by Tad Williams
Saomeji gave the mortal a look that was almost amused, if one ignored his eyes. “Convincing, yes. I know how much you love Makho.”
“I don’t care about him enough to hate him, if that’s what you mean, Singer. But I want to get down off this mountain before the summer ends and the real cold and winds come. In other words, I would like to live. Makho is a burden we can’t afford. Nezeru and I could do much—”
Saomeji’s hand snapped up. “No. You will be silent now. I am weary and I have other, more important things to attend to than your babble.” He turned to Nezeru. “Sacrifice, tomorrow the giant, the mortal, and I will go cut down trees so that we can make a sledge to haul the dragon more easily. You will stay here and tend the chieftain and the dragon.”
“I am no Healer, to be left with such duties,” she said, struggling to contain her fury. “I am not of that order.”
“You are of whatever order I say,” Saomeji returned calmly. “My master Akhenabi, as well as Her Majesty Queen Utuk’ku—may she reign forever—have charged me with bringing back a living dragon so that they may have its blood. Do not doubt that if you resist me or interfere in any way, I will happily kill all of you but the giant and get my last use of you by feeding your carcasses to the worm.”
This time Nezeru did not look at Jarnulf or anywhere near him, afraid to give Saomeji even a hint of her rebellious thoughts. Instead, she made her face into something without expression.
“I hear the queen in your voice,” she said—the old, safe words.
* * *
• • •
With the first filtered rays of dawn in the gray sky, Saomeji led Jarnulf and the giant away from the camp in search of wood to build a sledge, leaving Nezeru alone with the dragon and the burned chieftain.
As she cleaned Makho’s wounds with snow and dressed them once more, she could not help wondering that she had seen more of daylight in the last moons than in her entire life before that—so much that sunlight was beginning to feel almost ordinary. During the first days the brightness had sometimes blurred everything she saw into a dazzling, shimmering whole, parts of which could not be separated, leaving her blinking and motionless.
She had grown used to it, but she still felt as though she had wandered into a completely foreign world, and it was more than just the constant light. All her certainties were fractured. She no longer trusted those above her, all the rungs of the ladder between her and their great queen, high above. What had seemed solid and eternal now seemed terrifyingly shaky.
Saomeji had claimed the right to give orders, but she felt no confidence in this mad, dangerous journey down the mountain. Did he not realize that even if they managed to reach the bottom without killing themselves or the dragon, even if they reached their horses and added their strength to the giant’s, the sheer size of the creature would make it impossible to cross the great, snowy plain east of the Gray Southwood before winter returned with blizzard strength? That even if she and the others survived the weather, they would never be able to keep a bound dragon alive across the empty plain, let alone all the way back to distant Nakkiga? And on top of everything else, Saomeji had increased the risk of failing the queen by making them carry Makho’s useless weight home.
She took a deep, slow breath to calm herself. A handful of snow had melted in her clenched fist, dripping through her fingers onto the sleeping chieftain. Was she angrier about this unwanted task because she despised Makho, she wondered, or because she was outraged by the risk to the queen’s mission he represented? What had happened to the proud Sacrifice she had been, that she should even feel such doubt?
She discarded the slush, scooped up another handful of snow, and was patting it onto Makho’s wounds when his eye suddenly opened.
“You carry no child,” he said in a rasp that she could barely hear. His remaining eye fixed on her, dark as mountain glass. “No child. They told me.”
Her heart caught in her throat before she remembered they were alone. In any case, she reminded herself, her pretense of bearing a new life was no longer necessary: a halfblood like Saomeji had no rights to her body, and she could easily claim that the fight with the dragons had killed what had been growing inside her. She took a breath and continued to tend Makho’s wounds. He gave an agonized grunt but did not speak again, and his eye rolled up until only the dark purple rim of his iris could still be seen beneath the lid. She ignored the terrible stink of his wounds, trying to work swiftly.
Suddenly she felt his jaw tremble beneath her fingers, then his whole body began to shake until she thought he must be dying, perhaps simply from the pain of what she was doing. She would have given him some kei-vishaa, but Saomeji had declared the small amount of the powder left could be used only to keep the trussed dragon quiet, and had it on his person at all times.
Makho’s shivering suddenly eased. Nezeru tried to finish tending his raw-meat-red and waxy yellow wounds, but a voice abruptly sighed from his open mouth.
“Darkness has a true name.” This new, whispering voice did not sound like Makho or his way of speaking. “It is wound all through the whisperless whispers, in places where the stars look down with cold cruelty on everything that moves and lives.”
Her heartbeat stuttered. She felt like a small animal frozen beneath an owl’s shadow.
“It is Unbeing,” said the breathless, murmuring voice. “It is the enemy of life. They told me. It is the unbinding force.”
She looked around, for once actually hoping to see Saomeji approach, but she was still alone on the mountainside with Makho and the motionless dragon.
“All waits for the aspects of the Crow Mother to become one.” His words floated out like the cold vapor of his breath, like a poisonous smoke. “She is three—She Who Waits Outside, She Who Stands In The Door, She Who Never Enters. She is three and must become one. Only when the three are one will Unbeing and Being contest. The voices tell me. The voices weep like lost children. The voices . . .”
