This series is dedicated to my mother, Barbara Jean Evans, who
taught to me a deep affection for Toad Hall, the Hundred Aker
Woods, the Shire, and many other hidden places and countries
beyond the fields we know. She also induced in me a lifelong desire
to make my own discoveries, and to share them with others. I wish
to share these books with her.




Autfior's Note

 . . Of all the many changing things
In dreary dancing past us whirled,
 To the cracked tune that Chronos sings,
 Words alone are certain good.
Where are now the warring kings,
Word be-mockers?--By the Rood,
Where are now the warring kings?
An idle word is now their glory,
By the stammering schoolboy said,
Reading some entangled story:
The kings of the old time are dead;
The wandering earth herself may be
Only a sudden flaming word,
In clanging space a moment heard,
Troubling the endless reverie.

--WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
     (from The Song of the Happy Shepherd)

I am indebted to Eva Cumming, Nancy Deming-WiUiams, Paul Hudspeth,
Peter Stampfel, and Doug Werner, who all had a hand in the cultivation of
this book. Their insightful comments and suggestions have taken root--in
some instances, putting forth rather surprising blossoms. Also, and as
usual, special thanks go to my brave editors, Betsy Wollheim and Sheila
Gilbert, who have labored mightily through both storm and drought.
    (By the way, all the above mentioned are just the kind of folk I want at
my side if I'm ever ambushed by Norns. This might be construed as a
somewhat dubious honor, but 'tis mine own to bestow.)

NOTE: There is a cast of characters, a glossary of terms, and a guide to
pronunciation at the back of this volume.



\






    For eons the Hayholt belonged to the immortal Sithi, but they had fled
the great castle before the onslaught of Mankind. Men have long ruled this
greatest of strongholds, and the rest of Osten Ard as well. PresterJohn,
High King of all the nations of men, is its most recent master; after an
early life of triumph and glory, he has presided over decades of peace from
his skeletal throne, the Dragonbone Chair.
    Simon, an awkward fourteen year old, is one of the Hayholt's scullions.
His parents are dead, his only real family the chamber maids and their
stern mistress, Rachel the Dragon. When Simon can escape his kitchen-work
he steals away to the cluttered chambers of Doctor Morgenes, the castle's
eccentric scholar. When the old man invites Simon to be his apprentice,
the youth is overjoyedwuntil he discovers that Morgenes prefers teaching
reading and writing to magic.
    Soon ancient King John will die, so Elias, the older of his two sons,
prepares to take the throne. Josua, Elias' somber brother, nicknamed
Lackhand because of a disfiguring wound, argues harshly with the king-
to-be about Pryrates, the ill-reputed priest who is one of Elias' closest
advisers. The brothers' feud is a cloud of foreboding over castle and
country.
    Elias' reign as king starts well, but a drought comes and plague strikes
several of the nations of Osten Ard. Soon outlaws roam the roads and
people begin to vanish from isolated villages. The order of things is
breaking down, and the king's subjects are losing confidence in his rule,
but nothing seems to bother the monarch or his friends. As rumblings of
discontent begin to be heard throughout the kingdom, Elias' brother Josua
disappearswto plot rebellion, some say.

xi


xii                                   Tad Williams

    Elias' misrule upsets many, including Duke Isgrimnur of Rimmerst
and Count Eolair, an emissary from the western country of Herny:
Even King Elias' own daughter Miriamele is uneasy, especially about
scarlet-robed Pryrates, her father's trusted adviser.
    Meanwhile Simon is muddling along as Morgenes' helper. The t
become fast friends despite Simon's mooncalf nature and the doct(
refusal to teach him anything resembling magic. During one of his me
derings through the secret byways of the labyrinthine Hayholt, Sir;
discovers a secret passage and is almost captured there by Pryrates. Eli
ing the priest, he enters a hidden underground chamber and finds Josl
who is being held captive for use in some terrible ritual planned
Pryrates. Simon fetches Doctor Morgenes and the two of them free Jos
and take him to the doctor's chambers, where Josua is sent to freedo
down a tunnel that leads beneath the ancient castle. Then, as Morgenes
sending off messenger birds bearing news of what has happened to myst
rious friends, Pryrates and the king's guard come to arrest the doctor ar
Simon. Morgenes is killed fighting Pryrates, but his sacrifice alloy
Simon to escape into the tunnel.
    Half-maddened, Simon makes his way through the midnight corrido.
beneath the castle, which contain the ruins of the old Sithi palace. H
surfaces in the graveyard beyond the town wall, then is lured by the lig~
of a bonfire. He witnesses a weird scene: Pryrates and King Elias engage
in a ritual with black-robed, white-faced creatures. The pale things giv,
Elias a strange gray sword of disturbing power, named Sorrow. Simol
flees.
    Life in the wilderness on the edge of the great forest Aldheorte i
miserable, and weeks later Simon is nearly dead from hunger and exhaus-
tion, but still far away from his destination, Josua's northern keep al
Naglimund. Going to a forest cot to beg, he finds a strange being caughl
in a trap--one of the Sithi, a race thought to be mythical, or at least long-
vanished. The cotsman returns, but before he can kill the helpless Sitha,
Simon strikes him down. The Sitha, once freed, stops only long enough
to fire a white arrow at Simon, then disappears. A new voice tells Simon
to take the white arrow, that it is a Sithi gift.
    The dwarfish newcomer is a troll named Binabik, who rides a great gray
wolf. He tells Simon he was only passing by, but now he will accompany
the boy to Naglimund. Simon and Binabik endure many adventures and
strange events on the way to Naglimund: they come to realize that they
have fallen afoul of a threat greater than merely a king and his counselor
deprived of their prisoner. At last, when they find themselves pursued by
unearthly white hounds who wear the brand of Stormspike, a mountain of
evil reputation in the far north, they are forced to head for the shelter of
Gelog's forest house, taking with them a pair of travelers they have rescued
from the hounds. Gelo~, a blunt-spoken forest woman with a reputation


STONE    OF    FAREWELL

xiii

 as a witch, confers with them and agrees that somehow the ancient Norns,
 embittered relatives of the Sithi, have become embroiled in the fate of
 Prester John's kingdom.
     Pursuers human and otherwise threaten them on their journey to
 Naglimund. After Binabik is shot with an arrow, Simon and one of the
 rescued travelers, a servant girl, must struggle on through the forest. They
 are attacked by a shaggy giant and saved only by the appearance of Josua's
 hunting party.
     The prince brings them to Naglimund, where Binabik's wounds are
 cared for, and where it is confirmed that Simon has stumbled into a
 terrifying swirl of events. Elias is coming soon to besiege Josua's castle.
 Simon's serving-girl companion was Princess Miriamele traveling in dis-
 guise, fleeing her father, whom she fears has gone mad under Pryrates'
 influence. From all over the north and elsewhere, frightened people are
 flocking to Naglimund and Josua, their last protection against a mad king.
    Then, as the prince and others discuss the coming battle, a strange old
Rimmersman named Jarnauga appears in the council's meeting hall. He is
a member of the League of the Scroll, a circle of scholars and initiates of
which Morgenes and Binabik's master were both part, and he brings more
grim news. Their enemy, he says, is not just Elias: the king is receiving
aid from lneluki the Storm King, who had once been a prince of the
Sithimbut who has been dead for five centuries, and whose bodiless
spirit now rules the Norns of Stormspike Mountain, pale relatives of the
banished Sithi.
    It was the terrible magic of the gray sword Sorrow that caused Ineluki's
deathmthat, and mankind's attack on the Sithi. The League of the Scroll
beheves that Sorrow has been given to Ehas as the first step in some
incomprehensible plan of revenge, a plan that will bring the earth beneath
the heel of the undead Storm King. The only hope comes from a pro-
phetic poem that seems to suggest that "three swords" might help turn
back Ineluki's powerful magic.
    One of the swords is the Storm King's Sorrow, already in the hands of
their enemy, King Elias. Another is the Rimmersgard blade Minneyar,
which was also once at the Hayholt, but whose whereabouts are now
unknown. The third is Thorn, black sword of King John's greatest knight,
Sir Camaris. Jarnauga and others think they have traced it to a location in
the frozen north. On this slim hope, Josua sends Binabik, Simon, and
several soldiers off in search of Thorn, even as Naglimund prepares for
siege.
    Others are affected by the growing crisis. Princess Miriamele, frustrated
by her uncle Josua's attempts to protect her, escapes Naglimund in
disguise, accompanied by the mysterious monk Cadrach. She hopes to make
her way to southern Nabban and plead with her relatives there to aid
Josua. Old Duke Isgrimnur, at Josua's urging, disguises his own very


xiv                                    Tad Williams

recognizable features and follows after to rescue her. Tiamak, a swamp--
dwelling Wrannaman scholar, receives a strange message from his old
mentor Morgenes that tells of bad times coming and hints that Tiamak has
a part to play. Maegwin, daughter of the king of Hernystir, watches
helplessly as her own family and country are drawn into a whirlpool of
war by the treachery of High King Elias.
    Simon and Binabik and their company are ambushed by Ingen Jegger,
huntsman of Stormspike, and his servants. They are saved only by the
reappearance of the SithaJiriki, whom Simon had saved from the cotsman's
trap. When he learns of their quest, Jiriki decides to accompany them to
Urmsheim mountain, legendary abode of one of the great dragons, in
search of Thorn.
    By the time Simon and the others reach the mountain, King Elias has
brought his besieging army to Josua's castle at Naglimund, and though
the first attacks are repulsed, the defenders suffer great losses. At last Elias'
forces seem to retreat and give up the siege, but before the stronghold's
inhabitants can celebrate, a weird storm appears on the northern horizon,
bearing down on Naglimund. The storm is the cloak under which Ineluki's
own horrifying army of Norns and giants travels, and when the Red Hand,
the Storm King's chief servants, throw down Naglimund's gates, a terri-
ble slaughter begins. Josua and a few others manage to flee the ruin of the
castle. Before escaping into the great forest, PrinceJosua curses Elias for his
conscienceless bargain with the Storm King and swears that he will take
their father's crown back.
    Simon and his companions climb Urmsheim, coming through great
dangers to discover the Uduntree, a titanic frozen waterfall. There they
find Thorn in a tomblike cave. Before they can take the sword and make
their escape, Ingen Jegger appears once more and attacks with his troop
of soldiers. The battle awakens Igjarjuk, the white dragon, who has been
slumbering for years beneath the ice. Many on both sides are killed.
Simon alone is left standing, trapped on the edge of a cliff; as the ice-
worm bears down upon him, he lifts Thorn and swings it. The dragon's
scalding black blood spurts over him as he is struck senseless.
    Simon awakens in a cave on the troll mountain of Yiqanuc. Jiriki and
Haestan, an Erkynlandish soldier, nurse him to health. Thorn has been
rescued from Urmsheim, but Binabik is being held prisoner by his own
people, along with Sludig the Rimmersman, under sentence of death.
Simon himself has been scarred by the dragon's blood and a wide swath
of his hair has turned white. Jiriki names him "Snowlock" and tells Simon
that, for good or for evil, he has been irrevocably marked.


~I~fl~ ~ sawed across the empty battlements, yowling like a
thousand condemned souls crying for mercy. Brother Hengfisk, despite
the bitter cold that had sucked the air from his once-strong lungs and
withered and peeled the skin of his face and hands, took a certain grim
pleasure in the sound.
    Yes, that is what they will all sound like, all the sinful multitude who scold at
the message of Mother Church--including, unfortunately, the less rigorous of
his Hoderundian brothers. How they will cry out before God's just wrath,
begging for mercy, when it is fur, Jar too late ....
    He caught his knee a wicked blow on a stone lying tumbled from a
wall, and pitched forward into the snow with a crack-lipped squeal. The
monk sat whimpering for a moment, but the painful bite of tears freezing
on his cheek forced him back onto his feet. He hobbled forward once
more.
    The main road that climbed through Naglimund-town toward the castle
was full of drifting snow. The houses and shops on either side had nearly
disappeared beneath a smothering blanket of deadly white, but even those
buildings not yet covered were as deserted as the shells of long-dead
animals. There was nothing on the road but Hengfisk and the snow.
    As the wind changed direction, the whistling of the fluted battlements at
the top of the hill rose in pitch. The monk squinted his bulging eyes up at
the walls, then lowered his head. He trudged on through the gray after-
noon, the crunch of his footsteps a near-silent drumbeat accompanying the
skirling wind.
    It is no wonder the townspeople have fled to the keep, he thought, shivering.
All around him gaped the black idiot-mouths of roofs and walls staved in

XV


xvi                                    Tad Williams

by the weight of snow. But inside the castle, under the protection of stone
and great timbers, there they must be safe. Fires would be burning, and
red, cheerful faces---sinners' faces, he reminded himself scornfully: damned,
heedless sinners' faces----would gather around him and marvel that he
had walked all this way through the freakish storm.
    It is Yuven-month, is it not? Had his memory suffered so, that he could
not remember the month?
    But of course it was. Two full moons ago it had been spring--a little
cold, perhaps, but that was nothing to a Rimmersman like Hengfisk,
reared in the chill of the north. No, that was the freakish thing, of course,
that it should be so deadly cold, the ice and snow flying, in Yuvenmthe
first month of summer.
    Hadn't Brother Langrian refused to leave the abbey, and after all Hengfisk
had done to nurse him back to health? "It's more than foul weather, Brother,"
Langrian had said. "It's a curse on God's entire creation. It's the Day of
Weighing-Out come in our lifetimes."
    Ah, that was well enough for Langrian. If he wanted to stay in the burned
wrack of Saint Hoderund's abbey, eating berries and such from the forest--
and how much fruit would there be anyway, in such unseasonable cold?
--then he could do as he pleased. Brother Hengfisk was no fool. Naglimund
was the place to go. Old Bishop Anodis would welcome Hengfisk. The
bishop would admire the monk's clever eye for what he had seen, the
stories that Hengfisk could tell of what had happened at the abbey, the
unseasonable weather. The Naglimunders would welcome him in, feed
him, ask him questions, let him sit before their warm fire ....
    But they must know about the cold, mustn't they? Hengfisk thought dully as
he pulled his ice-crackling robe closer about him. He was in the very
shadow of the wall now. The white world he had known for so many
days and weeks seemed to have come to an ending, a precipice that
vanished into stony nothingness. That is, they must know about the snow and
all. That's why they've all lelf the town and moved into the keep. It's the
damnable, demon-cursed weather that's keeping the sentries off the walls, isn't it?
Isn't it.t?
    He stood and surveyed with mad interest the pile of snow-mantled
rubbish that had been Naglimund's greater gate. The huge pillars and
massive stones were charred black beneath the drifts. The hole in the
sagging wall stood large enough to hold twenty Hengfisks standing abreast,
shoulder to bony, trembling shoulder.
    Look how they've let things go. Oh, they'll shriek when their judgment comes,
shriek and shriek with never a chance to make amends. Everything has been let
go---the gate, the town, the weather.
    Somebody must be scourged for such negligence. Doubtless Bishop
Anodis had his hands full trying to keep such an unruly flock in line.
Hengfisk would be only too happy to help that fine old man minister to


STONE OF FAREWELL

xvii

such slackers. First, a fire and some warm food. Then, a little monasterial
discipline. Things would soon be brought to rights ....
    Hengfisk stepped carefully through the splintered posts and white-
covered stones.

    The thing of it was, the monk slowly realized, in a way it was quite...
beautiful. Beyond the gate, all things were covered in a delicate tracery of
ice, like lacy veils of spiderweb. The sinking sun embellished the frosted
towers and ice-crusted walls and courtyards with rivulets of pale fire.
    The cry of the wind was somewhat less here within the battlements.
Hengfisk stood for a long while, abashed by the unexpected quiet. As the
weak sun slid behind the walls, the ice darkened. Deep violet shadows
welled up in the corners of the courtyard, stretching laterally across the
faces of the ruined towers. The wind softened to a feline hiss, and the
pop-eyed monk lowered his head in numb recognition.
    Deserted. Naglimund was empty, with not a single soul left behind to
greet a snow-bewildered wanderer. He had walked leagues through the
storm-ridden white waste to reach a place that was as dead and dumb as
stone.
    But, he wondered suddenly, if that is so . . . then what are those blue lights
that flicker in the windows of the towers?
    And what were these figures who approached him across the shambles
of the courtyard, moving as gracefully over the icy stones as blowing
thistledown?
    His heart raced. At first, as he saw their beautiful, cold faces and pale
hair, Hengfisk thought them angels. Then, as he saw the fell light in their
black eyes, and their smiles, he turned, stumbling, and tried to run.

    The Norns caught him effortlessly, then carried him back with them
into the depths of the desolated castle, beneath the shadowed, ice-mantled
towers and the ceaselessly flickering lights. And when Naglimund's new
masters whispered to him in their secretive, musical voices, his screams
for a while overtopped even the howling wind.



PART ONE;

.q..-




The WHITE WASTE

Chugik

zinsenatu(

~.Mintahoq

Sikkihoq

~-QANUC


Old Tumet'ai Road



!


