by Tad Williams
She vanished back down the hillside toward Jao é-Tinukai’i. A few moments later, Simon followed. Head down, watching his boot toes scuffing through the grass, he soon found himself standing on the path before Jiriki’s house. Evening was coming on and the crickets were singing by the river-pond.
“Very good, Seoman,” Aditu said the next day. She examined the shent board, nodding. “Misdirection! To go away from that which you wish to gain. You are learning.”
“It doesn’t always work,” he said glumly.
Her eyes glittered. “No. Sometimes you need a deeper strategy. But it is a beginning.”
Binabik and Sludig had not come far into the forest, only deep enough to shelter their camp from the bitter wind sweeping down the plains, a wind whose voice had become a ceaseless howling. The horses shifted uneasily on their tethers, and even Qantaqa seemed restless. She had just returned from her third excursion into the forest, and now sat with ears erect, as though listening for some expected but nonetheless dire warning. Her eyes gleamed with reflected firelight.
“Do you think we are any safer here, little man?” Sludig asked, sharpening his swore. “I think I would rather face the empty plains than his forest. ”
Binabik frowned. “Perhaps, but would you rather also be facing hairy giants like those we saw?”
The White Way, the great road that spanned the northern borders of Aldheorte, had turned at last by the forest’s easternmost edge, leading them south for the first time since they had come down off the Old Tumet’ai Road with Simon many days earlier. Not long after the southward turn, they had spotted a group of white shapes moving in the distance behind them—shapes that they both realized could be nothing but Hunën. The giants, once unwilling to leave their hunting lands at the foot of Stormspike, now seemed to range the length and breadth of the northland. Remembering the destruction that a band of these creatures had wreaked on their large traveling party, neither troll nor Rimmersgarder had any false hopes that the two of them could survive an encounter with the shaggy monstrosities.
“What makes you sure we are any safer because we have come a few furlongs into the woods?” demanded Sludig.
“Nothing that is certain,” Binabik admitted, “but I know that the small, creeping diggers are reluctant to tunnel into Aldheorte. Perhaps the giants may be having similar reluctance.”
Sludig snorted and made the blade rasp loudly on the whetstone. “And the Hunë that Josua killed near Naglimund, when the boy Simon was found? That one was in the forest, was it not?”
“That giant was driven to there,” Binabik said irritably. He pushed the second of the leaf-wrapped birds into the coals. “There are no promises in life, Sludig, but it seems to me smarter to take fewer chances.”
After a short silence, the Rimmersman spoke up. “You speak rightly, troll. I am only tired. I wish we would get where we are going, to this Farewell Stone! I would like to give Josua his damnable sword, then sleep for a week. In a bed.”
Binabik smiled. “With certainty. But it is not Josua’s sword, or at least I am not sure it is meant for him.” He stood and took the long bundle from where it leaned against a tree. “I am not sure what it is for at all.” Binabik’s fingers unwrapped the blade, allowing its dark surface to show. The firelight revealed no more than its dark outlines. “Do you see?” Binabik said, hefting the bundle in his arms. “Thorn now seems to think it is acceptable for a small troll to carry it.”
“Don’t talk about it as if it were alive,” Sludig said, sketching a hasty Tree in the air. “That is against nature.”
Binabik eyed him. “It may not be alive, as a bear or a bird or a man is alive, but there is something in it that is more than sword-metal. You know that, Sludig.”
“That may be.” The Rimmersman frowned. “No, curse it, I do know. That is why I do not like speaking of it. I have dreams about the cave where we found the thing.”
“That is not surprising to me,” the troll said softly. “That was a fearsome place.”
“But it is not just the place—not even the worm, or Grimmric’s death. I dream of the damnable sword, little man. It was laying there among those bones as though it waited for us. Cold, cold, like a snake in its den ...”
Sludig trailed off. Binabik watched him, but said nothing.
