The Stone of Farewell

by Tad Williams

  Not only bandits ... Eolair shook his head, disgusted with himself. He had been so caught up in the day-to-day matters of his people’s struggle to survive that he had failed to heed his own warning. There were indeed greater menaces to fear than Skali of Kaldskryke and his cutthroat army.

  Eolair had heard stories told by survivors of the fall of Naglimund, the bewildered accounts of a ghostly army raised by Elias the High King. From the days of his childhood Eolair had heard tales of the White Foxes, demons who lived in the blackest, coldest lands of the uttermost north, who appeared like a plague, then vanished again. All during this last year the Frostmarch dwellers had whispered over their night-fires of just such pale demons. How foolish that Eolair of all people should not have realized the truth behind these tales—had he not spoken of just that at the Great Table!?

  But what could it all mean? If they were truly involved, why should creatures like these White Foxes side with Elias? Could it have something to do with that monstrous priest Pryrates?

  The Count of Nad Mullach sighed, then leaned far to the side to help his horse balance as they made their way down a treacherous hill path. Perhaps for all her foolishness, Maegwin had been right to set this task for him. But still, that was no justification for the way in which she had done it. Why should she treat him as she did in the underground city, after all he had done for her family and the faithful service he had given her father King Lluth? The terror and strangeness of their situation might be the reason for such unkindness, but it was no excuse.

  Such thoughtlessness was yet another odd change in Maegwin’s demeanor, the latest of many. He feared for her deeply, but could think of no way to help. She despised his solicitousness, and seemed to think he was little more than a sly courtier—Eolair, who hated falsity, yet had been driven to master it in the loyal service of her father! When he tried to help, she insulted him and turned her back: he could only watch her sickening as the land around him had sickened, her mind filling with strange fancies. He could do nothing.

  Eolair was two days making his way down through the silent valleys of the Grianspog, with only his own cold thoughts for company.

  It was astonishing to see how quickly Skali was making his occupation of Hernystir permanent. Not content with taking over those houses and buildings still standing in Hernysadharc and the surrounding villages, the Thane of Kaldskryke had begun to construct new ones, great longhouses of rough-hewn timbers. The Circoille Forest fringe was shrinking rapidly, replaced by a growing expanse of mutilated tree stumps.

  Eolair made his way along the ridgetops, watching the antlike figures swarming over the flatlands below. The clatter of hammer on wedge rang through the snowy hills.

  He could not at first understand why Skali should need to build more dwelling places: the conqueror’s army, while of good size, was hardly so vast that it could not harbor itself in the Hernystiri’s abandoned dwellings. It was only when Eolair looked away to the lowering northern skies that he realized what was happening.

  All Skali’s Rimmersfolk must be coming here from the North—old and young, women and children. He stared down at the tiny, industrious shapes. If it’s snowing in Hernysadharc in late Tiyagar-month, it must be a frozen hell up by Naarved and Skoggey. Bagba bite me, what a thought! Skali has chased us into the caves. Now he will move his Rimmersgarders onto our captured lands.

  Despite all that his folk had already suffered at the hands of Skali Sharp-nose’s warriors, despite King Lluth struck down, Prince Gwythinn tortured and dismembered, and hundreds of Eolair’s own brave Mullachi dead beneath the gray skies of the western meadows, the count found suddenly and to his surprise that he contained depths of anger and raw hatred yet unplumbed. Skali’s men strutting in the roads of Hernysadharc was bad enough, but the thought of them bringing their women and families to live on Hernystiri land filled Eolair with an unchanneled rage stronger than he had felt since the first Hernystirmen had fallen at the Inniscrich. Helpless on the ridgetop, he cursed the invaders and promised himself that he would see Skali’s jackals whipped howling back to Kaldskryke—those who did not die on the precious Hernystiri soil that they had usurped.

  Suddenly, the Count of Nad Mullach longed for the purity of battle. The Hernystiri forces had been so savaged at Inniscrich that they had been unable to fight anything but rearguard actions since. Now they had been driven into hiding in the Grianspog and there was little they could do but harrass the victors. Gods, he thought, but it would be fine to swing steel in the open once more, to line up breast to breast with shields flashing sunlight and sound the charge! The count knew it was a foolish craving, knew himself for a careful man who always preferred talking sensibly to fighting, but just now he craved simplicity. Open warfare, for all its witless violence and horror, could seem a sort of beautiful idiocy into which one could throw oneself as into the arms of a lover.

