by Tad Williams
Simon sat staring at the flicker of the distant campfires until he began to feel lonely. The moon seemed very far away, her face cold and unconcerned.
He did not know how long he had been staring into empty blackness. For a moment he thought he had fallen asleep and was now dreaming, but surely this queer feeling of suspension was something real—real and frightening. He struggled, but his limbs were remote and nerveless. Nothing of Simon’s body seemed to remain but his two eyes. His thoughts seemed to burn as brightly as the stars he had seen in the sky—when there had been a sky, and stars; when there had been something besides this unending blackness. Terror coursed through him.
Usires save me, has the Storm King come? Will it be black forever? God, please bring back the light!
And as if in answer to his prayer, lights began to kindle in the great dark. They were not stars, as they first seemed, but torches—tiny pinpoints of light that grew ever so slowly larger, as though approaching from a great distance away. The cloud of firefly glimmers became a stream, the stream became a line, looping and looping in slow spirals. It was a procession, scores of torches climbing uphill the way Simon himself had climbed up Sesuad‘ra’s curving path when he had first come here from Jao é- Tinukai’i.
Simon could now see the cloaked and hooded figures who made up the column, a silent host moving with ritual precision.
I’m on the Dream Road, he realized suddenly. Amerasu said that I was closer to it than other folk.
But what was he watching?
The line of torchbearers reached a level place and spread out in a sparkling fan, so that their lights were carried far out on either side of the hilltop. It was Sesuad‘ra they had climbed, but a Sesuad’ra that even by torchlight was plainly different than the place Simon knew. The ruins that had surrounded him were ruins no longer. Every pillar and wall stood unbroken. Was this the past, the Stone of Farewell as it once had been, or was it some strange future version that would someday be rebuilt—perhaps when the Storm King had subjugated all Osten Ard?
The great company surged forward onto a flat place Simon recognized as the Fire Garden. There the cloaked figures set their torches down into niches between the tiles, or placed them atop stone pedestals, so that a garden of fire indeed bloomed there, a field of flickering, rippling light. Fanned by the wind, the flames danced; sparks seemed to outnumber the very stars.
Now Simon found himself suddenly pulled forward with the surging crowd and down toward the Leavetaking House. He plummeted through the glittering night, passing swiftly through the stone walls and into the bright-lit hall as though he were without substance. There was no sound but a continuous rushing in his ears. Seen closely, the images before him seemed to shift and blur along their edges, as though the world had been twisted ever so slightly out of its natural shape. Unsettled, he tried to close his eyes, but found that his dream-self could not shut out these visions: he could only watch, a helpless phantom.
Many figures stood at the great table. Globes of cold fire had been placed in alcoves on every wall, their blue, fire-orange, and yellow glows casting long shadows across the carved walls. More and deeper shadows were cast by the thing atop the table, a construct of concentric spheres like the great astrolabe Simon had often polished for Doctor Morgenes—but instead of brass and oak, this was made entirely from lines of smoldering light, as though someone had painted the fanciful shapes upon the air in liquid fire. The moving figures that surrounded it were hazy, but still Simon knew beyond doubt that they were Sithi. No one could ever mistake those birdlike postures, that silken grace.
A Sitha-woman in a sky-blue robe leaned toward the table and deftly scribed in trails of finger-flame her own additions to the glowing thing. Her hair was blacker than shadow, blacker even than the night sky above Sesuad’ra, a great cloud of darkness about her head and shoulders. For a moment Simon thought she might be a younger Amerasu; but though there was much in this one that was like his memories of First Grandmother, there was also much that was not.
Beside her stood a white-bearded man in a billowing crimson robe. Shapes that might have been pale antlers sprouted from his brow, bringing Simon a pang of unease—he had seen something like that in other, more unpleasant dreams. The bearded man leaned forward and spoke to her; she turned and added a new swirl of fire to the design.
Although Simon could not see the dark woman’s face clearly, the one who stood across from her was all too plain. That face was hidden behind a mask of silver, the rest of her form beneath ice-white robes. As if in answer to the black-haired woman, the Norn Queen raised her arm and slashed a line of dull fire all the way across the construct, then waved her hand once more to lay a net of delicately smoking scarlet light over the outermost globe. A man stood beside her, calmly watching her every move. He was tall and seemed powerfully built, dressed all in spiky armor of obsidian-black. He was not masked in silver or otherwise, but still Simon could see little of his features.
