by Tad Williams
“This is more than I can stand,” Eolair said, taking her arm. “This is madness, Lady, and it tears my heart in my chest to see you so. Come. Let us go back.”
Maegwin pulled away, eyes bright with anger. “You are the one who speaks madness, Count! Go back?! I have spent more hours than I can count cutting the bolt. I had to sleep for a little when I had finished, but I have done it! It is done, and I am going to go through the door! Do not speak to me of going back!”
Eolair looked up to see that the princess spoke truthfully. The bolt, big as a man’s wrist, had been chipped through. A hammer and dented chisel lay nearby.
“What is this door?” he asked suspiciously. “It is part of the old mines, surely. ”
“I told you,” she responded coldly. “It is the door to the past—the door that leads to the Peaceful Ones. To the Sithi.” As she faced him, her iron gaze seemed to soften and melt. Another emotion pushed its way to the surface, bringing confusion and longing to Maegwin’s face; the Count of Nad Mullach felt a deep, helpless pang of sorrow. “Oh, Eolair,” she said, pleading now, “don’t you see? We can be safe! Come, help me! Please, Eolair, I know you think I am a fool, a plainfaced horse of a woman, but you loved my father! Please, help me open the door!”
Eolair could not meet her gaze. He turned away to stare up at the great door, tears welling in his eyes. Wretched girl! What could have tormented her so? The death of a father and brother? The loss of a kingdom? Tragedies, all—but others who had suffered the same did not fall into such pitiable notions. The Sithi had been real once, certainly—real as rain and stone. But five long centuries had passed since even a rumor of the Fair Folk had made its way to Hernystir. And the idea that the gods were leading Maegwin to these long-vanished Sithi ... even Eolair, with his respect for the unknown, could still see that this was clearly the madness of her loss speaking.
He wiped his face with his sleeve. The stone facing around the door was covered with strange, intricate symbols and minutely detailed carvings of faces and figures, mostly worn down by dripping water. It was true that they were constructions of exquisite subtlety, seemingly far above even the most ambitious work of Hernystiri miners. What could this place have been? Some ancient temple, from the earliest days? Had strange rituals been performed here for Black Cuamh, away from the simple shrines of other gods that dotted the face of the land above?
Eolair took a breath and wondered if he was making a foolish decision. “I do not wish to hear you malign yourself untruthfully any longer, Princess, and I do not want to carry you back by force. If I help you open the door,” he said slowly, not daring to see the painful look of hope on her face, “will you return with me afterward?”
“Oh, yes, whatever you want!” She was childlike in her eagerness. “I will let you decide, because I know when you see the land where the Sithi still live, you will not want to hurry back to any sooty cavern. Yes!”
“Very well, then. I have your word, Maegwin.” He stood up and grasped the handle of the door, giving it a sharp tug. There was no movement at all.
“Eolair,” Maegwin said quietly.
He pulled again, harder, until he could feel the cords of his neck standing out, but the door did not budge.
“Count Eolair,” Maegwin said.
He gave the door another futile pull, then turned. “What?”
She gestured at the door with a broken-nailed finger. “I sawed the bolt through, but the pieces are still there. Shouldn’t we take them out?”
“That would make no difference ...” he began, then looked more closely. Part of the severed bolt had fallen into the door loop, effectively preventing the door’s opening. Eolair hissed, then pushed the pieces out. They fell clinking to the damp stone.
This time, as Eolair pulled, the hinges creaked protestingly. Maegwin came forward, curling her hands around the door handle beside the count’s, adding her strength to his. The hinges spoke louder. As he kept up the pressure, he distractedly watched the muscles in her forearms. She was strong, this young woman—but then, she never had been a weak or retiring type. Except around him, where he had often noticed her sharp tongue suddenly blunted.
