The Stone of Farewell

by Tad Williams

  “I will be back ...” Binabik began.

  “No more talk. Our time is short.”

  Their faces came together, vanishing as their hoods touched each other, and they stood that way for a long time. They were both trembling.

  PART TWO

  Storm’s Hand

  11

  Bones of the Earth

  It was often said that of all the lands of men in Osten Ard, secrets ran deepest in Hernystir. Not that the land itself was hidden, like the fabled Trollfells lurking beyond the icy fence of the White Waste, or the land of the Wrannamen, shrouded in treacherous swamps. The secrets Hernystir kept were hidden in the hearts of its people, or below its sunny meadows, deep in the earth.

  Of all mortal men, the Hernystiri once had known and loved the Sithi best. They learned much from them—although the things they had learned were now mentioned only in old ballads. They had also traded with the Sithi, bringing back to their own grassy country articles of workmanship beyond anything the finest smiths and craftsmen of Imperial Nabban could produce. In return, the Hernystirmen offered their immortal allies the fruits of the earth—nightblack malachite, ilenite and bright opal, sapphire, cinnabar, and soft, shiny gold—all painstakingly mined from the thousand tunnels of the Grianspog Mountains.

  The Sithi were gone now, vanished absolutely from the earth as far as most men knew or cared. Some of the Hernystiri knew better. It had been centuries since the Fair Ones had fled their castle Asu’a, deserting the last of the Nine Cities accessible to mortal man. Most mortals had forgotten the Sithi entirely, or saw them only through the distorting veil of old stories. But among the Hernystiri, an open-hearted and yet secretive folk, there were still a few who looked at the dark holes that pitted the Grianspog and remembered.

  Eolair was not particularly fond of caves. His childhood had been spent upon the grasslands in the meadows of western Hernystir, at the conjoining of the Inniscrich and the Cuimnhe rivers. As Count of Nad Mullach, he had ruled over that territory; later, in service to his king, Lluth ubh-Llythinn, he had traveled to all the great cities and courts of Osten Ard, carrying out Hernystir’s wishes beneath the lights of countless lamps and the skies of every nation.

  Thus, although his bravery was questioned by no one, and though his oath to King Lluth meant he would follow Lluth’s daughter Maegwin to the fires of perdition if that were his duty, he was not altogether pleased to find himself and his people living deep in the rock of the mighty Grianspog.

  “Bagba bite me!” Eolair cursed. A drop of burning pitch had fallen on his sleeve, scorching his arm through the thin cloth in the time it took him to put it out. The torch was guttering and would not last much longer. He considered lighting the second, but that would mean it was time to turn back; he was not ready to do that. He briefly weighed the risks of finding himself stuck without light in an unfamiliar tunnel deep in the bowels of the earth, then cursed again, quietly. If he had not been such a hasty idiot, he might have remembered to bring his flints with him. Eolair did not like making that sort of mistake. Too many errors of such an obvious sort and one’s luck would at last run out.

  His sleeve extinguished, he turned his attention back to the forking of the tunnel, squinting at the floor in the vain hope of seeing something that would help him decide which way to go. Seeing nothing, he hissed in exasperation.

  “Maegwin!” he called, and heard his voice go rolling out into darkness, echoing down the tunnels. “My lady, are you there?”

  The echoes died. Eolair stood in silence with a dying torch and wondered what to do.

  It was painfully evident that Maegwin knew her way about this underground maze far better than he did, so perhaps his concern was misplaced. Surely there were no bears or other animals dwelling this far in the depths, or they would have made themselves apparent by now. The tattered remainder of Hernysadharc’s citizens had already spent a fortnight in the mountain deeps, building a new home for an unhomed people among the bones of the earth. But there were other things to fear down here beside wild beasts; Eolair could not so lightly dismiss danger. Strange creatures walked in the heights of the mountains, and there had been mysterious deaths and disappearances all across the face of the land long before Skali of Kaldskryke’s army came at King Elias’ bidding to put down the rebellious Hernystirmen.

