by Tad Williams
The storm had obviously cast a pall over the trading city. Unless things had changed greatly since his last sojourn, there should be many more boats out on the water at midday, many more folk wandering Kwanitupul’s exotic byways. Those who were about seemed to be hurrying to their destinations. Even the ritual cries of greeting and challenge that rang between canal boats seemed unusually muted. Like insects, the residents seemed chilled almost to immobility by the snow that melted in patches on their wooden walkways, and the wind-borne sleet that stung exposed limbs and filled the canals with circular ripples.
Here and there among the sparse crowds Isgrimnur saw small gatherings of Fire Dancers, the religious maniacs who had gained their notoriety by self-immolation. They had become a familiar sight to the duke since he had first reached Nabban. These wild-eyed penitents, uncaring of the cold, stood on the walkways near busy canal intersections and shouted the praises of their dark master, the Storm King. Isgrimnur wondered where they had heard that name. He had never heard it spoken south of the Frostmarch before, even in a children’s bogey-story. It was no coincidence, he knew, but he could not help musing on whether these robed lunatics were the pawns of someone like Pryrates or true visionaries. If the latter was the case, then the end they foresaw might be real.
Isgrimnur shuddered at this thought and made the sign of the Tree on his breast. Black times, these were. For all their shouting, though, the Fire Dancers did not seem to be engaging in their familiar trick of setting themselves aflame. The duke smiled sourly. Perhaps it was a little too damp today.
The boatman stopped at last before an unprepossessing structure in the warehouse district, far from the centers of commerce. When Isgrimnur had paid him, the little dark man reached up with his gaff hook and pulled down the rope ladder from the dock. The duke was scarcely halfway up the swinging ladder before the boatman had turned around and was coasting out of sight down a side-canal.
Huffing and cursing his fat belly, Isgrimnur at last made his way upon to the more trustworthy footing of the dock. He rapped at the weather-worn door, then waited a long time in the freezing rain without answer, growing increasingly cross. At last the door swung open, revealing a frowning woman of middle age.
“I don’t know where the half-wit is,” she told Isgrimnur as though he had asked. “It’s not enough that I have to do every other lick of work here, but now I have to answer the door as well.”
For a moment the duke was so taken aback that he almost apologized. He struggled with his impulse toward chivalry. “I want a room,” he said at last.
“Well, come in, then,” the woman said doubtfully, opening the door wider. Beyond lay a makeshift boathouse that stank of tar and old fish. A couple of hulls were laid out like casualties of battle. In the corner, a brown arm protruded from a huddle of blankets For a moment Isgrimnur thought it was a corpse that had been carelessly thrown into the doorway; when the arm moved, pulling the blankets closer, he realized that it was only someone sleeping. He had a sudden premonition that he might not find the accommodations here up to the best standards, but he forced the thought down.
You’re getting fussy, old man, he chided himself. On the battlefield, you’ve slept in mud and blood and the nests of biting flies.
He had a mission, he reminded himself. His own comfort was secondary.
“By the way,” he called after the innkeeper, whose brisk steps had taken her almost the entire length of the dooryard, “I’m looking for someone.” Suddenly he could not recall the name Dinivan had told him. He stopped, running his fingers through his damp beard, then remembered. “Tiamak. I’m looking for Tiamak.”
When the woman turned, her sour expression had been supplanted by a look of greedy pleasure. “You?” she said. “You’re the one with the gold?” She opened her arms wide as though to embrace him. Despite the dozen cubits that separated them, the duke took a step backward, repelled. The bundle of blankets in the corner began to wiggle like a nest of piglets, then fell away. A small and very thin Wrannaman sat up, eyes still half-closed from sleep.
“I am Tiamak,” he said, trying to stifle a yawn. As he surveyed Isgrimnur, the marsh-man’s face seemed to show disappointment, as though he had expected something better. The duke felt his annoyance returning. Were all these people mad? Who did they think he was, or expect him to be?
“I bring you tidings,” Isgrimnur said stiffly, uncertain of how to proceed. “But we should talk in private.”
