Brothers of the Wind

by Tad Williams

  Xaniko shook his head. “The Snareworm was young and only ten paces or so in length. Even the great Hamakho Wormslayer himself could not kill Hidohebhi, golden Khaerukama’o’s deadly progeny, with only a witchwood spear.”

  Ineluki, always full of feeling, cried, “But you yourself say you killed dragons with a spear! Surely Hamakho was greater than you!”

  Now Xaniko again grew cold and calm. “Yes, I do not doubt it. But the Wormslayer was aware of many things which you are not, young Master of All Truth—and so am I.”

  Hakatri interposed himself between his brother and their host. “Then tell us what you know, please! Our people are in danger. Many around Silverhome and in the north have been killed by this beast . . . and not only our own kind. Many mortals like those who serve you here have suffered and died in this monster’s jaws.”

  For the first time I saw the hardness in Xaniko’s face soften, if only slightly, though his voice was still harsh. “Mortals? You would concern yourself with mere mortals?”

  Ineluki made a noise of disgust.

  “I would not stand by and see them destroyed by such a foul beast,” said my master. “They are not our kind, but they have a right to live.”

  Xaniko looked at him so long I wondered if he would ever speak again. “Very well,” he said at last. “I will tell you what I know. And the first and most important is this: What Hamakho and the other wormslayers back in the Garden knew, and what I know, is that when a worm is young the places between its scales are still tender. A sharp spear can pierce those places, especially if the beast itself drives against the spear with all its weight and strength. But as they grow, the dragons’ hides become harder and harder until their armor is like bronze even between the scales.” He gestured up toward the ceiling of the stable again. “Hamakho himself might have wielded that spear, but against a worm who has lived as many years as ill-famed Hidohebhi, it would have snapped like a dry twig and even the Wormslayer would have been worm food. So that is why all this talk is bootless. There is not a spear you could lift that would be strong enough to pierce its flesh.”

  With that, he turned and led us out of the stables and back toward the keep.

  * * *

  • • •

  My master’s people hardly sleep, although when they choose to do so—or are forced to it by some great exhaustion—they may sleep for a long time. But I am not of their kind: I sleep nearly every night. So, it was strange for me on that first night in Ravensperch to find myself so utterly unable to find rest. No single idea beset me, but rather many ideas—the murderous worm, Kai-Unyu shamed and mocked by Enazashi, the angry faces of the bent and crooked Tinukeda’ya who had wished to harm me only because I was dressed like my Zida’ya masters. Woven through all these memories, like thread of a single but noteworthy color, was Lady Ona speaking to me in a tongue I did not understand but which she said was my own. Each time I drifted down into something like sleep, it was only a short while before I again bobbed up into wakefulness in the small chamber.

  After hours of such frustrations, I finally rose from the bed. I peered into my master’s chamber and saw that he was awake, reading from a pile of scrolls that Lord Xaniko had given him. He looked up. “Pamon, have you seen my brother?”

  “No, my lord.”

  His eyes strayed back to the scroll. “If you see him, ask him to come to me tomorrow in the morning. There are things he and I must discuss.”

  “I will, my lord.”

  Since my master had already returned to his reading and did not look likely to need me for anything else, I went quietly away from the apartments. Wrapping myself in my cloak, I climbed up the stairs past nodding mortal sentries, headed for the top of the keep because I badly wanted to stand beneath the sky and let my head clear. But as I neared the landing of the uppermost floor I almost stumbled into two shadowy figures standing so close that I feared at first I had disturbed a pair of lovers.

  The larger figure turned toward me; I recognized Ineluki. A moment later the smaller figure tried to slip away, but Ineluki moved to prevent it, keeping himself between me and what I now took to be a female in an embroidered cloak and hood—possibly Lady Ona herself. I was stunned and alarmed by this thought and at first could not imagine what I should do; but as I stared at her my master’s brother moved again to keep her where she had been. I was seized with the need to do something.

  “My lord,” I said loudly.