  Now the call of that compelling but dangerous lover was growing stronger. Whole nations seemingly on the march, topsy-turvy weather, mad men ruling and dire legends come to life—how he suddenly longed for simple things!

  But even as he yearned for unthinking release, Eolair knew that he would hate its coming to be: the fruits of violence did not necessarily go to the just or the wise.

  Eolair skirted Hernysadharc’s westernmost outposts and circled far around the largest encampments of Skali’s Rimmersmen, who had spread across the meadowlands beneath Hernystir’s capital. He rode instead through the hilly country called the Dillathi, which stood like a bulwark along Hernystir’s coast as if to prevent invasion by sea. Indeed, the Dillathi would have presented a nearly impossible problem for any would-be conqueror, but the invasion which had undone Hernystir had come from the opposite direction.

  The highland folk were a suspicious lot, but they had grown used to war-fugitives in the past year, so Eolair was able to find welcome in a few houses. Those who took him in were far more interested in his news than the fact that their guest was the Count of Nad Mullach. These were days when gossip was the most valued coin in the country.

  So far from the cities, no one had known much of Prince Josua in the first place, let alone how his struggle with the High King might be somehow connected to Hernystir’s plight. No one in the Dillathi country had the slightest idea of whether King Elias’ brother Josua was alive or dead, let alone where he might be. But the highlanders had heard of their own King Lluth’s mortal wounding from the tales of wanderering soldiers, survivors of the fighting at the Inniscrich. Thus, Eolair’s hosts were usually heartened to discover from him that Lluth’s daughter still lived, and that a Hernystiri court-in-exile of sorts still existed. Before the war they had thought little of what the king in the Taig said or did, but he had been part of their lives nonetheless. Eolair guessed they found it reassuring that at least a shadow of the old kingdom remained, as though the continued existence of Lluth’s family somehow assured that the Rimmersmen would eventually be forced out.

  Coming down out of the Dillathi, Eolair steered wide of high-walled Crannhyr, Hernystir’s strangest and most insular city, guiding his horse instead toward Abaingeat at the mouth of the River Baraillean. He was unsurprised to find that the Hernystirmen of Abaingeat had found a way to live under the heavy hands of both Elias and Skali; Abaingeaters had a reputation for flexibility. It was a common joke in other parts of the country to refer to the port city as “Extremely North Perdruin” because of the shared affection for profits and dislike of politics—the kind of politics that interfered with business, anyway.

  It was also in Abaingeat that Eolair received his first real clue to Josua’s whereabouts, and it happened in a very typical Abaingeat way.

  Eolair shared a supper table with a Nabbanai priest in an inn along the waterfront. The wind was howling and rain was beating on the roof, making the common room rumble like a drum. Under the very eyes of bearded Rimmersmen and haughty Erkynlanders—Hernystir’s new conquerors—the good father, who had perhaps had one tankard of ale too many, told Eo
lair a disjointed but fascinating story. He had just arrived from the Sancellan Aedonitis in Nabban, and he swore that he had been told by someone there, someone he characterized as “the most important priest in the Sancellan,” that Josua Lackhand had survived Naglimund. with seven other survivors, had made his way eastward through the grasslands to safety. These facts had been told to him, the priest said, only under the condition of his complete discretion.

  Immediately after telling this tale, Eolair’s companion, full of drunken remorse, begged him swear to secrecy—as, the count felt sure, the priest had begged many other recipients of this same secret. Eolair agreed with a commendably straight face.

  There were several things that interested Eolair about this tale. The exact number of survivors in Josua’s party seemed a possible indication of its authenticity, although he had to admit it sounded almost like a legend in the making: The One-Handed Prince and his Gallant Seven. Also, the priest’s contrition about blurting out the secret seemed genuine. He had not told the tale to make himself appear more grand; rather, he was simply the kind of man who could not keep a confidence to save his soul.

