn around, already leaning into the rising slope. His voice fluttered back to Viyeki, soft as a moth in flight. “It will be easy enough, Host Foreman. Suno’ku is her ancestor’s heir, and more. We need only follow the trail of dead mortals.”
“By Dror and Aedon and all the rest, what is happening?” Isgrimnur stamped toward the group of men standing around the wreckage of the fiery wagon that had killed more than a dozen of his soldiers in its downward progress and had terrified at least ten score more into running headlong into the blind night. He feared that many who fled had already been killed by the Norns, but prayed that he would be able to find and bring back any survivors when the sun was up. The night had been a disaster, and now the Norns had escaped the ruins and were heading north again.
Isgrimnur sniffed the air and felt his stomach turn over at the tang of burned flesh. As he neared the gathering, he raised his voice again. “I said, what is happening? Why are you men huddled here? Sludig, is that you? I see Brindur’s horse—where is he? I told him to follow those damned, sneaking creatures. We must not let them get away. We must hound them through the wilderness until every last one of them is slaughtered.”
“Jarl Vigri went after them with his bowmen,” said Sludig from the darkness, but his voice sounded hoarse and strange. “Brindur is . . . he is . . .”
Isgrimnur felt his heart and innards go cold. He hurried forward, ignoring the pain of several bleeding wounds. “Oh, sweet Usires, is it Brindur? Is he . . . ?”
It was only as he reached the circle of men that Isgrimnur could see faces. One was Sludig’s long, mournful countenance, and the rest seemed to be Brindur’s Skoggeymen. But the man who was kneeling next to the smoking wreckage of the cart and the huge, upended coffin, Isgrimnur was surprised and relieved to see, was Thane Brindur himself.
A black, charred shape lay half in and half out of the scorched sarcophagus. Here and there a bit of pale flesh, a few grinning teeth, or a spot of unburnt bandage gleamed through the ash. Only a single arm protruding from the blackened, shriveled mass remained whole. Around its wrist was a thick gold bracelet.
Brindur glanced up, his eyes red in the torchlight and his face suddenly looking decades older. “It is his.” Brindur lifted the arm so that the bracelet caught the light. “He won it at Kraki’s Field against the remnants of Skali’s army just half a year ago.” Isgrimnur must have looked like he still did not understand, because Brindur blinked and said, “This is Floki. My son. They burned him alive and rolled him down the hill to frighten us like children.” Brindur shook his head slowly. “God curse them. God curse them!” When he spoke again, it was more quietly. “Telling his mother—that will be the foulest part.”
“There is nothing worse,” said Isgrimnur. “As I know myself.” Sludig leaned over and touched the duke’s arm, reminding him that there was much to do. “You stay here for now, Brindur,” Isgrimnur said. “Bury your son—and the others. Break camp and follow us when you can.”
“And so it goes on,” said Brindur.
Isgrimnur didn’t like the sound of that, and was almost glad he was leaving the thane behind for now. Brindur was a good man, but perhaps this had been one blow too many. Still, Isgrimnur understood the man’s pain. “We will all remember your son,” he said. “May God take him swiftly to His bosom in Heaven. Their tricks, the form of his death, they mean nothing—just more cruelty in the cruel war these bastard fairies have forced on us. Floki was captured in battle and died a hero. It is as simple as that.”
“If you say so, Your Grace.” Brindur let go of his son’s arm.
Isgrimnur did not want to see the burned body any longer: it looked as though something ancient and inhuman was trying to will itself into human shape. “It is the truth, Brindur.”
The thane of Norskog’s face was as still and empty as stagnant water, but his voice had something ragged in it that Isgrimnur had never heard. “I don’t doubt it. But are you not tired of seeing so many of our sons turned into heroes before their time, Isgrimnur? I would rather have seen him live and make sons of his own.”
The duke had nothing left to say. He could not even let himself feel true sadness now, because he knew it would make him weak when he needed to be strong and move swiftly. He and Vigri had to catch the Norns in the open before they could find another bolt-hole—or, worse, slip back to the safety of their city under Stormspike Mountain. He let his hand fall on Brindur’s shoulder, then nodded to Sludig to follow
him as he left the thane to grieve.
