The Stone of Farewell

by Tad Williams

  Cadrach stopped snoring. His slurred, querulous voice rose from the darkness before her. “My lady?”

  For a moment she did not move; then, sucking in a fierce gasp of breath, she struck out at the invisible monk. She made only the most incidental contact, but it was enough to locate him in the darkness. Her next blow landed stingingly on something. “You whoreson rogue!” she hissed, then struck again.

  Cadrach let out a muffled cry of pain, scrambling away from her so that her fingers struck nothing but the hold’s damp floorboards. “Why ... why do you... ?” he muttered. “Lady, I saved your life!”

  “Liar!” she spat, and burst into tears once more.

  “No, Princess, it is surely the truth. I’m sorry I hit you, but I had no choice. ”

  “Damnable liar!”

  “No!” His voice was surprisingly firm. “And keep quiet. We dare not be discovered. We must stay down here until we can sneak off at nightfall.”

  She sniffled angrily and wiped her nose on the back of her sleeve. “Dullard!” she said. “Fool! Sneak where? We’re at sea!”

  There was a moment of silence. “We can’t be ...” the monk said weakly. “We can’t be....”

  “Can’t you feel that up-and-down dipping? You never did know anything about boats, you treacherous little man. That’s no rocking at anchor in the harbor. That’s sea-swell.” Her anger was ebbing, leaving her empty and stupefied. She fought its going. “Now, if you don’t tell me how we wound up on this boat and how we’re going to get off, I’m going to make you wish you had never left Crannhyr—or wherever you truly came from. ”

  “Oh, gods of my people,” Cadrach groaned, “I have been a fool. They must have cast off while we were asleep....”

  “While you were asleep, drunkenly asleep. I had been beaten senseless!”

  “Ah, you speak the truth, my lady. I wish you didn’t. I did drink myself into forgetfulness, princess, but there was much to forget.”

  “If you mean hitting me, I won’t let you forget.”

  There was another silence in the darkness of the hold. The monk’s voice, when it came at last, was strangely wistful. “Please, Miriamele. Princess. I have done wrong many times, but in this I did only what I thought best.”

  She was indignant. “What you thought best! Of all the arrogance... !”

  “Father Dinivan is dead, Lady.” His words spilled out swiftly. “So is Ranessin, Lector of Mother Church. Pryrates killed them both in the very heart of the Sancellan Aedonitis.”

  She tried to speak, but something seemed stuck in her throat. “They’re... ?”

  “Dead, Princess. By tomorrow morning the news will be traveling like wildfire all across the face of Osten Ard.”

  It was hard to think about, hard to understand. Sweet, homely Father Dinivan, who had blushed like a boy! And the lector, who was going to make everything right, somehow. Now, nothing would be right. Nothing ever again.

  “Are you telling the truth?” she asked at last.

  “I wish I were not, Lady. I wish this were only another of my long index of falsehoods, but it is not. Pryrates rules Mother Church, or as good as. Your only true friends in Nabban are dead, and that is why we are hiding in the hold of a ship that was floating at anchor in the docks below the Sancellan ...”

  The monk found it hard to finish, but the odd catch in his voice finally convinced her beyond any doubting. The darkness in the ship’s belly seemed to grow. In the immeasurable time that followed, when it seemed that all the tears she had held back since leaving home came welling up at once, Miriamele felt as though that black shroud of despair had grown to enfold all the world.

  “So where are we?” she asked at last. Clasping her knees, she rocked slowly back and forth in countermotion to the swaying of the ship.

  Cadrach’s mournful voice whispered out of the darkness. “I do not know, my lady. As I told you, I brought us to a boat that was anchored beneath the Sancellan. It was dark.”

  Miriamele strove to compose herself, grateful that no one could see her tear-reddened face. “Yes, but whose ship? What did it look like? Whose mark was on the sail?”

  “I know little of boats, Princess, you know that. It is a boat, a large one. The sails were furled. I think there was a bird of prey painted on the bow, but the lamps burned very low.”

  “What bird?” she asked urgently.

  “A fish hawk, I think, or some such. Black and gold.”