  “What is it, Pamon?” Ineluki’s words were flat and harsh. He looked at me as he might look at a stain on his garment.

  I did something I had never done before and have never done since: I told a deliberate lie to one of my master’s family. “Your brother urgently desires to speak with you.”

  “Now? Truly?”

  I could barely meet his gaze and had only the courage to nod.

  Ineluki flicked his fingers in a gesture of annoyance, then turned away from the hooded figure and went past me down the stairs without a backward glance. When I turned, the female figure was already moving swiftly away down the hallway. She opened a creaking door and shut it behind her.

  Not quite certain what I had interrupted, and sick with worry about what would happen when my master’s brother learned of my deception, I made my way up to the roof of the keep.

  The wind outside was fresh and strong. It had blown away the mists so that the stars shone fiercely. As I sometimes did, I wondered what the stars of the Lost Garden had been like. I knew many of their names, of course: my master’s people talk about them almost as much as they do the stars under which we live now, in the way that the names of relatives both living and dead are mixed together in conversations about old family gatherings. I wondered if the Garden-star named Light of Joy had been truly as brilliant as the oldest Zida’ya claimed, or if fond memory had colored their recall in the same way my own memories of childhood were warmed and made into something sacred because it was now lost to me.

  Something large and dark swept through the sky above me then, blotting out the stars where it passed and startling me so that I took several steps back from the tower rampart. It was not a winged dragon, as my weary, strained imagination had thought in that fearful moment, but only a large raven flying close above me. It landed a few paces away and strutted in a wide circle making disapproving sounds, then spread its broad wings, shook them, and flew across the tower top to one of the parapets at the far side. I could not see where it landed in the darkness, but I heard several other croaking voices and guessed it had joined others of its kind there.

  I stood for a while listening to them until they had quieted, and then an even longer time enjoying the silence. The night air cooled my face and seemed to cool my unsettled thoughts as well, and my heart had just found its proper pace again when someone behind me spoke, surprising me so much that I jumped.

  “Armiger Pamon. There you are.”

  My master’s people can be as silent as shadows when they wish. Like a guilty child caught with a piece of stolen fruit, I was terrified to meet Ineluki’s eye, but I forced myself to turn. “Yes, my lord?”

  “Did my brother truly send you for me?”

  “I thought so, my lord. If I was wrong, I can only beg your pardon—”

  “He told me he wanted to see me tomorrow morn. Not tonight.”

  He did not sound as angry as I had feared. Something else seemed to have distracted him since we spoke on the stairs. “I can only offer my apologies, my lord. I must have misunderstood.”

  “No doubt, no doubt.” His tone suggested he was not convinced. “But bide here awhile, Pamon.”

  After that, he remained silent for a long, worrisome time, so that I quailed inside at what might be coming. Ineluki seldom addressed me at all unless it was to give me an order or ask me a question about something Hakatri wanted or had said, so I could think of no reason he would keep me except to punish me for my interf
erence.

  “My brother . . .” he began at last, sounding oddly reluctant. “My brother cannot . . . Pamon, if you care for him, you must convince him to return to Asu’a.”

  I was astonished by this, that instead of raging at my interference on the stairs he should instead set me such an impossible task. “Me, my lord? That is not my place. You can speak to him that way, but me—?”

  “No, I cannot speak to him that way,” said Ineluki bitterly. “Do you doubt that I have tried? He will not heed me. He is determined to protect me from my own prideful foolishness.”

  “He loves you.”

  “That is not a reason for him to die.”

  I was shocked, chilled. I had never heard my master’s brother speak in this familiar way, as if I were one of his own family, and it seemed an ill omen. “Pray do not even say such a thing, my lord!”

  “There is no help for it—I can think of nothing else. Since I made that cursed oath, I have felt doom hanging over us.”

  “Then take it back, Lord Ineluki.”

  He laughed. It was not a pleasant sound. “It is nothing so simple. When you declare yourself to the powers that watch over our world—over all worlds—you cannot simply turn around again and say, ‘I did not mean it. Forget my words.’ Fate, or whatever name you choose to give those powers, has already heard you. Like a great millstone driven by a rushing river, the engines that force our actions have begun to grind and they cannot so easily be stopped again.”