The Rimmersman sighed. “And I still do not understand what good having it will do Josua. ”
“No more do I, but it is a powerful thing. It is good to remember that.” Binabik stroked the glinting surface as he might the back of a cat. “Look at it, Sludig. We have been so caught up in our trials and losses that we have almost been forgetting Thorn. This is an object that is making legends! Perhaps it is the greatest weapon ever to have come to light in Osten Ard—greater than Hern’s spear Oinduth, greater than Chukku’s sling. ”
“Powerful it may be,” Sludig grumbled, “but I have doubts as to how lucky it is. It didn’t save Sir Camaris, did it?”
Binabik showed a small, secretive smile. “But he did not have it when he was swept over the side in Firannos Bay: Towser the jester told that to us. That is why we were able to discover it on the dragon-mountain. Otherwise it would be at ocean’s bottom—like Camaris. ”
The wind shrieked, rattling the branches overhead. Sludig waited an appropriate interval, then moved closer to the comforting fire. “How could such a great knight fall off a boat? God grant that I die more honorably, in battle. It only proves to me, if I had any doubts, that boats are things best left alone.”
Binabik’s yellow grin widened. “To be hearing such words from one whose ancestors were the greatest sailors mankind has known!” His expression grew serious. “Although it must be told that some doubt Camaris was swept into the sea. Some there are who say that he was drowning himself. ”
“What? Why in Usires’ name would he do such a thing?” Sludig poked at the fire indignantly.
The troll shrugged. “It is only being rumor, but I do not ignore such things. Morgenes’ writings are filled with many strange stories. Qinkipa! How I wish I had found more time for reading the doctor’s book! One thing Morgenes was telling in his life-story of Prester John was that Sir Camaris was much like our Prince Josua: a man of strange, melancholy moods. Also, he was much in admiration of John’s queen, Ebekah. King Prester John had made Camaris her special protector. When the Rose of Hernysadharc—as many were naming her—died in the birthing of Josua, Camaris was said to be much upset. He grew fell and strange, and railed against his God and Heaven. He gave up sword and armor and other things, as one who takes up a life of religion—or, as one who knows he will die. He was making his way back to his home in Vinitta after a pilgrimage to the Sancellan Aedonitis. In a storm he was lost in the ocean off Harcha-island. ”
Binabik leaned forward and began pulling the wrapped birds out of the fire, exerting caution so as not to burn his stubby fingers. The fire crackled and the wind moaned.
“Welladay,” Sludig said at last. “What you say only makes me more sure that I will avoid the high and the mighty whenever possible. But for Duke Isgrimnur, who has a good level head on his shoulders, the rest of them are drifty and foolish as geese. Your Prince Josua, if you will pardon my saying it, first among them.”
Binabik’s grin returned. “He is not my Prince Josua, and he is—what was your wording?—drifty. But not foolish. Not foolish at all. And he may be our last hope for staving off the coming storm.” As though he had stumbled into an uncomfortable subject, the troll busied himself with their supper. He pushed a smoking bird over to the Rimmersman. “Here. Have something to eat. Perhaps if the Hunën are enjoying the cold weather, they will be leaving us alone. We can then gain ourselves a good night sleeping. ”
“We will need it. We have a long road before we can give away this damnable sword.”
“But we owe it to those who have fallen,” Binabik said, staring out into the dark reaches of the surrounding forest. “We do not have the freedom of making a failure. ”
As t
hey ate, Qantaqa rose and paced about the campsite, listening intently to the wailing wind.
Snow was blowing savagely across the Waste, flung hard enough by the howling wind to strip the very bark from the trees along the Aldheorte’s ragged north fringe. The great hound, not hindered in the least by such unfriendly weather, bounded lightly back through the blinding flurries, stone-hard muscles coiling and uncoiling beneath its short fur. When the dog reached Ingen’s side, the Queen’s Huntsman reached into his vest and produced a length of gnarled, dried meat that had at one end something suspiciously like a fingernail. The white hound crunched it in a second, then stood peering out into the darkness, cloudy little eyes full of eagerness to be moving once more. Ingen scratched carefully behind the dog’s ears, his gloved fingers trailing across a bulgingly muscled jaw that could crush rock.
“Yes, Niku’a” the huntsman whispered, voice echoing within his helm. His own eyes were as madly intent as those of the hound. “You have the scent now, do you not? Ah, the Queen will be so proud. My name will be sung until the sun turns black and rotten and drops from the sky.”