“I will show you to your room,” the woman said hastily, “the finest in the house, and the little brown gentleman—another honored guest—can join you there.”
Isgrimnur had just turned back to Tiamak, who seemed to be dressing awkwardly beneath the blankets, when the inside door of the inn thumped open and a horde of children barged through, whooping like Thrithings-men at war. They were pursued by a tall, white-haired old man, who grinned from ear to ear as he pretended to stalk them. They fled him with shrieks of delight, and crashed through the door leading out to the dock. Before he could pursue them any further the landlady stepped before him, fists on hips.
“Damn you for a simple ass, Ceallio, you are here to answer the door!” The old man, chough considerably taller, cowered before her as though expecting a blow. “I know you are addled-pated, but you are not deaf. Did you not hear someone knocking at the door?”
The old man moaned wordlessly. The landlady turned from him in disgust. “He’s as stupid as a stone,” she began, then broke off, staring, as Isgrimnur dropped to his knees.
The duke felt the world tilt, as though giant hands had lifted it. It took long moments before he could speak, moments in which the landlady, the little Wrannaman. and the old doorkeeper looked at him with varying degrees of uneasy fascination. When Isgrimnur spoke, it was to the old man.
“My lord Camaris,” he said, and felt his voice catch in his throat. The world had gone mad now the dead lived again “Merciful Elysia, Camaris, do you not remember me? I am Isgrimnur! We fought for Prester John together—we were friends! Ah, God, you live! How can that be!”
He reached his hand out to the old man, who took it as a child might take something shiny or colorful offered by a stranger. The old man’s grip was callused, with a great strength that could be felt even as his hand lay flaccidly in Isgrimnur’s own. His handsome face showed only smiling incomprehension.
“What are you saying?” the landlady said crossly. “That’s old Ceallio, the doorkeeper. Been here for years. He’s a simpleton.”
“Camaris…” Isgrimnur breathed as he pressed the old man’s hand to his cheek, wetting it with tears. He could scarcely speak. “Oh, my good lord, you live.”
28
Sparks
Despite the unceasing loveliness of Jao é-Tinukai'i, or perhaps because of it, Simon was bored. He was also unutterably lonely.
His imprisonment was a strange thing: the Sithi did not hinder him, but other than Jiriki and Aditu, they continued to show no interest in him, either. Like a queen’s lapdog, he was well fed and well cared for, allowed to roam wherever he could go, but only because the outside world was beyond his reach. Like a prize pet, he amused his masters, but was not taken seriously. When he spoke to them, they responded politely in Simon’s own Westerling speech, but among themselves they spoke the liquid Sithi tongue. Only a few recognizable words ever reached his ear, but whole rivers of incomprehensible talk flowed around him. The suspicion that they might be discussing him in their private conversations infuriated him. The possibility that they might not, that they might never think of him except when in his presence, was somehow even worse. It made him feel insubstantial as a ghost.
Since his interview with Amerasu, the days had begun to flit past even more rapidly. As he lay in his blankets one night, he realized he could no longer say for certain how long he had been among the Sithi. Aditu, when asked, claimed not to remember. Simon took the same question to Jiriki, who fixed him with a look of great pity and asked whether he truly wished to count th
e days. Chilled by the implication, Simon demanded the truth. Jiriki told him that a little over a month had passed.
That had been some days ago.
The nights were the most difficult. In his nest of blankets in Jiriki’s house, or roaming the soft, damp grass beneath strange stars, Simon tormented himself with impossible plans for escape, plans that even he knew were as impractical as they were desperate. He became more and more morose. He knew Jiriki was worried for him, and even Aditu’s quicksilver laugh seemed forced. Simon knew that he was speaking constantly of his misery, but could not hide it—moreover, he did not want to hide it. Whose fault was it that he was trapped here?
They had saved his life, of course. Would it truly have been better to die by freezing or slow starvation, he chided himself, rather than living as a pampered, if restricted, guest in the most wonderful city in Osten Ard? But even though such ingratitude might be shameful, he still could not reconcile himself to his blissful prison.