E~/~;~ in the cave, where the crackling fire sent gray fingers of
smoke up to the hole in the stony roof, and red light played across the wall
carvings of twining serpents and tusked, staring-eyed beasts, the cold still
gnawed at Simon's bones. As he floated in and out of fevered sleep,
through curtained daylight and chill night, he felt as though gray ice grew
inside him, stiffening his limbs and filling him with frost. He wondered if
he would ever be warm again.
    Fleeing the chill Yiqanuc cave and his sickened body, he wandered the
Road of Dreams, slipping helplessly from one fantasy to the next. Many
times he thought he had returned to the Hayholt, to his castle home as it
once had been, but would never be again: a place of sun-warmed lawns, of
shadowed nooks and hiding-holes--the greatest house of all, full of bustle
and color and music. He walked again in the Hedge Garden, and the wind
that sang outside the cave in which he slept sang in his dreams as well,
blowing gently through the leaves and shaking the delicate hedges.
    In one strange dream he seemed to travel back to Doctor Morgenes'
chamber. The doctor's study was now at the top of a tall tower, with
clouds swimming past the high-arched windows. The old man hovered
fretfully over a large, open book. There was something frightening about
the doctor's single-mindedness and silence. Simon did not seem to exist
at all for Morgenes; instead, the old man stared intently at the crude
drawing of three swords that stretched across the splayed pages.
    Simon moved to the windowsill. The wind sighed, though he could feel
no breeze. He looked down to the courtyard below. Staring up at 'him
with wide, solemn eyes was a child, a small, dark-haired girl. She lifted a
hand in the air, as if in greeting, then suddenly was gone.
    The tower and Morgenes' cluttered chamber began to melt away be-
neath Simon's feet like a receding tide. Last to vanish was the old man
himself. Even as he slowly faded, hke a shadow in growing hght, Morgenes
still did not lift his eyes to Simon's; instead, his gnarled hands busily



4                                      Tad Williams

traced the pages of his book, as though restlessly looking for answers.
Simon called out to him, but all the world had turned gray and cold, full of
swirling mists and the tatters of other dreams ....

    He awakened, as he had so many times since Urmsheim, to find the
cave night-darkened, and to see Haestan and Jiriki bedded down near the
rune-scrawled stone wall. The Erkynlander was curled sleeping in his
cloak, beard on breastbone. The Sitha stared at something cupped in the
palm of his long-fingered hand. Jiriki seemed deeply absorbed. His eyes
gleamed faintly, as though whatever he held reflected the last embers of
the fire. Simon tried to say something--he was hungry for warmth and
voices--but sleep was tugging at him again.  The wind is so loud...
     It moaned in the mountain passes outside, as it did around the tower
tops of the Hayholt... as it had across the battlements of Naglimund.
  So sad...thewindissad...
    Soon he was asleep once more. The cave was quiet but for faint
breathing and the lonely music of high places.

    It was only a hole, but it made a very sufficient prison. It plunged
twenty cubits down into the stone heart of Mintahoq Mountain, as wide as
two men or four trolls lying head to foot. The sides were polished like the
finest sculptor's marble, so that even a spider would have been hard-pressed
to find a foothold. The bottom was as dark and cold and damp as any dungeon.
    Though the moon ranged above the snowy spires of Mintahoq's neigh-
bors, only a fine spray of moonhght reached down to the bottom of the
pit, where it touched but did not illuminate two unmoving shapes. For
a long while since moonrise it had been this way: the pale moon-disk--
Sedda, as the trolls called her--the only moving thing in all the night
world, crossing slowly through the black fields of the sky.
    Now something stirred at the mouth of the pit. A small figure leaned
over, squinting down into the thick shadows.
    "Binabik..." the crouching shape called at last in the guttural tongue of
the troll folk. "Binabik, do you hear me?"
    If one of the shadows at the bottom moved, it made no sound in doing
so. At last the figure at the top of the stone well spoke again.
    "Nine times nine days, Binabik, your spear stood be~re my cave, and I waited
for you."
    The words were spoken in a ritual chant, but the voice wavered un-
steadily, pausing for a moment before continuing. "I waited and I called
out your name in the Place of Echoes. Nothing came back to me but my own voice.
Why did you not return and take up your spear again?"


STONE OF FAREWELL

 Still there was no reply.
  "Binabik? Why do you not answer? Surely you owe me that, do you not?"
    The larger of the two shapes at the bottom of the pit stirred. Pale blue
eyes caught a thin stripe of moongleam.
    "What is that trollish yammering? It's bad enough you throw a man
down a hole who's never done you harm, but must you come shouting
your nonsense-talk at him when he's trying to sleep?"
    The crouching shape froze for a moment like a startled deer splashed
by lantern-glare, then disappeared into the night.
    "Good." The Rimmersman Sludig curled himself up once more in his
damp cloak. "I do not know what that troll was saying to you, Binabik,
but I do not think much of your people, that they come to mock at
youwand me~ too, although I am not surprised that they hate my kind."
    The troll beside him said nothing, only stared at the Rimmersman with
dark, troubled eyes. After a while, Sludig rolled over again, shivering, and
tried to sleep.

    "But Jiriki, you can't go!" Simon was perched at the edge of his pallet,
wrapped in his blanket against the insinuating chill. He gritted his teeth
against a wave of light-headedness; he had not been off his back often in
the five days since he had awakened.
    "I must," the Sitha said, eyes downcast as though he could not meet
Simon's imploring stare. "I have already sent Sijandi and Ki'ushapo ahead,
but it is my own presence that is demanded. I shall not leave for a day or
two, Seoman, but that is the utmost length I can put off my duty."
    "You have to help me free Binabik!" Simon lifted his feet off the cold
stone floor back onto the bed. "You said the trolls trust you. Make them
set Binabik free. Then we'll all go together."
    Jiriki let out a thin whistle of air between his lips. "It is not so simple,
young Seoman," he said, almost impatiently. "I have no right or power to
make the Qanuc do anything. Also, I have other responsibilities and duties
you cannot understand. I only stayed as long as I have because I wanted to
see you on your feet once more. My uncle Khendraja'aro has long since
returned to Jao ~-Tinukai'i, and my duties to my house and my kin
compel me to follow."
 "Compel you? But you're a prince!"
    The Sitha shook his head. "That word is not the same in our speech as
in yours, Seoman. I am of the reigning house, but I order no one and rule
no one. Neither am I ruled, fortunately---except in certain things and at
certain times. My parents have declared that this is such a time." Simon
thought he could almost detect a touch of anger in Jiriki's voice. "Never


6                                      Tad Williams

fear, though. You and Haestan are not prisoners. The Qanuc honor you.
They will let you leave when you wish."
    "But I won't leave without Binabik." Simon twisted his cloak between
his fists. "And Sludig, too."
    A small dark figure appeared in the doorway and coughed politely.
Jiriki looked over his s} ,ulder, then nodded his head. The old Qanuc
woman stepped forward and set a steaming pot down at Jiriki's feet, then
quickly pulled three bowls out of her tentlike sheepskin coat, arranging
them in a semicircle. Though her diminutive fingers worked nimbly, and
her seamed, round-cheeked face was expressionless, Simon saw a glimmer
of fear in her eyes as they rose briefly to meet his. When she had finished,
she backed quickly out of the cave, disappearing under the door flap as
silently as she had appeared.
    What is she afraid o~ Simon wondered. Jiriki? But Binabik said the Qanuc
and Sithi have always gotten along--more or less.
    He suddenly thought of himself.' twice as tall as a troll, red-haired,
hairy-faced with his first man's beardmskinny as a switch, too, but since
he was wrapped in blankets the old Qanuc woman couldn't know that.
What difference could the people of Yiqanuc see between himself and a
hated Rimmersman? Hadn't Sludig's people warred on the troll folk for
centuries?
      "Will you have some, Seoman?" Jiriki asked, pouring out steaming
liquid from the pot. "They have provided you with a bowl."  Simon reached out a hand. "Is it more soup?"
  "It is aka, as the Qanuc call it--or as you would say, tea."
    "Tea!" He took the bowl eagerly. Judith, Kitchen Mistress of the
Hayholt, had been very fond of tea. She would sit down at the end of
a long day's work to nurse a great hot mug full of the stuff, the kitchen
filling with the vapors of steeped southern island herbs. When she was in a
good mood, she would let Simon have some, too. Usires, how he missed
his home!
    "I never thought..." he began, and took a great long swallow, only to
spit it out a moment later in a fit of coughing. "What is it?" he choked.
"That's not tea!"
    Jiriki might have been smiling, but since he had his bowl up to his
mouth, sipping slowly, it was impossible to tell. "Certainly it is," the
Sitha replied. "The Qanuc people use different herbs than you Sudhoda'ya,
of course. How could it be otherwise, when they have so little trade with
your kind?"
    Simon wiped his mouth, grimacing. "But it's salty!" He took a sniff of
the bowl and made another face.
    The Sitha nodded and sipped again. "They put salt in it, yes--and
butter as well."
  "Butter!"


STONE OF FAREWELL

7

    "Marvelous are the ways of all Mezumiiru's grandchildren," Jiriki in-
toned solemnly, "... endless is their variety."
    Simon set the bowl down in disgust. "Butter. Usires help me, what a
miserable adventure."
    Jiriki calmly finished his tea. The mention of Mezumiiru reminded
Simon again of his troll friend, who one night in the forest had sung a
song about the Moon-woman. His mood turned sour once more.
"But what are we going to do for Binabik?" Simon asked. "Anything?"
Jiriki lifted calm, catlike eyes. "We will have a chance to speak on his
behalf tomorrow. I have not yet discovered his crime. Few Qanuc speak
any language but their own--your companion is a rare troll indeed--and I
am not very accomplished in theirs. Neither do they like to share their
thoughts with outsiders."
    "What's happening tomorrow?" Simon asked, sinking back into his bed
again. His head was pounding. Why should he still feel so weak?
    "There is a ... court, I suppose. Where the Qanuc rulers hear and
decide."
  "And we are going to speak for Binabik?"
    "No, Seoman, not as such," Jiriki said gently. For a moment a strange
look flitted across his spare features. "We are going because you met the
Dragon of the Mountain . . . and lived. The lords of the Qanuc wish to
see you. I do not doubt that your friend's crimes will also be addressed,
there before the whole of his people. Now take rest, for you will have
need of it."
    Jiriki stood and stretched his slender limbs, moving his head in his
disconcertingly alien way, amber eyes fixed on nothing. Simon felt a
shudder travel the length of his own body, followed by a powerful weariness.
    The dragon/ he thought groggily, halfway between wonderment and
horror. He had seen a dragon! He, Simon the scullion, despised muckabout
and mooncalf, had swung a sword at a dragon and lived---even after its
scalding blood had splashed him! Like in a story!
    He looked at blackly gleaming Thorn, which lay partly covered against
the wall, waiting like a beautiful, deadly serpent. Even Jiriki seemed
unwilling to handle it, or even discuss it; the Sitha had calmly deflected
all of Simon's questions as to what magic might run like blood through
Camaris' strange sword. Simon's chilled fingers crept up his jaw to the still-
painful scar running down his face. How had a mere scullion like himself
ever dared to lift such a potent thing?
    Closing his eyes, he felt the huge and uncaring world spin ever so
slowly beneath him. He heard Jiriki pad across the cave toward the
doorway, and a faint swish as the Sitha slid past the flap and out, then sleep
tugged him down.


8                                      Tad Williams

    Simon dreamed. The face of the small, dark-haired girl swam before
him once more. It was a child's face, but the solemn eyes were old and
deep as a well in a deserted churchyard. She seemed to want to tell him
something. Her mouth worked soundlessly, but as she slipped away
through the murky waters of sleep, he thought for a moment he heard her
voice.

    He awoke the next morning to find Haestan standing over him. The
guardsman's teeth were bared in a grim smile and his beard sparkled with
melting snow.
 "Time y'were up, Simon-lad. Many doin's this day, many doin's."
    It took some time, but even though he felt quite feeble, he managed to
dress himself. Haestan helped him with his boots, which he had not worn
since waking up in Yiqanuc. They seemed stiff as wood on his feet, and
the fabric of his garments scraped against his strangely sensitive skin, but
he felt better for being up and dressed. He walked gingerly across the
length of the cave a few times, beginning to feel like a two-legged animal
once more.
 "Where'sJiriki?" Simon asked as he pulled his cloak around his shoulders.
    "That one's gone ahead. But ha' no worry 'bout goin' t' meetin'. I
could carry ye, stickly thing that y'are."
    "I was carried here," Simon said, and heard an unexpected coldness
creeping into his voice, "but that doesn't mean I'll have to be carried always."
    The husky Erkynlander chortled, taking no offense. "I'm as happy if
y'walk, lad. These trolls make paths narrow enough, I've no great wish
t'carry anyone."
    Simon had to wait a moment just inside the cave-mouth to adjust to the
glare leaking through the raised door-flap. When he stepped outside, the
reflective brilliance of the snow, even on an overcast morning, was almost
too much for him.
    They stood on a wide stone porch that extended almost twenty cubits
out from the cave. It stretched away to the right and left on either side,
running along the face of the mountain. Simon could see the smoking
mouths of other caves all along its length, until it bent back out of sight
around the curve of Mintahoq's belly. There were similar wide trackways
on the slope above, row upon row up the mountain's face. Ladders
dangled down from higher caves, and where the irregularities of the slope
made the joining of the paths impossible, many of the different porches
were connected across empty space by swaying bridges that seemed made
of little more than leather thongs. Even as Simon stared, he saw the tiny,
fur-coated shapes of Qanuc children skittering across these slender spans,
gamboling blithely as squirrels, though a fall would mean certain death. It
made Simon's stomach churn to watch them, so he swung around to face
outward once more.


STONE OF FAREWELL

    Before him lay the great valley of Yiqanuc; beyond, Mintahoq's stony
neighbors loomed out of the misted depths, towering up into the gray,
snow-flecked sky. Tiny black holes dotted the far peaks; minuscule shapes,
barely discernible across the dark valley, bustled along the twining paths
between them.
    Three trolls, slouching in wrought-hide saddles, came riding down the
track on their shaggy rams. Simon stepped forward out of their way,
moving slowly across the porch until he was within a few feet of the edge.
Looking down, he felt a momentary surge of the vertigo he had felt on
Urmsheim. The mountain's base, bewhiskered here and there by twisted
evergreens, fell away below, crisscrossed by more ladder-hung porches
like the one on which he stood. He noticed a sudden silence and turned to
look for Haestan.
    The three ram-riders had stopped in the middle of the wide pathway,
gazing at Simon in slack-mouthed wonderment. The guardsman, nearly
hidden in the shadow of the cave-mouth on their far side, gave him a
mocking salute over the heads of the trolls.
    Two of the riders had sparse beards on their chins. All wore necklaces
of thick ivory beads over their heavy coats and carried ornately carved
spears with hooked bottoms, like shepherd's crooks, which they used to
guide their spiral-horned steeds. They were all larger than Binabik: Si-
mon's few days in Yiqanuc had taught him that Binabik was one of the
smallest adults of his people. These trolls also seemed more primitive and
dangerous than his friend, well-armed and fierce-faced, threatening despite
their small stature.
 Simon stared at the trolls. The trolls stared at Simon.
    "They've all heard of ye, Simon," Haestan boomed; the three riders
looked up, startled by his loud voice, "--but no one's hardly seen ye yet."
    The trolls looked the tall guardsman up and down in alarm, then
clucked at their mounts and rode on hurriedly, disappearing around the
mountain face. "Gave them some gossip," Haestan chuckled.
    "Binabik told me about his home," Simon said, "but it was hard to
understand what he was saying. Things are never quite what you think
they're going to be, are they?"
    "Only th' good Lord Usires knows all answers," Haestan nodded.
"Now, if y'would see y'r small friend, we'd best move on. Walk careful
nowmand not so close t'edge, there."

    They made their way slowly down the looping path, which alternately
narrowed and widened as it traversed the mountainside. The sun was high
overhead, but hidden in a nest of soot-colored clouds, and a biting wind
swooped along Mintahoq's face. The mountaintop above was white-
blanketed in ice, like the high peaks across the valley, but at this lower
height the snow had fallen more patchily. Some wide drifts lay across the


10                                     Tad Williams

path, and others nestled among the cave mouths, but dry rock and
exposed soil were also all around. Simon had no idea if such snow was
normal for the first days of Tiyagar-month in Yiqanuc, but he did know
that he was mightily sick of sleet and cold. Every flake that swooped into
his eye felt like an insult; the scarred flesh of his cheek and jaw ached
terribly.
    Now that they had left what seemed hke the populous section of the
mountain, there were not many troll folk to be seen. Dark shapes peered
out of the smoke of some of the cave-mouths, and two more groups of
riders passed by heading in the same direction, slowing to stare, then
bustling along as hastily as had the first troop.
    The pair passed a gaggle of children playing in a snowdrift. The young
trolls, barely taller than Simon's knee, were bundled up in heavy fur
jackets and leggings; they looked like little round hedgehogs. Their eyes
grew wide as Simon and Haestan trudged past, and their high-pitched
chatter was stilled, but they did not run or show any sign of fear. Simon
hked that. He smiled gently, mindful of his pained cheek, and waved to
them.
    When a loop of the path led them far out toward the northward side of
the mountain, they found themselves in an area where the noise of
Mintahoq's inhabitants disappeared entirely and they were alone with the
voice of wind and fluttering snow.
  "Don't like this bit m'self," Haesten said.
    "What's that?" Simon pointed up the slope. On a stone porch far above
stood a strange egg-shaped structure made of carefully ordered blocks of
snow. It gleamed faintly, pink-tinged by the slanting sun. A row of silent
trolls stood before it, spears clutched in their mittened hands, their faces
harsh in their hoods.
    "Don't point, lad," Haestan said, gently pulling at Simon's arm. Had a
few of the guards shifted their gazes downward? "It be somethin' impor-
tant, y'r friend Jiriki said. Called 'Ice House.' Th' little folk be all worked
up over it right this moment. Don't know why--don't want t'know,
either."
  "Ice House?" Simon stared. "Does someone live there?"
  Haestan shook his head. "Jiriki didna say."
    Simon looked to Haestan speculatively. "Have you talked withJiriki much
since you've been here? I mean, since I wasn't around for you to talk to?"
    "Oh, aye," Haestan said, then paused. "Not much, in truth. Always
seems like . . . hke he's thinkin' on something' grand, d'ye see? Some-
thin' important. But he's nice enough, in's way. Not like a person, quite,
but not a bad'un." Haestan thought a bit more. "He's not like I thought
magic-fellow 'd be. Talks plain, Jiriki does." Haestan smiled. "Does think
well on ye, he does. Way he talks, un'd think he owed ye money." He
chuckled in his beard.


