by Tad Williams
As she watched in astonishment and with extremely mixed feelings, the Gyrfalcons traded arrows with an invisible enemy. The only sound she heard was the hum of insects and, once every long while, the buzz of an arrow.
At last, when it had been a hundred heartbeats or more since the last arrow flew, she decided she should try to escape while the stalemate continued. She crouched, prepared to run up the slope to where her horse was tethered, but a sudden movement below her caught her attention: several shapes had burst from the thickly wooded base of the slope and were running toward the tangle of pines where the Gyrfalcons were hiding.
Zida’ya, she thought, amazed and confused. Those warriors are Zida’ya!
The Gyrfalcons did not wait for the Dawn Children to reach them, but spilled out of the trees with loud cries meant to imitate the voices of hunting birds. The Zida’ya moved swiftly but silently toward them along the hillside. Neither side carried bows; Nezeru guessed they had both exhausted their supply of arrows.
The Hikeda’ya soldiers were outnumbered—she counted only four of them now. Two had swords, and the other pair carried the hand-axes known as xari—scorpions—because of their hooked blades. The seven Zida’ya had swords and short spears.
Nezeru’s next surprise followed quickly. The Hikeda’ya might have been wearied after pursuing her since late the previous night, but they were all death-sung Sacrifices, and she expected them to fight off even a greater force of Zida’ya easily. All her life she had been taught that their forest-dwelling kin were weak and cowardly, that the Hikeda’ya had stayed strong while their soft relatives had surrendered to the corrupt world outside Nakkiga.
But these Zida’ya didn’t fight that way.
Even in the first, faint light of day it was easy for her to follow the struggle. The Gyrfalcons were uniformed in the dark colors of their legion, but the Zida’ya wore at least a half-dozen different shades of browns, grays, and greens, and even their hair colors were individual. The only thing the Dawn Children shared was a glinting brooch they wore on their shoulders; even Nezeru’s sharp eyes could not make out the insignia from such a distance.
The Zida’ya did not stand back and rely on their superior numbers, but came leaping along the slope. They threw themselves at the Hikeda’ya almost carelessly, as though rushing to meet a lover long missed. The knot of fighters tightened; she saw the dull gleam of weapons and heard them clicking as the two sides clashed, then the Hikeda’ya fell back to a higher spot, leaving one of their number motionless on the rocky hillside. The Zida’ya leaped after them. The Gyrfalcons had stopped shouting, and the two groups came together again in silence, then whirled and fell away into several separate struggles. It quickly became clear that the Gyrfalcon Sacrifices were being surrounded and dispatched, and even in her astonishment at this unforeseen result, Nezeru realized that when the Zida’ya finished with her pursuers they would see her as just another enemy. She turned and began scrambling back along the stone ledge, then headed up the hill, trying to stay low and quiet, hoping she could reach her horse unseen by the fighters below.
It didn’t work. “Hike!” someone cried from below her—“Cloud!” The Zida’ya had seen her and recognized her as one of their foes.
Nezeru reached her horse, unspeakably grateful that none of those below had any arrows left. The Nakkiga steed made no sound as she vaulted onto its back. She would have to run again, and hope that the Gyrfalcons still fighting for their lives could at least delay the Zida’ya.
By the Garden, I saw it with my own eyes—the Dawn Children’s warriors are as fierce as any Sacrifices! She urged the horse over the crest of the hill and down into the thickly forested valley below. Were they some special troop, like the Talons or the Queen’s Teeth of Nakkiga? Or was what she had been taught about the Zida’ya a lie all along?
She thought of Jarnulf, who had tried so hard to destroy her faith in her queen and people, to make her believe that her lifelong truths were lies. She felt poisoned by the cruel things he had told her.
But what if he had been right?
* * *
• • •
Nezeru’s flight led her ever deeper into the forest. She had no idea where the Zida’ya had appeared from, but she knew where her Hikeda’ya pursuers did, so she rode south through the night, letting the horse find its way through the trees. Sometime past midnight she heard the distant sounds of pursuit, hoofbeats echoing dully through the damp air. The Zida’ya must have finished with the Gyrfalcons and recovered their horses. She had to assume their mounts were fresher than hers.
Just as the moon was disappearing, Nezeru stumbled on what she at first thought was an animal track. It was full of obstacles, low-hanging branches and trees growing in the center of the uneven path, but it was much less densely forested than the surroundings and she could ride more swiftly. Unfortunately for her, those pursuing her would have the same benefit.
As she leaned low and sped along, desperate to stay ahead of the hunters as long as possible, she decided that the track she traveled was too long and well-defined to be merely a path made by deer or bison. It had to be an old road, a very old road, and she wracked her memory trying to make sense of it.
Like most of her order, Nezeru had not much studied the things that clerics and chroniclers learned. History had been taught to her only as a series of wars and battles, victories and retreats. But as she coursed down the ancient road with rain whipping her face and the sounds of hoofbeats behind her drawing steadily closer, she knew she had found something old. A snatch of poem her father had taught her when she was very young rose up from her memory.
“In the Old Heart, behind the hills . . .”
