To Green Angel Tower, Volume 1

by Tad Williams

  “That is not to the point,” Josua said dryly. “Your crimes, such as they were, are not for this gathering. Rather, I wish to know if you think it might be them.”

  “The fairy-folk?” blurted out Freosel. “This lad talks to the fairy-folk?”

  Simon ducked his head in embarrassment. “Jiriki seemed to say that it would be a long time before he could join us, if he even could. Also—and I cannot prove this, Highness, it is just a feeling—I think he would let me know somehow if he were coming to bring us help. Jiriki knows how impatient we mortals are.” He smiled sadly. “He knows how much it would lift our spirits if we knew they were coming.”

  “Merciful Aedon and His mother.” Freosel was still stunned. “Fairies!”

  Josua nodded thoughtfully. “So. Well, if the folks who make those lights are not friends, they are most likely enemies—although, now that I think on it, perhaps you saw the campfires of some of the folk Freosel spoke of, those who have fled Sesuad’ra.” He frowned. “I will think on this, too. Perhaps we will send a scouting party tomorrow. I do not wish to remain ignorant of whoever might be sharing our little corner of Osten Ard.” He stood, brushing ashes from his breeches, and tucked the stump of his right wrist into his cloak. “That will be all. I release you to find what slim provender you can to break your fast.”

  The prince turned and walked into his tent. Deornoth watched him go, then turned to look out at the edge of the great hill, where the standing stones loomed against a gray mist, as though Sesuad’ra floated in a sea of nothingness. He frowned at the thought and moved closer to the fire.

  In the dream, Doctor Morgenes stood before Simon, dressed as though for a long journey, wearing a traveling cloak with a tasseled hood and scorchmarks blackening its hem, as though its owner had ridden through flames. Little of the old man’s face could be seen in the darkened depths of the hood—a glint from his spectacles, the white flash of his beard; other than that, the doctor’s face was only hint and shadow. Behind Morgenes lay no familiar vista, but only a swirling patch of pearlescent nothingness like the eye of a blizzard.

  “It is not enough merely to fight back, Simon, ” the doctor’s voice said, “... even if you are only fighting to stay alive. There must be more. ”

  “More?” As delighted as he was to see this dream-Morgenes, Simon somehow knew he had only moments to grasp what the old man said to him. Precious time was slipping away. “What does that mean, ‘more’?”

  “It means you must fight for something. Otherwise you are no more than a straw man in a wheatfield—you can scare the crows away, you can even kill them, but you will never win them over. You cannot stone all the crows in the world ...”

  “Kill crows? What do you mean?”

  “Hate is not enough, Simon ... it is never enough.” The old man seemed about to say more, but the white emptiness behind him was abruptly slashed by a great stripe of vertical shadow which seemed to grow out of the very nothingness. Although without substance, still the shadow seemed oppressively heavy—a thick column of darkness that could have been a tower, or a tree, or the upright rim of an oncoming wheel; it bisected the void behind the doctor’s hooded figure as neatly as a heraldic blazon.

  “Morgenes!” Simon cried, but in this dream his voice was suddenly weak, almost stifled by the weight of the long shadow. “Doctor! Don’t leave!”

  “I had to leave a long time ago, ” the old man cried, his voice faint, too. “You’ve done the work without me. And remember—the false messenger!” The doctor’s voice suddenly slid upward in pitch until it became a piping shriek. “False!” he cried. “Faaaallllsssse!”

  His hooded shape began to crumple and shrink, the cloak flapping madly. At last, the old man was gone; where he had stood, a tiny silver bird beat its wings. It suddenly darted up into the emptiness, circling first sun-wise, then widdershins, until it was only a speck. An instant later it was gone.

  “Doctor!” Simon squinted after it. He reached up, but something was restraining his arms, a heavy weight that clung to him and pushed him down, as though the milky void had become thick as a sodden blanket. He struggled against it. “No! Come back! I need to know more.... ”

  “It is me, Simon!” Binabik hissed. “More quiet, please!” The troll shifted his weight once more until he was almost sitting on the young man’s chest. “Stop now! If you keep up these struggling-about movements, you will hit my nose again.”

