The Dragonbone Chair

by Tad Williams

  Haestan was next up, grumbling and cursing. The two Sithi had to worry his bulky form out of the opening like a cork from a wine jug. Binabik appeared on his heels—the nimble troll had easily caught up with the Erkynlander—followed within a short while by Sludig and Grimmric. The three remaining Sithi clambered lithely up behind them.

  No sooner had the last of the Fair Ones issued from the tunnel than the party went forward again, passing through the rock doorway and into a short passage beyond where they could at last stand upright. Lamps of some kind of milky golden crystal or glass had been set into niches in the wall, and their flickering light was enough to mask the glow of the door at the far end until they were almost upon it. One of the Sithi stepped to this gap in the stone, which unlike the last was shrouded with a hanging of dark cloth, and called out. An instant later two more of their kindred pushed past the cloth. Each of them held a short sword made of what looked to be some dark metal. They stood silently alert, betraying no surprise or curiosity, as the leader of the captors spoke.

  “We will bind your hands.” As he said this the other Sithi produced coiled lengths of shiny black cord from beneath their clothing.

  Sludig stepped back a pace, bumping into one of the guards, who made a quiet hissing noise but offered no violence.

  “No,” the Rimmersman said, his voice dangerously tight, “I will not let them. No man will bind me against my will,”

  “Nor me,” Haestan said.

  “Don’t be foolish,” Simon said, and stepped forward, offering his own crossed wrists. “We will probably get out of this with our skins, but not if you start a fight.”

  “Simon is speaking rightly,” Binabik said, “I, too, will let them tie me. You are not having sense if you do otherwise. Simon’s White Arrow is genuine. It is being the reason they did not kill us, and why they brought us here.”

  “But how can we…” Sludig began.

  “Also,” Binabik cut him off, “what would you plan for doing? Even if these folk here you fought and overcame, and the others who most likely wait beyond, what then? Should you slide downward through the tunnel you would no doubt be crashing onto Qantaqa. who waits at the bottom. I think such a startling thing would give you little chance to tell her you were no enemy.”

  Sludig looked down at the troll for a moment, plainly thinking of the possibilities attendant on being mistaken by a frightened Qantaqa. At last he called up a weak smile.

  “Again you win, troll.” He put his hands forward.

  The black cords were cool and scaly like snakeskin, but flexible as oiled leather thongs. Simon found that a couple of loops held his hands as immobile as if they had been caught in an ogre’s fist. When the Sithi had finished with the others, the group was led forward once more, through the cloth-covered door and into a dazzling wash of light.

  It seemed, when Simon tried to remember it later, as though they had stepped through the clouds and into a brilliant, shining land—some nearer neighbor to the sun. After the bleak snows and the featureless tunnels, the difference was like the wild carousal of the Ninth Day festival after the eight gray days that preceded.

  Light, and its handmaiden color, was everywhere. The room was a rock chamber less than twice a man’s height but very wide. Tree roots twined graspingly down the walls. In one comer, thirty paces away, a glinting stream of water ran down a grooved stone to arch, splashing, into a pond cupped in a natural basin of stone. The delicate chime of its fall wound in and out of the strange, subtle music that filled the air.

  Lamps like the ones that lined the stone hallway were everywhere, casting, according to their making, beams of yellow, ivory, pale chalky blue or rose, painting the stone grotto with a hundred different hues where they ran against each other. In the center of the floor, not far from the edge of the rippling pool, a fire was animatedly ablaze, the smoke vanishing into a crevice above.

  “Elysia, Mother of the Holy Aedon,” Sludig said, awed.

  “Never know there was a rabbit hole here,” Grimmric shook his head, “an’ they got a palace.”

  Perhaps a dozen Sithi, all male as far as Simon could tell on brief inspection, were ranged about the chamber. Several of them sat calmly before another pair seated on a high stone. One held a long flutelike instrument and the other was singing;-the music was so strange to Simon that it took him a few moments before he could separate voice from flute, and the continuing melody of the waterfall from either. Still, the exquisite, quavering song they played tugged achingly at his heart even as it lifted the short hairs on the back of his neck. Despite the unfamiliarity there was something in it that made him want to sink down on the spot, never to move again while such gentle music lasted.

