Brothers of the Wind

by Tad Williams

  I did not get back to Asu’a until the Otter Moon had appeared. I reached the city walls at the same time as a sad procession returned from Serpent’s Vale. As I waited at the gates, the wagons bearing the covered bodies of Yohe and the others Hidohebhi had slain passed into the city. A crowd waited on the Court of Gathering to honor the return of the city’s dead. Those who retrieved them had also brought back a trophy of sorts, the Blackworm’s skull, which had a wagon to itself at the end of the procession. The people of the city watched it pass, not with cries of loathing, but with sad faces and silence. Many of them wore mourning masks of ash painted across the eyes, their golden stares gleaming out of the darkness like treasures in an ancient cave.

  As soon as I had given Frostmane to a groom, I hurried to my master’s chamber, but when I reached his door I was kept from entering by several Zida’ya servants. This unnerved me, and I argued with them, but they would not let me in, nor would they tell me why I was being kept out. As I begged to be let in to see him, the door opened and a tall figure emerged from my master’s bedchamber. It was Hakatri’s wife, Lady Briseyu, and seeing her my heart sank even lower; I feared something terrible had happened.

  “Pamon Kes,” she said in a soft but stern voice, “why do you make such noise here?” Her expression should have lifted my spirits—I saw no sign of mourning or deep sorrow—but the feelings of my master’s folk are often beyond my ability to recognize.

  “How is my lord Hakatri? I have only just returned. Why can I not go in to him? Please tell me, my lady.”

  She held up her long fingers in a gesture for quiet, then opened the door and stepped aside so I could see.

  My master lay stretched on his bed. His eyes were closed, and I could make out nothing of his condition. A figure dressed all in white sat on a stool beside him, but it looked too slender to be the Nakkiga Song-lord, Jikkyo. For a moment my dream about my mother’s shade came back to me, filling me with dread. Then I saw that the pale shape sitting beside my master was not my long-dead mother but Hakatri’s living one, Lady Amerasu. The Sa’onsera held her spread hands above his chest, and I could hear a low murmur of song. I could feel something else, too, a heaviness to the air inside the chamber, as though I breathed something more tangible than what usually filled my chest. Then Briseyu of the Silver Braids pulled the door closed once more.

  “As you see, his mother is with him. She does what she can to ease his suffering, which is why you were kept out. You need not worry so, Armiger.”

  “I did not know that Amerasu was also a healer,” I said, struggling to calm myself.

  Briseyu smiled, but she looked very weary. “She is the Sa’onsera, Armiger. She can do many things. She has been often with him in recent days, trying to help him. Just now she has sung one of her most powerful songs, invoking a Word of Preservation to give him some protection against his pain.”

  “Did his suffering increase while I was gone?”

  Her smile disappeared. “Somewhat. But let us see what Lady Amerasu can do for him.”

  I waited in the hallway as an hour or more passed. At last the singing behind the door stopped and the Sa’onsera left my master’s bedside. Amerasu’s drawn face and uneven steps as she came out to us showed how much strength that Word of Preservation had taken from her. As Briseyu took her arm to help her back to her own chambers, Amerasu’s golden eyes briefly met mine, but she did not greet me or even seem to recognize me. She looked like someone who had barely won a hard-fought battle and knew the war would eventually be lost.

  When Briseyu and the Sa’onsera had gone, I rushed in to see my master. The chamber still had a strange feel to it, like the air after a sudden summer storm, and also an odd, lingering scent, acrid but also sweet, like a mixture of rose petals and the ashes of Peja’ura cedar wood. Hakatri seemed to be sleeping peacefully, but I could not forget the look of defeat I had seen on his mother’s face, and I ached at the thought that I still had to return the ring and relate the Protector of Xaniko’s refusal.

  “I worried for you all the time I was traveling,” I told my master when he was awake again. “Has the Sa’onsera’s song helped to lessen your pain?”