The track, which had meandered along hillsides and down through dells for at least two leagues, now became straight. The trees on either side seemed reluctant to grow upon it, though their branches hung over and mingled to form a tunnel of darkness.
“In the Old Heart, behind the hills and shielded from wind and sun, lies . . .”
And suddenly she could see pillars of weathered stone looming through the greenery before her. She had to hold tight to her horse as it leaped over a shattered arch which lay across the ancient road. She slowed without thinking. The central piece of the arch was a circle with coiling rays, like a sun, like a flower, like . . . a star.
The Gate of the Star, she realized. The track she was following must be Gatherers’ Way, the great avenue that had once led into the city from the north. The memory came to back to her in a single piece—she could hear her father’s voice, hear the words from her childhood.
“In the Old Heart, behind the hills and shielded from wind and sun, lies the ruin of The Tree of the Singing Wind, one of the Nine Cities of our people.”
This must be Da’ai Chikiza, the City of Refuge. She had never for a moment guessed she might see it someday, never imagined she would travel so far from the dark familiarity of Nakkiga. Now here she was, and by the sounds of the nearing pursuit, it also seemed that she would fight the last battle of her life amidst its crumbling walls and toppled towers.
* * *
Tzoja had not been called to the queen again since Jijibo had come to Utuk’ku with his strange, glowing fruit. She did not regret that. Simply being in the ancient queen’s presence was like nothing she had ever experienced, as terrifying as being locked in a lightless cage with a deadly beast.
As the days passed, she continued to go out and gather herbs when the great procession paused, always in the company of one of the silent Queen’s Teeth. Each time the wagons stopped, the country around her had changed. Though winter was coming on, they were traveling south, exchanging the chilly plain beside snowy mountains for rainy hills and woods of gold and dark green.
If Tzoja was not being called to the queen’s side during those days, as Sky-Singer’s Moon waxed and then waned, Vordis still was. She brought back many tales, mostly things she h
ad gleaned from listening to the Hikeda’ya women talking.
“We are near the end of our journey,” she said. “We are far into the lands of men now, on the Frostmarch, crossing into Erkynland.”
“But how can that be?” Tzoja asked. “Why aren’t the mortals fighting against us? I have lived with those people. They hate the Hikeda’ya and call them demons. Why would they let such a great company ride into Erkynland?”
Vordis shook her head. “I don’t know, Tzoja. Perhaps there is peace now between the mortals and our masters.”
Tzoja strongly doubted that, but she was conscious that no words were safe. “I was not always named Tzoja, you know,” she said instead. “That is the name that Magister Viyeki gave me when he first took me from the slave pens. I was born Derra.” She laughed a little. “It is funny. They both mean ‘star.’”
“Then ‘Star’ must be your true name,” said Vordis, smiling. “Even in Nakkiga, someone recognized it.”
Tzoja felt oddly soothed by this, and by the simple fact of Vordis’s presence; for the first time since she had been summoned to the Norn Queen, the sensation of impending disaster eased. The blind girl was the first mortal she had befriended since being stolen from the Astaline settlement so many years ago, and she had not understood how much she had missed that companionship. There had been no room in the slave pens for loyalty and friendship, and the mortal slaves she had known after being taken into Viyeki’s house had envied her, or even hated her, for her privileged position.
Tzoja’s attention was abruptly seized by a red glow she saw in the window of their wagon. “The sky,” she said. “Something is burning.”
Vordis was obviously confused by this sudden change of subject, but Tzoja did not stop to explain before climbing to her feet and hurrying to the window. For long moments she could only stare ahead, up the line of the wagons, toward the reddish glare in the distance.
“Where are we bound?” she asked in a dry-throated voice.
“A place called Ujin é-da Sikhunae, the Anchoresses said,” Vordis answered, “—‘The Hunter’s Trap’. I have not heard of it before. The mortals call it Naglimund.”
Tzoja knew that name well, as did everyone she had ever met in the mortal towns of the north when she lived there. It had been the site of a terrible battle between the Hikeda’ya and the mortals, a place of dark magicks and death, but the mortals had reclaimed it long before Tzoja had come to Erkynland.
As she looked out of the window, craning her neck, she saw that they were moving through a river valley. On the far side of the water a line of hills rose up tall and dark against the twilight stars. Between river and hills stood a set of shattered walls, like a skull’s gap-toothed grimace, and from those broken battlements and the fortress beyond them came the wavering red light of hundreds of fires—beacons and torches. A dark pall of smoke or dust hovered over the ruins, and the reflected light of the flames played along the bottom of the cloud like crimson lightning.
Hell, she thought, remembering Aedonite tales about the fate of sinners. Surely that is Hell, not Naglimund.
The infamous fortress was a vision of war and destruction, but the destruction seemed new-minted, as if only moments, not decades, had passed here in this valley since the Storm King’s War. Tzoja stared, unable to look away, and her heart was cold and anxious. It seemed to her that Time, like the serpent-symbol of the Hamakha clan, had swallowed its own tail. Naglimund was in flames, and the past had returned to devour the present.