  “An osprey.” Miriamele sat up straight, drumming her fingers agitatedly against her leg. “That is the Prevan House. I wish I knew how they stood, but it has been so long since I lived here! Perhaps they are supporters of my late uncle and would take us to safety.” She smiled wryly—for her own benefit only, since the darkness hid her from the monk. “But where would that be?”

  “Believe me, Lady,” Cadrach said fervently. “At this moment, the coldest, darkest, inner chambers of Stormspike would be safer for us than the Sancellan Aedonitis. I told you, Lector Ranessin has been thrown down and murdered! Can you imagine how Pryrates’ power must have grown that he would slay the lector right in God’s own house?”

  Miriamele’s fingers suddenly stopped drumming. “That was an odd thing to say. What do you know of Stormspike and its inner chambers, Cadrach?”

  The uneasy truce that shock and horror had built seemed suddenly very foolish. Miriamele’s quick-flaring anger masked a sudden fear. Who was this monk, who knew so much and acted so oddly? And here she was once more, trusting him, trapped in a dark place into which he himself had led her. “I asked you a question.”

  “My lady,” Cadrach said, hesitant as he searched for words. “There are many things ...”

  He broke off suddenly. A wrenching noise echoed through the hold; bright torchlight stabbed down as the hatch door rose. Blinking, the princess and Cadrach threw themselves among the piled casks, squirming for shelter like earthworms in a shovel-turn of soil. Miriamele caught a brief glimpse of a cloaked figure climbing backward down the ladder. She curled herself back against the inner wall of the hold and drew her legs up before her, hiding her face beneath her down-dropping hood.

  The one who had entered the hold made very little noise, picking carefully between the stacks of provisions. Miriamele’s speeding heart seemed to jump in her breast as the footsteps came to a sudden halt just a few cubits away. She held her breath in her straining lungs until it seemed she would burst. The sound of the surf was as loud in her ears as the bellowing of a bull, but a strange musical humming floated beneath it like the drowsy murmur of bees. Then the drone abruptly stopped.

  “Why do you hide here?” a voice asked; a dry finger touched her face. Miriamele’s pent-up breath flew out explosively and her eyes snapped open. The voice exclaimed: “Ah, but you are only a child!”

  The one who bent over her had pale golden skin and large, wide-set dark eyes that peered from beneath a fringe of white hair. She seemed aged and frail: her hooded robe could not hide the slightness of her frame.

  “A Niskie!” Miriamele gasped, then lifted her hand to her mouth.

  “Why should that surprise you?” the other said, thin brows arching. Her skin was netted with fine wrinkles, but her movements were precise. “Where better to find a Niskie than on a deep-water ship? No, the question, stranger-girl, is why are you here?” She turned toward the shadows where the monk still hid. “And that question also goes for you, man. Why are you skulking in the hold?”

  When there was no immediate answer from either stowaway, she shook her head. “Then I suppose I must call for the ship’s master ...”

  “No, please,” Miriamele said. “Cadrach, come out. Niskies have sharp ears.” She smiled in what she hoped was a conciliatory manner. “If we had known it was you, we would not have bothered. It is foolish to try to hide from a Niskie.”

  “Yes.” Their discoverer nodded, pleased. “Now tell me: who are you?”

  “Malachias ...” Miriamele stopped, realizing that her gender had already been
identified. “Marya, that is. That’s me. Cadrach is my companion.” The monk, crawling out from a bulky fold of sailcloth, grunted.

  “Good.” The Niskie smiled in tight-lipped satisfaction. “My name is Gan Itai. Eadne Cloud is my ship. I sing the kilpa down.”

  Cadrach was staring. “Sing the kilpa down? What does that mean?”

  “You said you were well-traveled,” Miriamele broke in. “Everyone knows that you can’t take a boat out to deep sea without a Niskie to sing the songs that keep the kilpa away. You know what kilpa are, don’t you?”

  “I have heard of them, yes,” Cadrach said shortly. He turned his curious gaze back to Gan Itai, who rocked back and forth, listening. “You are of the Tinukeda’ya, are you not?”

  The Niskie’s mouth widened in a toothless grin. “We are Navigator’s Children, yes. Long ago we came back to the sea, and by the sea we stayed. Now, tell Gan Itai what you do on this ship.”