Straining, Eolair sucked in a chestful of air and could not help noticing Maegwin’s scent. Sweaty and covered with dirt, the princess did not smell like a perfumed lady from the court in Nabban, but there was something raw and warm and lively about her that was not unpleasant at all. Eolair shook his head at such musings and redoubled his effort, watching Maegwin’s determined face as the noise of the hinges rose to a shriek. The door began to grate open—an inch, then a few inches more, then a foot, protesting loudly all the way. When a cubit of blackness was exposed they stopped, leaning against the heavy timbers to catch their breath.
Maegwin bent and picked up a lamp, then slipped through the opening while Eolair was still gasping.
“Princess!” he called breathlessly, then edged through after her. “Wait! The air may be bad!” Even as he spoke he realized that the air was fine, if a little heavy. “Just ...” he began, then stopped short at Maegwin’s shoulder. The lamp she held threw light all around.
“I told you!” Her voice was full of satisfied awe. “This is where our friends live!”
“Brynioch of the Skies!” Eolair murmured, stunned.
A great city lay before them, stretched along the bottom of a wide canyon. As they stood at the canyon’s edge, gazing down, the vast expanse of buildings seemed to be hewed directly from the mountain’s heart, as though the entire city were one seamless, incalculably immense piece of living stone. Every window and door had been cut into solid rock, every tower carved out of pillars of pre-existing stone, pillars that stretched up toward the cavern’s ceiling far overhead. But for all its size, the city also looked to be surprisingly close, as though it were in truth only a miniature, made to trick the eye. From where they stood on the top steps of a broad staircase that wound down into the canyon, it seemed they could almost reach out and touch the domed roofs.
“The city of the Peaceful Ones ...” Maegwin said happily.
If it was a Sithi city, Eolair thought, then its immortal inhabitants must have decided their declining years would be better spent on the sunny surface, for this spread of delicately hewn and shaded stone was empty—or so it certainly seemed. Shaken by the discovery of such an uncanny place, the count found himself fervently hoping that it was indeed as deserted as it looked.
The small cell was cold. Duke Isgrimnur snorted miserably, rubbing his hands together.
Mother Church would do better to take a few of those damned offerings and use them to heat her greatest house, he thought. The tapestries and gold candlesticks are all well and good—but how can anyone admire them when he’s freezing to death?
He had stayed long in the common room the night before, sitting quietly before the great fireplace as he listened to the stories of other traveling monks, most of whom had come to the Sancellan Aedonitis on some sort of business with the lectoral establishment. When friendly questions were directed toward him, Isgrimnur had replied tersely and infrequently, knowing that here—among others of the same guild, so to speak—the danger of his masquerade being detected was greatest.
Now, as he sat listening to the Clavean bell tolling for morning prayer, he felt himself strongly inclined to go back to the common room again. The risk of exposure was great, but how else could be help to uncover the news he so urgently sought?
If only that damnable Count Streáwe spoke straightly. Why should he bring me all the way across Ansis Pelippé just to tell me Miriamele was at the Sancellan Aedonitis? How could he know that? And why should he tell me, about whom he knew only that I was asking questions about two monks, an old one and a young?
Isgrimnur considered briefly the possibility that Streáwe had known who he was, and worse, that the count had set him to some kind of wild chase on purpose, when Miriamele was in reality nowhere near the lector’s palace. But if that was the case, why should Perdruin’s
master speak to him personally? They had sat there, the count and monkishly-disguised Isgrimnur, drinking wine in the count’s own sitting room. Did Streáwe know who he was? What did the man have to gain by sending Isgrimnur to the Sancellan Aedonitis?
Trying to puzzle out Count Streáwe’s game made Isgrimnur’s head ache. What choice did he have, anyway, but to take the count’s word at its face value? He had been at a complete dead end, combing the alleyways of Perdruin’s greatest city for word of the princess and the monk Cadrach with little result. So here he was, a mendicant monk taking a little charity in Mother Church’s bosom, hoping to find out if Streáwe was correct.