Part
Two
Three Ravens Tower
“As all Hikeda’ya know, when the children of our nobility reach the proper age, they are submitted to Yedade’s Box, and the way in which they escape the box or the way that they fail determines their path in life.
“When she was put to her test, the young Suno’ku seyt-Iyora broke free so swiftly that none present could remember any other child who had performed the feat so well.
“Thus it was later for Suno’ku as general: When no one else could have broken the siege at Tangleroot Castle, she led a small force there to save those trapped in the ruins and then fought her way out again, scattering the Northmen before her like chaff before a reaper’s blade. The rest of the besieged followed her, awed by her courage and skill, and when the trap was behind them she led them all north toward the shelter of the City Walls.
“The walls had been built during the time of our greatest power, when the Zida’ya still held Asu’a, when much of Nakkiga still existed outside the great mountain and the North was ours.
“But as our numbers diminished and the Northmen came across the cold sea and began their career of destruction through the lands of the Keida’ya, at our great queen’s order we fell back into the sheltering fastness of the mountain and eventually Nakkiga-That-Was stood deserted. Slowly the trees and grasses and the fierce winds began to take back the outer city. The great walls, a vast ring of stone that stretched for leagues around our mountain, fared little better. In the time of Sulen, the Thirteenth Celebrant, the Order of Sacrifice removed the last guards from the walls, calling them back to the city to better protect Nakkiga itself and the irreplaceable person of Queen Utuk’ku.
“So it was that Suno’ku and the rest of her charges, fleeing ahead of the mortal invaders, came at last to the Tower of Three Ravens and found it in a pitiable state, the tower itself gutted and long empty, the great walls it guarded now perilously weak. Although Lord Yaarike, Magister of the Builders, was with her, there was little his small number of workers could do to make repairs with the Northmen so close behind. Still, the Hikeda’ya were determined to make a stand there, trusting in Suno’ku’s generalship to keep the mortals from the mountain and from Nakkiga itself as long as could be managed.
“In the city, nothing was yet known of General Suno’ku’s mission, and after she took the largest part of the surviving warriors with her, the caverns of Nakkiga were silent with foreboding, the queen’s subjects fearful of what might come next if the invaders continued unchecked.
“They were right to fear.”
Overburdened with the duke’s own considerable weight, his horse nearly lost its footing on the steep track, sliding back a short distance in a flurry of gravel and scree. Isgrimnur reined up, eyeing the looming cliffs on either side with distaste.
“Tell me again how you know they are not lying in ambush for us,” the duke said.
The scout nodded. “There has been no movement that we’ve seen, Your Grace. I think the fairies are too few now—they’re all hiding in the tower, I’d say. Come, my lord, it’s just a little way more to the spot where we will make camp.”
Isgrimnur snorted. “Too few fairies? Don’t ever assume that, lad. Especially when we’ve followed them into their own lands.”
“My men and I found high ground to keep watch, my lord; we can see beyond this wall, all the way to their cursed mountain. This time, we would see any reinforcements long before they arrived. Just a little farther, my lord.”
Isgrimnur looked back on the line of mounted men making their slow way up the pass behind him, Sludig nearest, following like a faithful hound, then Brindur and his Skoggeymen, with Vigri and the Elvritshalla men close behind leading a train of foot soldiers. Two thousand able-bodied men left, at most. Could he really take such a small force into the forbidden lands of the Norns and hope to come out again in one piece?
But that doesn’t matter, does it? Isgrimnur thought. What matters is that we leave none of the fairies alive to threaten our lands again. If we can manage that, whatever befalls us, it would be a sacrifice worth making. He thought of his wife Gutrun, waiting for him not at Elvritshalla but far to the south, in the devastation of the Hayholt. She would be busy, he knew, with wounded men and women to care for and the new king and queen in need of her counsel and wisdom. At least she would have something to distract her from their lost son. Isgrimnur himself had spent too many nights under these cold, starry northern skies too pained to sleep, trying to think of ways things could have been different, that they could have beaten back the enemy without losing his son Isorn.
Wars don’t end, he thought suddenly. They become stories, told to children. They become causes that are taken up by those who were not even born when the war started. But they don’t end.