  Those not gathered around the musicians were talking quietly, or merely lying on their backs staring upward, as if they could gaze out through the solid stone of the hillside and into the night sky beyond. Most turned briefly to survey the captives at the chamber’s entrance, but in the manner, Simon felt, that a man listening to a good story might lift his head to watch a cat walk past.

  He and his companions, who had been quite unprepared for this, stood gaping. The leader of their guards crossed the room toward the far wall where two more figures sat facing each other over a table that was a tall, flattened knob of shiny white stone. Both stared intently at something on the tabletop, lit by another of the strange lamps set in a niche in the rock face close by. The warder stopped and stood quietly a short distance away, as though waiting to be recognized.

  The Sitha who sat with his back to the companions was dressed in a beautiful high-collared jacket of leaf-green, with pants and high boots of the same shade. His long, braided hair was of a red even more fiery than Simon’s, and his hands, as he moved something across the tabletop, glittered with rings. Across from him, watching the movements of his hand intently, sat one wrapped in a loose white robe rucked up around his braceleted forearms, his hair a pale shade of heather or blue. A crow’s feather, shiny black, hung down before one ear. Even as Simon watched, the white-gowned Sitha flashed his teeth and spoke to his companion, then reached out to slide some object forward. Simon’s stare grew more intense; he blinked.

  It was the very Sitha-man he had rescued from the cotsman’s trap. He was positive.

  “That’s him!” he whispered excitedly to Binabik. “The one whose arrow it is!”

  Even as he spoke, their warder approached the table, and the one Simon recognized looked up. The warder quickly said something, but the white-robed one only flicked a glance over toward the prisoners and waved a dismissive hand, returning his attention to what Simon had at last decided was either some kind of map or gaming board. His red-haired companion never turned, and a moment later their captor came back.

  “You must wait until Lord Jiriki has finished.” He brought his expressionless gaze to bear on Simon. “Since the arrow is yours, you may go unbound. The others may not.”

  Simon, only a stone’s throw from the one who had made the debt-pledge but still being ignored, was tempted to push forward and confront the white-robed Sitha—Jereekee, if that was his name. Binabik, who felt his tension, bumped him in warning.

  “If the others must remain tied, then so will I,” Simon said at last. For the first time he thought he saw something unexpected slide across his captor’s face: a look of discomfort. “It is a White Arrow,” the guard leader said. “You should not be prisoned unless it is proven you have come by it through foul means, but I cannot free your companions.”

  “Then I will stay tied,” Simon said firmly.

  The other stared at him for a moment, then shuttered his eyes in a slow, reptilian blink, reopening them to smile unhappily.

  “So it must be,” he said. “I do not like binding a bearer of the Staj’a Ame, but I see little choice. On my heart it will be, right or wrong.” Then, strangely, he bobbed his head in an almost respectful manner, fixing his luminous eyes on Simon’s. “My mother named me An’nai,” he said.

  Caught o
ff balance, Simon let a long moment pass until he felt Binabik’s boot grinding on his toe. “Oh!” he said, “I am…my mother named me Simon…Seoman, actually.” Then, seeing the Sitha nod, satisfied, he hurriedly added: “and these are my companions—Binabik of Yiqanuc, Haestan and Grimmric of Erkynland, and Sludig of Rimmersgard.”

  Perhaps, Simon thought, since the Sitha had seemed to place such importance on the sharing of his name, this forced introduction would help protect his companions.

  An’nai bobbed his head again and glided off, once more taking up a position near the stone table. His fellow guards, after lending surprisingly gentle help to the bound companions so that they could sit down, dispersed around the cavern.

  Simon and the others talked quietly for a long while, hushed by the strange twining music more than their situation.

  “Still,” said Sludig at last, after complaining bitterly about the treatment they had received, “at least we are alive. Few who encounter demons are so lucky.”

  “Y’r a top, Simon-lad!” Haestan laughed. “A spinnin’ top! Got the Fair Folk bowin’ and scrapin’. Let’s be sure t’ask for bag o’ gold ‘fore we go on our way.”

  “Bowing and scraping!” Simon smirked in unhappy self-mockery. “Am I free? Am I unbound? Am I eating supper?”