He stamped his feet. The soles of his boots were worn thin and the chill seemed to crawl up through the dank stone floors right into the bottoms of his feet. This was foolishness, this hiding in his cell; it would not help him in his quest. He must get out and mix with the Sancellan’s swarming throngs. Besides, when he sat too long by himself, the faces of his wife Gutrun and his children came to him, filling him with despair and helpless rage. He remembered the joy when Isorn had come back to him out of captivity, the bursting pride, the exhilaration of fear defeated. Would he live to have another such reunion with them all? God grant that he would. It was his fondest hope, but one that seemed so tenuous that, like a spider web, to handle it unnecessarily might spell its ruin.
But in any case, hope alone was not a fit diet for a knight—even an old one like the duke, with his best days behind him. There was also duty. Now that Naglimund was fallen and Isgrimnur’s folk were all scattered God knew where, the only duty he had left was to Miriamele, and to Prince Josua who had sent him after her. Indeed, he was grateful there was something left for him to do.
Isgrimnur stood in the hallway stroking his chin. Praise Usires, the beard stubble was not too pronounced. He had not been able to force himself to shave this morning. The bowl of water had been nearly frozen, and even after several weeks of traveling as a monk he was still not reconciled to running a sharp blade over his face every day. He had worn a beard since his first year as a man. He mourned it now the way he would have a missing hand or foot.
The duke was trying to decide which direction might lead him back toward the common room—and toward its blazing fire—when he felt a hand on his arm. He turned quickly, startled, and found himself surrounded by a trio of priests. The one who had touched him, an old man with a harelip, smiled.
“Did I not see you in the room last night, brother?” he asked. He spoke the Westerling tongue carefully, hampered by a strong Nabbanai accent. “You have just come from the north, no? Come and join us for the morning meal. Are you hungry?”
Isgrimnur shrugged and nodded.
“Good.” The old man patted his arm. “I am Brother Septes. These are Rovalles and Neylin, two others of my order,” He indicated the younger monks. “You will join us, yes?”
“Thank you.” Isgrimnur smiled uncertainly, wondering if there was some monkish etiquette known only to initiates. “God bless you,” he added.
“And you,” Septes said, taking Isgrimnur’s large arm with his thin fingers, leading him up the corridor. The other two monks fell in behind, talking quietly.
“Have you seen the Elysia Chapel yet?” the old man asked.
Isgrimnur shook his head. “I only arrived last night.”
“It is beautiful. Beautiful. Our abbey is near Lake Myrme, to the east, but I try to come here once a year. I always bring a few of the younger ones with me, to show them the glory that God has built for us here.”
Isgrimnur nodded piously. They walked on in silence for a while, their path joining that of other monks and priests who converged from crisscrossing hallways onto the main thoroughfare, blending together like shoals of drab fish, being drawn as though by a current toward the dining hall.
The mass migration slowed at the hall’s wide doors. As Isgrimnur and his new companions joined the pressing throng, Septes asked the duke a question. Isgrimnur could not hear above the clamor of voices, so the old man stood on tiptoe to speak into his ear.
“I said, how are things in the north?” Septes almost shouted. “We have heard terrible stories. Famine, wolves, deadly blizzards.”
Isgrimnur nodded, frowning. “Things are very bad,” he called back. As he spoke, he and the others were propelled through the door like a stopper from the neck of a bottle, and found themselves milling inside the dining hall entrance. The roar of conversation seemed enough to shake the roofbeams.
“I thought it was custom to have silence at mealtimes!” Isgrimnur shouted. Septes’ young followers, like the duke, stared goggle-eyed at the scores of tables that stretched end to end across the wide room. There were some dozen or so rows, and each table in each row was crowded with the hunched backs of cassocked men, their tonsured heads a profusion of pink spots, like the fingernails of some hundred-handed ogre. Each man seemed to be engaged in loud conversation with his neighbors, some waving their spoons for attention. The sound was as vast as the ocean that surrounded Nabban.
Septes laughed, the sound subsumed in the greater roaring. He stood on tiptoe again. “It is silent in our abbey at home and in many others—as no doubt it is in your Rimmersgard monasteries, yes? But here at the Sancellan Aedonitis are those who are doing God’s business: they must speak and listen just like merchants.”
“Speculating on the price of souls?” Isgrimnur grinned sourly, but the old man did not hear him.
