by Tad Williams
Camaris stared at the sword by his feet as though it were a serpent.
“Put it on!” Miriamele urged.
Elysia’s mercy, she thought frantically, what if he won’t do it! What if, after all this, he won’t do it?
“For the love of God, man, put it on,” Isgrimnur shouted. The old man looked at him, then bent and picked up the sword belt. He withdrew Kvalnir and let the belt and sheath slide back to the ground. He held it loosely, unwillingly.
“Matra sá Duos, ” Aspitis said disgustedly, “he does not even know how to swing a sword.” He unbelted his robe and let it fall, revealing a surcoat of yellow-gray trimmed in black, then took a few steps toward Camaris, who looked up bemusedly. “I will kill him quickly, Miriamele,” the earl declared. “You are the cruel one, to make an old man fight.” He raised his weapon, which gleamed beneath the white dawn sky, then aimed a cut at Camaris’ unprotected neck.
Kvalnir rose awkwardly and Aspitis’ blade rebounded. The earl, with a noise of irritation, swung again. Once more his steel clanked against the duke’s sword and flew back. Miriamele heard her warder grunt in soft surprise at his master’s frustration.
“You see!” she said, and forced herself to laugh, though there was no mirth in her. “The coward earl cannot even best a man in his dotage.”
Aspitis attacked more strongly. Camaris, moving almost like a man sleepwalking, kept Kvalnir weaving before him in deceptively slow arcs. Several more wicked blows were deflected.
“I see your old man has wielded a sword.” The earl was beginning to breathe a little more heavily. “That is good. I will not feel that I have been forced to kill one who cannot defend himself.”
“Fight back!” Miriamele shouted, but Camaris would not. Instead, as his movements became more fluid, ancient reflexes gradually awakening after a long sleep, he merely defended himself more diligently, blocking every thrust, guiding every slash away, spinning a web of steel that Aspitis could not breach.
The fighting was in deadly earnest now. It was plain that the Earl of Eadne and Drina was a very good swordsman, and he in turn had quickly grasped the fact that his opponent was something unusual. Aspitis eased his attack, pursuing a more cautious, probing strategy, but he did not back down from the challenge. Something, whether pride or some deeper, more animalistic urge, had caught him up. Camaris, meanwhile, seemed to fight only because he was forced to. Miriamele thought she saw several times when he could have pressed his own attack but chose not to, waiting until his enemy came at him once more.
Aspitis feinted, then slid in a thrust beneath Camaris’ guard, but somehow Kvalnir was there to push the earl’s blade aside. Aspitis cut at the old man’s feet, but Camaris shuffled back without visible haste, keeping his balance firm and his shoulders level even as he avoided the earl’s blow. He was like water, flowing always to where there was an opening, giving way but never breaking, absorbing every blow from Aspitis and directing its force up or down, to one side or the other. A thin film of sweat broke on the old man’s forehead, but his face remained calmly regretful, as though he were being forced to sit and watch two of his friends trade unpleasant words.
The duel went on for what seemed to Miriamele a dreadfully long time. Although she knew that her heart was racing, each beat seemed to come long moments apart. The two men, the crack-faced earl and the tall, long-legged Camaris, worked their way out from the stand of pine trees and down onto the hillside, circling their way along the weedy slope like two moths revolving around a candle, their blades whirling and flickering beneath the gray sky. As the earl pressed forward once again, Camaris stepped in a hole and lost his balance; Aspitis took advantage of the opportunity and landed a swipe across the old man’s arm, drawing a streak of blood. Behind her, Miriamele heard Isgrimnur curse in heartbreaking impotence.
The cut seemed to awaken something in Camaris. Although he still would not attack aggressively, he began to beat back the earl’s attacks with greater strength, striking hard enough to make the rattle of steel echo across the plains of the Lake Thrithing. Miriamele worried that it would not be enough, since despite his almost unbelievable fortitude, he seemed to be tiring at last. He stumbled again, this time with no hole to blame, and Aspitis brought home a thrust that skimmed off Kvalnir and found Camaris’ shoulder, freeing more blood. But the earl was flagging, too: after a swift flurry in which several of his strokes were blocked, he took a few steps back, panting, and bent low to the ground as if he might collapse. Miriamele saw him pick something from the ground.
