by Tad Williams
“He moved,” Josua said, striving to keep his voice level. “The Norn is alive. ”
“Not long,” Einskaldir said, raising his axe. Josua’s hand shot out, so that Naidel lay between the Rimmersman and his intended victim.
“No.” Josua motioned the others back. “It would be foolish to kill him.”
“It tried to kill us!” Isorn hissed. The duke’s son had just returned, bearing a torch he had lit with his flint-stone. “Think of what they did to Naglimund. ”
“I do not speak of mercy, ” Josua said, dropping the tip of his sword to rest on the Norn’s pale throat. “I speak of the chance to question a prisoner.”
As if from the pricking of his flesh, the Norn stirred. Several in the company gasped.
“You are too close, Josua!” Vorzheva cried. “Step away!”
The prince turned a cold look on her but did not move. He lowered Naidel’s point a little, pushing it against the prisoner’s breastbone. The Norn’s eyes fluttered open as he sucked a great rasp of breath past his blooded lips.
“Ai, Nakkiga,” the Norn said hoarsely, flexing his spidery fingers, “o‘do ’tke stazho....”
“But he’s heathen, Prince Josua,” Isorn said. “He can’t speak a human tongue. ”
Josua said nothing, but prodded again. The Norn’s eyes caught the torchlight, throwing back a strange violet reflection. The slitted gaze slid up the blade of the sword balanced on his slender chest until it settled at last on the prince.
“I speak,” the Norn said slowly. “I speak your tongue.” His voice was high and cold, brittle as a glass flute. “Soon it will be spoken only by the dead.” The creature sat up and swiveled his head, looking carefully all around him. The prince’s sword followed each movement. The Norn seemed jointed in strange places, his motions fluid where a mortal’s would be awkward, but elsewhere full of unexpected hitches. Several of those watching started away, frightened that the stranger was strong enough to move without show of pain, despite the bleeding ruin that had been his nose and the marks he bore of numerous other wounds.
“Gutrun, Vorzheva ...” Josua spoke without looking away from the prisoner. Beneath the web of drying blood, the Norn’s face seemed to glow like a moon. “You, too, Strangyeard,” the prince said. “The harper and Towser are alone. Go see to them and start a fire. Then make ready to depart. There is no use in our trying to hide now.”
“There never was, mortal man,” said the thing on the ground.
Vorzheva visibly bit back a response to Josua’s command. The two women turned away. Father Strangyeard followed after them, making the sign of the Tree and clucking worriedly.
“Now, hell-wight, speak. Why do you follow us?” Though his tone was harsh, Deornoth thought he saw a sort of fascination on the prince’s face.
“I will tell you nothing.” The thin lips parted in a smirk. “Pitiful, short-lived things. Are you not yet used to dying with your questions unanswered?”
Infuriated, Deornoth stepped forward and kicked at the thing’s side with his booted foot. The Norm grimaced, but showed no other sign of pain. “You are a devil-spawn, and devils are masters of lies,” Deornoth snarled. His head hurt fiercely, and the sight of this grinning, bony creature was almost too much to bear. He remembered them swarming through Naglimund like maggots and felt his gorge rising.
“Deornoth ... ” Josua said warningly, then addressed the prisoner once more. “If you are so mighty, why do your fellows not slay us and be done with it? Why waste your time on ones so much lower than you?”
“We will not wait much longer, never fear.” The Norn’s taunting voice took on a note of satisfaction. “You have caught me, but my fellows discovered all that we need to know. You may as well offer up your death-prayers to that little man-on-a-stick that you worship, for nothing will stop us now.”
Now it was Einskaldir who moved with a growl toward the Norn. “Dog! Blaspheming dog!”
“Silence,” Josua snapped. “He does it purposefully.” Deornoth laid a cautious hand on Einskaldir’s muscled arm. One did not grab heedlessly at the Rimmersman, who had a cold but swift temper. “Now,” Josua said, “what do you mean, ‘discovered what you need to know’? What might that be? Speak, or I shall let Einskaldir have you.”
