The Dragonbone Chair

by Tad Williams

“He is one of Elias’ spies!” hissed one of the northern lords, and others echoed him.

  Isgrimnur stood. “He is here because I brought him, Josua,” the duke growled. “He was waiting for us on our road to Vestvennby—knew where we were bound, and knew before we did that we would return here. He said that one way or another he was coming to speak to you.”

  “And that it would only be better for everyone if I arrived as soon as was possible,” the old man finished, fixing his luminous blue eyes on the prince. “I have things of importance to tell you—to tell you all.” He turned his disturbing gaze along the length of the table, and the whispering ceased in its wake. “You may listen or not, that is your choice…that is always the choice in matters like these.”

  “These are children’s riddles, man,” mocked Devasalles. “Whoever are you, and what do you know of the things we debate? In Nabban,” he smiled up at Josua, “we would send this old fool to the Vilderivan Brothers, whose purview is the care of lunatics.”

  “We are not speaking of southern matters here, Baron,” the old man said, with a smile cold as a row of icicles, “though soon the south, too, will feel chill fingers at its throat.”

  “Enough!” Josua cried. “Speak now, or I shall have you put in chains as a spy indeed. Who are you, and what is your business with us?!”

  The old man nodded stiffly. “Your pardon. I am long out of practice with the ways of courts. Jarnauga is my name, late of Tungoldyr.”

  “Jarnauga!” Binabik said, climbing back onto his chair to peer at the new arrival. “Amazing! Jarnauga! Ho, I am Binabik! I was for long apprenticing with Ookequk!”

  The old man pinned the troll with his bright, steely eyes. “Yes. We shall talk, and soon. But first I have business in this hall, with these men.” He stood straight, facing the prince’s chair.

  “King Elias is the enemy, I heard the young Hernystirman say, and I heard others echo him. You are all like mice, who speak in hushed tones of the terrible cat, and dream in the walls of doing away with him someday. Not a one of you realizes that it is not the cat who is the problem, but the master who brought him in to kill mice.”

  Josua leaned forward, displaying reluctant interest. “Are you saying that Elias himself is someone’s pawn? Who? That devil Pryrates, I suppose?”

  “Pryrates presumes to deviltry,” the old man sneered, “but he is a child. I speak of one to whom the lives of kings are flitting moments…one who will take away far more than your lands.”

  The men began to talk among themselves. “Has this mad monk broken in upon us to lecture us on the works of the Devil?” one of the barons cried. “It is no secret to us that the Arch-fiend uses men for his purposes.”

  “I do not speak of your Aedonite master-demon,” Jarnauga said, then turned his gaze back to the prince’s tall chair. “I speak of the true master-demon of Osten Ard, who is as real as this stone,” he squatted and slapped a palm on the floor, “and as much a part of our land.”

  “Blasphemy!” someone shouted. “Throw him out!”

  “No, let him speak!”

  “Speak up, old man!”

  Jarnauga raised his hands. “I am not some mad, half-frozen holy man come to save your imperiled souls.” He pinched his mouth in a bleak smile. “I come to you as one of the League of the Scroll, one who has lived his life beside—and spent that life watching—the deadly mountain called Stormspike. We of the League of the Scroll, as the troll can confirm for you, have for long kept vigil while others slept. Now I come to fulfill a vow made long-ago…and to tell you things you will wish you had never heard.”

  A nervous silence fell over the hall as the old man walked across the room and pushed open the door that led to the courtyard. The howl of the wind, that had been only a dim moan, was loud in everyone’s ears.

  “Yuven-month!” Jarnauga said. “It is only weeks till Midsummer! Listen; can a king, even the High King, do this?!” A swirl of rain blew past him like smoke. “There are fur-clad Hunën, giants, a-hunting men in the Wealdhelm. Bukken crawl from the cold earth to attack armed soldiers on the Frostmarch, and the forge fires of Stormspike in the north burn all night long. I myself have watched the glow against the sky, and heard the icy hammers falling! How do you think Elias has caused all this? Do you not see that there is a black, fell winter coming down on you out of all season, beyond all your power of understanding?”