  “What... ?” Simon gradually stopped thrashing. “Binabik?”

  “From bruised nose to wounded toes,” the troll sniffed. “Have you finished with your flinging of arms and legs?”

  “Did I wake you up?” Simon asked.

  Binabik slid down and crouched beside the pallet. “No. I was coming to wake you—that is the truth of it. But what was this dream that caused you so much worry and fearfulness?”

  Simon shook his head. “It’s not important. I don’t remember it very well, anyway.”

  He actually remembered every word, but he wished to think about it a while longer before he discussed the subject with Binabik. Morgenes had seemed more vivid in this dream than he had in others—more real. In a way, it had almost been like having a last meeting with his beloved doctor. Simon had grown covetous of the few things he could call his own: he did not yet wish to share this small thing with anybody. “Why did you wake me?” He yawned to cover the change of subject. “I don’t have to stand guard tonight.”

  “That is true.” Binabik’s surprising smile was a brief pale blur in the light of the dying embers. “But I am wishing you to get up, put on your boots and other clothes for traveling out of doors, and then be coming with me.”

  “What?” Simon sat up, listening for the sound of alarum or attack, but heard nothing louder than the ever-present wind. He slumped back down into his bed and rolled over, turning his back to the troll. “I don’t want to go anywhere. I’m tired. Let me go back to sleep.”

  “This is a thing that you will be finding is worth your trouble.”

  “What is it?” he grumbled into his upper arm.

  “A secret, but a secret of great excitingness.”

  “Bring it to me in the morning. I’ll be very excited then.”

  “Simon!” Binabik was a little less jovial. “Do not be so lazy. This is being very important! Do you have no trust in me?”

  Groaning as though the entire weight of the earth had been tipped onto his shoulders, Simon rolled over again and levered himself into a sitting position. “Is it really important?”

  Binabik nodded.

  “And you won’t tell me what it is?”

  Binabik shook his head. “But you will soon be discovering. That is my promise.”

  Simon stared at the troll, who seemed inhumanly cheerful for this dark hour of the night. “Whatever it is, it’s certainly put you in a good mood,” he growled.

  “Come.” Binabik stood up, excited as a child at the Aedontide feasting. “I have Homefinder with her saddle upon her back already. Qantaqa is also waiting with immense wolfly patience. Come!”

  Simon allowed himself to be coerced into boots and a thick wool shirt. Dragging his bed-warm cloak about him, he stumbled out of the tent after Binabik, then nearly turned and stumbled right back in again. “S’Bloody Tree!” he swore. “It’s cold!”

  Binabik pursed his lips at the oath, but said nothing. Now that Simon had been made a knight, the troll seemed to have decided that he was a grown man and could curse if he wished to. Instead, the little man lifted a hand to gesture toward Homefinder, who stood pawing at the snowy ground a few paces away, bathed in the light of a torch thrust handle-first into the snow. Simon approached her, stopping to stroke her nose and whisper a few muzzy words in her warm ear, then dragged himself clumsily into the saddle. The troll gave a low whistle and Qantaqa appeared silently out of the darkness. Binabik sank his fingers in her thick gray fur and clambered onto her broad back, then leaned over to pick up the torch before urging the wolf forward.

 
; They made their way out of the close-quartered tent city and across the broad summit of Sesuad’ra, across the Fire Garden where the wind whirled little eddies of snow across the half-buried tiles, then past Leavetaking House, where a pair of sentries stood. Not far beyond the armed men was a standing stone which marked the edge of the wide road that wound down from the summit. The sentries, bundled up against the cold so that only the gleam of their eyes could be seen below their helms, raised their spears in salute. Simon waved, puzzled.

  “They don’t seem very curious about where we’re going.”

  “We have permission.” Binabik smiled mysteriously.

  The skies overhead were almost clear. As they made their way down the hill along the crumbling stones of the old Sithi road, Simon looked up to see that the stars had returned. It was a cheering sight, although he was bemused to find that none of them seemed quite familiar. The moon, appearing for a moment from behind a spit of clouds, showed him that it was earlier than he had at first thought—perhaps only a few hours after sunset. Still, it was late enough that almost the whole of New Gadrinsett was abed. Where on earth could Binabik be leading him?

