by Tad Williams
“So there is nothing you can do.”
“Oh, there are things I may yet accomplish before I leave this world. Important things for the survival of our race. But these are not your concerns, Viyeki-tza. You will follow me to the magister’s chair, if I have my way. But you will not be me, nor should you. There may yet be some great calamity in my future, and I wish you to remain separate from me in the thoughts of those outside our order. We will have to stop meeting, at least in the open.”
Viyeki felt something like a blow against his heart. “Stop meeting . . . ?”
“I have my reasons.”
“Magister, surely nothing you could do . . .”
“I have my reasons.”
Viyeki had not heard his master’s voice so stern and unyielding toward him since his earliest time in the order. His hands moved rapidly: I am admonished, followed by a second sign that meant silent as the stone.
In a flat tone Yaarike said, “And yet I can see you still have questions.”
It was true, Viyeki’s heart was full of pain that he had thought was hidden. He was unhappy to know he had revealed himself so easily. “Yes, High Magister, I fear that I do. Why is Host Foreman Naji appointed to the greatest task?”
Yaarike eyed him expressionlessly. “What greatest task is that?”
“The work around the mountain’s gates, Magister. The work to improve our only protection against the Northmen.” Viyeki looked down at the stone flags instead of at his master and tried to find an appropriate composure.
“Ah,” said Yaarike after a long moment. “I wondered what was troubling you. I could see it behind your movements.” The High Magister pushed his chair back from the table and stood, showing his age in the deliberate way he did it. For a moment Viyeki spotted a bright flash of firelight at Yaarike’s throat, or so it seemed. Seeing the Heart of What Was Lost again, even for a brief instant, made him think of the proud moment when Yaarike had trusted him with the safety of his family treasure. But the news of Naji’s appointment had made that triumph seem hollow.
“I will walk you to the door,” the magister said. “Yes, it is time for you to go, Host Foreman. Learn to measure yourself. Excess of anything is hard to hide—joy, anger, sorrow. And when you reveal yourself, you reveal yourself to your enemies as well as your allies.”
“Yes, Master. But I still do not fully understand.”
“That may change.”
Viyeki took a deep breath. “I beg pardon, High Magister, but even if you cast me from the order, I cannot be silent. The work at the gates is by far the most important task we have. All our lives rest on it. Host Foreman Naji is not up to this challenge. He is a solid workman, but he has not the skill for such a task.”
The older man looked at him for a long time, long enough that Viyeki could feel his own heart beat more swiftly at the length of his master’s silence. It generally augured either fury or amusement, but little in between.
“I have met no finer Builder’s sensibility than yours in all my years in the order,” Yaarike finally said. “Your grasp of figures and your imagination, which has startled even me—” He broke off. “But I must take more into account than simply skill, Host Foreman. Or ambition. I must make the decisions I think best for all. And this is my decision. Do your work in the deep tunnels, and do it well. If you fear Naji’s abilities are not sufficient, all the more reason for you to prepare a final refuge for our queen and people.”
Viyeki did not speak until he felt himself in strict control once more. “If that is your desire, High Magister, of course I will do as you wish.”
“Learn to mask your feelings better, Viyeki.” Yaarike came forward and took his arm as if in companionship, though it might also have been a sign of the magister’s weakness. “In that at least you are definitely Naji’s inferior—he is as stolid as the stones he piles. Do not let your emotions blow you like the wind. And do not brood. This is not your fault, but mine. I should not have told you so soon that I wanted you as my successor.”
“You have changed your mind, then.”
“Young fool!” said Yaarike. “It was not necessary for anyone else to know it yet, and it has made you an object of interest. We must do our best to quell that interest.”
“But if you have not informed the Celebrants, how does anyone know? I saw how the others looked at me.”
Yaarike ignored the question. “From now on, you will come to me only when summoned, Viyeki. You will confine your correspondence with me to the facts of your work in the deeps. You will answer all questions about your future role in this order with polite evasion. Do you understand?”
“I do.” But still his heart was beating wildly.
His master seemed remote now. “The days ahead will be difficult and dangerous, not just for the Order of Builders but for all the Hikeda’ya. General Suno’ku is on the rise. Akhenabi will not give in, although he may make a show of doing so. The dance is barely begun, yet already disaster waits at every step, every turn. And if the mortals break down the gates, nothing else will matter anyway. We will disappear like one of those stars that lights the whole sky and then burns to a cinder and is forgotten. Now you are dismissed.”
As Viyeki turned for the doorway, Yaarike reached out and touched his sleeve. “One last thing.”
Startled by even such a small, informal contact, Viyeki stopped short. “Yes, Master?”
“I do not wish to interfere in the domain of your home, Viyeki-tza, but I strongly advise you to stop your wife from crowing to her relatives in the orders of Sacrifice and Song about your good fortune. No good will come of it. Is that clear?”
Something cold settled in the pit of his stomach. Khimabu, despite his warnings, had told her family. “Yes, Master. Very clear.”
The door swung shut. Viyeki had just enough time as he turned to compose his face into a mask of perfect placidity before he walked out past the other supplicants gathered in the high magister’s antechamber.