  Isgrimnur stood again, round face pale, eyes squinting. “What then, man, what? Are you saying, Udun One-Eye help me, that we are fighting…the White Foxes out of old legends?” Behind him was a chorus of whispered questions and shocked mumblings.

  Jarnauga stared at the duke, and his seamed face softened with an expression that might have been pity, or sorrow. “Ah, Duke Isgrimnur, bad as the White Foxes—who some know as the Norns—bad as they would be, it would be a boon to us if it were the whole case. But I tell you that Utuk’ku, the queen of the Norns herself, mistress of the dreadful mountain Sturmrspeik, is no more the guiding hand than is Elias.”

  “Hold, man, just hold your tongue a moment.” Devasalles leaped up angrily, robes billowing. “Prince Josua, forgive me, but it is bad enough this madman walks in and disrupts the council, stealing away the floor with no explanation of who or what he is, but now, as emissary for Duke Leobardis, I must waste my time listening to northern bogey tales? This is insufferable!”

  As the hubbub of argument rose again, Simon felt a strange, exciting chill. To think that he and Binabik had been in the center of it all, in the middle of a tale that would boggle anything Shem Horsegroom could devise! But as he thought of the story he might tell beside the fire one day, he remembered the muzzles of the Norn hounds, and the pale faces in the dark mountain of his dreams, and again, not for the first time or the last, wished desperately that he was back in the Hayholt kitchen, that nothing had changed, that nothing would ever change…

  Old Bishop Anodis, who had been watching the new arrival with the keen, fierce gaze of a gull confronting a newcomer to his favorite scavenging ground, arose.

  “I must say, and I feel no shame in admitting it, that I have thought very little of this…this Raed. Elias has perhaps made mistakes, but His Holiness the Lector Ranessin has offered to mediate, to try and find a way to bring peace between Aedonites, including, of course, their honorable pagan allies,” he nodded perfunctorily in the direction of Gwythinn and his men, “but all I have heard is talk of war, and the spilling of Aedonite blood in revenge for petty insults.”

  “Petty insults?!” Isgrimnur fumed. “You call the theft of my duchy a petty insult, Bishop? Let you come home to find your church a…a damned Hyrka stable, or a nest of trolls, and see if you find it a ‘petty insult’!”

  “Nest of trolls?!” said Binabik, rising.

  “And this only proves my point,” Anodis snapped, wielding the Tree in his knotted hand as though it were a knife to hold off bandits. “See, you shout at a churchman when he seeks to correct your foolish ways.” He drew himself up. “And now,” he waved the Tree at Jarnauga, “now this…this…bearded hermit comes to tell tales of witches and demons, and drive a wedge larger still between the only sons of the High King! Who does that benefit, eh? Who does this Jarnauga serve, eh?” Red and shaking, the bishop collapsed into his chair, taking the flagon of water his acolyte brought and drinking thirstily.

  Simon reached up and pulled on Binabik’s arm until his friend sat down.

  “I am still wanting an explanation for ‘nest of trolls,’ ” he growled under his breath, but at Simon’s frown he pursed his lips and was silent.

  Prince Josua sat staring for some time at Jarnauga, who bore the prince’s eye as calmly as a cat.

  “I have heard of the League of the Scroll,” Josua said at last. “It was not my understanding that its adherents tried to influence the ways of rulers and states.”

  “I have not heard of this so-called League,” Devasalles said, “and I think it is time this strange old man told us who sends him, and what it
is that endangers us—if it is not the High King as many here seem to think it is.”

  “For once I agree with the Nabbanman,” Gwythinn of Hernystir called out. “Let Jarnauga tell us all, that we may decide whether to believe him or drive him from the hall.”

  In the highest chair Prince Josua nodded. The old Rimmersman looked around at the expectant features, then raised his hands in a strange gesture, touching fingers to thumbs as though to hold a slender thread before his eyes.

  “Good,” he said. “Good. Thus we are on the first steps of the road, the only road that might possibly lead us out of the mountain’s black shadow.” He spread his arms, as though drawing the invisible thread out to great length, then opened his hands wide.