“Camaris! Watch out!” she screamed.
Aspitis flung the handful of dirt in the old man’s face and followed it with a swift and aggressive attack, seeking to end the combat with a single stroke. Camaris staggered backward, clawing at his eyes as Aspitis closed with him. A moment later, the earl fell to his knees, yowling.
Camaris, his greater reach enabling him to extend past the earl’s outstretched blade, had struck his opponent a flat blow across the upper arm, but the blade had bounced and continued upward, slashing diagonally across the earl’s forehead. Aspitis, his face quickly vanishing behind a sheet of blood, scrabbled across the ground toward Camaris, still waving his blade before him. The old man, who was rubbing the dirt from his watering eyes, stepped aside and brought the hilt of his sword down atop the earl’s head. Aspitis dropped like a maul-slaughtered ox.
Miriamele pulled free from the grip of her thunderstruck guard and dashed down the hillside. Camaris sank to the ground, gasping for breath. He looked tired and vaguely unhappy, like a child asked to do too much. Miriamele glanced at him quickly to make sure his wounds were not dangerous, then took Kvalnir from his unresisting grasp and kneeled down beside Aspitis. The earl was breathing, too, although shallowly. She turned him over, staring for a moment at his bloody, shattered-doll face ... and something changed inside of her. A bubble of hatred and fear that had been in her since the Eadne Cloud, a bubble that had grown chokingly large at finding Aspitis still pursuing her, abruptly burst. Suddenly, he seemed so small. He was nothing important at all, just a tattered, damaged thing—no different than the cloak draped over a chair-back that had given her the screaming night-terrors when she was a small child. Morning’s light had come, and the demon had become a rumpled cloak again.
A sort of smile crossed Miriamele’s face. She pressed the sword blade against the earl’s throat.
“You men!” she shouted at Aspitis’ soldiers. “Do you want to explain to Benigaris how his best friend was killed?”
Isgrimnur stood, pushing away the lance-point of the soldier who had held him.
“Do you?” Miriamele demanded.
None of the earl’s men spoke.
“Then give us your bows—all of them. And four horses.”
“We will not give you any horses, witch!” one of the soldiers shouted angrily.
“So be it. Then you can take Aspitis back with his gullet slit and tell Duke Benigaris it was done by an old man and a girl, while you stood watching—that is, if you get away unharmed, and you will have to kill us all to do that.”
“Do not bargain with them,” Cadrach shouted suddenly. There was desperation in his tone. “Kill the monster. Kill him!”
“Be quiet.” Miriamele wondered if the monk was trying to convince the soldiers that the danger to their master was real. If so, he was a fine actor: he sounded remarkably sincere.
The soldiers looked at each other worriedly. Isgrimnur took advantage of the moment’s confusion to begin relieving them of their bows and arrows. After the Rimmersman growled at him, Cadrach scrambled forward to help. Several of the men cursed them and looked as though they wished to resist, but no one made the move that would have sparked open conflict. When Isgrimnur and the monk each had an arrow nocked on a bow, the soldiers began to talk angrily among themselves, but Miriamele could see that the fight had gone out of them.
“Four horses,” she said calmly. “I will do you a favor and ride with the man that this scum,” she
prodded Aspitis’ still form, “called a ‘swamp boy.’ Otherwise you would be leaving us five.”
After more arguing, Aspitis’ troop turned over four horses, first removing the saddlebags. When riders and baggage were redistributed upon the remaining horses, two of the earl’s household guard came forward and lifted their liege-lord from the ground, then draped him unceremoniously across the saddle of one of the remaining horses. His soldiers had to ride two-to-a-mount, and looked positively embarrassed as the little caravan rode off.
“And if he lives,” Miriamele shouted after them, “remind him of what happened!”
The mounted company vanished quickly, riding east into the hills.