  This, of course, raised a question. Why would a man of some importance to Mother Church, as the priest’s informant supposedly was, entrust such a vital piece of intelligence to a numbwit on whose flushed, foolish face untrustworthiness was clearly written? Surely no one could expect this cheerful drunkard to keep anything to himself, let alone keep hidden a subject of such interest in the war-torn North?

  Eolair was puzzled but intrigued. As thunder growled over the Frostmarch, the Count of Nad Mullach began to consider a journey to the grassy country beyond Erkynland.

  Later that night, coming back from the stables—Eclair never trusted others to take proper care of his horse, a habit that had benefited him more often than not—he stopped outside the inn’s front door. A fierce wind laden with snow blew down the street, banging the shuttered windows. Beyond the docks the sea murmured uneasily. All of Abaingeat’s inhabitants seemed to have vanished. The midnight city was a ghost ship, floating captainless beneath the moon.

  Strange lights played across the northern sky: yellow and indigo and a violet like the after-image of lightning. The horizon pulsed with rippling, radiant bands unlike anything Eolair had ever seen, at once chilling and yet incredibly vital. Compared to silent Abaingeat, the North seemed wildly alive, and for a mad moment the count wondered if it was worth fighting any more. The world he had known was gone, and nothing could bring it back. Perhaps it would be better just to accept ...

  He smacked his gloved hands together. The clap echoed dully and faded. He shook his head, trying to shake the leadenness from his thoughts. The lights were compelling indeed.

  And where would he go now? It was a ride of several weeks to the meadowlands beyond Hasu Vale of which the priest had spoken. Eolair knew he could cling to the coastline, passing Meremund and Wentmouth, but that would mean riding as a lone traveler through an Erkynland that owed its complete allegiance to the High King. Or, he could let the shimmering aurora draw him north instead, to his home in Nad Mullach. His keep was occupied by Skali’s reavers, but those of his people who survived in the countryside would give him shelter and news, and also a chance to rest and reprovision himself for the remainder of his long journey. From there he could turn east and pass Erchester to the north, moving in the protective shadow of the great forest.

  Pondering, he stared at the spectral glow in the northern sky. It made for a very chilly light.

  The waves were choppy, the dark sky wild with tattered, ominous clouds. A zigzag of lightning flared on the blackened horizon.

  Cadrach gripped the railing and groaned as the Eadne Cloud lifted high, then settled once more into the trough of a wave. Overhead the sails popped in the strong wind, percussive bursts of sound like whipcracks. “Oh, Brynioch of the Skies,” the monk implored, “take this tempest away!”

  “This is barely a storm at all,” Miriamele said derisively. “You’ve never been in a real sea-storm.”

  Cadrach made a gulping sound. “Nor do I want to be.”

  “Besides, what are you doing, praying to pagan gods? I thought you were an Aedonite monk.”

  “I have been praying for Usires’ intercession all afternoon,” Cadrach said, his face pale as fish-flesh. “I thought it time to try something different.” He rose on tiptoes and leaned farther out over the railing. Miriamele turned her head away. A moment later the monk settled back, wiping his mouth with his sleeve. A spatter of rain drifted across the deck.

  “And you, Lady,” he said, “does nothing bother you?”

  She bit back a mocking reply. He looked truly pathetic, his few strands of hair pasted flat, his eyes dark-rimmed. “Many things, but not being on a boat at sea.”

  “Count yourself blessed,” he mumbled, then turned back to sag against the rail once more. Instead, his eyes widened. He screeched in shock and tumbled backward, falling rump-first to the deck.

  “Bones of Anaxos!” he shouted. “Save us! What is it?!”

  Miriamele stepped to the rail to see a gray head bobbing in the saddle of the waves. It was vaguely manlike, hairless yet unscaled, sleek as a dolphin, with a red-rimmed, toothless mouth and eyes like rotting blackberries. The flexible mouth rounded into a circle as though it would sing. It gave out a strange, gurgling hoot, then slipped beneath the waves, showing a glimpse of long-toed, webbed feet as it dove. A moment later the nub of head appeared again a little closer to the ship. It watched them.

  Miriamele’s stomach fluttered. “Kilpa,” she whispered.