  “But why do you fear for him—for my master? Have you walked the Dream Road and seen evil signs?”

  By starlight, I could just make out Ineluki slowly shaking his head. “I do not need the Road of Dreams to see the signs—they are all around us. Look at this place! It is like the hall of Death itself beyond the veil. Black birds of ill-omen all around us, and this empty, blighted land—!” For a moment I thought I heard something like utter despair. “And as if to remind himself of the ultimate fate of all our kind, the master of this house has even surrounded himself with the mortals who will take our land from us one day.”

  “I do not understand you, my lord. The mortals?”

  He turned to me, as if only just remembering that I was present in the flesh, not merely a voice in the darkness. “Yes, the mortals, Armiger Pamon. The creatures that will one day own this entire world for themselves. Surely you can see that as clearly as I can.” He laughed harshly then. “After all, the elders say your race is rich in foresight.”

  “Perhaps so, but that gift has not been given to me.” His words had turned my worry for myself into something sharper, colder. “And your brother may have gifted me with attention far beyond what I could have hoped for, but he would not listen to me if I told him to desert you. You know him, my lord. Once he has set his mind on something, that is that.” Like you, Lord Ineluki, I thought, though Hakatri does not come to such a place so easily . . . or so foolishly. Still, at that moment, though I fiercely resented what Ineluki had done to my beloved master, I could not be angry with him: his regret over what he had set in motion was too clear. “Can you truly not take back your oath?”

  Again Ineluki fell silent. “Go now,” he said at last. “It was a mistake thinking you might understand.” He made a curt gesture of dismissal.

  As I turned back toward the stairwell, the ravens in their stony refuge croaked in sleepy voices.

  A feeling like the thick-headedness of a fever rolled over me as I made my way down from the tower roof. If Ineluki himself could not change the course that fate would take, what had he expected of me? I wondered if he had spoken to me, not because he thought I could truly persuade his brother to turn his back and return home, but because in some way I would now share the blame for whatever happened. I made a prayer to our Garden then, sacred because it is both a place and an idea.

  Watch over my master. Do not let him lose his life in this terrible, needless pursuit because of a single vain, dangerous oath. Do not let Hakatri die!

  I often wondered in later days whether my prayer might have been to blame for what happened.

  * * *

  • • •

  I had become a little lost in the dark keep, uncertain which floor housed my master’s chamber, when I heard soft footsteps. Turning a corner, I found myself face-to-face with a small, slight figure in a hooded robe—the same I had seen before in the stairwell. Her pale face was only partly visible. Still thinking it must be the mistress of the castle, I dropped to one knee.

  “Forgive me, my lady,” I said. “I did not mean to intrude on you earlier. I was on my way to the roof.”

  “Ah, see!” she said. “It is my lord-errant returned!” It was not the voice of Sa-Ruyan Ona. “I thank you for saving me from a difficult position, sir.”

  As I stared at this stranger in surprise, I heard more footfalls behind me and turned to see Lady Ona herself approaching, dressed for bed but also wearing a heavy cloak—Ravensperch was a cold place at night. “So, I am not the only one who cannot sleep,” she said. “Is this why you are so slow with your errand, Sholi?”

  “I was hurrying back, my lady,” said the other woman. “Then this fellow appeared out of nowhere and dropped down to his knees in front of me. He is quite the young gallant.”

  I realized I was still kneeling and rose. “My apologies, Lady Ona,” I said. “I lost myself coming back from walking in the night air. Then I mistook this lady for you.”

  “Do you see, Sholi?” said Ona. “A perfectly reasonable explanation. Now, did you bring me some wine as I asked?”

  “Yes, my lady,” the other woman said. “The very last of the good red, I fear.”

  “We shall send for more when the next wagons come. Until then, we can make do with less noble vintages.” She turned to me. “Will you take a cup, Pamon Kes? Sholi here will be with us—you need not fear for your honor or good name.”