  “The story of the League is only a small story,” he began, “but it fits inside a larger story.” Again he walked to the door, which a page had closed to keep the warmth in the high-raftered hall. Jarnauga touched the heavy frame. “We can close this door, but that does not make the snow and hail go away. In the same manner, you can call me mad—that will not make he who menaces you go away, either. He has waited five centuries to take back what he feels is his, and his hand is colder and stronger than any of you can understand. His is the larger story, inside which the tale of the League is nestled like an old arrowhead stuck in a great tree, over which the bark has grown thick until the arrow itself is hidden.

  “The winter that is upon us now, the winter that has dethroned summer from its rightful place, is his. It is the symbol of his power as he reaches out and begins to shape things to his will.”

  Jarnauga stared fiercely, and for a stretching moment there was no sound but the wind’s lonely singing beyond the walls.

  “Who?” Josua asked at last. “What is the name of this thing, old man?”

  “I thought you might know. Prince,” Jarnauga replied. “You are a man who has learned many things.

  “Your enemy…our enemy…died five hundred years ago; the place where his first life ended lies beneath the foundations of the castle where your life began. He is Ineluki…the Storm King.”

  33

  From the Ashes of Asu’a

  ’’Stories within stories,” Jarnauga intoned, shucking off his wolfskin cloak. The firelight revealed the twining snakes that banded the skin of his long arms. occasioning fresh whispers. “I cannot tell you the story of the League of the Scroll without you first understanding the fall of Asu’a. The end of King Eahlstan Fiskerne, he who constructed the League as a wall against darkness, cannot be separated from the end of Ineluki, whose darkness is now upon us. Thus, the stories are woven together, one strand upon the other. If you pull a single thread away it is just that—a single thread. I defy any man to read a tapestry from a solitary strand.”

  As he spoke Jarnauga ran slender fingers through his knotted beard, smoothing it and arranging its great length as though it were a kind of tapestry itself, and might lend some sense to his story.

  “Long before men came to Osten Ard,” he said, “the Sithi were here. There is no man or woman who knows when they came, but they did, traveling out of the east, out of the rising sun, until they settled at last in this land.

  “In Erkynland, on the site where the Hayholt now stands, they made their greatest work of hands, the castle Asu’a. They delved deep into the earth, laying its foundations into the very bones of Osten Ard, then built walls of ivory and pearl and opal stretching up higher than the trees, and towers that stood against the sky like the masts of ships, towers from which all of Osten Ard could be seen, and from which the sharp-eyed Sithi could watch the great ocean bounding the western shore.

  “For countless years they lived alone in Osten Ard, building their fragile cities on the mountain slopes and in the deeps of the forest, delicate hill-cities like icy flowers, and forest settlements like earthbound boats with many sails. But Asu’a was the greatest, and the long-lived kings of the Sithi ruled there.

  “When men first came, it was as simple herders and fishermen, wandering over some long-vanished land bridge in the northern wastes, fleeing some fearful thing behind them in the west, perhaps, or merely looking for new grazing lands. The Sithi paid them no more mind than they did the deer or the wild cattle, even when the swift generations multiplied, and Man began to build himself stone cities, and forge bronze tools and weapons. As long as they did not take what was the Sithi’s, and stayed on the lands the Erf-king had allowed them, there was peace between the peoples.

  “Even the empire of Nabban in the south, glorious in its arts and its arms, that put all mortal men of Osten Ard beneath its long shadow, caused no concern to the Sithi, or their king, Iyu’unigato.”

  Here Jarnauga looked about for something to drink, and as a page filled a flagon for him the listeners exchanged looks and puzzled murmurs.

  “Doctor Morgenes told me about this,” Simon whispered to Binabik. The troll smiled and nodded, but appeared distracted by thoughts of his own.

  “There is no need, I’m sure,” Jarnauga resumed, his voice raised to recapture the attention of the muttering throng, “to speak about the changes that came with the first Rimmersmen. There will be old wounds enough that shall be opened without dwelling on what happened when they found their way across the water, out of the west.

  “But what must be spoken of is the march of King Fingil down out of the north, and the fall of Asu’a. Five long centuries have covered much of the story with the debris of time and ignorance, but when Eahlstan the Fisher King chartered our League two hundred years ago, it was to find and preserve such knowledge. Thus, there are things I will now tell you that most of you have never heard.