Porto’s days merged into what seemed an endless succession of climbing and huddling out of the wind interspersed with moments of sheer terror. He did his best not to think about his home and his wife and child, because what good would that do? He was stuck here at the end of the world, in the most foreign of foreign lands, and he had no more control over whether he would ever return to Perdruin than he did over the stars wheeling through the night sky.
He had plenty of time to watch those stars because, despite exhaustion, most nights he could not easily fall asleep, haunted by ghosts old and new. And since a few of their tunnels still lay undiscovered, the mountainside belonged to the Norns after dark; any mortal rash enough to tread in their domain, or even make himself unnecessarily visible, would usually be found dead in the morning with a single black arrow lodged in a vital spot.
But during the daytime the mortals’ greater numbers gave the Mountain Goats, as Porto’s troop dubbed itself, an advantage that they pressed as hard as they could, overwhelming the small groups of Norn bowmen they encountered on the mountain’s rocky sides—although seldom without a pitched and often deadly struggle. The fairies seemed to have run out of magical tricks, but that only meant they fought more fiercely; one of the White Foxes, already disarmed and all but dismembered, had still managed to drag a comrade of Porto’s to the ground and sink teeth into the man’s neck before any of the others could help him. Porto and the others had pulled the Norn off him and stabbed the pale creature until it stopped moving, but the man it had attacked bled to death.
Porto could not have hated the White Foxes more, their unnatural quickness, their near-identical faces, their utter refusal to surrender, but he also recognized their bravery. Outnumbered and driven to ground like badly wounded animals, they fought to the last breath for their land. He hated these things that had killed Endri, Brindur’s son, Floki, and so many others, but he also had to respect their courage.
Hours became days, each day with its mountainside patrol, and virtually every patrol with its ration of sudden danger and death. Days became sennights, and the grave trenches the Northmen had dug were filled and covered over and more trenches started, but still the Nakkiga Gates held—still the mountain would not yield. The air, always cold, began to turn colder. The sleet that blew into their faces as the Mountain Goats clambered over the treacherous high slopes felt as hard and sharp as daggers.
Summer was waning and autumn was coming down across the north. The winter—the true, deadly winter that even the hardiest Rimmersmen feared—was on the way. And Porto and his fellows were trapped in its path like beetles exposed in a shattered log.
Troop Governor Ruho’o looked up from his position of supplication as though ready for execution. He held up his hands in the gesture commonly called release to the parent, something taught to children that apparently still remained even after all the training the Builders’ order gave its officers.
“They will not go farther, Host Foreman,” the governor said without meeting Viyeki’s eye. “The shame is on me and my house. I should execute them all, but I cannot.”
Viyeki generally did not believe in executing balky workers, especially at a time when trained Builders were in short supply, but he was tempted to make an exception now, starting with the Troop Governor himself.
“Do they not understand their people’s need?” Viyeki added an appropriate edge of contempt to his words. “We are preparing a place for our folk to shelter if the gates fall. If there is no water close to that shelter, not even the Order of Song can save us—they cannot sing it up out of pure stone. Our people will all die gasping from thirst, like the proud walking fish in the ancient stories. Like animals. Even the queen herself!” He narrowed his eyes. “I should have these shirkers dig a pit and cast themselves in. You too, though live burial is better than you deserve.”
The governor fell forward, sprawled on his face at Viyeki’s feet, and moaned. “Take the head from my shoulders, Host Foreman!” he begged. “I have failed you, the Garden, and the Mother of All.”
“And what good would your head do me?” Viyeki fought to keep his peevishness in check. “It is too ugly to make much of a trophy. Get up and tell me why your charges are willing to die instead of obeying orders that come not just from me, but from High Magister Yaarike himself.”
Ruho’o backed slowly into a crouching position. “The workers are frightened, Lord Viyeki. Nobody but the Order of Song ever goes into those depths by choice, and only the Singers ever come back out again. The workers say . . . they say they cannot help themselves. They take a few steps into the downward tunnels and their hearts squeeze like a fist in their chests until they almost swoon. Something is down there.”
“Of course something is down there. Many things are down there. The mountain is ours, though, and nothing down there is to be feared. We have Lord Akhenabi’s word.”
“All the same, there are still four of our engineers missing, Lord, the ones you sent first into the lower tunnels. They did not return. But some of the men say they heard those engineers’ voices. Pleading for someone . . .” The foreman hesitated. “Pleading for someone to come and wake them. That is what I have heard.”
“But you did not hear this yourself.” Viyeki scowled. Perhaps a few executions would be necessary after all.
“No. But one of them, old Sasigi, appeared to me in a dream. I swear it is true! He said that they were all lost in the darkness. A darkness that breathed. And that he feared if he did not find his way out again, it would find him and chew him and swallow him down, and he would never awaken again.”
“Superstition,” said Viyeki, but that did not keep superstitious fear from tickling the nape of his own neck. “A dream, only. I expect more of you than to spread this kind of thing, Governor Ruho’o.” He composed himself. “How many of the men are refusing to do their duty?”