  Several times as they made their spiraling circuit of the Stone, Simon thought he saw lights sparkling in the distant forest, tiny points dimmer even than the stars high overhead. But when he pointed them out, the troll merely nodded as though such a sight was no more than he had expected.

  By the time they reached the place where the old road widened out once more, pale Sedda had vanished behind a curtain of mist on the horizon. They came down onto the sloping shoulder of land at the hill’s base. The waters of the great lake lapped against the stone. A few drowned treetops still protruded above the surface like the heads of giants sleeping beneath the black waters.

  Without a word, Binabik dismounted and led Qantaqa to one of the flatboats moored near the end of the road. Simon, lulled into an unquestioning dreaminess, slid down from the saddle arid led his horse aboard. Once Binabik had lit the lamp in the bow, they lifted their poles and pushed out onto the freezing water.

  “Not many more trips can we make this way,” Binabik said quietly. “Luckily, that will not matter soon.”

  “Why won’t it matter?” Simon asked, but the troll only waved his small hand.

  Soon the slope of the submerged valley began to fall away beneath the boat, until at last their poles reached down and touched nothing. They took up the paddles that were lying in the barge’s shallow bottom. It was hard work—the ice seemed to grab and cling to hull and paddle-blade alike, as though urging the boat to stop and become part of the greater solidification. Simon did not notice for a while that Binabik had steered them toward the northeast shore, where Enki-e-Shao’saye had once stood and where the strange glimmerings had appeared.

  “We’re going to the lights!” he said. His voice seemed to sigh and quickly fade, vanishing into the enormity of the darkened valley.

  “Yes.”

  “Why? Are the Sithi there?”

  “Not the Sithi, no.” Binabik was staring out across the wind-rippled water, his posture that of one who could barely contain himself. “I am thinking that you spoke truly: Jiriki would not keep his coming a secret.”

  “Then who is there?”

  “You will see.”

  The troll’s whole attention was now fixed on the far shore, which grew ever closer. Simon saw the great breakfront of trees looming up, shadowy and impenetrable, and suddenly remembered how the writing-priests back at the Hayholt would lift their heads almost as one movement when some errand brought him into their sanctuary—a vast crowd of ancient men tugged up from their parchmenty dreams by his blundering entrance.

  Soon the bottom of the boat scraped, then ran aground. Simon and Binabik stepped out and pulled it up onto a more secure spot while Qantaqa loped in wide, splashing circles around them. When Homefinder had been coaxed out onto the shore, Binabik relit his torch and they rode into the forest.

  The trees of the Aldheorte grew close together here, as though huddling for warmth. The torch revealed an incredible profusion of leaves in an uncountable variety of shapes and sizes, as well as what seemed to be every variety of creeper, lichen, and moss, all grown together into a disordered riot of vegetation. Binabik led them onto a narrow deer track. Simon’s boots were wet and his feet were cold and getting colder. He wondered again what they were doing in this place at such an hour.

  He heard the noise long before he could see anything but the choke of trees, a whining, discordant skirling of flutes that wound in and out around a deep, almost inaudible drumbeat. Simon turned to Binabik, but the troll was listening and nodding and did not see Simon’s inquiring glance. Soon they could see light, something warmer and less steady than moonlight, flickering through the thick trees. The odd music grew louder, and Simon felt his heart began to beat more swiftly. Surely Binabik knew what he was doing, he chided himself. After all the dreadful times they had survived together, Simon could trust his friend. But Binabik seemed so strangely distracted! The little man’s head was cocked to one side in an attitude that mirrored Qantaqa’s, as though he heard things in the weird melody and incessant drums that Simon could not even guess at.

  Simon was full of nervous anticipation. He realized that he had been smelling something vaguely familiar for a long while. Even after he could no longer ignore it, he was at first certain that it was nothing more than the scent of his own clothing, but soon the pungency, the aliveness of it could no longer be denied.

  Wet wool.