  Miriamele looked at Cadrach, but the monk seemed absorbed in thought. The torchlight showed his pale face beaded with sweat. Whether from the shock of discovery or something else, the fog of his drunkenness seemed to have burned away. His small eyes were troubled but clear. “We cannot tell all,” the princess answered. “We have done no wrong, but our lives are in danger, so we are hiding.”

  Gan Itai narrowed her long eyes and pursed her lips meditatively. “I must tell the ship’s master you are here,” she said at last. “If that is wrong, I am sorry, but I owe first allegiance to Eadne Cloud. Stowaways are always reported. No harm must come to my ship.”

  “We wouldn’t hurt the ship,” Miriamele said desperately, but the Niskie was moving swiftly toward the ladder, her nimbleness belying her apparent frailty.

  “I regret, but I do what I must. Ruyan’s Folk have laws that cannot be overthrown.” She shook her head and disappeared through the hatchway. A splash of dawn-lit sky showed briefly before the hatch door thumped down once more.

  Miriamele slumped back against a barrel. “Elysia save us. What will we do? What if this boat belongs to enemies?”

  “As far as I am concerned, it is boats themselves which are the enemies.” Cadrach shrugged fatalistically. “My hiding us on one was foolishness beyond understanding. As to discovery ...” he waved his plump hand dismissively. “It was inevitable once the boat actually put to sea, but anything is better than staying in the Sancellan Aedonitis.” He wiped sweat from his face. “Ah, me, my stomach feels dreadful. As a wise man stated, ‘There are three kinds of people—the living, the dead, and those at sea.’ ” His expression of disgust changed to one of contemplation. “But Niskies! I have met the living Tinukeda’ya! Bones of Anaxos, but the world is full of odd tales!”

  Before Miriamele could ask him what that meant, they heard the sound of heavy boots on the deck overhead. Deep voices spoke, then the hatch door creaked up and the opening was abruptly filled with torchlight and long shadows.

  Maegwin sat in a crumbling ancient arena, in the midst of a mysterious stone city hidden deep in the heart of a mountain, face to face with four creatures out of the legends of ancient days. Before her stood a great, shining stone that had spoken to her as though it were a person. Still, she was unutterably disappointed.

  “The Sithi,” she murmured quietly. “I thought the Sithi would be here. ”

  Eolair looked at her with seeming dispassion, then turned back to the saucer-eyed dwarrows once more. “This is very strange. How do you know the name of Josua Lackhand?”

  Yis-fidri seemed uncomfortable. The earth-dweller’s bony face bobbed at the end of his slender neck like a sunflower on its stem. “Why do you seek the Sithi? What do you want with our old masters?”

  Maegwin let out a sigh.

  “It was only a thin hope,” Eolair said quickly. “The Lady Maegwin thought they might help us, as they aided our people in days past. Hernystir has been invaded.”

  “And this Handless Josua of whom the Sithi spoke—is he the invader, or is he one of Hern’s children, like you?” Yis-fidri and his fellows leaned forward solemnly.

  “Josua Lackhand is no Hernystirman, but neither is he an invader. He is one of the chiefs in the great war that rages on the surface.” Eolair spoke carefully. “Our people have been invaded by Josua’s enemies. Thus, it could be said Josua fights for us—if he still lives.”

  “Josua is dead,” Maegwin said dully. The weight of earth and stone around her pressed down, squeezing out her breath. What was the point in all this blather? These spindly creatures were not the Sithi. This was not the city of banners and sweet music she had seen in her dreams. Her plans had come to nothing.

  “That may not be so, my lady,” Eolair said quietly. “When I was last afield, I heard rumors that he still lived, rumors that had more than a slight sound of truth to them.” He turned back to the patient dwarrows. “Please tell us where you heard Josua’s name. We are not your enemies.”

  Yis-fidri was not so easily swayed. “And does this Handless Josua fight for our old masters the Sithi, or against them?”

  Eolair pondered before speaking. “We mortals know nothing of the Sithi and their battles. Josua is probably as ignorant as we.”

  Yis-fidri pointed to the gleaming, shimmering chunk of stone at the center of the arena. “But it was the First Grandmother of the Zida’ya—the Sithi—who spoke to you through the Shard!” He sounded perversely pleased, as though he had caught Eolair in a pointless fib.