The Norn laughed, the sound of wind in dry leaves, but Deornoth thought he had seen a change in the purple eyes when Josua spoke. It seemed the prince had struck close to some delicate spot. “Kill me, then—swiftly or slowly,” the prisoner taunted. “I will say no more. Your time—the time of all mortals, shifty and annoying as insects—is nearly over. Kill me. The Lightless Ones will sing of me in the lowest halls of Nakkiga. My children will remember my name with pride.”
“Children?” Isorn’s surprise was clear in his voice. The prisoner turned a look of icy contempt onto the blond northerner, but did not speak.
“But why?” Josua demanded. “Why should you ally yourself with mortals? And what threat are we to you, far up in your northern home? What does your Storm King gain from this madness?”
The Norn only stared.
“Speak, damn your pale soul to hell!”
Nothing.
Josua sighed. “Then what do we do with him?” he murmured, almost to himself.
“This!” Einskaldir stepped away from Deornoth’s restraining arm and lifted his axe. The Norn stared up at him for a silent heartbeat, angled face like a blood-smeared mask of ivory, before the Rimmersman brought the hand-axe around, shearing through the skull and smashing the prisoner back against the earth. The Norn’s thin frame began to writhe, doubling over, straightening, then snapping forward once more as though he were hinged in the middle. A fine mist of blood sprayed from his head. The death-throes were as horribly monotonous as the contortions of a smashed cricket. After several moments, Deornoth had to turn away.
“Curse you, Einskaldir,”Josua said at last, voice ragged with rage. “How dare you? I did not tell you to do that!”
“And if I didn’t, then what?” Einskaldir said. “Take him with us? Wake up with that grinning corpse-face over yours some night?” He seemed a little less sure than he sounded, but his words were stiff with anger.
“By the Good God, Rimmersman, can you never wait before you strike? If you have no respect for me, what of your Master Isgrimnur, who bade you obey me?” The prince leaned forward until his agonized face was only a hand’s breadth from Einskaldir’s bristling dark beard. The prince held Einskaldir’s eye, as though trying to see something hidden. Neither man spoke.
Staring at his prince’s profile, at Josua’s moon-painted face so full of fierceness and sorrow, Deornoth was reminded of a painting of Sir Camaris riding to the first Battle of the Thrithings. King John’s greatest knight had worn just such a look, proud and desperate as a starving hawk. Deornoth shook his head, trying to clear the shadows away. What a night of madness this had become!
Einskaldir turned aside first. “It was a monster,” he grumbled. “Now it is dead. Two of its fellows are wounded and driven away. I will go clean the fairy blood from my sword.”
“First you will bury the body,” Josua said, “Isorn, help Einskaldir. Search the Norn’s clothing for anything that might tell us more. God help us, we know so little.”
“Bury it?” Isorn was respectful but dubious.
“Let us not give away anything that might save us—including information.” Josua sounded tired of talking. “If the Norn’s fellows do not find the body, they may not know he is dead. They may wonder what he is telling us.”
Isorn nodded without much conviction and bent to the unpleasant task. Josua turned and took Deornoth by the arm.
“Come,” the prince said. “We must talk.”
They walked a little way from the clearing, staying within hearing of the campsite. The shards of night sky visible through the thick trees had gone dark blue, beginning to warm to dawn. A solitary bird whistled.
“Einskaldir means well, Prince Josua,” Deornoth said, breaking the
stillness between the two men. “He is fiery, impatient—but not a traitor.”
Josua turned to him in surprise. “Heaven save us, Deornoth, do you think I do not know? Why do you think I said so little? But Einskaldir acted rashly—I would have wished to hear more from the Norn, though the end would have to have been the same. I hate cold-blooded killing, but what would we have done with the murderous creature? Still, Einskaldir considers me too much a thinker to be a good warrior.” His laugh was melancholy. “He is probably correct.” The prince raised his hand to still Deornoth’s response. “But that is not why I wanted to speak alone. Einskaldir is my affair. No, I wanted to hear your thoughts on the Norn’s words.”
“Which, Highness?”
Josua sighed. “He said that his fellows had found what they wanted. Or learned what they wished to know. What could that mean?”
Deornoth shrugged. “My skull is still rattling, Prince Josua.”