Every day was much the same. He wandered through the forest alone, or threw stones into the countless streams and rivers, and thought of his friends. In the sheltering summer of Jao é-Tinukai’i, it was hard to imagine how they must all be suffering in the dreadful winter outside. Where was Binabik? Miriamele? Prince Josua? Did they even live? Had they fallen beneath the black storm, or did they still struggle?
Growing ever more frantic, he begged Jiriki to let him speak to Amerasu again, to plead for her help in setting him free, but Jiriki declined.
“It is not my place to instruct First Grandmother. She will act in her own time, when she has thought carefully. I am sorry, Seoman, bur these matters are too important to hurry.”
“Hurry!” Simon raged. “By the time anyone does anything in this place, I will be dead!”
But Jiriki, although visibly saddened, remained adamant.
Balked at every turn, Simon’s anxiousness began to turn to anger. The reserved Sithi came to seem smug and self-righteous beyond enduring. While Simon’s friends were fighting and dying, engaged in a dreadful losing battle with the Storm King as well as with Elias, these foolish creatures wandered through their sunlit forest singing and contemplating the trees. And who was the Storm King, anyway, but a Sithi!? No wonder that his fellows were keeping Simon prisoned while the world outside withered before Ineluki’s cold wrath.
So the days spun by, each more and more like its predecessor, each increasing Simon’s disaffection. He ceased taking his evening meal with Jiriki, preferring a more solitary appreciation of the songs of crickets and nightingales. Resentful of Aditu’s playfulness, he began to avoid her. He was sick of being teased and fondled. He meant no more to her, he knew, than the lapdog did to the queen. He would have no more. If he must be a prisoner, he would act like one.
Jiriki found him sitting in a copse of larch trees, sullen and prickly as a hedgehog. The bees were mumbling in the clover and the sun streamed down through the needles, crosshatching the ground with slivers of light. Simon was chewing on a piece of bark.
“Seoman,” the prince said, “may I speak to you?”
Simon frowned. He had learned that Sithi, unlike mortals, would actually go away if permission was not given. Jiriki’s folk had a deep respect for privacy.
“I suppose so,” Simon said at last.
“I would like you to come with me,” Jiriki said. “We will go to the Yásira.”
Simon felt a quickening of hope, but it was a painful thing. “Why?”
“I do not know. I only know that we are all asked to come, all who live in Jao é-Tinukai’i. Since you live here now, I think it fitting that you come.”
Simon’s hopes sank. “They did not ask for me.” For a moment he had envisioned how it would be: Shima’onari and Likimeya apologizing for their mistake, sending him back to his own kind bearing presents, laden as well with the wisdom to help Josua and the others. Another mooncalf daydream—hadn’t he grown out of them yet? “I don’t want to go,” he said at last.
Jiriki squatted beside him, poised as gracefully as a hunting bird upon a branch. “I wish that you would, Seoman,” he said at last. “I cannot force you and I will not plead, but Amerasu will be there. It is rare indeed for her to ask to speak to our people, except when it is the Day of Year-Dancing.”
Simon felt his interest quicken. Perhaps Amerasu was going to speak on his behalf, order them to let him go! But if that was the case, why hadn’t he been asked to come?
He feigned indifference. Whatever else occurred, he was steadily learning Sithi ways. “There you go about Year-Dancing again, Jiriki,” he said. “But you have never told me what it means. I saw the Year-Dancing grove, you know.”
Jiriki appeared to be suppressing a smile. “Not very closely, I think. But come, Seoman, you are playing a game. Some other time I will tell you what I can of the responsibilities of our family’s house, but now I must go. You, too, if you plan to accompany me.”
Simon tossed the piece of chewed-upon bark over his shoulder. “I’ll go if I can sit near the door. And if I don’t have to speak.”
“You can sit wherever you please, Snowlock. You are a prisoner, perhaps, but an honored one. My people are trying to make your time here endurable. As to the rest, I have no say over what you may be asked. Come, you are almost grown, manchild. Do not be afraid to stand for yourself.”
