by Tad Williams
Deornoth turned to see Vorzheva sitting upright on her horse, face set in lines of grim fear. “What is it, my lady?” he asked. “Is something amiss?”
She offered a nervous smile. “My people have hated and feared this valley forever. Hotvig is a clan-man and would not show it, but he fears this place, too.” She sighed shakily. “Now I must follow my husband up on this unnatural rock. I am afraid.”
For the first time since his prince had brought this odd woman to live in the castle at Naglimund, Deornoth felt his heart opening to her, filling with admiration. “We are all deathly afraid, my lady,” he said. “The rest of us are just not as honest as you.”
He tapped gently with his heels at Vildalix’s ribs and followed Vorzheva up the path.
The road was overhung with trailing vines and the tangled branches of trees, forcing the travelers to spend as much time ducking their heads as they did riding upright. As they slowly circled out of the shadow, like ants walking the perimeter of a sundial, the mist that clung to the hill lent an unusual sparkle to the afternoon glow.
Deornoth thought that the smell of the place was what seemed strangest of all. Sesuad’ra gave off a scent of timeless growth, of water and roots and damp earth in a place long undisturbed. There was an air of peace here, of slow, careful thought, but also a disturbing sensation of watchfulness. From time to time the stillness was broken by the trill of unseen birds whose songs were as somber and hesitant as children whispering in a high-ceilinged hall.
As the grassy meadow began to drop away below them, the travelers passed posts of standing stone, time-smoothed white shapes almost twice a man’s height that had in their unrecognizable outlines some hint of movement, of life. They passed the first as the path brought them around into direct sunlight for the first time.
“Marking pillars,” Geloë called over her shoulder. “One for each of the moons in the year. We’ll pass a dozen every time we circle around the hill until we reach the summit. They were carved to look like animals and birds once, I think.”
Deornoth stared at the rounded nob that might have been a head and wondered what beast it had once represented. Weathered by wind and rain, it was now as shapeless as melted wax, faceless as the forgotten dead. He shivered and make the sign of the Tree on his breast.
A little while later Geloë stopped and pointed downward toward the northwest part of the valley, where the rim of the old forest reached out almost to the very banks of the Stefflod. The river was a tiny streak of quicksilver along the valley’s emerald floor.
“Just beyond the river,” she said, “do you see?” She gestured again at the forest’s dark breakfront, which might have been a frozen sea-wave awaiting only spring’s thaw before it swept across the low ground. “There, in the forest’s fringe. Those are the ruins of Enki-e-Shao’saye, which some say was the most beautiful city ever built in Osten Ard since the world began. ”
As his companions whispered and shaded their eyes, Deornoth moved to the edge of the path, squinting at the distant forest. He saw nothing but what might have been a crumbled wall of lavender, a flash of gold.
“There’s not much to see,” he said quietly.
“Not in this age,” Geloë replied.
Up they climbed as the day waned. Each time they circled around to the hill’s northern slope, coming out of shade into ever-decreasing afternoon light, they could see the spreading knot of blackness on the horizon. The storm was moving in swiftly. It had now swallowed the far borders of great Aldheorte, so that all the north seemed a gray uncertainty.
As they finished their twelfth circuit around the hill, passing the one hundred and forty-fourth of the marking pillars—a small enough diversion, but still Deornoth had kept score—the travelers emerged at last from the shadowing greenery, clambering up a final slope until they stood on the hill’s windy summit. The sun had fallen away into the west; only a reddish sliver remained.
The top of the hill was nearly flat and scarcely less wide than Sesuad’ra’s base. All around its perimeter jutted fingers of upright stone, not smoothed like the marking pillars, but great, raw standing stones, each as tall as four men, made of the same gray rock veined with white and pink that formed the hill.
In the center of the plateau, in the midst of a field of waving grass, stood a vast, low building of opalescent stone, tinged with the sunset’s red glow.