STONE OF FAREWELL

11

    It was a long, wearying walk for someone as weak as Simon: first up,
then down, back and forth over the face of the mountain. Although
Haestan put a steadying hand under his elbow each time he sagged, Simon
had begun to wonder if he could go any farther when they trudged around
an outcropping that pushed out into the path like a stone in a river and
found themselves standing before the wide entranceway of the great
cavern of Yiqanuc.
    The vast hole, at least fifty paces from edge to edge, gaped in the face of
Mintahoq like a mouth poised to pronounce a solemn judgment. Just
inside stood a row of huge, weathered statues: round-belhed, humanlike
figures, gray and yellow as rotted teeth, stoop-shouldered beneath the
burden of the entranceway roof. Their smooth heads were crowned with
ram's horns, and great tusks pushed out between their lips. So worn were
they by centuries of harsh weather that their faces were all but featureless.
This gave them, to Simon's startled eye, not a look of antiquity, but rather
of unformed newness--as if they were even now creating themselves out
of the primordial stone.
"Chidsik Ub Lingit," a voice said beside him, "---the House of the Ancestor."
Simon jumped a httle and turned in surprise, but it was not Haestan
who had spoken. Jiriki stood beside him, staring up at the blind stone
faces.
    "How long have you been standing there?" Simon was shamed to have
been so startled. He turned his head back to the entranceway. Who could
guess that the tiny trolls would carve such giant door-wardens?  "I came out to meet you," Jiriki said. "Greetings, I--Iaestan."
    The guardsman grunted and nodded his head. Simon wondered again
what had passed between the Erkynlander and the Sitha during the long
days of his illness. There were times when Simon found it very hard to
converse with veiled and roundabout Prince Jiriki. How might it be for a
straightforward soldier like I--Iaestan, who had not been trained, as Simon
had, on the maddening circularities of Doctor Morgenes?
  "Is this where the king of the trolls lives?" he asked aloud.
    "And the queen of the trolls, as well," Jiriki nodded. "Although they
are not really called a king and queen in the Qanuc language. It would be
closer to say the Herder and Huntress."
    "Kings, queens, princes, and none of them are what they are called,"
Simon grumbled. He was tired and sore and cold. "Why is the cave so
big?"
    The Sitha laughed quietly. His pale lavender hair fluttered in the sharp
wind. "Because if the cave were smaller, young Seoman, they would
doubtless have found another place to be their House of the Ancestor
instead. Now we should go inside--and not only so that you can escape
the cold."
 Jiriki led them between two of the centermost statues, toward flickering


12                                     Tad Williams

yellow light. As they passed between pillarlike legs, Simon looked up to
the eyeless faces beyond the polished bulges of the statues' great stone
bellies. He was reminded again of the philosophies of Do~or Morgenes.
    The Doctor used to say that no one ever knows what will come to them---"don't
build on expectation," he said that all the time. Who would ever have thought
someday I would see such things as this, have such adventures? No one knows
what will come to them ....
    He felt a twinge of pain along his face, then a needle of cold in his gut.
The Doctor, as was so often the case, had spoken nothing but the truth.

    Inside, the great cavern was full of trolls and dense with the sweetly
sour odors of oil and fat. A thousand yellow lights blazed.
    All around the craggy, high-ceilinged stone room, in wall-niches and in
the very floor, pools of oil bloomed with fire. Hundreds of such lamps,
each with its floating wick like a slender white worm, gave the cavern a
light that far outshone the gray day outside. Hide-jacketed Qanuc filled
the room, an ocean of black-haired heads. Small children sat pickaback,
like seagulls floating placidly atop the waves.
    At the room's center an island of rock protruded above the sea of troll
folk. There, on a raised stone platform hewn from the very stuff of the
cavern floor, two smallish figures sat in a pool of fire.
    It was not exactly a pool of pure flame, Simon saw a moment later, but
a slender moat cut into the gray rock all the way around, filled with the
same burning oil that fueled the lamps. The two figures at the center of
the ring of flames reclined side by side in a sort of hammock of ornately-
figured hide bounded by thongs to a frame of ivory. The pair nested
unmoving in the mound of white and reddish furs. Their eyes were bright
in their round, placid faces.
    "She is Nunuuika and he is Uammannaq," Jiriki said quietly, "--they
are the masters of the Qanuc..."
    Even as he spoke, one of the two small figures gestured briefly with a
hooked staff. The vast, packed horde of troll folk drew back to either side,
pressing themselves even closer together, forming an aisle that stretched
from the stone platform to the place where Simon and his companions
stood. Several hundred small, expectant faces turned toward them. There
was much whispering. Simon stared down the open length of cavern
floor, abashed.
    "Seems clear enough," Haestan growled, giving him a soft shove. "Go
on, then, lad."
    "All of us," Jiriki said. He made one of his oddly-articulated gestures to
indicate that Simon should lead the way.
    Both the echoing whispers and the scent of cured hides seemed to
increase as Simon made his way toward the king and queen...
 --Or the Herdsman and Huntress, he reminded himself. Or whatever.


STONE OF FAREWELL                                                                 13

    The air in the cavern suddenly seemed stifiingly thick. As he struggled
to get a deep breath he stumbled and would have fallen had not Haestan
caught at the back of his cloak. When he reached the dais he stood for a
moment staring at the floor, struggling with dizziness, before looking up
to the figures on the platform. The lamplight glared into his eyes. He felt
angry, although he didn't know at whom. Hadn't he more or less just
gotten out of bed today for the first time? What did they expect? That he
would leap right out and slay some dragons?
    The startling thing about Uammannaq and Nunuuika, he decided, was
that they looked so much ahke, as though they were twins. Not that it
wasn't instantly obvious which was which: Uammannaq, on Simon's left,
had a thin beard that hung from his chin, knotted with red and blue
thongs into a long braid. His hair was braided as well, held in intricate
loops upon his head with combs of black, shiny stone. As he worried at
his beard gently with small, thick fingers, his other hand held his staff of
office, a thick, heavily carved ram-rider's spear with a crook at one end.
    His wife--if that was the way things worked in Yiqanuc--held a straight
spear, a slender, deadly wand with a stone point sharpened to translucency.
She wore her long black hair high on her head, held in place with many
combs of carved ivory. Her eyes, gleaming behind slanting lids in a plump
face, were fiat and bright as pohshed stone. Simon had never had a
woman look at him in quite that cold and arrogant way. He remembered
that she was called Huntress, and felt out of his depth. By contrast,
Uammannaq seemed far less threatening. The Herder's heavy face seemed
to sag in loose lines of drowsiness, but there was still a canny edge to his
glance.
    After the brief moment of mutual inspection, Uammannaq's face creased
in a wide yellow grin, his eyes nearly disappearing in a cheerful squint. He
lifted his two palms toward the companions, then pressed his small hands
together and said something in guttural Qanuc.
    "He says you are welcome to Chidsik Ub Lingit and to Yiqanuc, the
mountains of the trolls," Jiriki translated. Before he could say more,
Nunuuika spoke up. Her words seemed more measured than Uammannaq's,
but were no more intelligible to Simon. Jiriki listened to her carefully.
    "The Huntress also extends her greetings. She says you are quite tall,
but unless she is very mistaken in her knowledge of the Utku people, you
seem young for a dragon-slayer, despite the white in your hair. Utku is the
troll word for lowlanders," he added quietly.
    Simon looked at the two royal personages for a moment. "Tell them
that I'm pleased to have their welcome, or whatever should be said. And
please tell them that I didn't slay the dragon--likely only wounded itmand
that I did it to protect my friends, just as Binabik of Yiqanuc did for me
many other times."
 When he finished the long sentence he was momentarily out of breath,


14                                     Tad Williams

bringing a rush of dizziness. The Herder and Huntress, who had been
watching curiously as he spoke--both had frowned slightly at the mention
of Binabik's name---now turned expectantly to Jiriki.
    The Sitha paused for a moment, considering, then rattled off a long
stream of thick trollish speech. Uammannaq nodded his head in a puzzled
way. Nunuuika listened impassively. When Jiriki had finished, she glanced
briefly at her consort, then spoke again.
    Judging by her translated reply, she might not have heard Binabik's
name at all. She complimented Simon on his bravery, saying that the
Qanuc had long held the mountain Urmsheim--YUarjuk, she called it--as
a place to be avoided at all costs. Now, she said, perhaps it was time to
explore the western mountains again, since the dragon, even if it had
survived, had most likely disappeared into the lower depths to nurse its
wounds.
    Uammannaq seemed impatient with Nunuuika's speech. As soon as
Jiriki finished relaying her words the Herder responded with some of his
own, saying that now was hardly the time for such adventures, after the
terrible winter just passed, and with the evil Croohokuq---the Rimmers-
men--so malevolently active. He hastened to add that of course Simon
and his companions, the other lowlander and the esteemed Jiriki, should
stay as long as they wished, as honored guests, and that if there was
anything he or Nunuuika could grant them to ease their stay, they had
only to ask.
    Even before Jiriki finished converting these works to the Westerling
speech, Simon was shifting his weight from one foot to the other, anxious
to respond.
    "Yes," he told Jiriki, "there is something they can do. They can free
Binabik and Sludig, our companions. Free our friends, if you would do us
a favor!" he said loudly, turning to the fur-swaddled pair before him, who
regarded him with incomprehension. His raised voice caused some of the
trolls crowded around the stone platform to murmur uneasily. Simon
dizzily wondered if he had gone too far, but for the moment was beyond
caring.
    "Seoman," Jiriki said, "I promised myself that I would not mistranslate
or interfere in your speech with the lords of Yiqanuc, but I ask you now as
a favor to me, do not ask this of them. Please."  "Why not?"
"Please. As a favor. I will explain later; I ask you to trust me."
Simon's angry words spilled out before he could control them. "You
want me to desert my friend as a favor to you? Haven't I already saved
your life? Didn't I get the White Arrow from you? Who owes the favors
here?"
    Even as he said it he was sorry, fearing that an unbreachable barrier had
suddenly grown between himself and the Sitha prince. Jiriki's eyes burned


STONE OF FAREWELL                                                                 15

 into his. The audience began to fidget nervously and mutter among
 themselves, sensing something amiss.
     The Sitha dropped his gaze. "I am ashamed, Seoman. I ask too much of
 you."
    Now Simon felt himself sinking like a stone into a muddy pool. Too
fast! It was too much to think about. All he wanted was to lie down and
not know anything.
    "No, Jiriki,' he blurted out, "I'm ashamed. I'm ashamed of what I said.
I'm an idiot. Ask the two of them if I can speak to them tomorrow. I feel
sick." Suddenly the dizziness was horribly real; he felt the whole cavern
tilt. The light of the oil lamps wavered as though in a stiff wind. Simon's
knees buckled and Haestan caught his arms, holding him up.
    Jiriki turned quickly to Uammannaq and Nunuuika. A rumble of fasci-
nated consternation ran through the trollish throng. Was the red-crested,
storklike lowlander dead? Perhaps such long thin legs were not capable of
bearing weight for long, as some had suggested. But then, why were the
other two lowlanders still standing upright? Many heads were shaken in
puzzlement, many whispered guesses exchanged.
    "Nunuuika, keenest of eye, and Uammannaq, surest of rein: the boy is still sick
and very weak. "Jiriki spoke quietly. The multitude, cheated by his soft speech,
leaned forward. "I ask a boon, on the primeval fi'iendship o four people."
    The Huntress inclined her head, smiling slightly. "Speak, Elder Brother,"
she said.
    "I have no right to inter~re in your justice, and will not. I do ask that the
judgment of Binabik of Mintahoq not go forward until his companionsmincluding
the boy Seoman--have a chance to speak in his behalf. And that the same be
granted also for the Rimmersman, Sludig. This I ask of you in the name of the
Moon-woman, our shared root." Jiriki bowed slightly, using only his upper
body. There was no suggestion of subservience.
    Uammannaq tapped the shaft of his spear with his fingers. He looked to
the Huntress, his expression troubled. At last he nodded. "We cannot refuse
this, Elder Brother. So shall it be. Two days, then, when the boy is stronger--but
even if this strange young man had brought us Ig/arjuk's toothy head in a
saddlebag, that would not change what must be. Binabik, apprentice of the Singing
Man, has committed a terrible crime."
    "So I have been told," Jiriki replied. "But the brave hearts of the Qanuc were
not the only thing that gained them the esteem of the Sithi. We loved the kindness
of trolls as well."
    Nunuuika touched the combs in her hair, her gaze hard. "Kind hearts
must never overthrow just law, Prince Jiriki, or all Sedda's spawnmSithi as well
as mortals--will return naked to the snows. Binabik shall have his judgment."
    Prince Jiriki nodded and made another brief bow before turning away.
Haestan half-carried the stumbling Simon as they walked back across the
cavern, down the gauntlet of curious trolls, back out into the cold wind.





2

and Sfiadows

,,c~_xne Fire popped and spat as snowflakes drifted down into the
flames to boil away in an instant. The surrounding trees were still striped
with orange, but the campfire had burned down almost to embers. Beyond
this fragile barrier of firelight, mist and cold and dark waited patiently.
    Deornoth held his hands closer to the embers and tried to ignore the
vast living presence of Aldheorte Forest all around, the twining branches
that blotted the stars overhead, the fog-shrouded trunks swaying somberly
in the cold, steady wind. Josua sat across from him, facing away from the
flames toward the unfriendly darkness; the prince's angled face, red-
washed by rippling firelight, was contorted in a silent grimace. Deornoth's
heart went out to his prince, but it was too difficult to look at him just
now. He turned his eyes away, kneading his chilled fingers as though he
could rub away all suffering--his, his master's, and that of the rest of their
pitiful, lamed flock.
    Someone moaned nearby, but Deornoth did not look up. Many in their
party were suffering, and some--the little handmaiden with the terrible
throat wound, and Helmfest, one of the Lord Constable's men, gut-bitten
by those unholy creatures--he doubted would live through the night.

    Their troubles had not ended when they had escaped the destruction of
Josua's castle at Naglimund. Even as the prince's party had staggered
down the last broken steps of the Stile, they had been set on. Mere yards
from the outer stand of Aldheorte, the ground had erupted around them
and the false, storm-carried night had rung with chirping cries.
    There had been diggers everywhere--Bukken, as young Isorn called
them, shouting the name hysterically as he lay about him with his sword.
Even in his fear the duke's son had killed many, but Isorn had also taken a
dozen shallow wounds from the diggers' sharp teeth and crude, jagged
knives. That was something else to worry about: in the forest, even small
wounds were likely to fester.

17


18                                     Tad Williams

    Deornoth shifted uneasily. Those small shapes had clung to his own
arm like rats. In his choking fear, he had almost cut his hand loose from
his body to get the chittering things off. Even now, the thought made
him squirm. He rubbed at his fingers, remembering.
    Josua's beleaguered company had finally escaped, hacking free long
enough to make a dash for the forest. Strangely, the forbidding trees
seemed to provide a sort of sanctuary. The swarming diggers, far too
numerous to have been defeated, did not follow.
    Is there some power in the jbrest that prevented them? Deornoth wondered.
Or more likely, does something live here more J~arsome even than they are?
    Fleeing, they had left behind five torn things that had once been human
beings. The prince's troop of survivors now numbered perhaps a dozen--
and judging by the tortuous, gasping breaths of the soldier Helmfest, who
lay wrapped in his cloak near the fire, they would be fewer than that soon.
    Lady Vorzheva was dabbing the blood away from Helmfest's ghost-pale
cheek. She had the distant, distracted look of a madman Deornoth had once
seen, who had sat in the Naglimund-town square pouring water from one
bowl to another for hours at a time, back and forth, never spilling a drop.
'Fending this living dead man was just as useless a thing to do, Deornoth
felt sure, and it showed in Vorzheva's dark eyes.
    Prince Josua had been paying no greater heed to Vorzheva than to
anyone else in the battered company. Despite the terror and weariness she
shared with the rest of the survivors, it was obvious that she was also
furiously angry about his inattention. Deornoth had long been a witness to
Josua and Vorzheva's stormy relationship, but was never quite sure how
he felt about it. Sometimes he resented the Thrithings-woman as a distrac-
tion, a hindrance to his prince's duties; at other moments he found himself
pitying Vorzheva, whose sincere passions often outstripped her patience.
Josua could be maddeningly careful and deliberate, and even at the best of
times tended toward melancholy. Deornoth guessed that the prince would
be a very difficult man for a woman to love and live with.
    The old jester Towser and Sangfugol the harper were talking dispirit-
edly nearby. The jester's wine sack lay empty and flattened on the ground
beside them; it was the only wine any of the survivors would see for a
while. Towser had drained it dry himself in just a few gulps, occasioning
more than a few sharp words from his fellows. His rheumy eye had
blinked angrily as he drank, like an old rooster warning away a henyard
interloper.
    The only ones engaged in useful activity at this moment were the
Duchess Gutrun, Isgrimnur's wife, and Father Strangyeard, the archivist
of Naglimund. Gutrun had slit the front and back of her heavy brocade
skirt and was now sewing the open pieces together, making something
like a pair of breeches for herself, the better to travel through Aldheorte's
clinging brush. Strangyeard, recognizing the good sense of this idea, was


                              STONE OF FAREWELL                                           19

 sawing away at the front of his own gray robe with Deornoth's dulled
 knife.
     The brooding Rimmersman Einskaldir sat near Father Strangyeard;
 between them lay a quiet shape, a dark bump below the wash of firelight.
 That was the little handmaiden whose name Deornoth could not remem-
 ber. She had fled with them from the residence, and had cried quietly all
 the long way up and down the Stile.
    Cried, that is, until the diggers had reached her. They had clung to her
throat like terriers to a boar, even after their bodies had been sheared loose
by the blades of her would-be rescuers. Now she cried no longer. She was
very, very still, holding precariously to life.
    Deornoth felt a shudder of trapped horror surge up within him. Merci-
ful Usires, what had they done to deserve such dreadful retribution? Of
what abominable sin were they guilty, to be punished by the harrowing of
Naglimund?
    He fought down the panic that he knew showed plainly on his face, then
looked around. No one was watching him, thank Usires: no one had seen
his shameful fear. Such conduct was not fitting, after all. Deornoth was a
knight. He was proud that he had felt his prince's gauntlet upon his head,
had heard the pronouncement of service. He only wished for the clean
terror of battle with human enemies--not tiny, squealing diggers, or the
stone-faced, fish-white Norris who had destroyed Josua's castle. How
could you battle creatures out of childhood bogey-tales?
    It must be the Day of Weighing-Out come at last. That was the only
explanation. These might be living things they fought--they bled and
died, and could demons be said to do so?rebut they were forces of
Darkness, nevertheless. The final days had come in truth.
    Oddly, the idea made Deornoth feel a little stronger. Was this not, after
all, a knight's true calling, to defend his lord and land against enemies
spiritual as well as corporeal? Hadn't the priest said so before Deornoth's
vigil of investiture? He forced his fearful thoughts back into their proper
track. He had long prided himself on his calm face, his slow and measured
anger; for just that reason, he had always felt very comfortable with the
reserved manners of his prince. How could Josua lead, except by the
mastery of his own person?
    Thinking ofJosua, Deornoth stole another look at him and felt worry
come surging back. It seemed that the prince's armor of patience was at
last breaking apart, wracked by forces no man should bear. As his liege
man watched, Josua stared out into the windy darkness, lips working as he
spoke soundlessly to himself, brow wrinkled in pained concentration.
    The watching became too difficult. "Prince Josua," Deornoth called
softly. The prince finished his silent speech, but did not turn his eyes to
the young knight. Deornoth tried again. "Josua?"
 "Yes, Deornoth?" he replied at last.