  “At the Battle of the Knock, and Ach Samrath Plain, and in the Utanwash—at one place and another Fingil and his armies triumphed, and drew the noose tight around Asu’a. The Sithi lost their last human allies at the Summerfield, Ach Samrath, and with the Hernystiri routed there were none among the Sithi who could stand against northern iron.”

  “Routed by treachery!” said Prince Gwythinn, red-faced and trembling. “Naught but treachery could drive Sinnach from the field—the corruption of the Thrithings-men, stabbing the Hernystiri in the back in hopes of some crumbs from Fingil’s bloody table!”

  “Gwythinn!” Josua barked. “You have heard Jarnauga: these are old wounds. There is not even a Thrithings-man present. Would you leap across the table and strike Duke Isgrimnur, since he is a Rimmersman?”

  “Let him try,” growled Einskaldir.

  Gwythinn shook his head, abashed. “You are right, Josua. Jarnauga, my apologies.” The old man nodded, and Lluth’s son turned to Isgrimnur. “And of course, good Duke, we are here the thickest of allies.”

  “No offense was taken, young sir,” Isgrimnur smiled, but beside him Einskaldir caught Gwythinn’s eyes and two stared hard at each other.

  “So it was,” Jarnauga continued, as if there had been no interruption, “that in Asu’a, even though its walls were bound with old and powerful magics, home and heart of the Sithi race though it was, still there was a sense that things were at their ending, that the upstart mortals would throw down the house of their elders, and that the Sithi would pass from Osten Ard forever.

  “Iyu’unigato the king dressed himself all in mourning white, and with his queen Amerasu spent the long days of Fingil’s siege—which quickly became months, then years, for even cold steel could not throw down the work of the Sithi overnight—listening to melancholy music, and the poetry of the Sithi’s brighter days in Osten Ard. From the outside, in the camps of the besieging northerners, Asu’a still seemed a place of great power, wrapped tight in glamour and sorceries…but inside the gleaming husk the heart was rotting away.

  “There was one among the Sithi, though, who wished it otherwise, and was not content to spend his last days keening over lost peace and ravaged innocence. He was Iyu’unigato’s son, and his name was…Ineluki.”

  Without saying a word, but not without a good deal of noise, Bishop Anodis was gathe
ring his things together. He waved his hand for his young acolyte, who helped him to his feet.

  “Your pardon, Jarnauga,” Josua said. “Bishop Anodis, why are you leaving us? As you can hear, there are dreadful things moving against us. We look for your wisdom and the strength of Mother Church to guide us.”

  Anodis looked up crossly. “And I should sit here, in the midst of a war council I never approved of, and listen to this…this wild man speaking the names of heathen demons? Look at you all—hanging on his words as though they were every one from the Book of the Aedon.”

  “Those of whom I speak were born long before your holy book, Bishop,” said Jarnauga mildly, but there was a fierce, combative tilt to his head.

  “It is fantasy,” Anodis grunted. “You think me a sour old man, but I tell you that such children’s tales shall lead you into perdition. The greater sadness, though, is that you may drag all our land down with you.”

  He sketched the sign of the Tree before him like a shield, then tottered out on the arm of the young priest-“Fantasy or no, demons or Sithi,” Josua said, rising from his chair to survey the assembly, “this is my hall, and I have asked this man to tell us what he knows. There will be no further interruptions.” He cast his eye about the shadowed room, then sat down, satisfied.

  “Well you should attend now,” Jarnauga said, “for this is the meat of what I bring you. I speak of Ineluki, son of Iyu’unigato the Erl-king.

  “Ineluki, whose name means ‘here is bright speech’ in the Sithi tongue, was the younger of the king’s two sons. Together with his older brother Hakatri he had fought the worm Hidohebhi the Black, mother of the red worm Shurakai that Prester John slew, and mother as well of Igjarjuk, the white dragon of the north.”

  “Your pardon, Jarnauga?” One of Gwythinn’s companions stood. ‘This is strange to us, but perhaps not all unfamiliar. We Hernystiri know stories of a black dragon, the mother of all worms, but in them she was called Drochnathair.”