The governor looked at him with something like wonder. “Why, all of them, Lord. I would not trouble you otherwise.”
It was an impossible situation. Viyeki could not help imagining what his master Yaarike would think when he failed at even this less glorious task after complaining about Naji being given the work around the great gates. But short of killing enough valuable workers to frighten the rest into compliance, what could he do? The caverns known as the Forbidden Deeps cut right across the path of the new canal, and it seemed impossible to dig around them swiftly enough to make a refuge ready before the Northmen broke down the gates. Nor was Viyeki such a fool as to completely discount the men’s fears. He knew they had good reasons to dislike the deepest places.
Even after the Hikeda’ya had held Nakkiga for close to fifty Great Years—three long millennia as mortals would reckon it—the mountain still held many secrets. The Order of Song knew some of them, which was part of what gave them such power in the queen’s city, but the mountain had hidden depths that even Akhenabi and perhaps even Queen Utuk’ku herself might hesitate to plumb. Viyeki had felt the terror of those deep places himself in his early years, the freezing claw that gripped the heart and turned all one’s thoughts into leaves swept up in a howling gale. He had even once seen Yaarike himself turn back from a place that he said was “too dark to enter,” though the high magister had held a brightly burning torch. How to force mere laborers?
He could see no other choice. “Go back and keep the men quiet, Troop Governor Ruho’o. Occupy them with some of the finishing work in the tunnels that are already completed. I will devise a solution. And spread no more tales, nor let others spread them!”
“Go back?” For an instant the governor, who had come prepared to be executed for his failure, did not look overwhelmingly grateful that he was being sent back, but he quickly smoothed his expression into blankness. “Yes, my lord. You are very wise. I will do just as you say.”
Though he could hear the sounds of hammers striking stone in many other parts of the city, Viyeki thought the Street of Eight Ships, usually bustling with workers and their overseers, was strangely quiet today. It made the constant shuddering boom of the mortals’ mighty ram even more dreadful. The Builders’ order-house was all but empty, and the functionary outside the High Magister’s sanctum told him that Yaarike was out somewhere, supervising one of the many sites where the Builders were laboring to protect the city. Viyeki was frustrated, but since the functionary could not or would not tell him precisely where Yaarike was, Viyeki had already turned to leave when he met High Foreman Naji in the doorway.
Naji, always correctly courteous, made the appropriate gesture of greeting to an approximate equal, reminding Viyeki that whatever he might have been promised, at this point he was only one among several Host Foremen that Yaarike commanded.
“Is the old man in a good mood?” Naji asked.
“He is not here.” Viyeki was suddenly curious. “Is he not at your site at the gates?”
“He has scarcely been there—not for days. Perhaps we have earned his confidence, and so he chooses to spend his time elsewhere.” Naji was an unemotional type, generally uninterested in things he had not already learned, but he was no fool, as his look of deliberately bland inquiry demonstrated. “Why do you seek him?”
The last thing Viyeki wished to do was to talk about his unruly workers—it would have been hard enough to admit it to the high magister. “Nothing—a trifle. How goes your work on the gate?”
Naji made a gesture of sufficiency. “It still stands. But the great bolts are slowly shaking free of the surrounding stone, of course. With all the weight above it, if the gate is not flush, that will put great strain on the lintel.” For a moment he seemed ready to talk about their shared professio
n, but a sudden look of distrust flashed across his face, and his posture became more rigid. “But are you not in charge of the refuge down in the deeps? What brings you back up to the city?”
“As I said, a trifle—just an idea I wished to discuss with the High Magister.” Viyeki wanted to end this conversation. If word of his troubles with his workers filtered back up to the city, the other High Foremen would see his visit to the order-house for what it truly was—desperation. “If you see our master, tell him I will find him another time.”
Naji looked mollified and his posture became less formal. “As I said, I scarcely see him—he is here, then he is there, as swift and hard to track as a rumor. He communicates with us mostly by messenger. The High Magister complains about his years, but should I ever reach such an age I pray I have even a fraction of his vigor.”
Age does not always weaken its victims, Viyeki thought. Sometimes, as with Lord Akhenabi, it made them more cruel, more dangerous, and more powerful. “These are deadly times,” was what he said to Naji. “Our master gives his all. We can do no less.” Viyeki felt the hypocrisy of his words even as he uttered them and abruptly changed the subject. “And what of the fighting outside the mountain? What do you hear from the Order of Sacrifice?”
Naji shook his head. “Grim things, I fear. The Marshal and General Suno’ku must conserve their forces in case we fail and the gate is breached. So the numbers of those fighting the Northmen are small, yet more of them fall every day, though we can ill-afford to lose even one Sacrifice. But Suno’ku inspires them to keep fighting, and the gates have held for far longer than most thought they would.”
“What do you think of her? Of the general?”
For the first time, Naji’s mask of formality slipped entirely. “I think she is the greatest of us—saving only the Mother of All, of course. We are blessed by the Garden to have her in this dark time. Such courage! But even more, it is a courage that she can lend to others when their own has fled.”
