The Stone of Farewell

by Tad Williams

  “The six what?”

  “It is not important. But remember this: although First Grandmother is of the same family as Aditu and myself, we are both children of the Last Days. Amerasu Ship-Born was one of the first speaking creatures to set foot on Osten Ard. I say this not to frighten,” he added hurriedly, seeing Simon’s distressed, moonlit expression, “but only to have you know she is different even than my father and mother. ”

  The silence returned as Simon pondered this. Could the handsome, sad-faced woman he had seen really be one of the oldest living things in the world? He did not doubt Jiriki, but his own wildest thoughts stretched to their limits still could not encompass the prince’s words.

  The winding path led them across a stone bridge. Once over the river, they made their way into the more heavily wooded part of the valley. Simon did his best to take note of what paths they took, but found that the memories quickly melted away, insubstantial as starlight. He remembered only that they crossed several more streams, each seeming slightly more melodious than the last, until they finally entered into a part of the forest that seemed quieter. Among these thickly knotted trees even the cricket songs were hushed. The tree branches swayed, but the wind was silent.

  When they finally stopped, Simon found to his surprise that they stood before the tall, cobwebbed tree he had found in his first attempt at escape. Faint lights shone through the tangle of silken threads, as though the great tree wore a glowing cloak.

  “I was here before,” Simon said slowly. The warm, still air made him feel at once drowsy and yet keenly alert.

  The prince looked at him and said nothing, but led him toward the oak. Jiriki set his hand to the moss-covered door, set so deeply into the bark that the tree might have grown around it.

  “We have permission,” he said quietly. The door swung silently inward.

  Beyond the doorway was an impossible thing: a narrow hallway that stretched away before him, as silk-tangled as the front of the oak-house. Tiny lights no larger than fireflies burned within the matted threads, filling the passageway with their flickering light. Simon, who could have sworn guiltlessly on a holy Tree that nothing lay behind the spreading oak but more trees, took a step back through the doorframe to see where such a hallway could possibly be hidden—could it pass down into the ground, somehow?—but Jiriki took his elbow and gently steered him across the threshold once more. The door fell shut behind them.

  They were completely surrounded by lights and silken webs, as though they moved through the clouds and among the stars. The curious sleepiness was still upon Simon: every detail was sharp and clear, but he had no idea how long they spent walking in the scintillant passage. They came at last to a more open place, a chamber that smelled of cedar and plum blossoms and other scents more difficult to identify. The minute and inconstant lights were fewer here, and the wide room was full of long, shuddery shadows. From time to time the walls creaked, as though he and Jiriki stood in the hold of a ship, or inside the trunk of a tree far larger than any Simon had ever seen. He heard a sound as of water slowly dripping, like the last drops of a rainstorm trickling from willow branches into a pool. Half-visible shapes lined the dark walls, things shaped like people; they might have been statues, for they were certainly very still.

  As Simon stared, his eyes not yet adjusted to the diminished light, something brushed against his leg. He jumped and cried out, but a moment later the flickering lights showed him a waving tail that could only belong to a cat; the creature swiftly vanished into the darkness along the walls. Simon caught his breath.

  Strange as the place was, he decided, there was nothing truly frightening about it. The shadowy chamber had an air of warmth and serenity unlike anything he had experienced thus far in Jao é-Tinukai’i. Judith, the Hayholt’s plump kitchen mistress, would almost have called it cozy.

  “Welcome to my house,” a voice said from the darkness. The pinpricks of light grew brighter around one of the shadowy figures, revealing a white-haired head and the back of a tall chair. “Come closer, manchild. I can see you there, but I doubt you can see me.”

  “First Grandmother has very sharp sight,” Jiriki said; Simon thought he could detect a trace of amusement in the Sitha’s voice. He stepped forward. The golden light revealed the ancient yet youthful face he had seen in Jiriki’s mirror.

  “You are in the presence of Amerasu y‘Senditu no’e-Sa’onserei, the Ship-Born,” intoned Jiriki from behind him. “Show respect, Seoman Snowlock.”

  Simon felt no compunction about doing so. He kneeled on wobbling legs and lowered his head before her.