  “As terrible as it is, my pain is still only a thing of the body.” In truth, he looked a bit stronger than he had before I left, but his expression was troubled. “My mother’s song has helped some, but the other part of my malady is beyond even the Sa’onsera’s powers. The worm’s blood has changed me, Pamon, in many strange ways. I feel as though I have grown another set of eyes and ears. I see things I never saw before, hear things that I was deaf to before the dragon’s blood burned me. And it becomes even more uncanny when I sleep and dream. The whole world seems to roll beneath me, showing me everything, but the visions are so vast, so powerful, that I often cannot understand them.”

  “It sounds like you still have fever, my lord.”

  He shook his head. “It is nothing so simple. From what you told me, Xaniko would understand it better than most. It is a pity he will not come. I could learn much from him.”

  “Perhaps, my lord, but he holds many grudges. I do not know Xaniko’s history except what you and his kin have told me, but he strikes me as the sort who does not forget any injury done to him.”

  My master gave a bitter little laugh, then winced at the pain it caused. “Yes, I know someone like that. All too well.”

  “In any case,” I said, “I am happy and grateful to see you more like yourself, my lord. I did not want to leave you, but the errand was for your sake, and it came from your father and mother.”

  He nodded. “You have nothing with which to fault yourself, faithful Pamon. And good may come from your journey after all. I read the letter Lady Ona gave you.”

  “She seems sincere in wanting to help, my lord.”

  “But to seek among the mortals—!” He laughed again, though his teeth stayed clenched in discomfort. “It will confirm everything my brother fears.” It was good to see him jest, but it pointed up the changes his misfortune had worked on him. Hakatri, once the very soul of steadiness, now seemed as changeable as a horse beset by flies, laughing one moment, then suddenly gasping or twitching, his face creasing as the agony of his burns escaped his ability to suppress it. It tugged at my heart to see him still suffering so badly, even after his mother’s intervention, but I also wondered what other changes the dragon’s blood had wrought.

  “And will you take Lady Ona’s advice?” I asked.

  “Not yet, Pamon. There are more healers of my own kind I should seek out first. Asu’a may be the first city of our people, and the learned folk here have done everything they could, but who is to say that in Hikehikayo or even Nakkiga itself we could not find scholars who know more than anyone in my parents’ court?”

  “You would go to Nakkiga, my lord?” I said in astonishment. “To Utuk’ku Silvermask’s court?” I could not help wondering whether Jikkyo the Singer had put this idea in my master’s head.

  “To Nakkiga? That is a foolish question.” He fixed me with a hard look, but I saw something deeper and more frightened moving beneath it, and for the first time I understood how terribly hard he was laboring simply to keep up the illusion of what he had been. I remembered Xaniko’s warning that I might never again see the Hakatri I had known so well, my master and my hero; that the dragon’s blood might have changed him beyond all recovery. “I would go anywhere if I could find something that would make me myself again,” he said. “Anywhere.”

  * * *

  • • •

  So it was that after being back in Asu’a for only a short time, I prepared for yet another journey, feeling a little like the Harcha sunbird, which is said to have no legs and only stops flying when it dies. But I could not let Hakatri go out into the world without me, so I hid my weariness and made ready.

  To my surprise, Ineluki insisted on accompanying us to Nakkiga. Much as he loved Hakatri, I s
uspected that joining us had more to do with how unhappy Ineluki was within the walls of Asu’a, where many blamed him for his brother’s terrible injuries—though never to his face. Ineluki was always thin-skinned, at least compared to my master.

  We set out a little after Midsummer, at the beginning of the Fox Moon, when the northern weather would be kindest to travelers, though my master would have preferred to go in the depths of winter. “Despite my mother’s efforts, even the merest touch of the sun makes the burning worse, Pamon,” he confided to me after the first time he tried to leave his bedchamber. “It feels as if I have set my flesh in living flame.”

  He did not exaggerate. On our journey to Nakkiga, Hakatri spent nearly all the daylight hours, even early morning or twilight, in a closed litter. Sometimes he was borne on a wagon, but other times, when the going became too difficult, servants took up the litter and carried my master on foot. On the worst days, Hakatri could not bear even the touch of his feather-light robes. I had to undress him so he could lie naked on his pallet in the litter, and even when the robes had been removed he moaned as if we had wrapped him in thorns instead of silk.