Wounds were tended, the newly-acquired horses were loaded with the travelers’ scant baggage, and by the middle of the day they were on their way once more. Miriamele felt curiously light-headed, as though she had just woken up from a terrible dream to find a sunny spring morning outside her window. Camaris had returned to his normal placidity; the old man seemed scarcely the worse for his experience. Cadrach did not speak much, but that was no different than any day of the last few.
Aspitis had been a shadow at the back of Miriamele’s mind since the night of the storm and her escape from the earl’s ship. Now that shadow was gone. As she rode across the hilly Thrithings-country with Tiamak nodding in the saddle before her, she almost felt like singing.
They covered several leagues that afternoon. When they stopped for the night, Isgrimnur, too, was in an excellent mood.
“We shall make far better time now, Princess.” He was grinning in his beard. If he thought less of her now that Aspitis had revealed her shame, he was too much a gentleman to show it. “By Dror’s Mallet, did you see Camaris? Did you see him? Like a man half his age.”
“Yes.” She smiled. The duke was a good man. “I saw him, Isgrimnur. It was like an old song. No, it was better.”
He woke her in the morning. She could tell by his face that something was wrong.
“Is it Tiamak?” She had a sickened feeling. They had come through so much! Surely the little man had been getting better?
The duke shook his head. “It’s the monk. He’s gone.”
“Cadrach?” Miriamele was not prepared for that. She rubbed her head, fighting to wake up. “What do you mean, gone?”
“Gone away. Took one of the horses. He left a note.” Isgrimnur pointed to a piece of the Village Grove cloth which lay on the ground near where she had been sleeping; the furl of cloth had been anchored by a rock against the stiff hillside breeze.
Where Miriamele’s feelings about Cadrach’s flight should have been, there was nothing. She lifted the stone and spread the sheet of pale fabric. Yes, he had written this: she had seen Cadrach’s hand before. It looked as though he had done his writing with the burned tip of a twig.
What could have been so important to say, she wondered, that he spent so much time writing a note before he left?
Princess,
it said,
I cannot go with you to Josua. I do not belong with those people. Do not blame yourself. No one has been kinder to me than you, even after you knew me for what I am.
I fear that things are worse than you know, much worse. I wish there was something more that I could do, but I am unable to. help anyone.
He had not signed it.
“What ‘things’?” Isgrimnur asked, irritated. He was reading over her shoulder. “What does he mean, ‘things are worse than you know’?”
Miriamele shrugged helplessly. “Who can say?” Deserted again, was all she could think.
“Maybe I was too hard on him,” the duke said gruffly. “But that’s no cause to steal a horse and ride off.”
“He was always afraid. Ever since I have known him. It’s hard to live with fear all the time.”
“Well, we can’t waste tears on him,” Isgrimnur grumbled. “We have troubles of our own.”
“No,” Miriamele said, folding the note, “we shouldn’t waste tears.”
20
Travefers and Messengers
“I have not been here for many seasons,” Aditu said. “Many, many seasons.”
She stopped and raised her hands, circling the fingers in a complicated gesture; her slim body swayed like a dowser’s rod. Simon watched in wonder and more than a little apprehension. He was quickly becoming sober.
“Shouldn’t you come down?” he asked.
Aditu only glanced down at him, a moonlit smile playing around the corners of her mouth, then turned her eyes upward to the sky once more. She tock a few more steps along the Observatory’s slender, crumbling parapet. “Shame to the House of Year-Dancing,” she said. “We should have done more to preserve this place. It grieves me to see it fallen to pieces.”
Simon did not think she sounded very grieved. “Geloë calls this place the Observatory,” Simon said. “Why is that?”
“I do not know. What is ‘observatory’? It is not a word that I know in your tongue.”
“Father Strangyeard said it’s a place like they used to have in Nabban in the days of the Imperators—a tall building where they look at the stars and try to figure out what will happen.”