  “We did not know whose voice it was. We are strangers here, and we are strangers to your ... your Shard.”

  “Ah.” Yis-fidri and the others huddled and spoke in their own tongue, the words flying back and forth like rippling chimes. At last they straightened.

  “We will trust you. We believe that you be honorable folk,” Yis-fidri said. “Even if we did not, you have seen now where the last dwarrows live. Unless we make an end to you, we can only hope you will not reveal us to our former masters.” He laughed sadly, his dark gaze nervously roaming the shadows. “And we are not folk who can compel others by force. We are weak, old ...” The dwarrow struggled to compose himself. “No more is saved by holding knowledge back. So, all our people can now return to this place, the Site of Witness.”

  Yis-hadra, the one Yis-fidri had named as his wife, lifted her hand. She beckoned into the darkness at the top of the great bowl, then called out in the musical dwarrow-tongue.

  Lights appeared and came drifting silently down the aisles of the arena, perhaps three dozen in all, each a gleaming rose crystal clutched in the hands of a dwarrow. Their large heads and wide, solemn eyes made them seem distorted children, grotesque but not frightening.

  Unlike Yis-fidri’s foursome, these new dwarrows seemed afraid to approach Maegwin and Eolair too closely. Instead, they passed slowly down the stone pathways and seated themselves here and there among the hundreds upon hundreds of benches, faces turned toward the gleaming Shard, thin fingers clutching their crystals. Like a dying galaxy, the vast, gloomy bowl was pricked with dim stars.

  “They were cold,” Yis-fidri whispered. “They are happy to come back to the warmth.”

  Maegwin jumped, startled after the long quiet. The realization came to her abruptly that here beneath the world’s crust there were no birds singing, no rustling of wind-tossed trees; the city seemed almost constructed of silence.

  Eolair looked around at the ring of solemn eyes before turning back to Yis-fidri. “But you and your people seemed afraid of this place.”

  The dwarrow looked embarrassed. “The voices of our old masters frighten us, yes. But the Shard is warm and great Mezutu’a’s halls and streets are cold.”

  The Count of Nad Mullach took a deep breath. “Please, then. If you believe we mean you no harm, explain to us how you know Josua’s name.

  “Our Witness—the Shard. As we told you. The Sithi have called to us here at the Site of Witness, asking of this Josua, and of the Great Swords. The Shard was long silent, but lately it has begun speaking to us again, for the first t
ime in recent memory.”

  “Speaking?” Eolair asked. “As it spoke to us? What is the Shard?”

  “Old, it is. One of the oldest of all the Witnesses.” Yis-fidri’s worried tone returned. His cohorts wagged their heads, narrow faces uneasy. “Long has it been silent. None did speak to us.”

  “What do you mean?” The count looked at Maegwin to see if she shared his puzzlement. She avoided his eyes. The Shard pulsed with gentle, milky light as Eolair tried again. “I am afraid I cannot understand you. What is a Witness?”

  The dwarrow considered carefully, looking for words to explain something that had never before needed explaining.

  “In days long past,” he finally said, “we and others of the Gardenborn did speak through the particular objects that could act as Witnesses: Stones and Scales, Pools and Pyres. Through these things—and through some others, like Nakkiga’s great Harp—the world of the Gardenborn was tied together with strands of thought and speech. But we Tinukeda‘ya had forgotten much even before mighty Asu’a fell, and had grown far apart from those who lived there ... those who we had once served.”

  “Asu’a?” Eolair said. “I have heard that name before....”

  Maegwin, only half-listening, watched the coruscating colors of the Shard dart like bright fish below the crystal’s surface. On the benches all around, the dwarrows watched, too, their faces grim, as though their hunger for its radiance shamed them.

  “When Asu‘a fell,” Yis-fidri continued, “the seldom-speaking became silence. The Speakfire in Hikehikayo and the Shard here in Mezutu’a were voiceless. Do you see, we dwarrows had lost the Art of their using. Thus, when the Zida‘ya spoke to us no more, we Tinukeda’ya could no longer master the Witnesses, even to speak among ourselves.”

  Eolair pondered. “How did you forget the art of using these things?” he asked at last. “How could it be lost among even such few as there are of you?” He gestured to the silent ones sitting around the stone bowl. “You are immortal, are you not?”