20                                     Tad Williams

    "My lord," the knight began, then realized he had nothing to say. "My
lord, my good lord . . ."
    As Deornoth bit at his lower lip, hoping inspiration might strike his
weary thoughts, Josua suddenly sat forward, eyes fixed where moments
before they had aimlessly roved, staring at the dark beyond the fire-
reddened breakfront of the forest.
    "What is it?" Deornoth asked, alarmed. Isorn, who had been slumber-
ing behind him, roused with an incoherent cry at the sound of his friend's
voice. Deornoth fumbled for his sword, pulling it free from the scabbard,
half-standing as he did so.
  "Be silent." Josua raised his arm.
    A thrill of dread swept through the camp. For stretching seconds there
was nothing, then the rest heard it, too: something breaking clumsily
through the undergrowth just beyond the ring of light.
    "Those creatures!" Vorzheva's voice rose up out of a whisper into a
wavering cry. Josua turned and grasped her arm tightly. He gave her a
single harsh shake.
  "Quiet, for the love of God!"
    The sound of branches breaking came nearer. Now Isorn and the
soldiers were on their feet, too, hands clutching fearfully at sword-hilts.
Some of the rest of the company were quietly weeping and praying.
    Josua hissed: "No forest dweller would go so noisily..." His anxious-
ness was poorly hidden. He pulled Naidel out of the sheath. "It walks
two-legged..."
    "Help me..." called a voice out of the dark. The night seemed to grow
deeper still, as though the blackness might roll over them and obliterate
their feeble campfire.
      A moment later something pushed through into the ring of trees. It
flung its arms up before its eyes as the firelight beat upon it.  "God save us, God save us!" Towser cried hoarsely.
"Look, it is a man," Isorn gasped. "Aedon, he is covered in blood!"
The wounded man lurched another two steps toward the fire, then slid
jerkily to his knees, pushing forward a face nearly black with dried blood,
but for the eyes that stared unseeingly toward the circle of startled people.
    "Help me," he moaned again. His voice was slow and thick, almost
unrecognizable as a man speaking the Westerling tongue.
    "What is this madness, Lady?" Towser groaned. The old jester was
tugging at Duchess Gutrun's sleeve as might a child. "Tell me, what is
this curse that has been put on us?"
    "I think I know this man!" Deornoth gasped, and a moment later felt
the freezing fear drop away; he sprang forward to grab the trembling
man's elbow and ease him closer to the fire. The newcomer was draped in
tattered rags. A fringe of twisted rings, all that remained of a mail shirt,
hung about his neck on a collar of blackened leather. "It is the pikeman


STONE OF FAREWELL

21

who came with us as a guard," Deornoth told Josua. "When you met
your brother in the tent before the walls."
    The prince nodded slowly. His gaze was intent, his expression momen-
tarily unfathomable. "Ostrael . . ." Josua murmured. "Was that not his
name?" The prince stared at the blood-spattered young pikeman for a long
instant, then his eyes brimmed with tears and he turned away.
    "Here, you poor, wretched fellow, here..." Father Strangyeard reached
forward with a skin of water. They had scarcely more of that than they
had of wine, but no one said a word. The water filled Ostrael's open
mouth and overflowed, streaming down his chin. He could not seem to
swallow.
    "The ... diggers had him," Deornoth said. "I am sure I saw him
caught by them, back at Naglimund." He felt the pikeman's shoulder
quiver beneath his touch, heard the man's breath whistling in and out.
"Aedon, how he must have suffered."
    Ostrael's eyes turned up to his, yellow and glazed even in the dim light.
The mouth opened again in the dark-crusted face. "Help . . ." The voice
was painfully slow, as though each heavy word were being hoisted up his
throat to his mouth before tumbling out into the air. "It . . . hurts me,"
he wheezed. "Hollow."
    "God's Tree, what can possibly be done for him?" Isorn groaned. "We
are all hurting."
 Ostrael's mouth gaped. He stared up with blind eyes.
    "We can bandage his wounds." Isorn's mother Gutrun was recovering
her considerable poise. "We can get him a cloak. If he lives until the
morning, we can do more then."
    Josua had turned back to look at the young pikeman again. "The
duchess is right, as usual. Father Strangyeard, see if you can find a cloak.
Perhaps one of the less injured can spare theirs . . ."
  "No!" Einskaldir growled. "I do not like this!"
  A confused silence fell on the gathering.
    "Surely you do not begrudge . . ." Deornoth began, then gasped as
Einskaldir leaped past him and seized the panting Ostrael by the shoulders,
throwing him roughly to the ground. Einskaldir squatted on the young
pikeman's chest. The bearded Rimmersman's long knife appeared from
nowhere to lie against Ostrael's blood-smeared neck like a glinting smile.
  "Einskaldirl" Josua's face was pale. "What is this madness?"
    The Rimmersman looked over his shoulder, a strange grin slashing his
bearded face. "This is no true man! I do not care where you think you
have seen him before!"
      Deornoth reached a hand toward Einskaldir, but drew it back quickly
when the Rimmersman's knife whickered past his outstretched fingers.
  "Fools! Look?' Einskaldir pointed with his hilt toward the fire.
  Ostrael's bare foot lay among the embers at the edge of the firepit. The


22                                     Tad Williams

flesh was being consumed, blackening and smoking, yet the pikeman
himself lay almost placidly beneath Einskaldir, his lungs fluting as he
forced breath in and out.
    There was a moment of silence. A smothering, bone-chilling fog seemed
to settle over the clearing. The moment had become as horribly strange yet
inalterable as a nightmare. Fleeing the ruin of Naglimund, they might
 have wandered into the trackless lands of madness.  "Perhaps his wounds . . ." Isorn began.
     "Idiot! He feels no fire," Einskaldir snarled. "And he has a slash in his
 throat that would kill any man. Look.t See.t" He forced back Ostrael's head
 until those gathered around could see the ragged, fluttering edges of the
 wound, which stretched from one angle of his jaw to the other. Father
 Strangyeard, who had been leaning close, made a choking noise and
 turned away.
     "Tell me he is not some ghost . . ." the Rimmersman continued, then
 was almost thrown to the ground as the body of the pikeman began to
 thrash beneath him. "Hold him down!" Einskaldir shouted, trying to keep
 his face away from Ostraers head, which whipped from side to side, the
 teeth snapping shut on empty air.
    Deornoth dove forward and clutched at one of the slender arms; it was
cold and hard as stone, but still horribly flexible. Isorn, Strangyeard, and
Josua were also struggling to find handholds on the wriggling, lunging
form. The half-darkness was rich with panicky curses. When Sangfugol
came forward and wrapped himself around the last unprisoned foot,
hanging on with both arms, the body became quiescent for a moment.
Deornoth could still feel the muscles moving beneath the skin, tightening
and relaxing, mustering strength for another try. Air hissed in and out of
the pikeman's distended, idiot-mouth.
     Ostrael's head craned out on his uplifted neck, his blackened face swing-
 ing to look at each of them in turn. Then, with terrifying suddenness, the
 staring eyes seemed to blacken and fall inward. A moment later, wavering
 crimson fire blossomed in the empty pits and the labored breathing stopped.
 Somebody shrieked, a thin cry that quickly fell away into choking silence.
     Like the clammy, crushing grip of a titan hand, loathing and raw dread
 reached out and enfolded the entire camp as the prisoner spoke.
     "So," it said. Nothing human was left in its tones, only the dreadful, icy
 inflection of empty spaces; the voice droned and blew like a black, un-
 fenced wind. "This would have been much the easier way . . . but a swift death
 that comes in sleep is denied to you, now."
     Deornoth felt his own heart speeding like a snared rabbit's, speeding
 until he thought it might leap from his breast. He felt the strength flowing
 out of his fingers, even as they clutched at the body that had once been
 Ostrael Firsfram's son. Through the tattered shirt he could feel flesh chill
 as a headstone but nevertheless trembling with awful vitality.


                              STONE OF FAREWELL                                           23

     "What are you!?" Josua said, struggling to keep his voice even. "And
 what have you done to this poor man?"
    The thing chuckled, almost pleasantly, but for the awful emptiness of its
voice. "I did nothing to this creature. It was already dead, of course, or nearly
so---it was not hard to find dead mortals in the ruins of your fieehold, prince of
rubble."
    Somebody's fingernails were cutting into the skin of Deornoth's arm,
but the ruined face gripped his gaze like a candle gleaming at the end of
a long, black tunnel.
  "Who are you?" Josua demanded.
    "I am one of the masters of your castle . . . and of your ultimate death," the
thing replied with poisonous gravity. "I owe no mortal answers. If not for the
bearded one's keen eye, your throats would have all been quietly slit tonight,
saving us much time and trouble. When your fleeing spirits go squealing at last into
the endless Between fiom which we ourselves escaped, it will be by our doing. We
are the Red Hand, knights of the Storm King---and He is the master of all!"
    With a hiss from the ruptured throat, the body abruptly doubled over
like a hinge, struggling with the horrifying strength of a scorched snake.
Deornoth felt his hold slipping away. As the fire was kicked up into
fluttering sparks, he heard Vorzheva sobbing somewhere nearby. Others
were filling the night with frightened cries. He was sliding o~ Isorn's
weight was being pushed down on top of him. Deornoth heard the terrified
shouts of his fellows intertwine with his own hysterical prayer for strength...
    Suddenly the thrashing became weaker. The body beneath him contin-
ued to flail from side to side for long moments, like a dying eel, then
finally stopped.
  "What... ?" he was able to force out at last.
    Einskaldir, gasping for breath, pointed to the ground with his elbow,
still maintaining a tight grip on the unmoving body. Severed by Einskaldir~s
sharp knife, Ostrael's head had rolled an arm's length away, almost out of
the firelight. Even as the company stared, the dead lips pulled back in a
snarl. The crimson light was extinguished; the sockets were only empty
wells. A thin whisper of sound passed the broken mouth, forced out on a
last puff of breath.
  "... No escape . . . Norns will find . . . No . . ." It fell silent.

"By the Archangel . . ." Hoarse with terror, Towser the jester broke
the stillness.
    Josua took a shaky breath. "We must give the demon's victim an
Aedonite burial." The prince's voice was firm, but it clearly took a heroic
effort of will to make it so. He turned to look at Vorzheva, who was
wide-eyed and slack-mouthed with shock. "And then we must flee. They
are indeed pursuing us." Josua turned and caught Deornoth's eye, staring.
"An Aedonite burial," he repeated.



24                                     Tad Williams

    "First," Einskaldir panted, blood welling in a long scratch on his face,
"I cut the arms and legs off, too." He bent to the task, lifting his hand axe.
The others turned away.
 The forest night crept in closer still.

    Old Gealsgiath walked slowly along the wet, pitching deck of his ship
toward the two hooded and cloaked figures huddling at the starboard rail.
They turned as he approached, but did not remove their hands from the
railing.
    "Be-damned-to-Hell stinking weather!" the captain shouted above the
moaning of the wind. The hooded figures said nothing. "Men are going
down to sleep in kilpa-beds on the Great Green tonight," Old Gealsgiath
added in a conversational roar. His thick Hernystiri burr carried even
above the flapping and creaking of the sails. "This be drowning weather,
sure enough."
    The heavier of the two figures pushed back his hood, eyes squinting in
his pink face as the rain lashed at him.
  "Are we in danger?" Brother Cadrach shouted.
    Gealsgiath laughed, his brown face wrinkling. The sound of his mirth
was sucked away by the wind. "Only if you plan to go in for swimming.
We're already near the shelter of Ansis Pelipp~ and harbor-mouth."
    Cadrach turned to stare out into the swirling twilight, which was dense
with rain and fog. "We're almost there?" he shouted, turning back.
    The captain lifted a hooked finger to gesture at a deeper smear of
darkness off the starboard bow. "The big black spot there, that's Perdruin's
mountain--'Streaw~'s Steeple,' as some do call it. We'll be slipping past
the harbor-gate before full dark. Unless the winds play tricksy. Brynioch-
cursed strange weather for Yuven-month."
    Cadrach's small companion snuck a look at the shadow of Perdruin in
the gray mist, then lowered his head again.
    "Anyhap, Father," Gealsgiath shouted above the elements, "we dock
tonight, and remain two days. I take it you'll be leaving us, since y'paid
fare only this far. P'raps you'd like to come down dockside and join me
for a drink of something--unless your faith forbids it." The captain
smirked. Anyone who spent time in taverns knew that Aedonite monks
were no strangers to the pleasures of strong drink.
    Brother Cadrach stared for a moment at the heaving sails, then turned
his odd, somewhat cold gaze onto the seafarer. A smile creased his round
face. "Thank you, captain, but no. The boy and I will remain on board for
a bit after we dock. He's not feeling well and I'm in no hurry to rush him
out. We'll have far to walk before we reach the abbey, much of it uphill."
The small figure reached up and tugged meaningfully at Cadrach's elbow,
but the monk paid him no attention.


STONE OF FAREWELL

25

    Gealsgiath shrugged and pulled his shapeless cloth hat farther down on
his head. "You know best, Father. You paid your way and did your work
aboard--although I would say your lad did the heartiest share of it. You
can leave anytime afore we hoist sail for Crannhyr." He turned with a
wave of his knob-knuckled hand and started back along the slippery
boards, calling: "--but if the lad ain't feeling well, I'd get him below
soon!"
    "We were just taking some air!" Cadrach bellowed after him. "We'll go
ashore tomorrow morning, most likely! Thanks to you, good captain!"
    As Old Gealsgiath stumped away, fading into the ram and mist, Cadrach's
companion turned and confronted the monk.
    "Why are we going to stay on board?" Miriamele demanded, anger
plainly displayed on her pretty, sharp-featured face. "I want to get off this
ship! Every hour is important!" The rain had soaked even through her
thick hood, plastering her black-dyed hair across her forehead in sodden
spikes.
    "Hush, milady, hush." This time Brother Cadrach's smile seemed a
touch more genuine. "Of course we're going off--nearly as soon as we've
touched the dock, don't you worry."
 Miriamele was angry. "Then why did you tell him... ?"
    "Because sailors talk, and I'll wager none of them talk louder or longer
than our captain. There was no way for keeping him quiet, Saint Muirfath
knows. If we'd given him money to keep silent, he'd just get drunk faster
and be talking sooner. This way, if anyone's listening for news of us,
they'll at least think we're aboard the ship still. Maybe they'll sit and
watch for us to come off until it sets out again, back to Hernystir.
Meanwhile, we'll be quietly ashore in Ansis Pelipp&" Cadrach clucked his
tongue in satisfaction.
    "Oh." Miriamele considered silently for a moment. She had underesti-
mated the monk again. Cadrach had been sober since they had boarded
Gealsgiath's ship in Abaingeat. Small wonder, since the voyage had made
him violently ill several times. But there was a shrewd brain behind that
plump face. She wondered again--and not for the last time, she felt
sure--what Cadrach was really thinking.
    "I'm sorry," she said at last. "That was a good idea. Do you really
think somebody is looking for us?"
    "We would be fools to suppose otherwise, my lady." The monk took
her' elbow and headed back toward the limited shelter of the lower deck.

    When at last she saw Perdruin, it was as if a great ship had risen out of
the unquiet ocean, coming suddenly upon their small, frail craft. One
moment it was a deeper blackness off the bow; in the next, as though a
final curtain of obscuring mist had been drawn away, it loomed overhead
like the prow of a mighty vessel.