  Other, more prosaic dangers might await as well: Maegwin could fall and break a leg, or tumble into an underground river or lake. Or she might overestimate her own knowledge of the caverns and wander lost and lightless until she died from starvation.

  There was nothing to do but go on. He would walk a short way farther, but turn to go back before his torch was half-consumed. That way, by the time darkness overcame him he should be within hailing distance of the caverns that now housed the greatest remnant of the Hernystiri nation-in-exile.

  Eolair lit his second torch with the smoldering remains of the first, then used the smoking butt of the expired brand to mark the wall at the forking of the tunnels with the signature runes of Nad Mullach. After a moment’s consideration he chose the wider of the two ways and started forward.

  This tunnel, like the one he had just left, had once been part of the mines that crisscrossed the Grianspog. At this depth within the mountains it knifed through solid rock. A moment’s thought brought home the unimaginable labor that must have gone into its making. The cross-timbers that braced it up were broad as the trunks of the greatest trees! Eolair could not help admiring the careful but heroic work of the vanished workmen—his and Maegwin’s ancestors—who had burrowed their way through the very stuff of the world to bring beautiful things back to the light.

  The old tunnel slanted downward. The bobbing torch shone on strange, dim marks scratched into the walls. These tunnels were long-deserted, but still there seemed an expectant air to them, as though they waited for some imminent return. The sound of Eolair’s boots on the stone seemed loud as a god’s heartbeat, so that the Count of Nad Mullach could not help but think of Black Cuamh, the master of deep places. The earth-god suddenly seemed very real and very near, here in a darkness the sun had never touched since Time’s beginning.

  Slowing to look more closely at the shallow carvings, Eolair suddenly realized that many of the curious shapes scratched on the walls were crude pictures of hounds. He nodded as understanding came. Old Criobhan had once told him that the miners of elder days called Black Cuamh “Earthdog,” and left him offerings in the farthest tunnels so that he would grant his protection against falling rocks or bad air. These carvings were pictures of Cuamh surrounded by the runes of miner’s names, tokens that begged the god’s favor. Other offerings implored the help of Cuamh’s servants, the deep-delving dwarrows, supernatural beings presumed to grant favors and wealthy ore-veins to lucky miners.

  Eolair took the snuffed torch and made his initials again beneath a round-eyed hound.

  Master Cuamh, he thought, if you still watch these tunnels, bring Maegwin and our people through to safety. We are sorely, sorely pressed.

  Maegwin. Now there was a distressing thought. Had she no feeling for her responsibilities? Her father and brother were dead. The late king’s wife Inahwen was little older than Maegwin herself and far less capable. Lluth’s heritage was in the princess’ hands—and what was she doing with it?

  Eolair had not objected so much to the idea of moving deeper into the caverns: summer had brought no respite from the cold or from Skali’s armies, and the slopes of the Grianspog Mountains were not the kind of place to last out a siege of either sort. The Hernystiri who had survived the war were scattered throughout the farthest wildernesses of Hernystir and the Frostmarch, but a large and important part was here with the shreds of the king’s household. This was indeed where the kingdom would endure or fail: it was time to make it a more permanent and defensible home.

  What had worried Eolair, though, was Maegwin’s wild fascination with the depths of the earth, with moving ever deeper into the mountain’s heart. For days now, long a
fter the shifting of the camps was finished, Maegwin had been wandering away on unspecified errands, disappearing into remote and unexplored caverns for hours at a stretch, returning at sleeping-time with her face and hands dirty and her eyes full of a preoccupation that looked much like madness. Old Criobhan and the others asked her not to go, but Maegwin only drew herself up and coldly declaimed that they had no right to question Lluth’s daughter. If she was needed to lead the people in defense of their new home, she said, or to tend the wounded, or to make decisions of policy, she would be there. The rest of the time was her own. She would use it as she saw fit.

  Concerned with her safety, Eolair also asked her where she went, suggesting that she should not go wandering in the depths again without him or some other companions. Maegwin, unmoved, would only speak mysteriously of “help from the gods,” and the “tunnels that led back into the days of the Peaceful Ones”—as much as saying that small-minded idiots like the Count of Nad Mullach should not concern themselves with things they could not understand.