At first it seemed a temple of some sort, like the great old buildings of Nabban from the days of the Imperium, but its lines were plainer. Its unassuming but affecting style made it seem almost to spring from the hill itself. It was plain that this structure belonged on this windy hilltop, beneath this incredibly wide sky. The grandeur and self-interest that spoke from every angle of houses of human worship, however finely wrought, was a language alien to whoever had built this. The passage of unguessable years had in places brought its walls to collapse. Unhindered for centuries, trees had thrust up through the building’s very roof, or pushed their way in at the arched doorways like unwanted guests. Still, the simplicity and beauty of the place were so plain—and at the same time so inhuman—that for a long time no one ventured to speak.
“We are here,” Josua said at last, his tones solemn but exalted. “After all our danger and all our suffering, we have found a place where we can stop and say: we go no farther.”
“It is not forever, Prince Josua.” Geloë spoke gently, as if unwilling to break his mood, but the prince was already striding confidently across the hilltop toward the white walls.
“It need not be forever,” he called. “But for now, we will be safe!” He turned and waved his hand for the others to follow, then continued turning, gazing around him on all sides. “I take back what I said!” he shouted to Geloë. “With a few good folk behind me, I could make a stand here and Sir Camaris himself could not defeat me, not with all the knights of my father’s Great Table at his side!”
He bounded away toward the pale walls that now showed a touch of blue. Evening was coming on. The others went after him, talking quietly among themselves as they passed through the swaying grass.
25
Petals in a Wind Storm
“It’s a stupidgame,” Simon said. “It doesn’t make any sense.”
Aditu lifted an eyebrow.
“It doesn’t!” he insisted. “I mean, look! You could win if you just moved here ...” he pointed, “and there ...” he pointed again. Looking up, he found Aditu’s golden eyes upon him, laughing, mocking. “Couldn’t you... ?” he finished.
“Of course, Seoman.” She moved the polished stones across the gaming board as he had suggested, from one golden island to another over a sea of sapphire-blue waves. The mock-ocean was surrounded by scarlet flames and murky gray clouds. “But then the game is over, and only the shallowest waters have been explored. ”
Simon shook his head. He had struggled for days to learn the complex rules of shent, only to discover that what he had been taught were only the rudiments. How could he learn a game that people did not play to win? But Aditu did not try to lose either, as far as Simon could tell. Instead, it seemed as though the issue was to make the game interesting by introducing themes and puzzles, most of which were as far beyond Simon’s comprehension as the mechanisms of the rainbow.
“If you will not take offense,” Aditu said, smiling, “may I instead show you another way?” She put the markers back in their previous locations. “If I use these Songs of mine to build a Bridge here ...”—a quick flurry of movements—“then you can cross to the Isles of the Cloud of Exile.”
“But why do you want to help me?” Somewhere, as if in the very fabric of the mutable walls, a stringed instrument began to sound; if Simon had not known that they were quite alone within the airy nectarine halls of Aditu’s house, he would have thought a musician played in the next wind-shifting room. He had stopped wondering about such things, but could not still a reflexive shudder; the music felt eerie and delicate as a small and excessively-legged something walking a
cross his skin. “How can you win a game when you keep helping the other person?”
Aditu leaned back from the gaming board. In her own home she wore just as little as she did on the walkways of Jao é-Tinukai’i, if not less. Simon, who still could not look comfortably on the abundance of her golden limbs, stared hard at the playing pieces.