  “True.” Haestan shook his head sadly. “A bit’d go down nice. And a jar or so.”

  “I am thinking we will receive nothing until Jiriki sees us,” Binabik said, “but if he is indeed the person that Simon rescued, we may yet be eating well.”

  “Do you think he’s important?” Simon asked. “An’nai called him ‘Lord Jiriki.’”

  “If there is not more than one living of that name…” Binabik began, but was interrupted by An’nai’s return. He was accompanied by the selfsame Jiriki, who clutched in his hand the White Arrow.

  “Please,” Jiriki called two of the other Sithi over, “untie them now.” He turned and said something rapid in his flowing tongue. The musical words somehow had the sound of a reproach. An’nai accepted Jiriki’s admonishment expressionlessly, if such it was, only lowering his eyes.

  Simon, carefully watching, was certain that minus that effects of hanging in a trap, and the bruises and gashes of the cotsman’s attack, this was the same Sitha.

  Jiriki waved a hand and An’nai walked away. Because of his confident movements, and the deference that those around him showed, Simon had at first taken him to be older, or at least of an age with the other Sithi. Now, despite the strange timelessness of their golden faces, Simon suddenly felt that the Lord Jiriki was, by Sithi standards anyway, still young.

  As the newly freed prisoners rubbed feeling back into their wrists, Jiriki held up the arrow. “Forgive the wait. An’nai misjudged, because he knows how seriously I take the playing of shent.” His eyes moved from the companions to the arrow and back again. “I never thought to meet you again, Seoman,” he said with a birdlike chin tilt, and a smile that never quite reached his eyes. “But a debt is a debt…and the Staj’a Ame is even more. You have changed since our first meeting. Then you looked more like one of the forest animals than like your human kindred. You seemed lost, in many ways.” His gaze burned brightly.

  “You’ve changed, too,” Simon said.

  A shadow of pain crossed Jiriki’s angular face. “Three nights and two days I spent hanging in that mortal’s trap. Soon I would have died, even if the woodsman had not come—from shame, that is.” His expression changed, as if he had shut his hurt beneath a lid. “Come,” he said, “we must give you food. It is unfortunate, but we cannot feed you as well as I would like. We bring little with us to our,” he gestured around the chamber while searching for the proper word, “hunting lodge.” Although he was far more fluent with the Westerling speech than Simon would ever have dreamed at their first meeting, still there was something halting yet precise in his manner that indicated how alien that tongue was to him.

  “You are here to…hunt?” Simon asked as they were led forward to sit before the fire. “What is it you hunt? The hills seem so barren now.”

  “Ah, but the game we seek is more plentiful than ever,” Jiriki said, walking past them and toward a row of objects draped with a shimmering cloth, set along one wall of the cavern.

  The green-clad, red-haired one stood up from the gaming table, where Jiriki’s place had been taken by An’nai, and spoke in tones both questioning and perhaps angry, all in the Sithi-speech.

  “Only showing our visitors the fruits of our hunt. Uncle Khendraja’aro,” Jiriki said cheerfully, but again Simon felt something missing from the Sitha’s smile.

  Jiriki crouched gracefully beside the row of covered objects, alighting like a sea bird. With a flourish he pulled the shroud away, revealing a row of half a dozen large, white-haired heads, dead features frozen in expressions of snarling hatred.

  “Chukku’s Stones!” Binabik swore as the others gasped.

  It took Simon a shocked instant to recognize the leathery-skinned faces for what they were.

  “Giants!” he said at last. “Hunën!”

  “Yes,” Prince Jiriki said, then turned. There was a flash of danger in his voice. “And you, trespassing mortals…what do you hunt in my father’s hills?”

  38

  Songs of the Eldest

  Deornoth woke in chill darkness, sweating. The wind hissed and wailed outside, clawing at the shuttered windows like a flight of the lonely dead. His heart leaped as he saw the dark shape looming over him, silhouetted by the embers in the fireplace.

  “Captain!” It was one of the men, voice a panicked whisper. “There’s someone comin’ down on th’ gate! Armed men!”