  Eolair thought she was going mad. He was frightened for Maegwin and her people—and also for himself. The count had watched her long slide. Lluth’s mortal injury and the treacherous slaying of her brother Gwythinn had wounded something inside her, but the wound was in a place Eolair could not reach and all his best efforts seemed only to make things worse. He did not know why his attempts to help her in her sorrow should distress her so, but he understood that the king’s daughter feared being pitied more than she feared death.

  Unable to ease her pain, or his own hurt at the sight of her suffering, he could at least help keep her alive. But how could he do even that when the king’s daughter did not want to be saved?

  Today had been the worst yet. Maegwin had risen before the first gleam of dawn bled through the chink in the cavern roof, then had taken torches and ropes and a collection of other ominous things before vanishing into the tunnels. She had not returned by the end of the afternoon. After supper, Eolair—tired himself from a day’s patrolling through the Circoille Woods—had set out after her. If he did not find her soon, he would return and raise a search party.

  For the better part of an hour he followed the meandering tunnels downward, marking his progress on the walls, watching his torch dwindle. He had gone beyond the point where he could pretend to himself he would be able to walk all the way back in light. He was unwilling to give up, but if he waited much longer there would be two lost in the catacombs, and what benefit was that to anybody?

  He stopped at last in a place where the way opened out into a rough-hewn chamber, with black tunnel mouths leading away in three more directions. He swore, realizing that the time had come to stop fooling himself. Maegwin could be anywhere; he might even have passed her. He would return to the jibes of the others, the princess back safely an hour before. Eolair smiled grimly and bound up his horsetail of black hair, which had come unbraided as he walked. Jokes would not be so bad. Better to suffer a little humiliation than ...

  A thin voice whispered into the rock chamber, a trace of melody faint as an old memory.

  “... His voice echoed out through woods and through wild. Where two hearts had sounded now beat only one . , .”

  Eolair’s heart sped. He walked into the chamber’s center and cupped his hands around his mouth.

  “Maegwin!” he cried. “Where are you, Lady? Maegwin!”

  The walls boomed with echoes. When they had died he listened carefully, but there was no answering cry.

  “Maegwin, it is Eolair!” he called. Again he waited for the chorus of shouting voices to quiet. This time the stillness was broken by another tenuous strand of song.

  “... Her dark eyes sky-watching, Only her shining blood gave him answer, Her head lay uncradled, her black hair undone ...”

  He moved his head from side to side, determining at last that the singing seemed loudest from the left-hand opening. He ducked his head through and shouted in surprise as he almost tumbled into blackness. He pushed outward at the craggy walls to steady himself, then bent to pick up the torch he had dropped, but even as he reached down, the flame sizzled and vanished. His hand felt water by the torch’s haft and empty space beyond. Dancing before his blinded eyes was the last thing he had seen before the light went out, a crude but discernible image painted on black nothing. He was standing at the top of a rough stone staircase that fell away down the steep tunnel, a parade of steps that seemed to lead to the center of the world.

  Blackness. Trapped in absolute darkness. Eolair felt a spasm of fear beginning and choked it off. It had been Maegwin’s voice he had heard, he was nearly certain. Of course it had been! Who else would be singing old Hernystiri songs in the deeps of creation!

  A quiet, childish fear of something that might hide in the dark and summon its prey with familiar voices struggled inside him. Bagba’s Herd, what kind of man was he?

  He touched the walls on either side. They were damp. The step below him, when he kneeled to inspect it with his fingers, was sunken in the middle; water had pooled there. At a reasonable distance below it lay another step. His probing foot found another lying a similar length below the second.

  “Maegwin?” he called again, but no one was singing.

  Stepping down cautiously, keeping his hands above his shoulders so he could grab at the walls, Eolair began to make his way down the coarse-hewn stairway. The last flash of light and the picture it had painted had vanished from his eyes. He strained, but could see only darkness. The noise of dripping water, running steadily from the walls on all sides, was the only sound beside his own scuffling feet.