  “Stand up, mortal boy,” she said quietly. Her voice was deep and smooth. It tugged at Simon’s memory. Had their short contact through the mirror burned itself so deeply on his mind?” “Hmmm,” she murmured. ”You are taller even than my young Willow-switch. Will you find the manchild a stool, Jiriki, so I do not have to stare up at him? Get yourself one, too.”

  When Simon was seated beside Jiriki, Amerasu inspected him carefully. Simon felt suddenly tongue-tied, but curiosity vied with shyness. He stole return glances while doing his best to avoid her almost frighteningly deep eyes.

  She was much as he remembered her: shining white hair, skin tight-stretched over her fine bones. Other than the measureless depths of her stare, the only hint of the immense age to which Jiriki had alluded was in the careful deliberation with which she assayed every movement, as though her skeleton were fragile as dried parchment. Still, she was very beautiful. Caught in the web of her regard, Simon imagined that in the dawn of the world Amerasu might have been as terrifyingly, blindingly splendid to look upon as the face of the sun.

  “So,” she said finally. “You are out of your depths, little fish.”

  Simon nodded.

  “Are you enjoying your visit to Jao é- Tinukai’i? You are one of the first of your kind to come here. ”

  Jiriki sat up straighter. “One of the first, wise Amerasu? Not the first?”

  She ignored him, keeping her gaze fixed on Simon. He felt himself drawn gently but helplessly into her spell of command, a wriggling fish pulled inexorably toward the water’s blinding surface. “Speak, manchild. What do you think?”

  “I ... I am honored to visit,” he said at last, then swallowed. His throat was very dry. “Honored. But ... but I don’t want to stay in this valley. Not forever.”

  Amerasu leaned back in her chair. He felt himself held more loosely, though the power of her presence was still strongly upon him. “I am not surprised.” She took a long breath, smiling sadly. “But you would have to be prisoned here a long while before you would be as weary of this life as I am.”

  Jiriki stirred. “Should I leave, First Grandmother?”

  His question gave Simon a faint tremor of fright. He could feel the Sitha-woman’s great kindness and great pain—but she was so fearfully strong! He knew that if she wished, she could keep him here forever, just with the power of her voice and those compelling, labyrinthine eyes.

  “Should I leave?” Jiriki asked again.

  “I know it pains you to hear me speak so, Willow-switch,” Amerasu said. “But you are dearest of all my young ones and you are strong. You can hear truth.” She shifted slowly in her chair, long-fingered hand settling on the breast of her white robe. “You, too, manchild, have known loss. That is in your face. But though every loss is grave, the lives as well as losses of mortals appear and fade as swiftly as the seasons turn the leaves. I do not mean to be cruel. Neither do I seek pity—but not you or any other mortal has seen the dry centuries roll past, the hungry millennia, seen the very light and color sucked out of your world until nothing remains but juiceless memories.” Strangely, as she spoke her face seemed to grow more youthful, as though her grief were the most vital thing left in her. Now Simon could see much more than a hint of her former splendor. He lowered his head, unable to speak.

  “Of course you have not,” she said, a slight tremor in her voice. “I have. That is why I am here,
in the dark. It is not that I fear the light, or that I am not strong enough to stand day’s brightness. ” She laughed, a sound like a whipoorwill’s mournful call. “No, it is only that in darkness I can see the lost days and faces of the past more clearly.”

  Simon looked up. “You had two sons,” he said quietly. He had realized why her voice seemed so familiar. “One of them went away.”

  Amerasu’s face hardened. “Both of them are gone. What have you told him, Jiriki? These are not tales for the small hearts of mortals.”

  “I told him nothing, First Grandmother.”

  She leaned forward intently. “Tell me of my sons. What old legends do you know?”

  Simon swallowed. “One son was hurt by a dragon. He had to go away. He was burned—like me.” He touched his own scarred cheek. “The other ... the other is the Storm King.” As he whispered this last, Simon looked around, as though something might step toward him out of the deep shadows. The walls creaked and water dripped, but that was all.

  “How do you know this?”

  “I heard your voice in a dream.” Simon searched for words. “You spoke in my head for a long time when I was sleeping.”