  “God’s Tree!” he cursed, struggling into his boots. Shrugging his mailshirt over his head, he snatched up his scabbard and helmet and followed the soldier out.

  Four more men were huddled on the top platform of the gatehouse, hunkered down behind the rampart. The wind pushed him staggering, and he quickly dropped into a crouch.

  “There, Captain!” It was the one who had awakened him. “Comin’ up th’ road through th’ town.” He leaned past Deornoth to point.

  The moonlight, shining through the streaming clouds, silvered the shabby thatching of Naglimund-town’s huddled roofs. There was indeed movement on the road, a small company of horsemen, perhaps a dozen in number.

  The men on the gatehouse watched the riders’ slow approach. One of the soldiers groaned quietly. Deornoth, too, felt the ache of waiting. It was better when the horns were shrilling, and the field was full of shouting.

  It is this waiting that has unmanned us all, Deornoth thought. Once we have been blooded again, our Naglimunders will do proudly.

  “There must be more, a-hidin’!” one of the soldiers breathed. “What should we do?” Even with the crying of the wind, his voice seemed loud. How could the approaching riders not hear?

  “Nothing,” Deornoth said firmly. “Wait.”

  The waiting seemed to last days. As the horsemen drew nearer, the moon picked out shining spearpoints and the gleam of helmets. The silent riders reined in before the massive gate, and sat as if listening.

  One of the gatemen stood, drawing his bow and sighting on the breast of the leading rider. Even as Deornoth leaped toward him, seeing the straining lines on the guardsman’s face, his desperate eye, there came a loud pounding from below. Deornoth caught the bow arm and forced it up; the arrow spat forth and out into the windy darkness over the town.

  “By the good God, open your door!” a man shouted, and once more a spear-butt was thumped against the timbers. It was a Rimmersman’s voice, with an edge almost, Deornoth thought, of madness. “Are you all asleep?! Let us in! I am Isorn, Isgrimnur’s son, escaped from the hand of our enemies.”

  “Look! See how the clouds break! Don’t you think that is a hopeful sign, Velligis?” As he spoke. Duke Leobardis swung his pointing hand in a broad arc to the cabin’s open window, nearly smacking his mailed arm against the head of his sweating
squire in the process. The squire ducked, swallowing a silent oath as he juggled the duke’s greaves, and turned to cuff a young page who had not gotten out of his way fast enough. The page, who had been trying to make himself as unobtrusive as possible in the ship’s crowded cabin, renewed his desperate efforts to shrink out of sight entirely.

  “Perhaps we are, in some way, the thin end of the wedge that will put an end to this madness.” Leobardis clanked to the window, his squire scrambling along the floor behind him, struggling to hold a half-fastened greave in place. The gravid sky did indeed show long, rippled streaks of blue, as if Crannhyr’s dark and bulky cliffs, looming over the bay where Leobardis’ flagship Emettin’s Jewel rolled at close anchor, caught and tore at the lowering clouds.

  Velligis, a great round man in golden escritorial robes, stumped to the window to stand at the duke’s side.

  “How, my lord, can throwing oil on the fire help to extinguish it? It is, if you will pardon my forwardness, folly to think so.”

  The hammering of the muster-drum echoed across the water. Leobardis brushed lank white hair out of his eyes. “I know how the lector feels,” he said, “and I know he directs you, beloved Escritor, to try and persuade me out of this. His Sacredness’ love of peace…well, it is admirable, but it will not come about by talking.”

  Velligis opened a small brass casket and shook out a sugar-sweet, which he delicately placed on his tongue. “This is perilously close to sacrilege. Duke Leobardis. Is prayer ‘talking’? Is the intercession of His Sacredness the Lector Ranessin somehow of less validity than the force of your armies? If that is so, then our faith in the word of Usires, and of his first acolyte Sutrines, is a mockery.” The escritor sighed heavily, and sucked.

  The duke’s cheeks pinkened; he waved the squire away, bending creakily to fasten the last buckle himself, then waved for his surcoat of rich blue with the Benidrivine kingfisher gold-blazoned on the chest.

  “God bless me, Velligis,” he said testily, “but I haven’t the mind for arguing with you today. I have been pushed too far by the High King Elias, and now I must do what is needed.”