“If you prefer silence,” Septes shouted, “you should go down to the archives. The priests there are silent as the tomb and a whisper sounds like a thunderclap. Come! Bread and soup can be got over there, where that door is, then you will tell me more about what happens in the north, yes?”
Isgrimnur tried not to watch the old man eat, but it was difficult. Because of his harelip, Septes dribbled soup constantly, and soon had a little river of it running down the front of his robe.
“I am sorry,” the old man said at last, mumbling at a crust of bread; he did not seem to have many teeth, either. “I have not asked your name. What are you called?”
“Isbeorn,” the duke said. It was his father’s name and fairly common.
“Ah, Isbeorn. Well, I am Septes ... but I told you that, no? Tell us more of what happens in the north. That is another reason I come to Nabban—for news we do not get in the Lakelands.”
Isgrimnur told him something of what had happened north of the Frostmarch, of the killing storms and evil times. Choking down his bitterness, he told of Skali of Kaldskryke’s usurpation of his own power in Elvritshalla and the devastation and kinslaying that had resulted.
“We had heard that Duke Isgrimnur was proved a traitor to the High King,” Septes said, mopping the last of the soup from his bowl with a rind of bread. “Travelers told us that Elias found out the duke was in league with the king’s brother Josua to take the throne.”
“That’s a lie!” Isgrimnur said angrily, smacking his hand on the table so that young Neylin’s bowl almost overtipped. Heads turned on all sides.
Septes raised an eyebrow. “Forgive us,” he said, “for we only speak of rumors we have heard. Perhaps we have touched on a painful subject. Was Isgrimnur a patron of your order?”
“Duke Isgrimnur is an honest man,” the duke said, cursing himself for letting his temper get the best of him. “I hate to hear him slandered.”
“Of course,” Septes spoke as soothingly as he could while still being heard above the ruckus. “But we have heard other stories from the north as well, very frightening, yes? Rovalles, tell him what the traveler told to you.”
Young Rovalles started to speak, but broke into a fit of coughing as he choked on a crust. Neylin, the other acolyte, pounded him on the back until he got his breath, then continued pounding, perhaps a little overexcited at being in Nabban for the first time.
“A man we meet when we are coming here,” Rovalles said when Neylin had been restrained, “he is from Hewenshire, or some place up in Erkynland.” The
young monk did not speak Westerling as well as Septes; he had to stop and think carefully before choosing words. “He say that when Elias’ siege cannot throw down Josua’s castle, the High King raise up white demons from the earth, and by magic they kill everyone in the keep. He swear it is so, that he sees it himself.”
Septes, who had been dabbing at the front of his robe while Rovalles spoke, now leaned forward. “Like me, Isbeorn, you know how full of superstition people can be, yes? If only this man told the story, I would call him madman and have done. But many are speaking quietly here in the Sancellan, many who say Elias has trafficked with demons and evil spirits.” He touched Isgrimnur’s hand with his bent fingers; the duke fought an urge to recoil. “You must have heard of the siege, even though you say you left the north before it ended. What is the truth behind these stories?”
Isgrimnur stared at the old monk for a moment, wondering if there was more to this question than met the eye. At last he sighed. This was a kindly old man with a harelip, nothing more. These were frightening times—why should Septes not try to cadge information from someone who had come from the heartland of rumor?
“I have heard little more than you,” he said at last, “but I can tell you that evil things are afoot—things that godly men would rather not know about, but damn me if that makes them go away.” Septes’ eyebrow twitched upward again at Isgrimnur’s language, but he did not interrupt. Isgrimnur, warming to the subject, spoke on. “Sides are forming, you could say, and some that look prettier are really the fouler. I can’t say more than that. Don’t believe everything you hear, but don’t be too quick to cry ‘superstition,’ either ...” He broke off, realizing that he was entering dangerous territory. There was little more he could say without attracting attention as a source of substantiation for the gossip that was doubtless flying through the Sancellan Aedonitis. He could not afford to be the subject of attention until he had learned if Princess Miriamele was indeed here.