Makho fell silent.
What have I become part of? Her heart was still rabbiting so quickly that her chest hurt and her ears hummed; in that instant, she wanted nothing more than to be ignorant again. She was no longer a glorious part of the holy Sacrifice army but a single, lost thing. She floated in untethered darkness, without kin or place or understanding.
By the Sacred Garden, what is happening? And what have I become?
* * *
As Goh Gam Gar hacked down trees with his massive ax and shaved away the branches under Saomeji’s constantly threatening supervision, it fell to Jarnulf to tie the trimmed logs together into a platform strong enough to support the dragon’s immense weight. It was clear that he was quickly running out of rope, but building the sledge seemed at this moment to be the least of Jarnulf’s problems.
As he wound the last of the slippery Hikeda’ya cord around the trunks, securing each with strong knots, he began to wonder whether his goals might not be best served simply by killing Saomeji now, finishing off Makho, and perhaps giving a swift and painless death to the female Sacrifice Nezeru as well. Only a few moons earlier he would have rejoiced at sending five Talons to their deaths, and fate had already dispatched two of them without Jarnulf raising a hand. But now fate was beginning to look a bit greedy, and Jarnulf did not want to join these mad Hikeda’ya in death.
My God, my sweet Ransomer, I do not care for my own life at all, but somehow I must survive so I can do Your work.
Now that he knew Queen Utuk’ku herself still lived, his earlier determination to single-handedly rid the world of as many Norns as possible seemed a simpleton’s plan. The Hikeda’ya were preparing for war—a great war, from what he could tell. Uncountable mortals would die, and Jarnulf’s enslaved folk would die too, forced to fight for Nakkiga and their Hikeda’ya masters. The oaths he had taken to avenge Father, the priest who had adopted him, and to avenge Jarnulf’s own family as well, seeme
d meaningless now. The only thing he could do that might avert the Norns’ coming war on mankind was to kill their monstrous queen. And returning to Nakkiga in the triumphant company of the Talons who had achieved the queen’s greatest tasks was the only way he could imagine getting close enough to the ageless witch to destroy her. Jarnulf had no doubt he would die himself in the doing of it, but if he succeeded the angels would sing up and down the roads of Heaven when he arrived. Father would be proud of him. His poor, dead brother Jarngrimnur would be proud. And God Himself and His holy Son Usires would be proud.
“Why do you malinger, mortal?” Saomeji shouted across the slope. The sun had gone down, and only a glowing lavender veil lit the western skies. Behind the sorcerer a tall pine was swaying violently with every one of the giant’s heavy ax-blows. “We must still drag the sledge all the way back up to where the dragon lies, and we cannot do that until you finish it.”
“We?” bellowed the giant, pausing between swings. “You are a lying turd, Singer. You mean that poor old Goh Gam Gar will carry it.”
Jarnulf waved his hands in exaggerated frustration. “I have used all the rope you gave me, Singer, but the sledge is not finished. If you can tell me how to make more rope out of air, or perhaps send demons speeding back to Blue Cavern to fetch some, please do.”
Saomeji gave him a blankly annoyed look. “There is more. I have kept some back.” He turned to the giant. “On with your work, beast, or you will taste something you won’t like.” When the giant had bent to his task again, Saomeji made his way across snow and rubble toward the unfinished sledge.
“You should have told me earlier, mortal,” he said. “I will bring you what I can spare, but after that you will have to make double-headed pegs when we return to the camp.”
“With what, my fingers? My battle-blade? You are generous with the work for everyone else, Singer. Anything more you wish from me? Shall I carry you back up the hill on my shoulders as well?”
If Saomeji was stung he hid it behind his stony expression. “In fact there is another task for you, mortal. While I am fetching more rope, you may take the time to hunt—and don’t let a little weariness talk you into half-measures. Just as I cannot let the dragon perish, I cannot let the giant die from hunger—not yet, when I still need his strength. But you are nothing so useful, pink-skin, and you are certainly not under the protection of our Exile’s Way like Chieftain Makho and Sacrifice Nezeru. If I am forced to destroy you, we can still complete our task without you. And do not think you can escape me by fleeing, because the giant could catch you and kill you before the moon sets. Now go.”
Jarnulf briefly considered what it would be like to push his sword blade through the Singer’s snow-white robe and into his black Hikeda’ya heart, but it was a fantasy he could not afford to indulge. Instead he merely nodded, then went to collect his bow and quiver and don the jacket he had taken off in the heat of work.
O, my Ransomer, he thought, and it was not quite a prayer so much as a complaint, my loving Lord, I know You cannot expect me to feel even an instant’s pity for these inhuman creatures, who would deny You and murder Your children, but could You ease my hatred just a little so I do not lose patience and betray Your greater works?
* * *
By the middle of the following day the massive sledge was finished. Grunting and sputtering, the giant managed to drag the great body of the dragon onto it, then they secured the beast with a great length of Saomeji’s remaining rope. All Nezeru wished now was to survive this broken expedition and return to her home and her people. Unless the Singer actually put the queen’s mission into fatal danger, she felt bound to obey his orders.