  The roads we followed on this long, harrowing journey were ancient ones, scarcely used these days because so few travel between Asu’a and the lands of the Hikeda’ya. Where the roads still connected Zida’ya settlements they had been maintained, but in many stretches across the wide, empty Snowfields the roads all but disappeared. Some mortal men still hung on in these dreary, gray lands, but we saw few of them, since they mostly kept their distance from my master’s people.

  The great mountain became visible long before our journey ended, watching over the last days of our travel. Some of my master’s people say that Ur-Nakkiga was once a fire-mountain like S’un Hinakta, ancient curse of the southern islands. When the Eight Ships first came from the Garden, Ur-Nakkiga still belched flame and smoke and made the earth around it shake, but it has long since fallen asleep. Even silent, though, the great mountain stares down over the small, bashful hills that surround it, ominous as an angry elder.

  We reached the outer city at last and rode along the Royal Way toward the entrance. There was no hint of ceremony for our arrival, though I guessed it had been a very long time indeed since any of Clan Sa’onserei had come to Nakkiga. White-skinned faces peered out at us from doorways and windows, but the watchers did not leave their houses, as if my master’s terrible malady might be dangerous to others. We approached Nakkiga’s massive gates through a vast field lined with weather-worn stone statues. The gates stood ten times my height, made of witchwood so ancient it was almost black, with massive bronze hinges aged to the green of dying grass.

  Lord Hikhi, the queen’s High Celebrant, wore a mask that covered all of his face but his dark eyes, as many of Utuk’ku’s closest minions did and still do. He met us in the massive entry hall beyond the gate. As it turned out, he was the highest official we ever saw; neither Queen Utuk’ku nor any of her closest advisors seemed interested in us—or so I thought. Later I learned differently. But we had nothing to complain about in High Celebrant Hikhi’s greeting, which was respectful and welcoming.

  We had just finished a very long journey across the barren Snowfields and the colder, mountainous uplands called Cruel Winds and I was quite weary. I stared at the strange buildings and statue-haunted crossings as we made our way through the open spaces of Nakkiga’s main level, but I could not summon much interest. The streets were dark and wide, and a somber image of Drukhi the White Prince, Utuk’ku’s dead son, seemed to watch us wherever we went. The roaring waters of the gigantic Tearfall, which plummeted down from somewhere high in the mountain and filled half of Nakkiga with spray, could be heard in all parts of that ground level except behind the thickest walls. And I glimpsed other sights just as astounding—park gardens of ghostly white fungus, massive temples as dark inside as the bottom of a well even when crowded with Nakkiga-folk—but all of them seemed like shadows to me. Now I mourn all that I failed to study or even notice, since I doubt I will ever see that strange, secretive city again, and it is unlike any other.

  I was, of course, mostly worried about my master. He had taken a turn for the worse as we approached the mountain, his dreams becoming ever more florid, and his intervals of sense more widely separated. As we trudged through the steaming mists that seemed to choke every street and public place in the Hikeda’ya stronghold, Hakatri moaned and cried out in his litter. I always found it hard to comfort him at such times because I could not touch him: when he was suffering badly even the lightest stroke against his skin felt to my master like the burn of a red-hot iron.

  Distracted by his misery, I remember little of our long, slow passage up the massive ceremonial stairs to the upper levels, where High Celebrant Hikhi led us to the house that had been provided for us, a nearly windowless block of stone from the outside, a shadowy labyrinth inside.

  In the days that followed I scarcely left Lord Hakatri’s side as he was visited by healers and even a few of the Nakkiga nobles. If I had been largely ignored by the important folk of Silverhome and Skyglass Lake, I had at least been treated with courtesy as a valued servant. Utuk’ku’s courtiers did not even seem to see me. But I had not expected anything different—I knew the Hikeda’ya thought of my folk only as slaves—and I was there for my master, not myself. I did my best within the strictures of my duty to ignore them as thoroughly as they ignored me.