He lifted his helmet and let the stinging wind batter his face. As certainly as he knew that frosty stars shone somewhere above the darkness, so, too, he knew that his quarry was still before him, and that he drew nearer to it with every day that passed. At this moment he did not feel himself to be the stolid, tireless hound that was his sigil, and whose snarling face made the mask of his helm; he was instead some subtler, more feline predator, a creature of fierce but quiet joy. He felt the freezing night on his face and knew that nothing that lived beneath the black sky could escape him for long.
Ingen Jegger slid the crystalline dagger from his sleeve and held it before him, staring at it as though it were a mirror in which he could see himself, the Ingen who had feared to die in obscurity. Catching some hardy beam of moonlight or starshine, the translucent blade burned with a chilly blue fire; its carvings seemed to writhe like serpents beneath his fingers. This was all he had dreamed, and more. The Queen in the Silver Mask had set him a great task, a task befitting the making of a legend. Soon—he felt it with a certainty that made him tremble—soon that task would be accomplished. Ingen let the dagger slide back into his sleeve.
“Go, Niku’a,” he whispered, as though the hidden stars might betray him if they heard. “It is time to hunt our prey to ground. We will run.” Ingen vaulted into the saddle. His patient mount stirred as if awakening.
The snow swirled, blowing through the empty night where a moment before a man, a horse, and a dog had stood.
The afternoon light was failing, the translucent walls of Jiriki’s house gradually growing darker. Aditu had brought a meal of fruit and warm bread to Simon’s room, an act of kindness for which he would have been even more appreciative had she not stayed to annoy him. It was not that Simon did not enjoy Aditu’s company or admire her exotic beauty: it was, in fact, her very beauty and shamelessness that disturbed him, making it especially difficult to concentrate on such mundane tasks as eating.
Aditu trailed a finger up his backbone once more. Simon nearly choked on a mouthful of bread.
“Don’t do that!”
The Sitha-woman made an interested face. “Why not? Does it cause you pain?”
“No! Of course not. It tickles.” He turned away sulkily, inwardly regretting his lack of manners—but not much. He was feeling, as he usually did around Aditu, quite flummoxed. Jiriki, for all his alien ways, had never made Simon think of himself as a cloddish mortal: beside Aditu, Simon felt himself to be made of mud.
She was attired today in little but feathers and jeweled beads and a few strips of fabric. Her body gleamed with scented oils.
“Tickles? But is that bad?” she asked. “I do not wish to hurt you or make you uncomfortable, Seoman. It is just that you are so—” she searched for the proper word, “—so unusual, and I have seldom been near your kind.” She seemed to be enjoying his discomfiture. “You are very wide here ...” She ran a finger from one of his shoulders to the other, sighing as this occasioned another muffled yelp. “It is clear you are not made like our folk.”
Simon, who had slid out of reach once more, grunted. He was uncomfortable around her, that was a simple fact. Her presence had begun to make him feel as though he had some kind of damnable itch, and in his solitude he had come to both yearn for and yet fear her arrivals. Every time he stole a glance at her slim body, displayed with an immodesty that still shocked him to the depths of his being, he found himself remembering the thundering sermons of Father Dreosan. Simon was astonished to discover that the priest, whom he had always thought an idiot, had been right after all—the devil did make snares for the flesh. Just watching Aditu’s lissome, catlike movements filled Simon with a squirming consciousness of sin. It was the more terrible, he knew, because Jiriki’s sister was not even of his own kind.
As the priest had taught, Simon tried to keep the pure face of Elysia the Mother of God before him when he was confronted by the temptation of flesh. Back in the Hayholt, Simon had seen that face in hundreds of paintings and sculptures, in countless candlelit shrines, but now he was alarmed to find his memory turning traitor. In recollection, the eyes of Usires’ sainted mother seemed more playful and more ... feline ... than could possibly be proper or holy.