26                                     Tad Williams

     A thousand lights gleamed through the fog, small as fireflies, making
 the great rock sparkle in the night. As Gealsgiath's cargo-hauler glided in
 through the harbor passages, the island continued to rise above them, its
 mountainous back a wedge of darkness pushing ever upward, blocking
 out even the mist-cloaked sky.
    Cadrach had chosen to remain below decks. Miriamele was quite satis-
fied with the arrangement. She stood at the railing, listening to the sailors
shouting and laughing in the lantern-pricked darkness as they furled the
sails. Voices rose in ragged song, only to end abruptly in curses and more
laughter.
    The wind was gentler here, in the lee of the harborside buildings.
Miriamele felt a strange warmth climb up her back and into her neck, and
knew without thinking what it signified: she was happy. She was free and
going where she chose to go; that had not been true for as long as she
could remember.
    She had not set foot on Perdruin since she had been a small girl, but she
still felt, in a way, as if she were returning home. Her mother Hylissa had
brought her here when Miriamele had been very young, as part of a visit
to Hylissa's sister, the Duchess Nessalanta in Nabban. They had stopped
in Ansis Pelipp6 to pay a courtesy call on Count Strefiwe. Miriamele
remembered little of the visit--she had been very young---except a kind
old man who had given her a tangerine, and a high-walled garden with a
tiled walkway. Miriamele had chased a long-tailed, beautiful bird while
her mother drank wine and laughed and talked with other grown people.
     The kind old man must have been the count, she decided. It was
 certainly a wealthy man's garden they had visited, a carefully-tended
 paradise hidden in a castle courtyard. There had been flowering trees and
 beautiful silver and golden fish floating in a pond set right into the
 path ....
     The harbor wind gained strength, tugging at her cloak. The railing was
 cold beneath her fingers, so she tucked her hands under her arms.
     It had been not long after the visit to Ansis Pelipp~ that her mother had
 gone on another journey, this time without Miriamele. Uncle Josua had
 taken Hylissa to join Miriamele's father Elias, who was in the field with
 his army. That had been the journey which had crippled Josua, and from
 which Hylissa had never returned. Elias, almost mute with grief, too full
 of anger to speak of death, would only tell his little daughter that her
 mother could never come back. In her child's mind, Miriamele had
 pictured her mother captive in a walled garden somewhere, a lovely
 garden like the one they had visited on Perdruin, a beautiful place that
 Hylissa could never leave, even to visit the daughter who missed her
 SO ....
     That daughter lay awake many nights, long after her handmaidens had
 tucked her into bed, staring up into the darkness and plotting to rescue her


STONE OF FAREWELL

27

 lost mother from a flowering prison threaded by endless, tried paths ....
     Nothing had been right since then. It was as though her father had
 drunk of some slow poison when her mother had died, some terrible
 venom that had festered within, turning him into stone.
Where was he? What was High King Elias doing at this moment?
Miriamele looked up at the shadowy, mountainous island and felt her
moment of joy swept away as the wind might snatch a kerchief from her
hand. Even now, her father was laying siege to Naglimund, venting his
terrible rage on the walls of Josua's keep. Isgrimnur, old Towser, all of
them were fighting for their lives even as she floated in past the harbor
lights, riding the ocean's dark, smooth back.
    And the kitchen boy Simon, with his red hair and his awkward, well-
meaning ways, his unconcealed concerns and confusions--she felt a pang
of sorrow as she thought of him. He and the little troll had gone into the
trackless north, perhaps gone forever.
    She straightened up. Thinking of her former companions had reminded
her of her duty. She was posing as a monk's acolyte--and a sick one at
that. She should be below decks. The ship would be docking soon.
    Miriamele smiled bitterly. So many impostures. She was free now of
her father's court, but she was still posing. As a sad child in Nabban and
Meremund, she had often pretended happiness. The lie had been better
than answering the well-meaning but unanswerable questions. As her
father had retreated from her she had pretended not to care, even though
she had felt that she was being eaten away from within.
    Where was God, the younger Miriamele had wondered; where was He
when love was slowly hardening into indifference and care becoming
duty? Where was God when her father Elias begged Heaven for answers,
his daughter listening breathlessly in the shadows outside his chamber?
    Perhaps He believed my lies, she thought bitterly as she walked down the
rain-slicked wooden steps onto the lower deck. Perhaps He wanted to believe
them, so He could get on with more important things.

    The city on the hillside was bright-lit and the rainy night was full of
masked revelers. It was Midsummer Festival in Ansis Pelipp& despite the
unseasonable weather, the narrow, winding streets were riotous with
merrymakers.
    Miriamele stepped back as a half-dozen men dressed as chained apes were
led past, clanking and staggering. Seeing her standing in the shadowy
doorway of one of the shuttered houses, a drunken actor turned, his false
fur matted with rainwater, and paused as if to say something to her.
Instead, the ape-man belched, smiled apologetically through the mouth
hole of his skewed mask, then returned his sorrowful gaze to the uneven
cobblestones before him.
 As the apes tumbled away, Cadrach reappeared suddenly at her side.


28                                     Tad Williams

    "Where have you been?" she demanded. "You have been gone nearly
an hour."
    "Not so long, lady, surely." Cadrach shook his head. "I have been
finding out certain things that will be useful. Very useful." He looked
around. "Ah, but it's a riotous night, is it not?"
    Miriamele tugged Cadrach out into the street once more. "You'd never
know there was war in the north and people dying," she said disapprov-
ingly. "You wouldn't know that Nabban may soon be at war, too, and
Nabban's just across the bay."
    "Of course not, my lady," Cadrach huffed, matching his shorter strides
to hers as best he could. "It is the way of the Perdruinese not to know such
things. That is how they remain so cheerfully uninvolved in most con-
flicts, managing to arm and supply both the eventual victor and the
eventual vanquished--and turn a neat profit." He grinned and wiped
water from his eyes. "Now there's something your Perdruin-folk would
be going to war about: protecting their profit."
    "Well, I'm surprised no one's invaded this place." The princess wasn't
sure why the heedlessness of Ansis Pelipp~'s citizens should nettle her so,
but she was nevertheless feeling exceedingly nettlesome.
    "Invade? And muddy the waterhole from which all drink?" Cadrach
seemed astonished. "My dear Miriamele ... your pardon, my dear
Malachias--I must remember, since we will soon be moving in circles
where your true name is not unfamiliar--my dear Malachias, you have
much to learn about the world." He paused for a moment as another gang
of costumed folk swirled by, engaged in a loud, drunken argument about
the words to some song. "There," the monk said, gesturing after them,
"there is an example of why that which you say will never come to pass.
Were you hearing that little debate?"
    Miriamele pulled her hood lower against the slanting rain. "Some of
it," she replied. "What does it matter?"
    "It is not the subject of the argument that matters, but the method.
They were all Perdruinese, unless my ear for accents has gone wrong from
all that ocean roar--yet they were arguing in the Westerling tongue."
  "So?"
    "Ah," Cadrach squinted his eyes as if looking for something down the
crowded, lantern-lit street, but continued speaking all the while. "You and
I are speaking Westerling, but except for your Erkynlandish fellow-
countrymen--and not even all of them--no one else speaks it among their
own people. Rimmersmen in Elvritshalla use Rimmerspakk; we Hernystiri
speak our own tongue when in Crannhyr or Hernysadharc. Only the
Perdruinese have adopted your grandfather King John's universal lan-
guage, and to them it is now truly their first language."
    Miriamele stopped in the middle of the slickened roadway, letting the
press of celebrants eddy around her. A thousand oil lamps raised a false


STONE OF FAREWELL

29

dawn above the housetops. "I'm tired and hungry, Brother Cadrach, and I
don't understand what you are getting at."
    "Simply this. The Perdruinese are what they are because they strive to
please--or, put more clearly, they know which way the wind is blowing
and they run that direction, so the wind is always at their backs. If we
Hernystir-folk were a conquering people, the merchants and sailors of
Perdruin would be practicing their Hernystiri. 'If a king wants apples,' as
the Nabbanai say, 'Perdruin plants orchards.' Any other nation would be
foolish to attack such a compliant friend and helpful ally."
    "Then you are saying that the souls of these Perdruin-folk are for sale?"
Miriamele demanded. "That they have no loyalty to any but the strong?"
    Cadrach smiled. "That has the ring of disdain, my lady, but it seems an
accurate summing up, yes."
    "Then they're no better than--" she looked around carefully, fighting
down anger, "--no better than whores!"
    The monk's weathered face took on a cool, distant cast; his smile was
now a mere formality. "Not everyone can stand up and be a hero,
Princess," he said quietly. "Some prefer to surrender to the inevitable and
salve their consciences with the gift of survival."
    Miriamele thought about the obvious truth of what Cadrach had said as
they walked on, but could not understand why it made her so unutterably
sad.

    The cobbled paths of Ansis Pelipp~ not only wound tortuously, in
many places they climbed in gouged stone steps up the very face of the
hill, then spiraled back down, doubling and redoubling, crossing each
other at odd angles like a basket of serpents. On either side the houses
stood shoulder to shoulder, most with windows shadowed like the closed
eyes of sleepers, some ablaze with light and music. The foundations of the
houses tilted upward from the streets, each structure clinging precariously
to the hillside so that their upper stories seemed to lean over the con-
stricted roads. As her hunger and fatigue began to make her giddy,
Miriamele felt at times that she was back beneath the close-stooping trees
of Aldheorte Forest.
    Perdruin was a cluster of hills surrounding Sta Mirore, the central
mountain. Their lumpy backs rose up almost directly from the island's
rocky verges, looking over the Bay of Emettin. Perdruin's silhouette thus
resembled a mother pig and her feeding young. There was little fiat land
anywhere, except in the saddles where high hills shouldered together, so
the villages and towns of Perdruin clung to the faces of these hills like
gulls' nests. Even Ansis Pellip~, the great seaport and the seat of Count
Stre~we's house, was built on the steep slopes of a promontory that the
residents called Harborstone. In many places the citizens of Ansis Pellip~
could stand on one of the capital's hill-hugging streets and wave to their
neighbors on the thoroughfare below.



30                                     Tad Williams

    "I must eat something," Miriamele said at last, breathing heavily. They
stood at a turnout of one of the looping streets, a place where they could
look down between two buildings to the lights of the foggy harbor below.
The dull moon hung in the clouded sky like a chip of bone.
  "I am also ready to stop, Malachias," panted Cadrach.
  "How far is this abbey?"
"There is no abbey, or at least we are not going to such a place."
"But you told the captain . . . oh." Miriamele shook her head, feelinI
the damp heaviness of her hood and cloak. "Of course. So, then, wher,
are we going?"
    Cadrach stared at the moon and laughed quietly. "Wherever we wish
my friend. I do think there is a tavern of some repute at the top of thi
street: I must confess I was leading us in that general direction. Certainb
not because I enjoy climbing these goirach hills."
"A tavern? Why not a hostel, so we can find a bed after we eat?"
"Because, begging your pardon, it is not eating that ! am thinkinI
about. I have been aboard that abominable ship longer than I care to think
I will take my rest after I have indulged my thirst." Cadrach wiped hi
hand across his mouth and grinned. Miriamele did not much like the lool
in his eyes.
"But there was a tavern every cubit down below..." she began.
"Exactly. Taverns full of drunken tale-passers and minders of others
business. I cannot be taking my well-deserved rest in such a place." H
turned his back on the moon and began stumping away up the roac
"Come, Malachias. It is only a little farther, I am sure."

    It seemed that during Midsummer Festival there was no such thing as a
uncrowded tavern, but at least the drinkers in The Red Dolphin were nc
cheek to cheek, as they were in the dockside inns, only elbow to elbog
Miriamele gratefully slid down onto a bench set against the far wall and le
the wash of conversation and song flow over her. Cadrach, after puttin
down his sack and walking stick, moved off to find himself a mug 
Traveler's Reward. He returned after only a moment.
    "Good Malachias, I had forgotten how nearly beggared ] am fror
paying our sea passage. Do you have a cintis-piece or two I might emplo
in the removal of thirst?"
    Miriamele dug in her purse and produced a palm full of coppers. "G~
me some bread and cheese," she said, pouring the coins into the monk~
outstretched hand.
    As she sat wishing she could take off her wet cloak to celebrate bein
out of the rain, another group of costumed celebrants banged in throu~-
the door, shaking water from their finery and calling for beer. One of t}
loudest wore a mask shaped like a red-tongued hound. As he thumped h


STONE OF FAREWELL

31

fist on a table, his right eye lit on Miriamele for a moment and seemed to
pause. She felt a rush of fear, suddenly remembering another hound mask,
and flaming arrows slashing through the forest shadows. But this dog
quickly turned back to his fellows, making a jest and throwing his head
back in laughter, his cloth ears swinging.
    Miriamele pushed her hand against her chest as if to slow down her
speeding heart.
    I must keep this hood on, she told herself. It's a festival night, so who will
look twice? Better that than someone recognizing my face--however unlikely that
might seem.
    Cadrach was gone a surprisingly long time. Miriamele was just starting
to feel restive, wondering if she should go and look for him, when he
returned with a jar of ale in each hand. A half-loaf of bread and an end of
cheese were prisoned between the jars.
"A man could die of thirst a-waiting for beer, tonight," the monk said.
Miriamele ate greedily, then took a long swallow of the ale, which was
bitter and dark in her mouth. The rest of the jar she left for Cadrach, who
did not protest.
    When the last crumbs were licked from her fingers and she was ponder-
ing whether she was hungry enough to eat a pigeon pie, a shadow fell
across the bench she and the monk shared.
 The raw-boned face of Death stared down at them from a black cowl.
    Miriamele gasped and Cadrach sputtered ale on his gray robe, but the
stranger in the skull mask did not move.
    "A very pretty joke, friend," Cadrach said angrily, "and merry mid-
summer to you, too." He swiped at the front of his garments.
    The mouth did not move. The fiat, unexcited voice issued from behind
the bared teeth. "You come with me."
    Miriamele felt the skin on the back of her neck crawl. Her recently-
consumed meal felt very heavy in her stomach.
    Cadrach squinted. She could see tension in his neck and fingers. "And
who might you be, mummer? Were you truly Brother Death, I would
expect you clad in finer clothing." The monk pointed a slightly trembling
finger at the tattered black cloak the figure wore.
    "Stand up and come with me," the apparition said. "I have a knife. If you
shout, things will be very bad for you."
    Brother Cadrach looked at Miriamele and grimaced. They rose, the
princess on wobbly knees. Death gestured for them to walk ahead, through
the press of tavern guests.
    Miriamele was entertaining disconnected thoughts of making a bolt for
freedom when two other figures slipped discreetly out of the crowd near
the doorway. One wore a blue mask and the stylized garb of a sailor; the
other was dressed as a rustic peasant in an oversized hat. The somber eyes
of the newcomers belied their gaudy costumes.


32                                     Tad Williams

    With the sailor and peasant on either side, Cadrach and Miriamele
followed black-cloaked Death out into the street. Before they had gone
three dozen paces, the little caravan turned into an alley and down a flight
of stairs to the next street below. Miriamele slipped for a moment on one
of the rainwashed stone steps and felt a thrill of horror as her skull-faced
captor reached out a hand to steady her. The touch was fleeting and she
could not draw away without falling down, so she suffered it silently. A
moment later they were off the stairway, then quickly into another alley-
way, up a ramp, and around a corner.
    Even with the faint moon overhead and the cries of late revelers echoing
from the tavern above and the harbor district below, Miriamele quickly
lost any sense of where she was. They traveled down tiny back streets like
a string of skulking cats, ducking in and out of hidden courtyards and
vine-shrouded walkways. From time to time they heard the murmur of
voices from a darkened house, and once the sound of a woman crying.
    At last they reached an arched gateway in a tall stone wall. Death
produced a key from his pocket and opened the lock. They stepped
through into an overgrown courtyard roofed with leaning willow trees,
from whose trailing branches rainwater dripped patiently onto the cracked
stone cobbles. The leader turned to the others, gestured briefly with his
key, then indicated that Miriamele and Cadrach should walk ahead of him
toward a shadowed doorway.
    "We have come with you so far, man," the monk said, whispering as if
he, too, were a conspirator. "But there is no benefit to us in walking into
an ambush. Why should we not fight you here and die beneath open sky,
if we must be dying?"
    Death leaned forward without a word. Cadrach started back, but the
skull-masked man only leaned past him and knocked on the door with
black-gloved knuckles, then pushed it inward. It swung open silently on
oiled hinges.
    A dim, warm light burned inside the portal. Miriamele stepped past the
monk and through the doorway. Cadrach followed a moment later,
muttering to himself. Skull-face came last of all and pushed the door shut
behind him.
    It was a small sitting room, lit only by a fire in the grate and one candle
burning in a dish beside a decanter of wine on the table top. The walls
were covered with heavy velvet tapestries, their designs distinguishable in
the firelight only as swirls of color. Behind the table, in a high backed
chair, sat a figure fully as strange as any of their escorts: a tall man in a
russet-brown cloak, wearing the sharp-featured mask of a fox.
    The fox leaned forward, indicating two chairs with a graceful sweep of
his velvet-gloved fingers.
    "Sit down." His voice was thin but melodious. "Sit down, Princess
Miriamele. I would rise, but my crippled legs do not permit it."


STONE OF FAREWELL


    "This is madness," Cadrach blustered, but kept an eye on the skull-
faced specter at his shoulder. "You have made a mistake, sir--this is a boy
you address, my acolyte..."
    "Please." The fox gestured amiably for silence. "It is time to doff our
masks. Is that not how Midsummer Night always ends?"
    He lifted the fox face away, revealing a shock of white hair and a face
seamed with age. As his unmasked eyes glittered in the fireglow, a smile
quirked his wrinkled lips.
    "Now that you know who I am . . ." he began, but Cadrach inter-
rupted him.
  "We do not know you, sir, and you have mistaken us!"
    The old man laughed dryly. "Oh, come. You and I may not have met
before, my dear fellow, but the princess and I are old friends. As a matter
of fact, she was my guest, once--long, long ago."
 "You are... Count Stre~we?" Miriamele breathed.
    "Indeed," the count nodded. His shadow loomed on the wall behind
him. He leaned forward, clasping her wet hand in his velvet-sheathed
claw. "Perdruin's master. And, beginning the moment you two touched
foot on the rock over which I rule, your master as well."