“Manchild,” she said, “I think you can learn. I think you are learning. But remember, we Zida’ya have been playing this game since time before time. First Grandmother says it came with us from the Garden that is Lost.” She laid a placatory hand on Simon’s arm, raising goosebumps there. “Shent can be played to amuse, only. I have played games that were nothing but gossip and friendly mockery, and all strategies were turned to that end. Other games one can only win by almost losing. I have also experienced games where both players truly strove to lose—although it took years for one to succeed.” Some memory brought a flick of smile. “Do you not see, Snowlock, winning and losing are only the walls within which the game takes place. Inside the House of Shent ...” she paused, a frown touching her mercurial face like a shadow. “It is hard to say in your tongue.” The frown disappeared. “Perhaps that is why it seems so difficult for you. The thing is, within the House of Shent it is the coming and going, the visitors—friends and enemies both—the births and deaths, all of these things that matter.” She gestured around her at her own habitation, the floors deep in sweet grass, the rooms tangled with the branches of tiny flowering trees. Some of the trees, Simon had discovered, had fierce little thorns. “As with all dwellings,” she said, “of mortals and immortals both, it is the living that makes a house—not the doors, not the walls.”
She rose and stretched. Simon watched covertly, struggling to keep his frowning mask even as her graceful movements caused his heart to leap painfully. “We will continue our play tomorrow,” she said. “I think you are learning, although you do not know it yet. Shent has lessons even for Sudhoda’ya, Seoman.”
Simon knew that she was bored and that it was time for him to leave. He was terribly conscious of never overstaying his welcome. He hated it when the Sithi were kind and understanding with him, as though he were a stupid animal that did not know better.
“I should go, Aditu.”
She did not ask him to stay. Anger and regret and a sort of deep physical frustration all struggled within him as he bowed his head briefly, then turned and made his way out between the swaying blossoms. The afternoon light glowed through the orange and rose walls, as if he moved inside the very heart of a sunset.
He stood outside Aditu’s house for some time, looking out past the shimmering mist thrown up from the cataract that played beside her doorway. The valley was umber and gold, slashed with the darker green of the tree-covered hills and the bright emerald of tended meadows. To look at, Jao é-Tinukai‘i seemed straightforward as sun and rain. Like any other place, it had rocks and plants and trees and houses—but it also had the Sithi, the folk who lived in these houses, and Simon had grown quite sure that he would never understand them. Like the minute and secret life that teemed in the black earth beneath the valley’s placid grass, Simon now realized that Jao é-Tinukai’i was crowded with things beyond his comprehension. He had already found out how little he understood when he had embarked upon an attempt at escape, soon after being sentenced to a lifetime’s imprisonment among these gentle captors.
He had waited three full days after his sentence had been delivered by Shima’onari. Such patience, Simon had felt sure, demonstrated a cold-blooded subtlety of maneuver worthy of the great Camaris. Looking back a fortnight later, such ignorance was already laughable. What had he thought he was doing... ?
On the fourth day of his sentence, in late afternoon while the prince was away, Simon walked out of Jiriki’s house. He crossed the river quickly but—he hoped—unobtrusively, clambering over a narrow bridge, then headed back toward the spot where Aditu had first brought him to the valley. The cloth-knotted mural that led to Jiriki’s house continued on the river’s far side as well, spanning from tree to tree. The sections Simon passed seemed to show the survivors of some great disaster bringing their boats to a new land—the Sithi coming to Osten Ard?—and building great cities, empires in the forests and mountains. There were other details, too, signs woven into the tapestry that suggested strife and sorrow had not been left behind in the blighted homeland, but Simon was in too much of a hurry to stop and look closely.
After making his way down the river path for some distance he turned off at last and headed for the heavy undergrowth at the base of the hills, where he hoped to make up in stealth what he lost in time. There were not many Sithi about, but he was certain that any one of them would sound the alarm at the sight of their prisoner traveling toward the boundaries of Jao é-Tinukai’i, so he slid through the trees as carefully as he could, keeping away from the common paths. Despite the exhilaration of escape, he felt more than a pang of guilt: Jiriki would doubtless suffer some punishment for letting the mortal captive slip away. Still, Simon owed a responsibility to his other friends that outweighed even the multimillennial laws of the Sithi.
No one saw him, or at lease no one made an attempt to stop him. By the time several hours had passed, he had moved into what seemed a wilder, less tamed section of the old forest, and was certain he had made his escape. His entire trip with Aditu, from the Pools to Jiriki’s door, had taken less than two hours. He had now gone easily twice that, straight back along the river.