  I was still shaken by my talk with Ineluki, but I could not easily think of a reason to turn down this kinswoman of mine, although in truth our first encounter had made me a bit fearful of her. That no doubt sounds strange, since she had said nothing to me that should have disturbed me much. Perhaps it was the sense that, since we had left Asu’a to seek Ineluki, things normally hidden—and sensibly so—had risen too close to the surface to be safely ignored.

  I followed Lady Ona and Sholi down the hall to a retiring room. Ona lit the lamps with her own hand, then lowered the hood of her thick cloak to reveal her long silvery hair, let down for the night. Sholi vanished into the next chamber, but soon returned with three cups and an earthenware jug on a tray, which she set down on a small table. Then she shrugged off her own cloak to reveal a mass of loose, fair tresses. She was dressed in a thick sleeping robe with what looked like a fine nightdress showing its hem beneath it.

  “As you have likely noticed,” Ona said, “when it is the Hare’s Moon here on the Beacon, it feels more like the Wolf Moon. My husband chose this place for its isolation, not its comforts.”

  “The cold has not troubled me,” I told her—my second untruth of the hour. In fact, I had shivered through much of my conversation with Lord Ineluki, though not entirely because of the chilly air.

  Lady Ona poured the wine and passed the first cup to me, the next to the young woman. I had a chance to observe this Sholi more closely now, and though I did my best not to make it obvious, it was hard not to stare at her. Where Lady Ona’s features were fine, her nose prominent, her cheekbones and jaw so precisely defined she might have been of my master’s people, Sholi was quite different. She had round cheeks, flushed from the first sips of wine (or perhaps from escaping the cold corridor) and her nose turned up a little at the end, which gave her a mischievous appearance. But at the same time, something in her wide-set eyes and pale golden complexion, not to mention her long, slender fingers wrapped around the cup, made me certain that this Sholi was Tinukeda’ya, just like Lady Ona. A
nd just like me.

  “You are correct,” said Ona, as if she could hear my unspoken thoughts. “My lady-in-waiting is also one of the Ocean Children, like us. She is of the Tur Clan.”

  “Not precisely like you, my lady,” Sholi said easily. She was a good deal younger than Lady Ona, that was clear from her skin and her speech, but she seemed to treat Ona as an equal. “My family are Sha-Vao.”

  I did not know the word. Ona saw my confusion, smiled, and gently said, “Our new friend Kes does not speak the old tongue, Sholi.”

  “Truly?” The surprised look she gave me made me freshly ashamed. “Forgive me, then. My people are of the Sea Watchers.”

  “Niskies?” I was more startled by this than she had been at my ignorance. This Sholi did not show the signs I was familiar with from the Sea Watchers I knew: her arms seemed no longer than mine or Lady Ona’s, and I saw none of the usual roughness on her skin. “Are you from the south?”

  Sholi laughed. “No, and glad not to be. Our people along the southern coasts are strange and inbred. My family is among the last of its kind still in the north. I come from the town of Da-Yoshoga—Goblin Rock.”

  I had heard of it, a good-sized settlement along the coast west of the Sunstep Mountains. In recent years, both the Zida’ya and Tinukeda’ya have largely been replaced there by mortal Hernsmen, and Da-Yoshoga has become a busy port town. The mortals call it Crannhyr, a name whose meaning I do not know, but it has always been a strange place where many sorts of folk came together and many kinds of trade took place—some less wholesome than others.

  I felt out of my depth at first, to be sitting with these two, members of my own race though they might be. Of course, I was a resident of the great court at Asu’a, so I assumed that was the reason for their interest.

  Instead, though, the two women seemed fixed on me. “Armiger Pamon rescued me from a bad moment,” Sholi announced. “He spoke up to one of his masters who was paying me uncomfortable attention, which gave me a chance to escape.” She turned to me. “It was not what it seemed, though. Lord Ineluki was asking questions about my lady’s husband Lord Xaniko, and I did not think I should answer them. Your arrival was still most appreciated.”