3

Oatft-Br~

L~t~ in the day of his meeting with the Herder and Huntress, when
the sun was high in the sky, Simon felt strong enough to go outside and
sit on the rocky porch before his cave. He wrapped a corner of his blanket
about his shoulders and tucked the remainder of the heavy wool beneath
him as a cushion against the mountain's stony skin. But for the royal
couch in Chidsik ub Lingit, there seemed to be nothing like a chair in all
of Yiqanuc.
    The herders had long since led their sheep out of the protected valleys
where they slept, taking them down-mountain in search of fodder. Jiriki
had told him that the spring shoots on which the animals usually fed had
been all but destroyed by the clinging winter. Simon watched one of the
flocks milling on a slope far below him, tiny as ants. A faint clacking
sound wafted up to him, the rams butting horns as they contested for
mastery of the herd.
    The troll women, their black-haired babies strapped to their backs in
pouches of finely stitched hide, had taken up slender spears and gone
out hunting, stalking marmots and other animals whose meat could help
to eke out the mutton. Binabik h~:d often said that the sheep were the
Qanuc people's true wealth, that they ate only such members of their
flocks as were good for nothing else, the old and the barren.
    Marmots, coneys, and other such small game were not the only reason
the troll women carried spears. One of the furs ostentatiously wrapped
around Nunuuika had been that of a snow leopard, dagger-sharp claws
still gleaming. Remembering the Huntress' fierce eyes, Simon had little
doubt that Nunuuika had brought down that prize herself.
    The women were not alone in facing danger; the task of the herdsmen
was just as perilous, since there were many large predators that had to be
kept from the precious sheep. Binabik had once told him that the wolves
and leopards, although a threat, were scarcely comparable to the huge
snow bears, the biggest of them heavy as two dozen trolls. Many a Qanuc

34



STONE OF FAREWELL

35

herder, Binabik had said, met a swift and unpleasant end beneath the claws
and teeth of a white bear.
    Simon repressed a reflexive tremor of unease at this thought. Hadn't he
stood before the dragon Igjarjuk, grander and deadlier by far than any
ordinary animal?
    He sat as late morning passed into afternoon, watching the life of
Mintahoq as it lay spread before him, as simultaneously hectic yet organ-
ized as a beehive. The elders, their years of hunting and herding past,
gossiped from porch to porch or crouched in the sun, carving bone and
horn, cutting and sewing cured hide into all manner of things. Children
too big to be carried off to the hunt by their mothers played games up and
down the mountain under the old folks' bemused supervision, shinnying
up the slender ladders or swinging and tumbling on the swaying thong
bridges, heedless of the fatal distances that stretched beneath them. Simon
found it more than a little difficult to watch these dangerous amusements,
but through all the long afternoon not a single troll child came to harm.
Though the details were alien and unfamiliar, he could sense the order
here. The measured beat of life seemed as strong and stable as the moun-
tain itself.

 That night Simon dreamed once more of the great wheel.
    This time, as in a cruel parody of the passion of Usires the Son of God,
Simon was bound helplessly to the wheel, a limb at each quarter of the
heavy rim. It turned him not only topside-down, as Lord Usires had
suffered upon the Tree, but spun him around and around in an earthless
void of black sky. The stars' bleak radiance blurred before him like the
tails of comets. Something else--some shadowy, icy thing whose laugh was
the empty buzzing of flies--danced just beyond his sight, mocking him.
    He called out, as he often did in such terrible dreams, but no sound
came forth. He struggled, but his limbs were without strength. Where
was God, who the priests said saw every act? Why should He leave Simon
in the grasp of such dreadful darknesses?
    Something seemed to form slowly out of the pale, attenuated stars; his
heart filled with awful anticipation. But what emerged from the spinning
void was not the expected red-eyed horror, but a small, solemn face: the
little dark-haired girl he had seen in other dreams.
  She opened her mouth. The madly revolving sky seemed to slow.
  She spoke his name.
    It came to him as down a long corridor, and he realized he had seen her
somewhere. He knew that face--but who.., where... ?
    "Simon," she said again, somehow clearer now. Her voice was filled
with urgency. But something else was reaching out for him, too--something
closer to hand. Something quite near...
  He awoke.


36                                     Tad Williams

    Someone was looking for him. Simon sat up on his pallet, breathless,
alert for any sound. But for the endless sighing of the mountain winds and
the faint snoring of Haestan, wrapped in his heavy cloak near the coals of
the evening's fire, the cavern was still.
    Jiriki was absent. Could the Sitha have called to him from outside the
cave? Or was it only the residue of dream? Simon shivered and considered
pulling the fur coverlet back over his head once more. His breath was a
dim cloud in the ember-light.
    No, somebody was waiting outside. He did not know how he knew,
but he was sure: he felt tuned like a harp string, trembling. The night
seemed tight-stretched.
    What if someone did wait for him? Perhaps it was someone--some
thing--from which it would be better to hide?
    Such thoughts made little difference. He had gotten it into his head that
he must go out. Now the need tugged at him, impossible to ignore.
    My cheek aches terribly, anyway, he told himself. I won't be able to _~ll
asleep for a long while.
    He snaked his breeches out from under the sleeping-cloak where they
stayed warm in the bitter Yiqanuc night, wrestling them on as silently as
he could, then pulled his boots onto his cold feet. He briefly debated
putting on his mail shirt, but the thought of its chilly rings, rather than
any surety of safety, decided him against it. He furled the cloak around
him, stilting quietly past sleeping Haestan and out under the door-skin into
the cold.
    The stars over high Mintahoq were mercilessly clear. As Simon stared
up, amazed, he felt their distance, the impossible vastness of the night sky.
The moon, not quite full, hovered low over distant peaks. Bathed in its
diffident light, the snow on the heights gleamed, but all else lay sunken in
shadow.
    Even as he turned his eyes down and took a few steps to the right, away
from the cave-mouth, he was stopped short by a low growl. A strange
silhouette loomed on the pathway before him, moonbrushed at the edges,
black at the core. The deep rumble came again. Eyes flared green as they
caught the moonlight.
  Simon's breath snagged in his throat for a moment, until he remembered.
  "Qantaqa?" he said quietly.
The growl changed into a curious whine. The wolf tipped its head.
"Qantaqa? Is it you?" He tried to think of some of Binabik's troll
speech, but could summon nothing. "Are you hurt?" He silently cursed
himself. He had not once thought of the wolf since he had been brought
down from the dragon's mountain, although she had been a companion--
and, in a way, a friend.
  Selfish.t he chided himself.


STONE OF FAREWELL

37

    With Binabik imprisoned, who knew what Qantaqa had done? Her
friend and master had been taken from her, just as Doctor Morgenes had
been taken from Simon. The night seemed suddenly colder and emptier,
full of the world's heedless cruelty.
    "Qantaqa? Are you hungry?" He took a step toward her and the wolf
shied back. She growled again, but it sounded more like excitement than
anger. She took a few prancing steps, the shimmer of her gray coat almost
invisible, then growled again before bounding away. Simon followed her.
    It occurred to him as he went, stepping carefully on the wet stone
pathways, that he was doing a foolish thing. The twisting roadways of
high Mintahoq were no place for a midnight walk, especially without a
torch. Even the native trolls knew better: the cave-mouths were lightless
and silent, the paths empty. It was as if he had wakened from one dream
to enter another, this shadowy pilgrimage beneath the distant and uncar-
ing moon.
    Qantaqa seemed to know where she was going. When Simon lagged
too far behind she trotted back, stopping just out of reach until he caught
up, her hot breath pluming the air. As soon as he drew within an arm's
length she was off again. Thus, like a spirit of the afterworld, she led him
away from the fires of his own kind.
    It was only when they had walked for some time, traveling well around
the curve of the mountain from the sleeping-cave, that Qantaqa bounded
all the way back to Simon. She did not pull up short this time. Her great
frame struck him so suddenly that even though she had merely bumped
against him, he fell back onto his seat. She stood over him for a moment,
her face buried in his neck, cold nose rooting ticklingly near his ear.
Simon reached up to scratch her ears and felt her tremble even through
her thick fur. A moment later, as if her need for comfort had been
satisfied, she leaped away again and stood whining quietly until he rose,
rubbing his tailbone, and followed.

    It seemed that Qantaqa had led him halfway around Mintahoq. She
stood now at the edge of a great blackness, yipping in excitement. Simon
walked forward cautiously, feeling the raw stone face of the mountain
with his right hand as he went. Qantaqa paced in seeming impatience.
    The wolf was standing at the rim of a great pit, which burrowed away
from the side of the path into the very mountain. The moon, sailing
low in the sky like an overloaded carrack, could only silver the stone
around the hole's mouth. Qantaqa barked again with barely contained
enthusiasm.
 To Simon's staggering surprise, a voice echoed thinly from below.
 "Go away, wolff Even sleep is taken from me, Aedon curse it!"
    Simon threw himself to the cold gravel and crawled forward on elbows
and knees, stopping at last with his head hanging over blind nothingness.


38                                     Tad Williams

     "Who's there?" he cried. His words reverberated as though they jour-
neyed a great distance. "Sludig?" There was a pause.
 "Simon? Is that you who calls?"
    "Yes! Yes, it's me! Qantaqa brought me! Is Binabik with you? Binabik!
It's me, Simon!"
    A silent moment passed, then Sludig spoke again. Now Simon could
hear the strain in the Rimmersman's voice. "The troll will not speak. He is
here, but he will not speak to me, to Jiriki when he came, to anyone."
  "Is he sick? Binabik, it's Simon! Why don't you answer me?"
    "He is sick in his heart, I think," Sludig said. "He looks as he always
did--thinner, perhaps, but so I am, too--but he acts like one already
dead." There was a scraping noise as Sludig, or someone, moved in the
depths. "Jiriki says they will kill us," the Rimmersman said a moment
later, his voice fiat with resignation. "The Sitha spoke for us--not with
heat or anger, as far as I could tell, but he spoke for us all the same. He
said the troll people did not agree with his arguments and were deter-
mined to have their justice." He laughed bitterly. "Some justice, to kill a
man who never did them harm, and kill one of their own as well, both of
whom have suffered much for the good of all folk--even the trolls.
Einskaldir was right. But for this silent fellow beside me, they are all
hell-wights."
    Simon sat up, holding his head in his hands. The wind blew uncaringly
about the heights. Helplessness spread through him.
    "Binabik!" he cried, leaning over once more. "Qantaqa waits for you!
Sludig suffers at your side! No one can help if you don't help yoursel~
Why won't you speak to me?!"
    Only Sludig answered. "It's no good, I tell you. His eyes are closed. He
does not hear you, will not speak at all."
    Simon slapped his hand against the rock and cursed. He felt tears start in
his eyes.
    "I will help you, Sludig," he said at last. "I do not know how, but I
will." He sat up. Qantaqa nosed him and whimpered. "Can I bring you
something? Food? Water?"
    Sludig laughed dully. "No. They feed us, although not to bursting. I
would ask for wine, but I do not know when they come for me. I will not
go with my head foggy from drink. Only pray for me, please. And for the
troll, too."
 "I will do more than that, Sludig, I swear." He stood up.
    "You were very brave on the mountain, Simon," Sludig called quietly.
"I am glad that I knew you."
    The stars glittered coldly above the pit as Simon walked away, fighting
to stand straight and cry no more.


STONE OF FAREWELL

39

    He walked a while beneath the moon, lost in the swirl of his distracted
thoughts, before he realized that he was again following Qantaqa. The
wolf, who had paced anxiously beside the edge of the pit while Simon
talked to Sludig, now trotted purposefully along the path before him. She
did not allow him a chance to catch up as she had on their outward
journey, and he was hard pressed to keep to her pace.
    The moonlight was just bright enough for Simon to see where he was
going, the trail just wide enough to allow for recovery from the occasional
misstep. Still, he was feeling decidedly weak. He wondered more than once
whether he should just sit down and wait until dawn came, when some-
one would find him and return him safely to his cave, but Qantaqa trotted
on, full of lupine determination. Feeling that he owed her a sort of loyalty,
Simon did his best to follow.
    He soon noted with more than a little alarm that they seemed to be
climbing above the main trail, angling up Mintahoq's face along a steeper,
narrower pathway. As the wolf led him ever upward, and as they cut
across more than a few horizontal paths, the air began to seem thinner.
Simon knew he had not climbed so far, that the sensation was due instead
to his own flagging wind, but he nevertheless felt himself to be passing
out of the realms of safety into the upper heights. The stars seemed very
close.
    He wondered for a moment if those cold stars might somehow be the
airless peaks of other, incredibly distant mountains, vast bodies lost in
darkness, snow-capped heads gleaming with reflected moonlight. But no,
that was foolishness. Where could they be standing, that they would not
be visible in daylight beneath the bright sun?
    In truth, the air might have been no scarcer, but the cold was certainly
growing, undeniable and intrusive despite his heavy cloak. Shivering, he
decided he should turn around and make his way back down to the main
roadway, no matter what moonlight pastime Qantaqa found so enticing.
A moment later, he was surprised to find himself stepping up off the path
and following the wolf onto a narrow shelf in the mountainside.
    The rocky porch, dotted with patches of dimly gleaming snow, stood
before a large, black crevice. Qantaqa jogged forward and stopped before
it, sniffing. She turned to regard Simon, her shaggy head tipped at an
angle, then barked once inquiringly and slipped into blackness. Simon
decided there must be a cave hidden in the shadows. He was wondering
whether he should follow her--letting a wolf lead him on a foolish hike
along the mountainside was one thing, but letting her lead him into a
lightless cavern in the middle of the night was another thing entirelym
when a trio of small dark shapes appeared out of the blackness of the cliff
face before him, startling Simon so badly that he almost stepped backward
off the stone porch.
  Diggers.t he thought wildly, scrabbling on the barren ground for some


40                                     Tad Williams

weapon. One of the shapes stepped forward, raising a slender spear
toward him as if in warning. It was a troll, of course--they were quite a
bit larger than the subterranean Bukken, when calmly examinedtbut still
he was frightened. These Qanuc were small but well-armed; Simon was a
stranger wandering about at night, perhaps in some sacred place.
    The nearest troll pushed back a fur-ringed hood. Pallid moonlight shone
on the face of a young woman. Simon could see little of her features but
the whites of her eyes, but he was sure her expression was fierce and
dangerous. Her two companions moved up beside her, muttering in what
seemed like angry voices. He took a step backward down the pathway,
feehng carefully for a safe foothold.
    "I'm sorry. I'm just going," he said, realizing even as he spoke that they
could not understand him. Simon cursed himself for not having Binabik
or Jiriki teach him some words of troll speech. Always regretting, always
too late! Would he be a mooncalf forever? He was tired of the position.
Let someone else take it on.
    "I'm just going," he repeated. "I was following the wolf. Following
... the ... wolf." He spoke slowly, trying to make his voice sound
friendly despite his tightened throat. One misunderstanding and he might
be plucking one of those wicked-looking spears out of his midsection.
    The troll woman watched him. She said something to one of her
companions. The one addressed took a few steps toward the shadowed
cave-mouth. Qantaqa growled menacingly from somewhere within the
echoing depths and the troll quickly scuttled away again.
    Simon took another step back down the path. The trolls watched him in
silence, their small dark forms poised and watchful, but they made no
move to hinder him. He turned his back on them slowly and helped
himself down the trail, picking his way among the silvered rocks. After a
moment the three trolls, Qantaqa, and the mysterious cave were all out of
sight behind him.
    He made his way downslope alone in dreaming moonlight. Halfway
back to the main trail he had to stop and sit, elbows on trembling knees.
He knew that his exhaustion and even his fear would eventually recede,
but he could imagine no cure for such loneliness.

    "I am truly sorry, Seoman, but there is nothing to be done. Last night
Reniku, the star we call Summer-Lantern, appeared above the horizon at
sundown. I have stayed too long. I can remain no longer."
    Jiriki sat cross-legged atop a rock on the cave's vast porch, staring down
into the mist-carpeted valley. Unlike Simon and Haestan, he wore no
heavy clothing. The wind plucked at the sleeves of his glossy shirt.
 "But what will we do about Binabik and Sludig?" Simon flung a stone


STONE OF FAREWELL

41

into the depths, half-hoping it would wound some fog-hidden troll below.
"They'll be killed if you don't do something!"
    "There is nothing I could do, in any circumstance," Jiriki said quietly.
"The Qanuc have a right to their justice. I cannot honorably interfere."
    "Honor? Hang honor, Binabik won't even speak! How can he defend
himself?."
    The Sitha sighed, but his hawkish face remained impassive. "Perhaps
there is no defense. Perhaps Binabik knows he has wronged his people."
    Haestan snorted his disgust. "We dunna even know th' little man's
crime."
    "Oathbreaking, I am told," Jiriki said mildly. He turned to Simon. "I
must go, Seoman. The news of the Norn Queen's Huntsman attacking the
Zida'ya has upset my people very much. They wish me home. There is
much to discuss." Jiriki brushed a strand of hair from his eye. "Also,
when my kinsman An'nai died and was buried on Urmsheim, a responsi-
bility fell upon me. His name must now be entered with full ceremony in
the Book of Year-Dancing. I, of all my people, can least shirk that
responsibility. It was, after all, Jiriki i-Sa'onserei and no other who brought
him to the place of his death--and it was much to do with me and my
willfulness that he went." The Sitha's voice hardened as he clenched his
brown fingers into a fist. "Do you not see? I cannot turn my back on
An'nai's sacrifice."
    Simon was desperate. "I don't know anything about your Dancing
Book--but you said that we would be allowed to speak for Binabik! They
told you so!"
 Jiriki cocked his head. "Yes. The Herder and Huntress so agreed."
    "Well, how will we be able to do that if you are gone? We can't speak
the troll-tongue and they can't understand ours."
    Simon thought he saw a look of bewilderment flit briefly across the
Sitha's imperturbable face, but it passed so swiftly he was not sure. Jiriki's
flake-gold eyes caught and held his gaze. They stared at each other for
long moments.
    "You are right, Seoman," Jiriki said slowly. "Honor and heritage have
pincered me before, but never quite so neatly." He dropped his head
down and stared at his hands, then slowly lifted his eyes to the gray sky.
"An'nai and my family must forgive me. J'asu pra-peroihin! The Book of
Year-Dancing must then record my disgrace." He took a deep breath. "I
will stay while Binabik of Yiqanuc has his day at court."
    Simon should have exulted, but instead felt only hollowness. Even to a
mortal, the Sitha prince's unhappiness was profoundly apparent: Jiriki was
making some terrible sacrifice that Simon could not understand. But what
else could be done? They were all caught here on this high rock beyond
the known world, all prisoners--at least of circumstance. They were
ignorant heroes, friends to oath-breakers...