  The Sitha-woman’s beautiful face was grave. She stared at him as though something hidden within him threatened her. “Do not be afraid, manchild,” she said at last, reaching out with her slender hands. “Do not fear. And forgive me.”

  Amerasu’s cool, dry fingers touched Simon’s face. The lights streamed like shreds of lightning, then flickered and faded, dropping the chamber into utter darkness. Her grip seemed to tighten. The blackness sang.

  There was no pain, but somehow Amerasu was inside his head, a forceful presence so intimately connected to him at that moment that he felt shockingly, terrifyingly raw, an exposure far more profound than any merely physical nakedness. Sensing his terror, she calmed him, cradling his secret self like a panicking bird until he was no longer afraid. First Grandmother then began to pick delicately through his memories, probing him with gentle but purposeful thoroughness.

  Dizzy snatches of thought and dream fluttered past, swirling like flower petals in a windstorm—Morgenes and his countless books, Miriamele singing, seemingly meaningless fragments of conversation from Simon’s days in the Hayholt. The night of Thisterborg and the dreadful gray sword spread though his mind like a dark stain, followed by the silver face of Utuk’ku and the three swords from his vision in the house of Geloë. Plump Skodi and the thing that had laughed in the courtyard flames whirled and melted into the lunacy of the Uduntree and the emotionless eyes of the great white worm Igjarjuk. Thorn was there, too, a black slash across the light of recollection. As the memories flew by, he again felt the burning pain of the dragon’s blood and the fearful sense of connection to the spinning world, the sickening vastness of the hope and pain of all living things. At last, like the tatters of a dream, the pictures faded.

  The lights came back slowly. Simon’s head was cradled in Jiriki’s lap. The wound on his cheek was throbbing.

  “Forgive me, First Grandmother,” Jiriki said as though from a great distance, “but was that necessary? He would have told you all he knew.”

  Amerasu was silent for a long time. When she spoke, it was with great effort. Her voice seemed older than before. “He could not have told me all, Willow-switch. Those things that to me seem most important, he is not even aware that he knows.” She turned her eyes down to Simon, her face full of weary kindness. “I am truly sorry, manchild. I had no right to plunder you that way, but I am old and frightened and I have little patience left. Now, I am more frightened than ever.”

  She tried to pull herself up. Jiriki reached out to help, and she rose unsteadily from her chair and vanished into the shadows. She returned a moment later with a cup of water, which she held to Simon’s lips with her own hands. He drank thirstily. The water was cold and sweet, with just a savor of wood and earth, as though it had been scooped from the trunk of a hollow tree. In her white robe, Simon thought, Amerasu looked like some pale and radiant saint from a church picture.

  “What ... did you do?” he asked as he sat up. There was a buzzing sound in his ears and small shining flecks dancing before his eyes.

  “Learned what I needed to learn,” Amerasu said. “I knew that I had seen you in Jiriki’s mirror, but I thought that a fluke, a mischance. The Road of Dreams has changed much of late, and has become as obscure and unpredictable to even the experienced as it once was for those who only traveled it in sleep. I see now that our earlier meeting was no accident of fate. ”

  “Do you mean that your meeting with Simon was intended by someone, First Grandmother?” Jiriki said.

  “No. I mean only that the boundaries between those worlds and ours are beginning to weaken. Someone like this manchild, who has been pulled one way and another, who through true chance or some unimaginable design has been dragged into many powerful and dangerous connections between the dream world and the waking ...” She trailed off, seating herself carefully once more before continuing. “It is as though he lived on the edge of a great wood. When the trees begin to spread outward, it is his house that first has roots across the threshold. When the wolves of the forest begin to grow hungry, it is beneath his window that they first come howling. ”

  Simon struggled to speak. “What did you learn ... from my memories? About... about Ineluki?”

  Her face became impassive. “Too much. I believe I now understand my son’s terrible, subtle design, but I must think a while longer. Even in this hour, I must not be frightened into foolish haste.” She lifted a hand to her brow. “If I am correct, our danger is graver than we ever guessed. I must speak to Shima’onari and Likimeya. I only hope they listen—and that time has not passed us by. We may be starting to dig the well as our houses burn down.”