We are a fierce race, we men. We will give up even our short, precious lives for revenge—no, for justice. No wonder the immortals fear us.
The steep track angled to one side, following the line of the pass. As they came out from behind a massive cliff wall, Isgrimnur could suddenly see all the way to the top, to the darkening sky and the great, dark wall that girdled all of the Norn lands. It stretched thirty ells high across the top of the pass, a thing of monstrous black slabs laid flush one on another as though by the work of some gigantic mason.
In the middle of the pass, squarely above the climbing road and a gate that had long since been filled in with even more stone, a tower bulged out from the wall. The entire structure seemed oddly proportioned to Isgrimnur’s eye, but the tower’s crown was one of the strangest things he had ever seen, with three beak-like projections, the middle pointing forward and the others angled to either side, each one hanging out ten cubits or more beyond the wall. He thought the tower looked more like some huge weapon than a mere building, a battle mace for a sky-tall giant.
“Sweet Elysia, Mother of Mercy,” he said.
Sludig had reined up beside Isgrimnur; he looked as though he had bitten into an apple and discovered half a squirming worm. “This is an evil place.”
Another voice said, “Evil is in what mortals—and immortals—do. The place itself is but a place.” Ayaminu the Sitha-woman rode up beside them on her own horse, which despite its fine-boned slenderness seemed to have less trouble with the cold and the steep climbs than the Rimmersmen’s mounts, bred in cold northern lands. “Once it was a point upon the teeming earth like any other.”
“Does this abomination have a name?” asked Isgrimnur.
“That?” She made one of the barely perceptible gestures that passed for a shrug among her kind. “It is called Three Ravens Tower. You see the beaks, of course. They allowed the defenders to drop stones, or hot oil, or other even less pleasant things upon anyone trying to take the wall.”
Isgrimnur had not come to like the Sitha-woman’s company any better during the sennight they had pursued the Norns from Tangleroot Castle. He had found all the Sithi he met difficult to understand and even more difficult to parley with, and he found their reluctance to engage with their murderous cousins even more frustrating; but if the immortals Jiriki and Aditu had been frustrating, and their mother Likimeya close to maddening, Ayaminu made those three seem easy company. Despite accompanying the duke’s troop and offering an occasional bit of information, Ayaminu seemed otherwise unconcerned by the doings of the mortals or even their deaths, and did not seem to care at all whether they ever caught the Norns who had brought so much ruin to her own people as well as Isgrimnur’s. Many times he had wondered whether they harbored some kind of spy in their midst, though the men he had set to watch her had seen no evidence of any treachery.
“Do you think the Norns are guarding it?” he asked now. “Or are they hurrying back to Stormspike Mountain?”
“They will defend this pass,” she said. “They have no choice. Do you see what has happened to the wall on the ri
ght side of the tower?”
Isgrimnur squinted, but in the fading twilight it was hard to make out much beyond the high wall’s shadowy, massive presence. “No. My eyes are not like a Sithi’s. Speak plainly.”
“A very few years ago, just before the beginning of the Storm King’s war, the earth shook here—a great writhing of the ground that threw down many parts of the wall around Nakkiga-That-Was, including that section beside the tower. If you look closely, you can see that the tower itself tilts slightly to one side.”
“I see no sign of the wall having collapsed.”
“Because repairs were done—but they were hasty. My people sent a number of our families to help them. This was before the Hikeda’ya moved openly against us, but Queen Utuk’ku still refused our offer. We know, though, that the repairs were over-swift, most likely because the queen’s eye was turned southward to the lands of men.”
“Over-swift? What do you mean?” This was Brindur, who had joined the impromptu council. “I may not have your damnable fairy eyes, but they look solid enough to me.”
As always, Ayaminu seemed unperturbed by insults. “Yes, the stones were piled up once more with as much skill as could be rendered, but not all the rituals were observed or the proper things done. The queen was keeping her holy Singers busy then, preparing the way for the Storm King’s return. We can all be grateful they failed at that, but also that they were so gravely occupied by it, because the Words of Binding and other necessary cantrips were not sung here. The wall is weak. It can be breached with nothing but force.”
“What else would we use?” Brindur demanded. “Trickery, like your accursed breed?”