What were they doing? Was this the Pact of Parting that Simon had heard of—for certainly he was watching both Sithi and Norn gathered together upon Sesuad’ra.
The blurred figures began to talk more animatedly. Looping and crisscrossing lines of flame were thrown into the air around the spheres where they hung in nothingness, bright as the afterimage of a hurtling fire-arrow. Their speech seemed to turn to harsh words: many of the shadowy observers, gesticulating with more anger than Simon had seen in the immortals he knew, stepped forward to the table and surrounded the principal foursome, but still he could hear nothing but a dull roaring like wind or rushing water. The flame globes at the center of the dispute flared up, undulating like a wind-licked bonfire.
Simon wished he could move forward somehow to get a better view. Was this the past he was watching? Had it seeped up from the haunted stone? Or was it only a dream, an imagining brought on by his long night and the songs he had heard in Jao é-Tinukai’i? Somehow, he felt sure that it was no illusion. It seemed so real, he felt almost as though he could reach out ... he could reach out ... and touch....
The sound in his ears began to fade. The lights of torches and spheres dimmed.
Simon shivered back into awareness. He was sitting atop the crumbling stone of the Observatory, dangerously close to the edge. The Sithi were gone. There were no torches in the Fire Garden, and no living things visible atop Sesuad’ra except a pair of sentries sitting near the watchfire down beside the tent city. Bemused, Simon sat for a little while staring at the distant flames and tried to understand what he had seen. Did it mean something? Or was it just a meaningless remnant, a name scratched upon a wall by a traveler which remained long after that person was gone?
Simon trudged back down the stairway from the Observatory roof and returned to his blanket. Trying to understand his vision made his head hurt. It was becoming more difficult to think with every hour that passed.
After wrapping his cloak around himself more tightly—the robe he was wearing beneath was not very warm—he took a long swallow from his drinking skin. The water, from one of Sesuad’ra’s springs, was sweet and cold against his teeth. He took another swig, savoring the aftertaste of grass and shade-flowers, and tapped his fingers on the stone tiles. Dreams or no dreams, he was supposed to be thinking about the things Deornoth had told him. Earlier in ihe night, he had repeated them over and over in his mind so many times that they had finally begun to seem like nonsense. Now, when he again tried to concentrate, he found that the litany Deornoth had so carefully taught him would not stay in his head, the words elusive as fish in a shallow pond. His mind roved instead, and he pondered all the strange happenings he had endured since running away from the Hayholt.
What a time it had been! What things he had seen! Simon was not sure that he would call it an adventure—that seemed a little too much like something that ended happily and safely. He doubted the ending would be pleasant, and enough people had died to make the word “safely” a cruel jest ... but still, it was definitely an experience far beyond a sculli
on’s wildest dreams. Simon Mooncalf had met creatures out of legends, had been in battles, and had even killed people. Of course, that had proved much less easy than he had once upon a time imagined it would be, when he had seen himself as a potential captain of the king’s armies; in fact, it had proved to be very, very upsetting.
Simon had also been chased by demons, was the enemy of wizards, had become an intimate of noble folk—who didn’t seem much better or worse than kitchen-and-pantry folk—and had lived as a reluctant guest in the city of the undying Sithi. Besides safety and warm beds, the only thing his adventure seemed to be lacking was beautiful maidens. He had met a princess—one he had liked even when she had seemed just an ordinary girl—but she was long gone, the Aedon only knew where. There had been precious little else in the way of feminine company since then, other than Aditu, Jiriki’s sister, but she had been a little too far beyond Simon’s awkward understanding. Like a leopard, she was: lovely but quite frightening. He yearned for someone a little more like himself—but better looking, of course. He rubbed his fuzzy beard, felt his prominent nose. A lot better looking. He was tired of being alone. He wanted someone to talk to—someone who would care, who would understand, in a way that not even his troll-friend Binabik ever could. Someone who would share things with him ...