50
A Powder of Dragon’s Bones
Not even Simon, who had been born within the walls of the Hayholt, knew why half the rooms were named as they were. Din’s Passage, the Blue Knight’s Pantry, and the Chaplain’s Walking Hall had all been named long before anyone alive could remember. As he watched Countess Yissola explore the Bishop’s Reflection Room, a high-ceilinged chamber above the royal chapel, he wondered idly who the bishop had been, and what had required his reflection so much that a large chamber had been named for it. The chamber overlooked the Small Pleasance, a walled garden deep near the heart of the keep, and was visited almost solely by gardeners and the occasional pair of lovers seeking privacy, though none of either type were in view just now.
The countess examined the walls, hung with religious pictures and portraits of religious men, then paused for a last look at the garden, which was not its best in autumn, the trees mostly leafless, the hedges brown and shrunken-looking. “Every year, I think that the winter takes a little more than it did the year before,” Yissola said. “That in the long battle, life is losing.”
“But there is always more life, surely.”
“Is there?” She turned from the window and made her way to the table. A servant came forward to hold her chair, then slid back into the shadow of the doorway. “I suppose so. But increasingly it seems to be a world I do not know.”
Simon snorted. “Forgive me, my lady, but you are a good length younger than me. Shouldn’t I be the one saying such things?”
She gave him a smile both pretty and sad. “Perhaps. Or perhaps it is the difference in our situation. You have an heir, your grandson, as well as your delightful granddaughter. She could rule as well, you know.”
“I certainly do. And God help you all if you got on the wrong side of her. She is as fierce as a grassland widow, that one.” He said it in the tone of a jest, but his heart had clutched at the mention of Morgan, still lost somewhere along the Erkynlandish frontier. He wondered how much Yissola already knew—the Perdruinese were famous for their spycraft—but decided not to press for an answer. “Why, if I may be so bold, have you never yourself married, Countess?” he asked instead. “You mourn the lack of an heir, but it is my guess that there are dozens—nay, hundreds—of men of station and wealth who would gladly husband you.”
She lifted her hand and waved away all those suitors with a flick of her long fingers. “There are, of course, Your Majesty. Were I broad as an ox and with a face like a monkfish, I would have suitors. Perdruin’s throne is a prize that many desire. But I have different wants. I have no desire to become the consort of an ambitious man,” she said, and her handsome face took on sterner lines. “I have worked too hard for my people, suffered loneliness and the scorn of small minds, simply to give over my power to a husband and become a brood mare to future generations.”
There were depths of anger in her voice that Simon had not guessed from her outer semblance. “You are much like your father Streáwe, then. He did not allow anyone to dictate to him. He would have bargained with the Devil himself, and won.”
“As you have likely guessed, I was the child of his old age,” she said. “What you may not know is that my mother was only one of several women that he kept. Some even gave birth to sons. But one reason he did not marry any of them was that my father liked having only illegitimate children—an entire falcon mews of bastards, and none could be his heir unless he chose them. None of his male children were what he sought, but he saw something of himself in me—as you just did—so I became his successor.”
“And the others? Were you not afraid that one of them would rise against you?”
“A few did,” she said. “The fact that you do not know that shows you that the challenges did not last long. But do not think I killed them all!” For a moment she opened her eyes wide, looking so much the innocent young woman that it was easy to forget they were talking of the eradication of rivals. “My nearest half-brother, Costante—the best of an indifferent lot, I must say—was sent away on a voyage to the unknown south before my father named me his choice. Costante never came back.” She smiled, and Simon thought it looked like genuine sadness. “I miss him, God defend his soul. We were close friends in our childhood.”
The territory of heirs safely negotiated, Simon said, “Obviously your father chose well. The people of Perdruin are prosperous and at peace.”
“We are always
at peace,” she said, amused. “How could we prosper, as you put it, if we took sides?”
“I am corrected.” Suddenly, despite the allure of the handsome woman before him, Simon felt deeply weary. “So tell me, Countess, what brings you to Erkynland, then? Why did you wish to speak to me?”
“Because you have done the people of Perdruin a wrong, King Simon.”
“Have I, Countess? And what wrong is that?”
“You are the master of the High Ward, Majesty. Please do me the courtesy of not pretending you do not know. Your Royal Establishment was signed only one year ago.”
Now that he had seen her show scorn, Simon was even more impressed. Not even Miri at her most withering could achieve such quiet fury. “I am only half of the High Ward, as you know, but I don’t think Queen Miriamele would do something as important as you seem to make this—whatever it is—without my knowing.” Even as he spoke, though, he felt a moment of worry: Miri had told him many times he did not pay enough attention to the small matters of statecraft, leaving them to her. Still, she always brought him anything of import. He could not believe that had changed.
“I speak of your own neutral ports here in Erkynland—Grenefod, Laestmouth, Meremund, among others. Do I refresh your memory?”
“I must confess you haven’t.”
She rose so swiftly that he thought she might throw something at him. One of the armed guards even took a step forward from his place by the door, but Simon lifted his hand to keep him back. Yissola turned, gown swirling, and went to the window. She stared down. “Perdruin is an island country, Majesty. We survive on our wits, on the speed of our ships and the mastery of their captains. We have never asked for favors, only measure given for measure. But this law of yours—it is a blow at our heart.”