  “It is horrible,” Cadrach said, still crouching below the wale. “It has the face of a damned soul.”

  The empty black eyes followed Miriamele as she moved a few steps up the railing. She understood the monk clearly. The kilpa was far more horrifying than any mere animal could be, no matter how savage—so dreadfully near-human, yet so devoid of anything that looked like human feeling or understanding.

  “I have not seen one in years,” she said slowly, unable to tear her eyes away. “I don’t think I have ever seen one so close.” Her thoughts tumbled back to her childhood, to a trip she had taken with her mother Hylissa from Nabban to the island of Vinitta. Kilpa had glided in and out of their wake, and to the younger Miriamele they had seemed almost sportive, like porpoises or flying fish. Seeing this one so closely, she now understood why her mother had hastily dragged her from the rail. She shuddered.

  “You say that you have seen them before, my lady?” a voice asked. She whirled to find Aspitis standing behind her, his hand resting on crouching Cadrach’s shoulder. The monk looked quite sick.

  “On a long-ago visit to ... to Wentmouth,” she said hastily. “They are terrible, aren’t they?”

  Aspitis nodded slowly, staring at Miriamele rather than the slick gray thing bobbing off the stern rail. “I hadn’t realized that kilpa traveled into cold northern waters,” he said.

  “Doesn’t Gan Itai keep them away?” she said, trying to change the subject. “Why has this one come so close?”

  “Because the Niskie is exhausted and is sleeping for a while, and also because the kilpa have become very bold.” Aspitis bent and picked a square-headed iron nail off the deck, then pitched it at the silent watcher. It splashed a foot from the kilpa’s noseless, earless head. The black eyes did not blink. “They are more active than I have ever heard of, these days,” the earl said. “They have swarmed several small craft since the winter, and even a few large ones.” He hurriedly raised a hand on which gold rings sparkled. “But fear not, Lady Marya. There is no better singer than my Gan Itai.”

  “That thing is a horror and I am ill.” Cadrach groaned. “I must go and lie myself down.” He ignored Aspitis’ proffered hand and clambered to his feet, then went stumbling away.

  The earl turned and shouted instructions to the crewmen swarming in the wind-buffeted rigging. “We must reef the sails,” he said by way of explanation. “There is a very fi
erce storm coming, and we can only ride it out.” As if to underscore his point, lightning flashed once more on the northern horizon. “Perhaps you would be good enough to join me for my evening meal.” Thunder came rolling across the swells; a flurry of rain swept over them. “That way, your guardian can be given some privacy to recuperate, and you need not be without company if the storm grows frightening.” He smiled, showing even teeth.

  Miriamele felt tempted but cautious. There was an impression of coiled strength to Aspitis, as though some potential Were being hidden so as not to frighten. In a way, it reminded her of old Duke Isgrimnur, who treated women with gentle, almost excessive deference, as though his blundering bluffness might at any time escape his control and burst forth to shock and offend. Aspitis, too, seemed to hold something in check. It was a quality she found intriguing.

  “Thank you, your Lordship,” she said at last. “I would be honored—you will have to excuse me, though, if I must leave from time to time to see that Brother Cadrach is not suffering too badly for want of aid or company. ”

  “Did you not,” Aspitis said, smoothly taking her arm, “you would not be the good and gentle lady that you are. I can see that you two are as close as family, that you respect Cadrach as you would a beloved uncle.”

  Miriamele could not help looking over her shoulder as Aspitis led her across the deck, beneath the crewmen shouting at each other in the rigging so they could be heard above the wail of the wind. The kilpa still floated in the rough green seas, watching solemnly as a priest, its open mouth a round black hole.

  The earl’s squire, a thin, whey-faced young man with a resentful frown, directed the two pages as they loaded the table with fruit and bread and white cheese. Thures, the smaller of the pages, tottered out beneath the weight of a salver bearing a cold joint of beef. The boy stayed to assist, handing the squire a new carving untensil each time that artist impatiently waved his hand. The little page seemed clever—his dark eyes watched the pasty-faced squire intently for the slightest sign—but the bad-tempered older boy nevertheless found several opportunities to cuff him for his slowness.