Someone who will understand about the dragon, was his sudden thought.
Simon felt a march of prickling flesh along his back, not caused by the wind this time. It was one thing to see a vision of ancient Sithi, no matter how vivid. Lots of people had visions—madmen by the score in Erchester’s Battle Square shouted about them to one another, and Simon suspected that in Sesuad’ra such things might be even more common occurrences. But Simon had met a dragon, which was more than almost anyone could say. He had stood before Igjarjuk, the ice-worm, and hadn’t backed down. He had swung his sword—well, a sword: it was more than presumptuous to call Thorn his—and the dragon had fallen. That was truly something wonderful. It was a thing no man but Prester John had ever done, and John had been the greatest of all men, the High King.
Of course, John killed his dragon, but I don’t believe Igjarjuk died. The more I think about it, the more certain I am. I don’t think its blood would have made me feel the way it did if the dragon was dead. And I don’t think that I’m strong enough to kill it, even’ with a sword like Thorn.
But the strange thing was, although Simon had told everyone exactly what happened on Urmsheim and what he thought about it all, still some of the folk who now made the Stone of Farewell their home were calling him “Dragon Killer,” smiling and waving when he passed. And although he had tried to shrug off the name, people seemed to take his reticence for modesty. He had even heard one of the new settlers from Gadrinsett telling her children the tale, a version that included a vivid description of the dragon’s head struck loose from its body by the force of Simon’s blow. Someday soon, what really happened wouldn’t matter at all. The people who liked him—or liked the story, rather—would say he had singlehandedly butchered the great snow dragon. Those who didn’t care for him would say the whole thing was a lie.
The idea of those folk passing false stories of his life made Simon more than a little angry. It seemed to cheapen things, somehow. Not so much the imagined naysayers—they could never take away that moment of pure silence and stillness atop Urmsheim—but the others, the exaggerators and simplifiers. Those who told it as a story of unworrying bravery, of some imaginary Simon who sworded dragons simply because he could, or because dragons were evil, would be smearing dirty fingers across an unstained part of his soul. There was so much more to it than that, so much more that had been revealed to him in the beast’s pale, emotionless eyes, in his own confused heroism and the burning instant of black blood ... the blood that had shown him the world ... the world....
Simon straightened up. He had been nodding again. By God, sleep was a treacherous enemy. You couldn’t face it and fight it; it waited until you were looking the other way, then stole up quietly. But he had given his word, and now that he would be a man, his word must be his solemn bond. So he would stay awake. This was a special night.
The armies of sleep had forced him to drastic measures by dawn’s arrival, but they had not quite managed to defeat him. When candle-bearing Jeremias entered the Observatory, his entire frame tense with the gravity of his mission, it was to discover Simon sitting cross-legged in a puddle of fast-freezing water, wet red hair dangling in his eyes, the white streak that ran through it stark as an icicle. Simon’s long face was alight with triumph.
“I poured the whole water skin over my head,” he said with pride. His teeth were chattering so hard that Jeremias had to ask him to repeat himself. “Poured water over my head. To stay awake. What are you doing here?”
“It’s time,” the other said. “It’s nearly dawn. Time for you to come away.”
“Ah.” Simon stood up unsteadily. “I stayed awake, Jeremias. Didn’t sleep once.”
Jeremias nodded. His smile was a cautious one. “That’s good, Simon. Come on. There’s a fire at Strangyeard’s place.”
Simon, who felt weaker and colder than he had thought he would, draped his arm around the other youth’s lean shoulder for support. Jeremias was so thin now that it was hard for Simon to remember him as he once had been: a suety chandler’s apprentice, treble-chinned, always huffing and sweating. But for the haunted look that showed from time to time in his dark-shadowed eyes, Jeremias looked just like what he now was—a handsome young squire.
“A fire?” Simon’s thoughts had at last caught up with his friend’s words. He was quite giddy. “A good one? And is there food, too?”
“It’s a very good fire.” Jeremias was solemn. “One thing I learned ... down in the forges. How to make a proper fire.” He shook his head slowly, lost in thought, then looked up and caught Simon’s eye. A shadow flitted behind his gaze like a hare hunted in the grass, then his wary smile returned. “As for food—no, of course not. Not for a while yet, and you know it. But don’t worry, pig, you will probably get a heel of bread or something this evening.”