Several more days passed as they made their laborious way down the lower slopes of the mountain. The weather sharpened, blinding them with flurries of snow and turning the nights cold enough that even Nezeru began to feel truly uncomfortable despite her heritage and training. They also spent hours every day struggling with the dragon’s weight on treacherous slopes, difficult problems of engineering that would have given her own father pause, even with all his Builders to help him.
Even Saomeji seemed to recognize that time and the deepening chill of approaching winter was against them. “We need more than you diminished lot to do the queen’s will,” he said one night as they all huddled on an unprotected slope around a small fire, Saomeji’s only concession to the bitter weather. “If I but had Kemme and Makho to lend their strength, we would be on our way across the plain already.”
“But you do not,” said Jarnulf. “Kemme is a broken, frozen lump in the snow somewhere high above us, and Makho is scarce better off. What you really need is the Echo you lost the day I met you, to call for someone to help us.”
“Ibi-Khai,” said Nezeru promptly, surprising herself. She had scarcely known him, but he had been part of their Hand and had a name. She wondered if fearing her own likely disappearance in these trackless wastes had made her speak. Does it matter whether our names are remembered? she wondered. We will still be just as dead. We will still have failed the Mother of All.
“Just so,” Jarnulf said. “If we had his mirror, or whatever trinket it is that Echoes carry, we could communicate to your masters in Nakkiga how badly their mission goes.”
“Like all mortals, you talk needlessly and foolishly about things you do not understand.” Saomeji’s voice was full of scorn. “But your words have helped me to make up my mind. It is true we must find help soon, before winter storms make it impossible to reach Nakkiga. And I think I know a way.”
“What will you do?” asked Nezeru.
“You have no need to know that—you will see it when the time comes.” The Singer glanced over at the place where Makho lay bundled in his cloak on a rock that had been cleared of snow. “How is your dragon-burned charge today? Does he show any signs of recovery?”
Nezeru was astonished by the question. “Recovery? He lies on the threshold of death. His wounds are terrible, and I doubt he will live more than a few more days. When he is awake, all he does is whisper and sing. His mind is gone.”
“Sing?” For the first time Saomeji seemed to be paying attention. “That is interesting. I will look him over myself later.”
* * *
• • •
Two long days later they finally reached the mountain’s broad skirts. The slopes here were a little easier to negotiate, though the task still exhausted them all and tested even the giant’s great strength to its uttermost. When the day’s travel was finished Goh Gam Gar could do little but eat and then sleep. Makho rode on the dragon’s sledge, submerged in almost continuous slumber, and despite the days’ passing, his wounds did not heal or even scar. Nezeru felt certain the chieftain was on the edge of death, and wished it would happen sooner rather than later.
As they descended the broader slopes Saomeji began collecting round stones like those that he had filled full of fiery heat and used as weapons against the mortal bandits on the Hand’s journey to the mountain. Every stone he collected—and there were dozens—was added to the growing pile on the sledge, much to the giant’s irritation. Saomeji paid no attention to complaints. Occasionally the Singer picked up a different kind of stone, jagged shards with clear and obvious veins of brighter, more translucent stone running through them, and these he piled on the sledge with the others.
* * *
• • •
It was mid-morning when Saomeji stopped them, the sun shrouded in iron-gray clouds and flurrying snow. “Here,” he said. “We will go no farther today. The time to seek help has come, and I have difficult labors to perform.”
Nezeru had not expected them to make camp until long after dark, and she was even more puzzled when the Singer ordered the giant to dig a pit in a level space at the center of a stand of leafless birch trees.
“What?” growled Goh Gam Gar. “You wish me to break my hands as well as break my back?”
&nbs
p; “There is soil under the snow,” said Saomeji. “It is frozen hard, but you will manage. Do you complain of your burden? Do you wish help to carry the dragon to the queen? Then dig, monster, dig.”
The shrouded sun was high in the sky when Goh Gam Gar had finished digging the pit in the frozen ground, and his great, hairy hands were filthy and bleeding. The Singer sent him away from the hole, then began to remove the stones he had collected on their journey from the sledge. As Nezeru watched, Saomeji walked in a wide circle around the spot where Goh Gam Gar now sat. As the giant stared at the Singer with bleary distrust, Saomeji set the stones in a wide ring around the giant so that none was more than a pace from the next, singing softly as he did so. When Saomeji had finished the first circuit he went around again, and this time picked up each stone, moved it to the nearest stone in the circle until they clicked together, then did the same with the stone that had already been there, until he had touched, clicked, and moved each stone one space around the circle, still singing the same soft, strange song.
“I have an important task to do now,” Saomeji said to the giant when he had finished surrounding him with the ring of stones. “A task that will take much of my strength. But even should I have a moment of inattention, monster, do not think it will do you any service. Should anything cross the line of my stone circle I will know it instantly. And I will not wait to see what it is, but will burn you from the inside out.”
Goh Gam Gar stared at him from beneath the great shelf of his brow. “What if I do not move, but something else crosses it? What if a bird flies through your Song-circle?”
“Then as soon as I see that is true, I will stop your punishment. I do not wish to kill you if I do not have to—not while I need your labor.”