Simon frowned, considering. “Lead on, then,” he said.
They stopped before the doorway of the great living tent. The butter-flies were agitated, fluttering their spangled wings so that shifting patterns colored shadow rippled across the face of the Yásira like wind through afield of wheat- The papery rustle of their gentle commingling filled the whole glen. Suddenly unwilling to proceed through the door, Simon pulled back, shaking himself free of Jiriki’s companionable arm.
“I don’t want to hear anything bad,” he said. There was a cold heaviness in the pit of his stomach, the same as he had felt when he expected punishment from Rachel or the Master of Scullions. “I don’t want to be shouted at.”
Jiriki looked at him quizzically “No one will shout, Seoman. That is not our way, we Zida’ya. This may be nothing to do with you at all.”
Simon shook his head, embarrassed. “Sorry. Of course.” He took a deep breath and shrugged nervously, then waited until Jiriki gently took his arm once more and steered him toward the Yásira’s rose-entwined doorway. A thousand, thousand butterfly wings hissed like a dry wind as Simon and his companion stepped through into the vast bowl of multi-hued light.
Likimeya and Shima’onari, as before, were seated at the center of the room on low couches near the jutting finger-stone. Amerasu sat between them on a higher couch, the hood other pale gray robe thrown back. Her snowy white hair, unbound, spread in a soft cloud upon her shoulders. She wore a sash of bright blue around her slender waist, but no other ornamentation or jewelry.
As Simon stared, her eyes passed briefly across his. If he hoped for a helpful smile or a reassuring nod, he was disappointed; her gaze slid by as though he were just one unexceptional tree in a great forest. His heart sank. If any ideas remained about Amerasu’s being concerned with moon-calf Simon’s fate, he decided, it was time to put them away.
Beside Amerasu, on a pedestal of dull gray rock, stood a curious object—a disk of some pale icy substance, mounted on a broad stand of dark and shiny witchwood wrought with twining Sithi carvings. Simon thought it a table-mirror—he had heard that some great ladies possessed them—but, oddly, it did not seem to reflect. The disk’s edges were sharp as knives, like a sugar-sweet that had been sucked to near-transparency. Its color was the frosty near-white of a winter moon, but other, deeper hues seemed to move sleepily within it. A wide, shallow bowl of the same translucent substance lay before the stone disk, nestled in the carved stand.
Simon could not stare at the thing too long. The changing colors disturbed him. in some strange manner, the shifting stone reminded him of the gray sword Sorrow, and that was a memory he did not wish reawa
kened. He turned his head away and looked slowly around the great chamber.
As Jiriki had suggested, all the residents of Jao é-Tinukai’i seemed to have come to the Yásira this afternoon. Dressed in their emphatically colorful manner, plumed like rare birds, still the golden-eyed Sithi seemed unusually reserved, even by the standards of a retiring folk. Many eyes had turned toward Simon and Jiriki upon their entrance, but no one gaze had lingered long; the attention of all assembled seemed fixed on the three figures at the center of the vast tree-chamber. Glad of the anonymity, Simon chose a place on the outskirts of the silent crowd for Jiriki and himself to sit. He did not see Aditu anywhere, but he knew she would be hard to pick out in the midst of such an array.
For a long time there was no movement or speech, although it seemed to Simon that there were hidden currents moving just beneath his own understanding, subtle communications shared by everyone in the room but him. Still, he was not so insensitive that he failed to perceive the tension of the quiet Sithi, the clear sense of uneasy anticipation. There was a sharpness to the air, as before a lightning storm.
He had begun to wonder if they would go on this way all afternoon, like a group of cat-rivals gathered on a wall, silently staring each other down, when at last Shima’onari rose and began to speak. This time, the master of Jao é-Tinukai’i did not bother with Simon’s own Westerling tongue, but used the musical Sithi speech. He spoke for some while, accompanying his soliloquy with graceful hand gestures, the sleeves of his pale yellow robe fluttering as he emphasized his words. To Simon, it was only confusion piled atop incomprehensibility.