  Jiriki helped Simon sit up. “My father and mother must listen. Everyone knows your wisdom, First Grandmother.”

  Amerasu smiled sadly. “Once, the women of the House Sa’onserei were the keepers of lore. The final word belonged to the eldest of the house. When Jenjiyana of the Nightingales saw the right of things, she spoke and it was so. Since the Flight, things have changed.” Her hand fluttered in the air like a bird alighting. “I am certain your mother will listen to reason. Your father is good, Jiriki, but in some ways he dwells even more deeply in the past than I do.” She shook her head. “Forgive me. I am weary and I have much to think about. Otherwise, I would not talk so uncarefully, and especially in front of this boy.” She extended her hand toward Simon, brushing his cheek with her fingertip. The pain of his old burn became less. As he looked at her solemn face and the weight she seemed to carry, he reached up and touched her retreating hand.

  “Jiriki spoke to you truthfully, manchild,” she said. “For better or for worse, you have been marked. I only wish I could give you some word to help you on your journey.”

  The light faded again. Simon let Jirki lead him out in darkness.

  26

  Painted Eyes

  Miriameleleaned against the railing, watching the bustle and activity of the docks. Vinitta was not a large island, but its ruling Benidrivine house had provided Nabban’s final two Imperators, as well as its three dukes under Prester John’s kingship. It had also been the birthplace of the legendary Camaris, but even so great a knight was accorded only a middling-high place in Vinitta’s luminous, hero-studded history. The port was a busy one: with Benigaris on the ducal throne, the fortunes of Vinitta still ran high.

  Aspitis Preves and his captain had gone down into the town to accomplish their business. What that might be, Miriamele could not say. The earl had intimated that he had some important mission direct from Duke Benigaris, but that was as far as he would discuss the subject. Aspitis had bade both Miriamele and Cadrach stay on board until he returned, suggesting that the port was not the place for a noble lady to wander, and that he had not enough men-at-arms available to handle his own affairs safely and still detach a pair of soldiers for their pro
tection.

  Miriamele knew what this meant. Whatever Aspitis thought of her, however he valued her beauty and company, he did not intend to give her the chance to slip away. Perhaps he harbored some doubts about her story, or simply worried that she might be persuaded to leave by Cadrach, who had made little attempt to disguise his growing hatred of the Earl of Eadne and Drina.

  She sighed, gazing sadly at the rows of tented booths that ran along the dockfront, each one festooned with flags and crammed with goods for sale. Hawkers cried their wares as they shuffled along the road, carrying their stock on their backs in huge, overstuffed bags. Dancers and musicians performed for coins, and the sailors of various boats mingled with Vinitta’s residents in a shouting, laughing, swearing throng. Despite the dark skies and intermittent flurries of rain, the crowds that swarmed the waterfront seemed bent on making a cheerful ruckus. Miriamele’s heart ached to join them.

  Cadrach stood beside her, pink face paler than usual. The monk had not spoken much since Aspitis’ pronouncement; he had watched the earl’s party leave the Eadne Cloud with much the same sour expression as he now leveled on the activity below.

  “God,” he said, “but it makes a man sick to see such heedlessness.” It was not exactly clear what his remark addressed, but Miriamele felt it rankle nonetheless.

  “And you,” she snapped. “You are better? A drunkard and coward?”

  Cadrach’s large head came around, moving as ponderously as a millwheel. “It is my very heedfulness that makes me so, Lady. I have watched too carefully. ”

  “Watched what? Oh, never mind. I am not in the mood for one of your roundabout lectures.” She shivered with anger, but could not summon the sense of righteousness she sought. Cadrach had grown more remote over the last few days, observing her from what seemed a disapproving distance. This irritated her, but the continuing flirtation between herself and the earl made even Miriamele somewhat uncomfortable. It was hard to feel truly justified in her irritation, but it was harder still to have Cadrach’s gray eyes staring at her as though she were a child or a misbehaving animal. “Why don’t you go and complain to some of the sailors?” she said at last. “See how well they’ll listen to you.”