  In truth, even if I had been well treated, I would have been unhappy in Nakkiga. The weight of the queen’s rule kept her subjects abject and largely mute, and the few of my own Tinukeda’ya people I encountered were all slaves. Unlike most other places I have visited, even in the mortal lands, the endless, shadowy streets did not make me want to explore them. The darkness in which the Hikeda’ya lived seemed not merely an absence of light, but the actual manifested spirit of the hidden city.

  The healers who came to our lodgings minutely examined my master, staring, poking, and asking questions, sometimes with such aggressive interest that they persisted even after he had fallen asleep—sleep he always badly needed, since it was one of his only ways to escape the pain of his wounds. But with my master’s sleep came dreams, and the Nakkiga-folk seemed fascinated by these as well. Chief of these observers was one Lord Yedade, who I learned was the son of Nerudade, one of the Hikeda’ya’s chief philosophers when the Garden was still our home—the one, in fact, that some claimed had loosed Unbeing and thereby caused his own death and the Garden’s destruction. Despite this, Yedade was apparently as prized for his learning by the queen’s Hamakha Clan as his father had once been, and he certainly showed no signs of shame over what his sire might have done.

  Yedade had the most colorless skin of any Hikeda’ya I had ever seen, not merely white but almost transparent. At certain angles it seemed I could see all the way down to his veins and the workings of his muscles and bones, which moved like ornamental fish swimming in a cloudy pond. Yedade was also achingly thin, but his dark eyes were very large and frighteningly intent, as though every single thing he saw was an object of surpassing interest, with scant distinction between the living and the unliving.

  In the days after our arrival, Lord Yedade and his fellow philosophers spent a great deal of time clustered around my master’s bed, but unlike the healers, they seemed far more interested in the malady than in the sufferer. They even scraped at his burn scars and took the bits away in folded squares of parchment. Neither could I make any sense of many of the things they asked him. “When the fit is on you, do you see a wall or curtain of deep red?” Yedade would ask, as if something useful could be gleaned from the visions of a fever dream. “Do you hear voices? What language are they speaking?” Sometimes one or two of the Lords of Song—Utuk’ku’s order of high mages—joined Yedade at my master’s bedside. I particularly remember one named Karkkaraji because he was extremely old and had long, yellow fingernails that curved like claws. I never heard him speak. H
e communicated with his fellow Singers only in gestures, the secret language of signs his order use among themselves.

  The more ordinary Hikeda’ya healers who attended Hakatri were not as obtrusive as the mages, but neither did they bring my master any true relief, despite all their pastes and salves and the many unpleasant liquids they made him swallow.

  We stayed in Nakkiga for most of the Lynx Moon. During that time I saw little of my master’s brother Lord Ineluki, but was told by one of the healers that he alone of our company had been invited to the royal palace, the Omeiy’o Hamakh, to meet with Queen Utuk’ku. Ineluki came to visit his brother after this meeting, but I was sent from the room and do not know what passed between them. My master Hakatri was in agony at the time, almost insensible with pain, so I doubt he had much to say, or in fact heard much of what Ineluki told him.

  It was not a comfortable visit and not a comfortable place. During our stay in Utuk’ku’s underground city I felt currents, heard whispers, and saw shadows around me that I could not fully understand, as though the people of that city were all engaged in some secret conversation about a subject I did not understand. The misty streets, what little I saw of them, seemed haunted, and not just by the ever-present effigies of Drukhi, the queen’s son, whose memorials were everywhere. From the conversations I did hear, people of that strange city seemed to care only about things that had happened in the past, seemed to believe the present era was little more than an illusion—something to be endured while worshipping things and places and people now lost beyond hope.

  * * *

  • • •

  In the end, it became clear that Nakkiga’s healers could not help my master. I was not sorry when we decided to leave that place.

  We had planned next to travel west to Hikehikayo, the other great mountain city. But Lord Ineluki insisted that a journey there would be useless. “The queen says that the few healers left in that city are far behind what can be done here in Nakkiga.”