Despite this discomfort, in his loneliness he was still grateful to Aditu for all her attentions, however perfunctory he sometimes thought them to be, and however careless of Simon’s feelings her teasing sometimes became. He was most grateful for the meals. Jiriki was seldom at home of late, and Simon was more than a little uncertain about which of the fruits, vegetables, and less familiar plants growing in the prince’s extensive forest gardens could be safely eaten. There was no one but the prince’s sister on whom he could rely. Even among the first family—the “Root and Bough” as Jiriki had phrased it—there seemed to be nothing like servants. Everyone fended for themselves, as befitted the Sithi’s solitary habits. Simon knew that the Sithi kept animals, or rather, that the valley was full of animals that came when they were called. The goats and sheep must allow themselves to be milked, for the meals Aditu brought him often included fragrant cheeses, but the Sithi seemed to eat no meat. Simon often thought longingly about all those trusting animals wandering the paths of Jao é-Tinukai’i. He knew he would never dare do anything about it, but—Aedon!—wouldn’t a leg of mutton be a fine thing to have!
Aditu poked him again. Simon stolidly ignored her. She got up and walked past the nest of soft blankets that was Simon’s bed, stopping before the billowing blue wall. The wall had been scarlet when Jiriki first brought him, but Simon’s Sitha host had somehow changed its color to this more soothing cerulean. When Aditu brushed it with her long-fingered hand, the fabric slid away like a drawn curtain, revealing another, larger room beyond.
“Let us return to our game,” she said. “You are too serious, manchild.”
“I will never be able to learn it,” Simon muttered.
“You do not apply yourself. Jiriki claims you have a good mind—although my brother has been wrong before.” Aditu reached into a fold in the wall and produced a crystal sphere which began to glow at her touch. She placed it on a simple tripod of wood, letting its light spread through the darkened room, then took a carved wooden case from beneath the colorful shent board and removed the polished stones that served as playing pieces. “I think I had just made myself an acre of Woodlarks. Come, Seoman, play and don’t pout. You had a good idea the other day, a very clever idea—fleeing that which you truly sought.” She stroked his arm, making the hairs stand up, and gave him one of her strange Sithi smiles, full of impenetrable significance.
“Seoman has other games to play tonight.”
Jiriki stood in the doorway, dressed in what appeared to be ceremonial attire, an intricately embroidered robe in varied shades of yellow and blue. He wore soft gray boots. His sword Indreju dangled at his hip in a scabbard of the same gray stuff, and three
long white heron feathers were braided into his hair. “He has received a summons.”
Aditu carefully set the pieces on the board. “I shall have to play by myself, then—unless you are staying, Willow-switch.” She gazed from beneath lowered lids.
Jiriki shook his head. “No, sister. I must be Seoman’s guide.”
“Where am I going?” Simon asked. “Summoned by who?”
“By First Grandmother.” Jiriki lifted his hand and made a brief but solemn gesture. “Amerasu the Ship-Born has asked to see you.”
Walking in silence beneath the stars, Simon thought about the things he had seen since leaving the Hayholt. To think that once he had feared he would live and die a castle-drudge! Was there to be no end to the strange places he must go, to the strange people he must meet? Amerasu might be able to help him, but still he was growing weary of strangeness. Then again, he realized with a flutter of panic, if Amerasu or some other did not come to his aid, the lovely but limited vistas of Jao é-Tinukai’i might be all he would ever see again.
But the strangest thing, he thought suddenly, was that no matter where he went or what he saw, he always seemed to remain the same old Simon—a little less mooncalfish, perhaps, but not very different from the clumsy kitchen boy who had lived at the Hayholt. Those distant, peaceful days seemed utterly gone, vanished without hope of reclamation, but the Simon who had lived them was still very much present. Morgenes had told him once to make his home in his own head. That way, home could never be taken from him. Was this what the doctor meant? To be the same person no matter where you went, no matter what madness occurred? Somehow, that didn’t seem quite right.
“I will not burden you with instructions,” Jiriki said suddenly, startling him. “There are special rites to be performed before meeting the First Grandmother, but you do not know them, nor could you perform all of them even if they were told to you. I do not think that cause to worry, however. I believe Amerasu wishes to see you because of who you are and what you have seen, not because she wishes you to watch you perform the Six Songs of Respectful Request.”