“But you said yourself that there must be a reason that they haven’t killed us.” The prince sat down on the mossy trunk of a toppled tree, motioning the knight to join him. The bowl of sky was turning lavender overhead. “They send a walking dead man to come among us; they shoot arrows but don’t kill us, to prevent us from turning east—and now they send a few of their creatures to sneak into our camp like thieves. What do they want?”
No answer would come, no matter how hard Deornoth thought. He could not shake his memory free from the Norn’s mocking smile. But there had been another look, too, that momentary glimmer of unease...
“They fear...” Deornoth said, feeling the idea very close, “... they fear...”
“The swords,” Josua hissed. “Of course! What else would they fear?”
“But we have no magical sword,” Deornoth said.
“Perhaps they do not know that,” Josua said. “Perhaps that is one of the virtues of Thorn and Minneyar—that they are invisible to the Norns’ magic.” He slapped at his thigh. “Of course! They must be, or the Storm King would have found them and destroyed them! How else could weapons deadly to him still exist!?”
“But why have they tried to prevent our going east?”
The prince shrugged. “Who can say? We must think on this more, but I believe it is the answer. They fear we already have one or both of the swords and they are afraid to come against us until they know.”
Deornoth felt his heart sinking. “But you heard what the creature said. They know now.”
Josua’s smile faded. “True. Or at least they must be fairly sure. Still, it is a piece of knowledge that might still work in our favor, somehow. Somehow.” He stood. “But they are no longer afraid to approach us. We must travel even more swiftly. Come.”
Wondering how a company so injured and dispirited could make any greater haste, Deornoth followed the prince back through the dawn light to camp.
7
spreading Fires
The seagulls wheeling in the gray morning sky balefully echoed the creaking of the oarlocks. The rhythmic squeak, squeak, squeak of the oars was like an insistent finger digging at her side. Miriamele felt her anger building. At last, she turned on Cadrach in a fury.
“You ... you traitor!” she spat.
The monk goggled at her, his round face growing pale with alarm.
“What?” Cadrach looked as though he would have liked to move away, and quickly, but they were cramped together in the rowboat’s narrow stern. Lenti, Streáwe’s sullen servitor, watched them in irritation from the rowing bench where he and the other servant pulled languidly at the handles. “My lady ...” Cadrach began, “I don’t ...”
His feeble denials only made her angrier. “Do you think I’m a fool?” she snarled. “I am slow to realize, but if I think long enough, I get there. The count called you Padreic—and he’s not the first to call you by that name!”
“A confusion, lady. The other was a dying man, if you remember—maddened by pain, his life leaking out on the Inniscrich ...”
“You swine! And I suppose it’s a coincidence that Streáwe knew I had left the castle—practically before I knew I was going myself? You have had a fine time, haven’t you? Pulling both ends of the rope, that’s what you’ve been doing, isn’t it? First you took Vorzheva’s gold to escort me, then you’ve taken mine while we were on the road, borrowing for a jug of wine here, cadging a meal there...”
“I am only a poor man of God, my lady,” tried Cadrach gamely.
“Be quiet, you ... you treacherous drunkard! And you took gold from Count Streáwe, too, didn’t you? You let him know I was coming—I wondered why you kept sneaking away when we were first in Ansis Pellipé. And while I was prisoner, where were you? Run of the castle? Suppers with the count?” She was so upset she could hardly speak. “And ... and you probably also passed the word on to whoever it is I’m being sent to now, didn’t you? Didn’t you! How can you wear religious robes? Why doesn’t God just ... just kill you for your blasphemy? Why don’t you just burst into flames on the spot?” She stopped, choking on angry tears, and tried to catch her breath.
“Here now,” Lenti said ominously, his single eyebrow creasing downward toward his nose, “stop all this shouting. And don’t you try any tricks!”
“Shut your mouth!” Miriamele told him.
Cadrach thought he saw his chance. “That’s right, sirrah, don’t you get to insulting the lady. By Saint Muirfath, I can’t believe...”