  After many cautiously negotiated steps and a drift of time that could have been hours, the stairway ended. As far as he inched his foot ahead, the ground stayed level. Eolair took a few cautious steps forward, cursing himself once more for not bringing his flints. Who would ever have guessed that this short search for a wandering princess would have turned into a struggle for life? And where was the one who had sung, whether Maegwin or some less friendly cavern-dweller?

  The tunnel seemed level. He pushed on slowly, following the pathway’s twists with one hand dragging on the wall and the other held before him, probing in blackness. After he had gone a few hundred paces the tunnel turned once more. To his immense relief, he found that here he could actually see something: a faint glow outlined the tunnel’s interior, brighter at its turning a dozen ells ahead.

  As he came around the corner, he was splashed with a strong light welling up from an opening in the tunnel wall. The stone corridor itself continued on until it bent to the right and he could see no farther, but the hole in the wall now drew all his attention. Apprehension speeding his heart more than a little, Eolair got down on his knees and stared through, starting up again with such surprise that he grazed his head on the stone. A moment later he had dangled his legs through the opening, letting himself slide off the floor of the tunnel down into the hole. He landed, bending his knees to keep from falling over, then slowly stood upright.

  He was in a wide cavern whose fluted ceilings, ornate with hanging spikes of stone, seemed to waver in the light from a pair of flickering oil lamps. At the far end of the cavern stood a great door, twice as tall as a man, flush with the very face of the rock. The door joined the stone lintel as closely as if it had grown there, its mighty hinges bolted directly to the wall of the cavern. Sitting against the door in a clutter of ropes and tools was ...

  “Maegwin!” he cried, running forward, tripping on the uneven ground. The princess’ head rested upon on her knees, unmoving. “Maegwin, are you... ?”

  She raised her head as he approached. Something in her eyes caught him up short. “Princess... ?”

  “I was sleeping.” She shook her head slowly and ran her hands through her sorrel hair. “Sleeping, and dreaming ...” Maegwin paused and stared at him. Her face was almost black with dirt; her eyes gleamed eerily. “Who... ?” she began, then shook her head again. “Eolair! I was having the oddest dream
... you were calling me ...”

  He sprang forward, squatting at her side. She seemed to have suffered no injury. He quickly ran his hands through her hair, feeling her head for the mark of a fall.

  “What are you doing?” she asked, but did not seem overly concerned. “And what are you doing here?”

  He leaned away so he could look at her face. “I must ask you that question, Lady. What are you doing here? Your people are sick with worry. ”

  She smiled lazily. “I knew I would find it,” she said. “I knew it.”

  “What are you talking about?” Eolair said angrily. “Come, we must go back. Thanks to the gods that you have lamps, otherwise we would be trapped here forever!”

  “Do you mean you didn’t bring a torch? Foolish Eolair! I have brought many things with me, since it is such a long way back to the upper caverns.” She gestured at her scattered tools. “I have some bread, I think. Are you hungry?”

  Eolair sat back on his heels, baffled. Was this what happened when someone went irretrievably mad? The princess seemed quite happy, here in a hole far beneath the earth. What had happened to her?

  “I ask you again,” he said as calmly as he could. “What are you doing here?”

  Maegwin laughed. “Exploring. At least at first. It is our only hope, you know. To go deeper, that is. We must always keep going deeper, or our enemies will find us.”

  Eolair let out a hiss of exasperation. “We have done as you wish already, Princess. The people have taken to the caves, as you directed. Now they wonder where the king’s daughter has gone.”

  “But I also knew I would find this,” she said, continuing as if Eolair had not spoken. Her voice dropped to a whisper. “The gods have not deserted us,” she said, looking around as though she feared eavesdroppers, “—for they have spoken to me in dreams. They have not deserted us.” She pointed at the great door behind them. “And neither have our old allies the Sithi—for that is what we need, do we not, Eolair? Allies?” Her eyes were fearfully bright. “I have thought about this until my head is splitting and I know I am right! Hernystir needs help in this terrible hour—and what better allies than the Sithi, who stood with us once before?! Everyone thinks the Peaceful Ones have disappeared from the earth. But they haven’t! I am sure they have only gone deeper.”