42                                     Tad Williams

     A chill dashed up Simon's backbone. "Jiriki!" he gasped, waving his
hands as if to clear a way for the sudden inspiration. ' Would it work? Even if it did, would it help?
    "Jiriki," he said again, more quietly this time, "I believe I have thought
of something that will let you do what you need to and help Binabik and
Sludig, too."
    Haestan, hearing the tightness in Simon's voice, put down the stick he
had been carving and leaned forward. Jiriki raised an expectant eyebrow.
    "You will only need to do one thing," Simon said. "You must go with
me to see the king and queen--the Herder and the Huntress."

    After they had spoken to Nunuuika and Uammanaq, gaining the pair's
grudging acceptance of their proposal, Simon and Jiriki walked back in
mountain twilight from the House of the Ancestor. The Sitha wore a faint
smile.
    "You continue to surprise me, young Seoman. This is a bold stroke. I
have no idea if it will help your friend, but it is a beginning, nevertheless."
    "They would never have agreed if you hadn't asked, Jiriki. Thank
you."
    The Sitha made a complicated gesture with his long fingers. "There is
still a brittle respect between the Zida'ya and some of the Sunset Children--
chiefly the Hernystiri and the Qanuc. Five desolate centuries cannot so
easily overwhelm the millennia of grace. Still, things have changed. You
mortals--Lingit's children, as the trolls say--are in ascendancy. It is not
my people's world any longer." His hand reached out, touching lightly on
Simon's arm as they walked. "There is also a bond between you and me,
Seoman. I have not forgotten that."
    Simon, trudging along at the side of an immortal, could think of no
reply.
    "I ask only that you understand this: my kin and I are now very few. I
owe you my life--twice, in fact, to my great distress--but my obliga-
tions to my people greatly outweigh even the value of my own continued
existence. There are some things that cannot be wished away, young
mortal. I hope for Binabik's and Sludig's survival, of course . . . but I am
Zida'ya. I must take back the story of what happened on the dragon-
mountain: the treachery of Utuk'ku's minions and the passing of An'nai."
    He stopped suddenly and turned to face Simon. In the violet-tinged
evening shadows, with his hair blowing, he seemed a spirit of the wild
mountains. For a moment, Simon perceived Jiriki's immense age in his
eyes, and felt he could almost grasp that great ungraspable: the vast
duration of the prince's race, the years of their history like grains of sand
on a beach.
    "Things are not so easily ended, Seoman," Jiriki said slowly, "even by
my leaving. It is a very unmagical wisdom that tells me we shall meet


STONE OF FAREWELL

43

again. The debts of the Zida'ya run deep and dark. They carry with them
the stuff of myth. I owe you such a debt." Jiriki again flexed his fingers in
a peculiar sign, then reached into his thin shirt and produced a flat, circular
object.
    "You have seen this before, Seoman," he said. "It is my mirror--a scale
of the Greater Worm, as its legend has it."
    Simon took it from the Sitha's outstretched palm, marveling at its
surprising lightness. The carved frame was cool beneath his fingers. Once
this mirror had shown him an image of Miriamele; another time, Jiriki had
produced the forest-city of Enki-e-Shao'saye from its depths. Now, only
Simon's own somber reflection stared back, murky in the half-light.
    "I give it to you. It is has been a talisman of my family's since Jenjiyana
of the Nightingales tended fragrant gardens in the shade of Sen{ Anzi'in.
Away from me, it will no longer be anything but a looking glass." Jiriki
raised his hand. "No, that is not quite true. If you must speak with me, or
have need of me--true need--tell the mirror. I will hear and know." Jiriki
pointed a stern finger at the speechless Simon. "But do not think to
summon me in a puff of smoke, as in one of your folk's goblin stories. !
have no such magical powers. I cannot even promise you I will be able to
come. But if I hear of your need, I will do what is in my power to help.
The Zida'ya are not totally without friends, even in this bold young world
of mortals."
    Simon's mouth worked for a moment. "Thank you," he said at last.
The small gray glass suddenly seemed a thing of great weight indeed.
"Thank you."
    Jiriki smiled, showing a stripe of white teeth. Again he seemed what he
was among his own folk--a youth. "And you have your ring, as well."
He gestured at Simon's other hand, to the thin gold band with its fish-
shaped sign. "Talk of goblin stories, Seoman! The White Arrow, the black
sword, a golden ring, and a Sithi seeing-glassmyou are so weighted down
with significant booty that you will clank when you walk!" The prince
laughed, a trill of hissing music.
    Simon stared at the ring, saved for him from the wrack of the doctor's
chambers, sent on to Binabik as one of Morgenes' final acts. Grimy with
the oil of the gloves Simon had been wearing, it sat unfiatteringly on a
dirt-blackened finger.
    "I still don't know what the writing inside means," he said. On a
whim, he twisted it off and handed it to the Sitha. "Binabik couldn't read
it either, except for something about dragons and death." He had a sudden
thought. "Does it help the person wearing it to slay dragons?" It was an
oddly depressing idea, especially since he didn't think he'd actually man-
aged to slay the ice-worm. Had it only been a magical spell after all? As he
recovered his strength, he found himself more and more proud of his
bravery in the face of the terrible Igjarjuk.


44                                     Tad Williams

    "Whatever happened on Urmsheim was between you and ancient
Hidohebhi's child, Seoman. There was no magic." Jiriki's smile had
disappeared. He shook his head solemnly, passing the ring back. "But I
cannot tell you more about the ring. If the wise man Morgenes did not
provide for your understanding when he sent it to you, then I will not
presume to tell. I have perhaps already burdened you unfairly during our
short acquaintance. Even the bravest mortals grow sick with too much
truth."
  "You can read what it says?"
    "Yes. It is written in one of the languages of the Zida'ya--although,
interestingly for a mortal trinket, one of the more obscure. I will tell you
this, however. If I understand its meaning, it does not concern you now in
any direct fashion, and knowing what it said would not help you in any
palpable way."
  "And that's all you'll tell me?"
    "For now. Perhaps if we meet again, ! will have more understanding of
why it was given to you." The Sitha's face was troubled. "Good fortune
to you, Seoman. You are an odd boy--even for a mortal .... "
    At that moment they heard Haestan's shout and saw the Erkynlander
striding up the path toward them, waving something. He had caught a
snow hare. The fire, he called happily, was ready for cooking.

    Even with a stomach comfortably full of broiled meat and herbs, it took
Simon a long time to fall asleep that night. As he lay on his pallet looking
up at the flickering red shadows on the cave ceiling, his mind tumbled
with all that had happened, the maddening tale in which he had been
caught up.
    I'm in a sort of story, just like Jiriki said. A story like Shem used to tell--or is
it History, like Doctor Morgenes used to teach me... ? But no one ever explained
how terrible it is to be in the middle of a tale and not to know the ending ....
    He slipped away at last, awakening with a start some time later. Haestan,
as always, was snorting and sighing in his beard, deep in slumber. There
was no sign of Jiriki. Somehow, the cavern's curious emptiness told
Simon that the Sitha was truly gone, headed down the mountain to return
to his home.
    Stung by loneliness, even with the guardsman grumbling stuporously
away nearby, he found himself crying. He did so quietly, ashamed at this
failure of manhood, but he could no more stop the flow of tears than lift
great Mintahoq on his back.

    Simon and Haestan came to Chidsik ub Lingit at the time Jiriki had told
themman hour after dawn. The cold had worsened. The ladders and


STONE OF FAREWELL

45

thong bridges swayed in the cold wind, unused. Mintahoq's stone byways
had become even more treacherous than usual, covered in many places by
a thin skin of ice.
    As the two outsiders pressed their way in through a horde of chattering
trolls, Simon leaned heavily on Haestan's fur-cloaked elbow. He had not
slept well after the Sitha had gone, his dreams shot through with the
shadows of swords and the compelling but inexplicable presence of the
small, dark-eyed girl.
    The troll folk around them were done up as if for a festival, many in
shiny necklaces of carved tusk and bone, the women with their black hair
bound up in combs made from the skulls of birds and fish. Men and
women both passed skins of some highland liquor back and forth, laugh-
ing and gesturing as they drank. Haestan watched this procedure gloomily.
    "I talked one of 'em into givin' me sip o' that," the guardsman said.
"Tasted like horse piss, did. What I wouldna give for drop o' red Perdruin."
    At the center of the room, just within the moat of unlit oil, Simon and
Haestan found four intricately-worked bone stools with seats of stretched
hide, which stood facing the empty dais. Since the milling trolls had made
themselves comfortable all around, but had left the seats empty, the
interlopers guessed that two of the stools were theirs. No sooner had they
seated themselves than the Yiqanuc folk gathered around them stood up.
A strange noise rose, echoing from the cavern walls--a sonorous, hum-
ming chant. Incomprehensible Qanuc words, like castoff spars floating on
an uneasy sea, bobbed to the surface and then slipped back beneath the
steady moaning. It was a strange and disturbing sound.
    For a moment Simon thought the chanting had something to do with
his and Haestan's entrance, but the dark eyes of the assembled trolls were
focused on a door in the far cavern wall.
    Through this door at last came not the masters of Yiqanuc, as Simon
had expected, but a figure even more exotic than the folk who surrounded
him. The newcomer was a troll, or at least of troll size. His small,
muscular body was oiled so that it gleamed in the lamplight. He wore a
fringed skirt of hide and his face was hidden behind a mask made from a
ram's skull which had been decoratively carved and gouged until the bone
was scarcely more than a filigree, a white basket around the black eye
holes. Two enormous, curving horns that had been hollowed to near
transparency stood out over his shoulders. A mantel of white and yellow
feathers and a necklace of curved black claws swung beneath the bony
mask.
    Simon could not tell if this man was a priest, a dancer, or simply a
herald for the royal couple. When he stamped his gleaming foot the crowd
roared happily. When he touched the tips of his horns, then raised his
palms to the sky, the troll folk gasped and quickly resumed their chanting.
For long moments the man capered across the raised dais, as intent on his


46                                     Tad Williams

work as any solemn craftsman. At last he paused as though listening. The
murmuring of the crowd stopped. Four more figures appeared in the
doorway--three of troll size, one towering over the rest.
    Binabik and Sludig were brought forward. One troU guard stood on
each side, the heads of their sharp spears remaining at a!l times near the
prisoners' backbones. Simon wanted to stand and shout, but Haestan's
broad hand fell on his arm, holding him down on his stool.
    "Quiet, lad. They be comin' this way. Wait for 'em t'get here. We
make no show for this rabble."
    Both the troll and the fair-haired Rimmersman were considerably thin-
ner than when Simon had last seen them. Sludig's bushy-bearded face
was pink and peeling, as though he had been too much in the sun. Binabik
was paler than he had been, his once-brown skin now the color of
porridge; his eyes seemed sunken, surrounded by shadows.
    The pair walked slowly, the troll head down, Sludig looking defiantly
around the room until he saw Simon and Haestan, to whom he offered a
grim smile. As they stepped over the moat into the inner circle, the
Rimmersman reached out and patted Simon's shoulder, then grunted in
pain as one of the guards following close behind pricked his arm with a
spear point.
    "Had I but a sword," Sludig murmured, stepping forward and gingerly
seating himself on one of the stools. Binabik took the seat at the far end.
He had not yet raised his eyes to meet those of his companions.
    "Take more than swords, friend," Haestan whispered. "They be small,
but stern--an' look at th'Usires-cursed numbers of 'em!"
    "Binabik!" said Simon urgently, leaning across Sludig. "Binabik! We've
come to speak for you!"
    The troll looked up. For a moment it seemed he might say something,
but his dark eyes were distant. He gave the slightest, gentlest shake of his
head, then returned his gaze to the cavern floor. Simon felt rage burning
inside him. Binabik must fight for his life! He was sitting like old Rim the
plow-horse, waiting for the killing blow to fall.
    The growing buzz of excited voices was abruptly stilled. Another trio ot
figures appeared in the doorway, moving slowly forward: Nunuuika the
Huntress and Uammannaq the Herder, in full ceremonial trappings of fur
and ivory and polished stones. Another troll followed them on silent,
soft-booted feetma young woman, her large eyes expressionless, her
mouth set in a firm line. Her shuttered stare flicked across the line o'
stools, then away. The man with the ram horns danced before the three.
some until they reached the dais and ascended to their divan of hides ant
fur robes. The unfamiliar troll woman sat just before the royal pair, one
step below the top. The capering herald--or whatever he was: Simon stil
could not decide--thrust a taper into one of the wall lamps, then touchec
it to the ring ofoil, which caught with a blazing huff. Flames raced arounc


STONE OF FAREWELL

47

the circle, trailing black smoke. A moment later the smoke dissipated
upward into the shadowy reaches of the cavern ceiling. Simon and the
others were surrounded by a ring of fire.
    The Herder leaned forward, lifting his crooked spear, and waved it at
Binabik and Sludig. As he spoke the crowd chanted again, just a few
words before they fell silent, but Uammannaq kept speaking. His wife and
the young female looked on. The Huntress' eyes seemed to Simon pierc-
ingly unsympathetic. The attitude of the other was harder to discern.
    The speech went on for some time. Simon was just beginning to
wonder if the lords of Yiqanuc had broken their promise to Jiriki when the
Herder broke off, waving his spear at Binabik, then gesturing angrily to
Binabik's companions. Simon looked at Haestan, who raised his eyebrow
as if to say: wait and see.
 "This is a strange thing, Simon."
    It was Binabik who spoke, his eyes still fixed on the ground before him.
His voice seemed to Simon as fine a thing to hear as birdsong or rain upon
the roof. Simon knew he was beaming like a fool, but for the moment he
did not care.
    "It seems," Binabik continued, his voice scratchy from disuse, "that
you and Haestan are guests of my masters, and that I must render these
proceedings into a speech you can understand, since no one else here
speaks both tongues."
 "We canna' speak for you if canna' be understood," Haestan said softly.
    "We'll help you, Binabik," Simon said emphatically, "but your silence
will help nobody."
    "This, as I said, is a strangeness," Binabik rasped. "I am condemned for
dishonor, yet for honor's sake I must translate my wrongs for outsiders,
since they are honored guests." A hint of a grim smile played at the
corners of his mouth. "Esteemed guest, dragon-slayer, meddler in other
people's affairs--somehow I am sensing your hand in this, Simon." He
squinted for a moment, then extended a stubby finger as if to touch
Simon's face. "You wear a brave scar, friend."
"What have you done, Binabik? Or what do they think you've done?"
The little man's smile evaporated. "I have broken my oath."
Nunuuika said something sharp. Binabik looked up and nodded. "The
Huntress says I have had time enough to explain. Now my crimes must be
dragged out into the light for inspecting."

    With Binabik rendering the proceedings into the Westerling tongue,
everything seemed to happen much more quickly. Sometimes it seemed
he repeated what was spoken word for word, other times long speeches
would be dispatched in a quick summation. Although Binabik seemed to
regain a little of his familiar energy as he went about the business of
translating, there was no mistaking the perilousness of his situation.


48                                     Tad Williams

    "Binabik, apprentice to the Singing Man, great Ookequk, you are held
as an oath-breaker." Uammannaq the Herder leaned forward, twisting his
thin beard fretfully, as though he found the proceedings upsetting. "Do
you deny this?"
    There was a long silence after Binabik finished translating the Herder's
question, After a moment, he turned from his friends to face the lords of
Yiqanuc. "I have no denial," he said at last. "I will offer the full truth,
though, if you will be hearing it, Sharpest of Eye and Surest of Rein."
    Nunuuika leaned back on her cushions. "There will be time for that."
She turned to her husband. "He does not deny it."
    "So," Uammannaq responded heavily, "Binabik is charged. You,
Croohok," he swiveled his round head toward Sludig, "are accused o
being of an outlaw race who have attacked and injured our people sinc,
time out of mind. That you are a Rimmersman no one can deny, so you~
charge remains as spoken."
    As the Herder's words were translated, Sludig began an angry retort
but Binabik raised a hand to silence him. Surprisingly, Sludig complied.
    "There can be no real justice between old enemies, it seems," th~
northerner murmured to Simon. His fierce glare became an unhapp
frown. "Still, there are trollkind who have had less chance at the hands c
my kinsmen than I have here."
"Let those who have reason to accuse now speak," Uammannaq said.
A certain expectant stillness filled the cavern. The herald stepped for
ward, his necklaces rattling and shivering. From the eyes of his ram sku
he looked at Binabik with undisguised contempt, then lifted his hand an
spoke in a thick, harsh voice.
    "Qangolik the Spirit Caller says that the Singing Man Ookekuq did nc
appear at the Ice House on the Winter Lastday, as has been the law of ot
people since Sedda gave us these mountains," Binabik translated. His o~
voice had taken on some of the unpleasant tone of his accuser's. "QangolJ
says that Binabik, the Singing Man's apprentice, also did not come to the h
House."
    Simon could almost feel the hatred flowing between his friend and t]
masked troll. There seemed little doubt that there was some rivalry
dispute of long standing between the two.
    The Spirit Caller continued. "Since Ookequk's apprentice did not con
to his duty--to sing the Rite of Quickeningmthe Ice House still has n
melted. Because the Ice House is unmelted, Winter will not leave Yiqanu
Through his treachery, Binabik has doomed his people to a bitter seasc
The summer will not come and many will die.  "Qangolik calls him oath-breaker."
    There was a rush of angry talk through the cavern. The Spirit CaI
had already squatted down once more before Binabik finished putting ]
words into Westerling.