The monk never got to finish his sentence. With an inarticulate shout of rage, Miriamele leaned into him and pushed hard. Cadrach huffed out a surprised breath, waved his arms briefly trying to keep his balance, then toppled into the Bay of Emettin’s green waves.
“Are you mad?” Lenti roared, dropping his oar and leaping upright. Cadrach disappeared under a wash of jade water.
Miriamele stood to shout after him. The boat rocked, dropping Lenti back down into his seat; one of his blades slipped from his hands, diving into the bay like a silvery fish. “You faithless rogue!” she screamed at the monk, who was not currently in view. “Damn you to hell!”
Cadrach broke the surface, spewing a great plume of salty water. “I’ll drown!” he gurgled. “Drown! Help me!” He slid back under.
“So drown, you traitor!” Miriamele shouted, then shrieked as Lenti grabbed her arm and dragged her down onto her seat, twisting it cruelly in the process.
“Mad bitch!” he shouted.
“Let him die,” she panted, struggling to pull free. “What do you care?”
He reached out and slapped her on the side of the head, bringing fresh tears to her eyes. “Master said carry two to Nabban-side, you mad bitch. Show up with one, that’s the end of me.”
Meanwhile, Cadrach had bobbed up spluttering once more, thrashing and making noises that indeed sounded as though they came from a drowning man. Streáwe’s other servant, wide-eyed, had continued to pull at his oar, so that by lucky accident the little boat was now coming about, turning toward where Cadrach splashed and shouted.
The monk saw them coming, panic in his bulging eyes. He began to strain toward them, but his untutored movements dipped him forward so that his head sank beneath the waves once more. A moment later he was up again, the look of panic on his face even more raw.
“Help!” he screeched breathlessly, flinging his arms about in a paroxysm of horror. “Something’s... ! Something’s in here... !”
“Aedon and the saints!” Lenti snarled, leaning over the side, fighting to keep his own balance. “What now, sharks?”
Miriamele huddled sobbing in the bow, uncaring. Lenti snatched up the tie-rope and flung it toward the monk. Cadrach did not see it at first as he beat wildly against the water, but in a few moments his arm had become tangled in one of the coils.
“Grab it, you fool!” Lenti shouted. “Grab hold!”
At last the monk did, grasping the rope with both hands. He was hauled through the water toward the boat, legs kicking like a frog’s. When Lenti had pulled him close enough, the other servant le
t go of his oar and leaned forward to help. After a couple of failed attempts and a great deal of cursing they managed to heave his sodden weight up over the wale. The rowboat pitched. Cadrach lay in the bottom, choking and vomiting bay water.
“Take your cloak and dry him off,” Lenti told Miriamele as the monk subsided at last into hoarse breathing. “If he goes and dies, I’ll have you swimming all the way to shore.”
She grudgingly complied.
The brown and sable hills of Nabban’s northeastern coast rose steadily before them. The sun was climbing toward noon, burnishing the surface of the bay with a fierce, coppery glare. The two men rowed, the boat rocked back and forth, and the oarlocks creaked and creaked and creaked.
Miriamele was still furious, but it had become a flat, hopeless anger. The eruption was over, the fires burning down to ashen coals.
How could I have been so foolish? she wondered. I trusted him—worse, I was even beginning to like him! I enjoyed his company, half-drunken though it usually was.
Only a few moments before, as she had shifted position on the bench, she had heard something clinking in the pocket of Cadrach’s robe. When removed, this proved to be a purse embossed with the seal of Count Streáwe, half full of silver quinis-pieces and a pair of gold Imperators. This indisputable proof of the monk’s treachery momentarily brought back her rage. She considered pushing him back overboard, suffering Lenti’s punishment if necessary, but after a little deliberation she decided that she was no longer angry enough to kill him. In fact, Miriamele was a little surprised that her earlier fury had burned as hotly as it had.
She looked down at the monk, who lay curled in exhausted, fitful sleep, his head propped on the bench beside her. Cadrach’s mouth was open, his breath coming in little gasps as though even in his dreams he battled for air. His pink face was becoming even pinker. Miriamele lifted her hand and peered upward at the sun through shielding fingers. It had been a cold summer, but here in the middle of the water the sun beat down mercilessly.