Aditu laughed and raised one foot in the air to take off her boot, then lowered it and did the same with the other, as calmly as though she stood on the ground beside Simon instead of twenty cubits in the air on a thin cornice of stone. She tossed the boots down. They thumped softly on the damp grass. “Then she is making fun, I think, although there is some meaning behind her jest. No one looked at the stars here, except as one would look at them anywhere. This was the place of the Rhao iye-Sama’an—the Master Witness.”
“Master Witness?” Simon wished she wouldn’t move along the slippery parapet so quickly. For one thing, it forced him to walk briskly just to stay within hearing. For another ... well, it was dangerous, even if she didn’t think so. “What’s that?”
“You know what a Witness is, Simon. Jiriki gave you his mirror. That is a minor Witness, and there are many of those still in existence. There were only a few Master Witnesses, each more or less bound to a place—the Pool of Three Depths in Asu‘a, the Speakfire in Hikehikayo, the Green Column in Jhiná- T’seneí—and most of those are broken or ruined or lost. Here at Sesuad’ra it was a great stone beneath the ground, a stone called the Earth-Drake’s Eye. Earth-Drake is another name—it is difficult to explain the differences between the two in your tongue—for the Greater Worm who bites at his own tail,” she explained. “We built this entire place on top of that stone. It was not quite a Master Witness—in fact, it was not even a Witness by itself, but such was its potency that a minor Witness like my brother’s mirror would be a Master Witness if used here.”
Simon’s head was whirling with names and ideas. “What does that mean, Aditu?” he asked, trying to keep from sounding cross. He had been doing his best to remain calm and well-spoken once the wine had begun to wear off. It seemed important that she see how much he had grown in the months since they had last met.
“A minor Witness will lead you onto the Road of Dreams, but will usually show you only those you know, or those who are looking for you.” She raised her left leg and leaned backward, her back arched like a drawn longbow as she bent gracefully into balance, looking for all the world like a little girl playing on a waist-high fence. “A Master Witness, if used by someone who knew the ways of it, could look on anyone or anything, and sometimes into other times and... other places.”
Simon could not help remembering the night-visions of his vigil, as well as what he had seen when he had brought Jiriki’s mirror to this place on a later night. He pondered this as he watched Aditu tilt backward until her palms touched the crumbling stone. A moment later, both her feet were in the air as she swayed upside down, standing on her hands.
“Aditu!” Simon said sharply, then tried to make his voice calm. “Shouldn’t we go see Josua now?”
She laughed again, a swift sound of pure animal pleasure.
“My frightened Seoman. No, there is no need to hurry to Josua, as I told you on the way here. The tidings from my folk can wait until morning. Give your prince a night of rest from worries. From what I saw of him, he needs some relief from woe and care.” She inched along on her hands. Her hair, unbound, hung down over her face in a white cloud.
Simon felt sure she could no longer see what she was doing. It frustrated him and made him more than a little angry. “Then why did you come all the way from Jao é-Tinukai’i, if it wasn’t important?” He stopped following. “Aditu! What are you doing this for?! If you’ve come to talk to Josua, then let’s go and talk to Josua!”
“I did not say it was not important, Seoman,” she replied. There was something of her old mocking tone, but there was a hint of something sharper, almost angry. “I merely said that it would best wait until tomorrow. And that is what will happen.” She brought her knees down between her elbows and delicately placed her feet between her hands. Then she lifted her arms and stood up all in one motion, as though preparing to dive out into empty space. “So until then I will spend my time as I please, no matter what a young mortal might think.”
Simon was stung. “You’ve been sent to bring news to the prince, but you’d rather do tumbling tricks.”
Aditu was wintery-cool. “In fact, if I had been given my choice, I would not be here at all. I would have ridden with my brother to Hernystir.”
“Well, why didn’t you?”
“Likimeya willed otherwise.”
So quickly that Simon barely had time to draw in a surprised breath, she bent, catching the parapet in one long-fingered hand, then dropped over the edge. She found a grip on the pale stone wall with her free hand and lodged the toe of one bare foot while probing with the other. She descended the rest of the way as quickly and effortlessly as a squirrel skittering down a tree trunk.