“Dog,” Simon said, grinning, and purposefully leaned in such a way that Jeremias stumbled under the added weight. Only after much cursing and mutual insult did they avoid tumbling over onto the chilly stone flags. Together they staggered through the Observatory door and out into the pale gray-violet glow of dawn. Eastern light splashed all across the summit of the Stone of Farewell, but no birds sang.
Jeremias had been as good as his word. The blaze that burned in Father Strangyeard’s tent-roofed chamber was gloriously hot—which was just as well, since Simon had stepped out of his robe and into a wooden tub. As he stared around at the white stone walls, at the carvings of tangled vines and minute flowers, the firelight rippled across the stonework so that the walls seemed to move beneath shallow pink and orange waters.
Father Strangyeard raised another pot of water and poured it over Simon’s head and shoulders. Unlike his earlier self-inflicted bath, this water had at least been warmed; as it ran down his chilly flesh, Simon thought that it felt more like flowing blood than water.
“... May this ... may this water wash away sin and doubt.” Strangyeard paused to fiddle with his eyepatch, his one squinting eye netted in wrinkles as he tried to remember the next passage of the prayer. Simon knew it was nerves, not forgetfulness: the priest had spent most of yesterday reading and rereading the short ceremony. “Let
... let then the man so washed and made shriven fear not to stand before Me, so that I might look into the glass of his soul and see there reflected the fitness of his being, the righteousness of his oath ... the righteousness of ... of his oath ...” The priest squinted again, despairingly. “Oh ...”
Simon let the heat of the fire beat upon him. He felt quite boneless and stupid, but that was not such a bad way to feel. He had been sure he would be nervous, terrified even, but his sleepless night had burned away his fear.
Strangyeard, runnin
g his hand fitfully through his few remaining wisps of hair, at last summoned up the rest of the ceremony and hurried through to the ending, as though afraid the memory might slip away again. When he finished, the priest helped Jeremias to dry Simon off with soft cloths, then they gave him back his white robe, this time with a thick leather belt to wrap around his waist. Then, as Simon was stepping into his slippers, a small shape appeared in the doorway.
“Is he now ready?” Binabik asked. The troll spoke very quietly and gravely, as always full of respect for someone else’s rituals. Simon stared at him and was filled with a sudden fierce love for the little man. Here was a friend, truly—one who had stood by him through all adversity.
“Yes, Binabik. I’m ready.”
The troll led him out, Strangyeard and Jeremias following behind. The sky was more gray than blue, wild with fragmented clouds. The whole procession matched itself to Simon’s bemused, wandering pace as they made their way in the morning light.
The path to Josua’s tent was lined with spectators, perhaps ten score in all, mostly Hotvig’s Thrithings-folk and the new settlers from Gadrinsett. Simon recognized a few faces, but knew that those most familiar to him were waiting up ahead with Josua. Some of the children waved to him. Their parents snatched at them and whispered warningly, fearful of disrupting the solemn nature of the event, but Simon grinned and waved back. The cold morning air felt good on his face. A certain giddiness had taken him over once more, so that he had to repress an urge to laugh out loud. Who would ever have thought of such a thing as this? He turned to Jeremias, but the youth’s face was closed, his eyes lowered in meditation or shyness.
As they reached the open place before Josua’s lodging, Jeremias and Strangyeard dropped back, moving to stand with the others in a rough semicircle. Sludig, his yellow beard new-trimmed and braided, beamed at Simon like a proud father. Dark-haired Deornoth stood beside him dressed in knightly finery, with the harper Sangfugol, the duke’s son Isorn, and old Towser all close by—the jester, wrapped in a heavy cloak, seemed to be muttering quiet complaints to the young Rimmersman. Nearer the front of the tent stood Duchess Gutrun and young Leleth. Beside them stood Geloë. The forest woman’s stance was that of an old soldier forced to put up with a meaningless inspection, but as Simon caught her yellow eyes she nodded once, as if acknowledging a job completed.