  “Binabik!” he cried—then, recognizing the truth, he began to laugh.

  They came down into a wide clearing. The crumbled ruins of the old Sithi city lay all around, but now the dead stone was painted with leaping flames: life had returned, if not the life its builders had intended. All along the upper part of the dell, crowding and quietly clamoring, bumped a great herd of snow-white rams. The bottom of the dell, where the fires burned merrily, was equally filled with trolls. Some were dancing or singing. Others were playing on trollish instruments, producing the skittering, piping music. Most simply watched and laughed.

  “Sisqinanamook!” Binabik shouted. His face was stretched in an impossibly delighted smile. “Henimaatuq! Ea kup!”

  A score of faces, two score, three score or more, all turned to stare up at the spot where he and Simon stood. In an instant a great crowd was pushing up past the disgruntled, sour-bleating rams. One small figure outstripped the rest and within moments had reached Binabik’s widespread arms.

  Simon was surrounded by chattering trolls. They shouted and chuckled as they tugged at his garments and patted him; the good will on their faces was unmistakable. He felt himself suddenly in the midst of old friends and found that he was beaming back at them, his eyes overbrimming. The strong scent of oil and fat that he remembered so well from Yiqanuc rose to his nostrils, but at this moment it was a very pleasant scent indeed. He turned, dazed, and looked for Binabik.

  “How did you know?” he cried.

  His friend stood a little way distant, an arm wrapped around Sisqi. She was smiling almost as widely as he, and the color had come out in her cheeks. “My clever Sisqinanamook was sending me one of Ookequk’s birds!” Binabik said. “My people have been at camp here for two days, building boats!”

  “Building boats?” Simon felt himself gently jostled from side to side by the ocean of little people that hemmed him close.

  “To come across our lake for joining Josua,” Binabik laughed. “One hundred brave trolls is Sisqi bringing to help us! Now you will truly see why the Rimmersmen still frighten their children with whispered stories of Huhinka Valley!” He turned and embraced her again.

  Sisqi ducked her head into the side of his neck for a moment, then turned and faced Simon. “I read Ookekuq book,” she said, her Westerling awkward but understandable. “I speak more now, your talk.” Her nod was almost a bow. “Greetings, Simon.”

  “Greetings, Sisqi,” he said. “It is good to s
ee you again.”

  “This is why I was wanting you to come, Simon.” Binabik waved his hand around the clearing. “Tomorrow will be enough time for talking of war. Tonight, friends are being together again. We will sing and dance!”

  Simon grinned at the joy evident in Binabik’s face, a happiness that was mirrored in the dark eyes of his betrothed. Simon’s own weariness had melted away. “I’d like that,” he said, and meant it.

  9

  Pages in an Old Book

  Clawlike hands grasped at her. Empty eyes stared. They were all around her, gray and shiny as frogs, and she could not even scream.

  Miriamele awakened with her throat so tightly constricted that it ached. There were no clutching hands, no eyes, only a sheet of cloth above her and the sound of slapping waves. She lay on her back for long moments, fighting for breath, then sat up.

  No hands, no eyes, she promised herself. The kilpa, apparently sated by their feast on the Eadne Cloud, had scarcely troubled the landing boat.

  Miriamele slid out from beneath the makeshift awning she and the monk had constructed from the boat’s oiled broadcloth cover, then squinted, trying to find some trace of the sun so she could gauge the time of day. The ocean that surrounded her had a dull, leaden look, as though the vast sheet of water surrounding the boat had been hammered out by a legion of blacksmiths. The gray-green expanse stretched in every direction, featureless but for the wave-crests glimmering in the diffuse light.

  Cadrach was sitting before her on one of the front benches, the oar handles held beneath his arms while he stared down at his hands. The bits of cloak he had wrapped around his palms for protection were in tatters, shredded by the repetitive slide of the oar handles.

  “Your poor hands.” Miriamele was surprised by her own rasping voice. Cadrach, more startled than she, flinched.

  “My lady.” He peered at her. “Is all well?”

  “No,” she said, but tried to smile. “I hurt. I hurt all over. But look at your hands, they are terrible.”