But when Simon crept down from the cover of the thickest vegetation, it was to find himself still in Jao é-Tinukai’i, albeit in a part he had not yet seen.
He stood in the middle of a shadowed, dusky clearing. The trees all around were draped with fine, silky streamers like spiderwebs; the afternoon sun set them gleaming, so that the forest seemed wound in a fiery net. In the middle of the clearing an oval door of moss-matted white wood had been built into the trunk of a huge oak, around which the silk hung so thickly that the tree itself was barely visible. He paused for a moment, wondering what undersized hermit would live here, in a tree on the outskirts of the city. Next to the beautiful, rippling folds of Jiriki’s house or the other graceful constructions of Jao é-Tinukai‘i, let alone the living magnificence of the Yásira, this place seemed backward, as though whoever dwelled here hid himself from even the slow pace of the Sithi. But despite its aura of age and isolation, the spidersilk house seemed in no way menacing. The clearing was empty and peaceful, comfortable in its unimportance. The air was dusty but pleasant, like the pockets of a beloved aunt. Here the rest of Jao é-Tinukai’i seemed only a memory of vibrant life. A person could linger here beneath the silk-draped trees while the very world crumbled away outside....
As Simon stood watching the undulating strands, a mourning dove hooted softly. He abruptly remembered his mission. How long had he stood here, staring like a fool? What if the owner of this strange house had come out, or returned from some errand? Then the hue and cry would go up and he would be caught like a rat.
Frustrated by this first error in reckoning, Simon hurried back into the forest. He had misjudged his time, that was all. Another hour’s hiking would carry him beyond the city’s fringe and back through the Summer Gate. Then, with the hoarded provisions he had quietly stolen from the prince’s generous table, he would head due south until he reached the edge of the forest. He might die in the attempt, but that was what heroes did. This he knew.
Simon’s willingness to become a dead hero seemed to have little effect on the subtleties of Jao é-Tinukai’i. When he emerged at last from the dense brush, the sun now far across the sky toward evening, it was to find himself up to his knees in the golden grass of open woodland before the mighty Y ásira, where he stood dumbstruck before the shimmering, shifting wings of the butterflies.
How could this be? He had followed the river carefully. It had never been out of his sight for more than a few steps, and always it had flowed in the same direction. The sun had seemed to move cor
rectly across the sky. His journey into this place with Aditu would be printed on his heart forever—he could not forget a single detail!—but nevertheless, he had walked more than half the afternoon to travel a distance of a few hundred paces.
With this realization, the strength flowed from his body. He fell to the warm, damp ground and lay with his face against the turf, as though he had been struck a blow.
Jiriki’s house had many rooms, one of which he had given to Simon to be his own, but the prince seemed to spend most of his own time in the open-sided chamber where Simon had first met him on arriving in Jao é- Tinukai’i. As the earliest weeks of his confinement passed it became Simon’s habit to spend each evening there with Jiriki, sitting on the gentle slope above the water while the light gradually dimmed from the sky, watching the shadows lengthen and the glassy pond grow darker. As the last gleam of the sunset vanished from between the branches the pond became a somber mirror, stars blooming in its violet depths.
Simon had never really listened to the sounds of oncoming night, but Jiriki’s often silent company encouraged him to give ear to the songs of cricket and frog, to begin to hear the sighing of wind in the trees as something other than a warning to pull his hat down tightly over his ears. At times, as he sank into the swelling evening, he felt he was on the verge of some great understanding. A sense of being more than himself stole over him, of what it felt like to live in a world that cared little for cities or castles or the worries of the folk who built them. Sometimes he was frightened by the size of this world, by the limitless depths of the evening sky salted with cold stars.
But for all these unfamiliar insights, he still remained Simon: most of the time he was merely frustrated.