STONE OF FAREWELL

49

     Nunuuika looked about with ritual deliberateness. "Does anyone else
 here accuse Binbinaqegabenik?"
    The unknown young woman, whom Simon had nearly forgotten in the
furor of Qangohk's words, got up slowly from her seat on the topmost
step. Her eyes were demurely lowered and her voice was quiet. She spoke
for only a few brief moments.
    Binabik did not immediately explain her words, though they set off a
great rustle of whispering among the gathered trolls. He wore an expres-
sion Simon had never seen before on his friend's face: complete and utter
unhappiness. Binabik stared at the young woman with grim fixedness, as
though he watched some terrible event that it was nevertheless his duty to
remember and later report in detail.
    Just when Simon thought Binabik had been silenced again, this time
perhaps forever, the troll spoke--flatly, chronicling the receipt of an old
and now insignificant wound.
    "Sisqinanamook, youngest daughter of Nunuuika the Huntress and
Uammannaq the Herder, also accuses Binabik of Mintahoq. Though he
placed his spear before her door, when nine times nine days had passed
and the appointed day of marriage came, he was gone. Neither did he send
any word or explanation. When he returned to our mountains, he came
not to the home of his people, but traveled with Croohok and Utku to the
shunned peak Yijarjuk. He has brought shame on the House of the
Ancestor and on his once-betrothed.
  "Sisqinanamook calls him oath-breaker.'
    Thunderstruck, Simon stared at Binabik's dejected face as the troll
droned his translation. Marriage! All the while Simon and the little man
had been fighting their way to Naglimund and making their way across
the White Waste, Binabik's people had been waiting for him to fulfill his
marriage oath. And he had been betrothed to a child of the Herder and
Huntress! He had never given the slightest hint!
    Simon looked more closely at Binabik's accuser. Sisqinanamook, al-
though as small to Simon's eye as all of her folk, seemed actually a little
taller than Binabik. Her glossy black hair was plaited on either side of her
face, the two braids joining beneath her chin into one wide plait interlaced
with a sky-blue ribbon. She wore little jewelry, especially when compared
with her formidable mother, the Huntress. A single deep blue gem spar-
kled on her forehead, held in place by a slender black leather thong.
    She had a flush of color in her brown cheeks. Although her gaze was
clouded as though by anger or fright, Simon thought he sensed a strong-
willed, defiant tilt to her jaw, a sharpness to her eye---not her mother
Nunuuika's blade-edged glance, but the look of someone who made up
her own mind. For a moment, Simon felt he could see her as one of her
own wouldwnot a gentle, pliant beauty, but a comely and clever young
woman whose admiration would not be easy to win.


50                                     Tad Williams

    He abruptly realized that this was the one who had stood before Qantaqa
cave last night--the one who had menaced him with her spear! Somethit
indefinable in the angle of her face told him so. Remembering, he kne
she was a huntress after all, just like her mother.
    Poor Binabik! Her admiration might not be easy to gain, but Simor
friend had won her over, or so it seemed. However, the wit and deterrn
nation that Binabik must have so admired was now bent against him.
    "I have no disagreement with Sisqinanamook, daughter of the Line,
the Moon," Binabik finally replied. "That she ever accepted the spear,
so unworthy a one as the Singing Man's apprentice was to me astonishing.
    Sisqinanamook curled a lip at this speech, as if in disgust, but Simon d
not think her contempt seemed altogether convincing.
    "Great is my shame," Binabik continued. "Nine times nine nights,
truth, my spear stood before her door. I did not come to be married wh
those nights were through. There is no word I can speak that will
mending the hurt, or be making less of my fault. A choice there was to
made, as is the way of things once the Walk of Manhood or Womanho,
has been walked. I was in a strange land and my master was dead. I ma
my choosing; had I the same to decide once more, I say with regret,
would make this same choosing again."
    The crowd was still buzzing with shock and perturbation as Binal:
finished interpreting what he had said for his companions. As he finishe
he turned back to the young woman standing before him and said sore
thing to her, quietly and rapidly, calling her "Sisqi" instead of her fi
name. She swung her face away quickly, as if she could not stand to 1o
at him. He did not translate his last speech, but sadly turned back to t
mother and father.
    "And what," Nunuuika asked scornfully, "might you have had
decide about? What choice could have turned you into an oath-breaker
you, who had already climbed far beyond the snows to which you w~
accustomed, whose betrothal-spear had been chosen by one high abc
you?"
    "My master Ookequk made a promise to Doctor Morgenes oft
Hayholt, a very wise man of Erkynland. With my master dead, I felt
was my place to keep his promise."
    Uammannaq leaned forward, his beard wagging with surprise a
anger. "You thought a promise to a lowlander more important tt
wedding a child of the House of the Ancestor--or the bringing of su
mer? Truly, Binabik, those who said you had learned madness at
Ookequk's knee were right! You turned your back on your people for.
for Utku?"
    Binabik shook his head helplessly. "It was more than that, Uammann;
Herder of the Qanuc. My master had fears of grave danger, not just
Yiqanuc but to all the world below the mountains as well. Ookeq


STONE OF FAREWELL

51

feared a winter coming far worse than any we have experienced, one that
would leave the Ice House hard-frozen for a thousand black years. And it
was far more than only evil weather that Ookequk foresaw. Morgenes,
the old man in Erkynland, shared his fears. It was because of these dangers
that the promise seemed important. Because of this, too---because I believe
my master's worries arejustified--I would again break my oath ifI had no
other choice."
    Sisqinanamook had returned her gaze to Binabik once more. Simon
hoped to see a softening of her expression, but her mouth was still
clenched in a firm, bitter line. Her mother Nunuuika slapped a palm on the
butt of her spear.
    "This is no argument at all!" the Huntress exclaimed. "Not at all. If I
feared loose snow in the upper passes, should I then never leave my cave,
letting my children starve? This is as much as saying that your people and
the mountain home that gave you nurture mean nothing to you. You are
worse than a drunkard, who at least says 'I should not drink,' but falls
again into bad ways by weakness. You stand before us, bold as a robber of
others' saddlebags, and say: 'I will do it again. My oath means noth-
ing.'" She shook her spear in rage. The gathered assembly hissed its
agreement. "You should be put to death immediately. If your madness
infects others, the wind will howl in our empty caves before a generation
passes."
    Even as Binabik finished his dull rendering of this last, Simon stood up,
shaking with anger. His face ached where the scar had been burned across
his cheek, and every throb brought back the memory of Binabik clinging
to the frost-worm's back, shouting for Simon to run, to save himself
while the troll fought on alone.
    "No!" Simon cried furiously, surprising even Haestan and Sludig, who
had been listening dumbfoundedly to every strange detail of the exchange.
"No!" Simon steadied himself with his stool. His head was whirling.
Binabik, dutifully, turned to his masters and his betrothed and began
explaining the red-haired lowlander's words.
    "You don't understand what is happening," Simon began, "or what
Binabik has done. Here in these mountains, the world is far away--but
there is danger that can reach you. In the castle where I lived once, it
seemed to me that evil was only something talked about by the priests,
and that even they did not truly believe in it. Now I know better. There
are dangers all around us and they are growing stronger every day! Don't
you see? Binabik and I have been chased, chased by this evil all through
the great forest and across the snows below these mountains. It followed
us even to the dragon-mountain!"
    Simon stopped for a moment, dizzied, breathing swiftly. He felt as
though he held some squirming thing that was wriggling out of his grip.
What can I say? I must sound like a madman. Look, Binabik tells them what


52                                     Tad Williams

I've said and they stare at me as though I'm barking like a dog! I will get Binabik
killed for certain!
    Simon groaned quietly and began again, trying to marshal his nearly
unmanageable thoughts. "We are all in danger. A terrible power is in the
north--I mean, no, we're in the north now . . ." He hung his head and
tried to think for a moment. "To the north, but also to the west of here
There's a huge mountain of ice. The Storm King lives there--but he's no
alive, lneluki is his name. Have you heard of him? Ineluki? He is terrible!'
    He leaned forward, his balance abruptly uncertain, and goggled at th,
alarmed faces of Herder and Huntress and their daughter Sisqinanamook.
    "He is terrible..." he said again, staring straight into the troll maiden'
dark eyes.
Binabik called her Sisqi, he thought disjointedly. He must have loved her...
Something seemed to grab his mind and shake it, as a hound shakes;
rat. Suddenly he was tumbling forward, down a long, spinning shaft. Th
dark eyes of Sisqinanamook deepened and grew, then changed. A roomer
later, the troll woman was gone, her parents, Simon's friends, and all c
Chidsik ub Lingit vanished with her. But the eyes remained, transmute
now into another grave stare that slowly filled his field of vision. Thes
brown eyes belonged to one of his own kind--the child who had haunte
his dreams . . . a child he finally recognized.
    Leleth, he thought. The little girl we left in the house in the forest, because he
wounds were so awful. The girl we lefi with . . .
    "Simon," she said, her voice reverberating oddly in his head, "this is n
last opportunity. My house will soon .~ll and I will flee into the jbrest--but fit
there is something I must tell you."
    Simon had never heard the girl Leleth speak. The reedy tones seem
fitting for a child her age---but something about the voice was wrong:
was too solemn, too articulate and heavy with self-knowledge. The pal
and the phrasing sounded like a grown woman's, like . . .
    "Gelo~'?' he said. Although he did not think he actually spoke, he heal
his voice echo out through some empty place.
    "Yes. I have no time left. I could not have reached you, but the child Leleth h
abilities . . . she is like a burning-glass through which I can narrow my will. S
is a strange child, Simon." Indeed, the nearly expressionless child's face th
spoke the words did seem somehow different than that of any oth
mortal child. There was something in the eyes that saw through hit
beyond him, as though he himself were insubstantial as mist.  "Where are you?"
    "In my house, but not long. My J~nces have been thrown down and my lake
full of dark things. The powers at my door are too strong. Rather than st~
against such gale winds, I will flee to fight another day.
    "What I have to tell you is this: Naglimund is j~llen. Elias has won .
day--but the real victor is He of whom we both know, the dark one in the nor
Josua, however, is alive."


STONE OF FAREWELL

53

 Simon felt a chilly twist of fear in his stomach. "And Miriamele?"
    "She who was Marya--and also Malachias? I know only that she is gone from
Naglimund: more than that, friendly eyes and ears cannot tell me. Now I must say
something else: you must remember it and think o fit, since Binabik of Yiqanuc has
closed himself to me. You must go to the Stone of Farewell. That is the only place
of saJ~ty from the growing storm--saJ~ty for a little while, anyway. Go to the
Stone of Farewell."
    "What? Where is this stone?" Naglimund fallen? Simon felt despair settle
into his heart. Then all was truly lost. "Where is the stone, Gelo~'?"
    Without warning a black wave crashed through him, sudden as a blow
from a giant hand. The little girl's face disappeared, leaving only a gray
void. Gelo~'s parting words floated in his head.
 "It is the only place of saJ~ty . . . Flee! . . . the storm is coming . . ."
 The gray slid away, like waves receding down a beach.
    He found himself staring into the shimmering, transparent yellow light
of a pool of blazing oil. He was on his knees in the cavern of Chidsik ub
Lingit. Haestan's fearful face was bent close to his.
    "What devils ye, lad?" the guardsman asked, supporting Simon's heavy
head with a shoulder as he helped him up onto a stool. Simon felt as
though his body were made of rags and green twigs.
    "Gelo~ said . . . she said a storm . . . and the Stone of Farewell. We
must go to the Stone of Fare . . ." Simon trailed off, looking up to see
Binabik kneeling before the dais. "What's Binabik doing?" he asked.
    "Waitin' th' word," Haestan said gruffly. "When y'fell swoonin', he
said would fight no longer. Spoke t'king an' queen some while, now he be
waitin'."
    "But that's not right!" Simon tried to rise, but his legs buckled beneath
him. His head hummed like an iron pot struck by a hammer. "Not . . .
right."
 "'Tis th' will o' God," Haestan murmured unhappily.
    Uammannaq turned from a whispered colloquy with his wife to stare at
the kneeling Binabik. He said something in the guttural Qanuc-tongue
that sent a windy moan through the spectators. The Herder lifted his
hands to his face, slowly covering his eyes in a stylized gesture. The
Huntress solemnly repeated the gesture. Simon felt a chill descend,
heavier and bleaker even than winter's cold. He knew beyond doubt that
his friend had been given a judgment of death.


4

      A Bow[
of c damint Tea

S~f~ filtered through the swollen clouds, filling mutedly on
great party~of horses and armored men riding up Main Row toward the
Hayholt. The light of their bright banners was dulled by uneven shadow,
and the click of the horse's hooves died in the muddy road, as though the
brave army rode silently along the bottom of the ocean. Many of the
soldiers held their eyes downcast. Others peered out from the shadow ot
their helms like men who feared to be recognized.
    Not all appeared so dismayed. Earl Fengbald, soon to be a duke, rode al
the head of the king's party beneath Elias' green and sable dragon-banne'
and his own silver falcon. Fengbald's long black hair spilled down hi
back, held only by a scarlet band knotted around his temples. He smilec
and waved a gauntleted fist in the air, eliciting cheers from the severa
hundred spectators lining the roadway.
    Riding close behind, Guthwulf of Utanyeat restrained a scowl. He, too
held an earl's title--and supposedly the king's favor--but he knew beyom
doubt that the siege of Naglimund had changed everything.
    He had always envisioned the day when his old comrade Elias wouh
reign as king and Guthwulf would stand at his side. Well, Elias was kinI
now, but somehow the rest of the story had gone wrong. Only a fat
headed young idiot like Fengbald could be either too ignorant to notic,
 . . or too ambitious to let it bother him.
    Guthwulf had shorn his graying hair close to his head before the sieg,
had started. Now his helmet fit loosely. Even though he was a strong mal
still in the prime of his health, he felt almost as though he were shrinkinI
away inside of his armor, becoming smaller and smaller.
    Was he the only one uneasy, he wondered? Perhaps he had grown sol
and womanish in his too many years away from the field of battle.
    But that could not be true. It was true that during the siege a fortnig[
ago his heart had beaten very swiftly, but that had been the racing pulse 
exhilaration, not of fear. He had laughed as his enemies had swept dow

54


                                         STONE OF FAREWELL                                                                 55

 upon him. He had broken a man's back with a single blow of his longsword,
 and taken blows in turn without losing his seat, handling his mount as
 well as he had twenty years ago--better, if anything. No, he had not
 grown soft. Not that way.
    He also knew that he was not the only soul who felt a gnawing
disquietude. Though crowds stood by cheering, most of them were young
bravos and drunkards from the town. A goodly number of the windows
facing Erchester's Main Row were shuttered; more than a few others
showed only a stripe of darkness, out of which peered those citizens who
did not care to come down and cheer the king.
    Guthwulf turned his head to look for Elias, then experienced an unset-
tling chill when he discovered the king was already staring at him--a rapt,
green stare. Almost against his will, Guthwulf nodded his head. The king
stiffly returned the gesture, then looked sourly out on the welcoming folk
of Erchester. Elias, feeling the pains of some undisclosed but minor illness,
had only left his tented wagon to climb atop his black charger a furlong or
so before their arrival at the city gate. Nevertheless, he was riding well,
concealing any discomfort he might feel. The king was thinner than he
had been in some years; the firm line of his jaw could be seen quite
plainly. Except for his pale skin--not as obvious in the blotchy afternoon
light as it sometimes was--and the distracted glare of his eyes, Elias
looked slender and strong, as befitted a warrior king returning in triumph
from a successful siege.
    Guthwulf stole a worried glance at the double-guarded gray sword
bumping in its scabbard against the king's hip. Cursed thing! How he
wished that Elias would throw the damned blade down a well. There was
something wrong about it, Gutliwulf knew that beyond question. Some
among the crowd obviously felt the uneasiness the blade engendered as
well, but only Guthwulf had been in Sorrow's presence often enough to
recognize the true source of their distress.
    And the sword was not the only thing troubling the people of Erchester.
Just as the mounted king of the afternoon had been a sick man in a wagon
at mid-morning, so also had the breaking of Naglimund been something
less than a glorious victory over a usurping brother. Guthwulf knew that
even far from the scene, the citizens of Erchester and the Hayholt had
come to hear something about the odd, terrible fate of Josua's castle and
people. Even if they had not, the faintly sickened expressions and bowed
posture of what should be an exulting, victorious army proclaimed that all
was not as it should be.
    It was more than shame, Guthwulf thought, and it was more than just
feeling unmanned--for him as well as for the soldiers. It was fear they felt
and could not quite hide. Was the king mad? Had he brought evil down
on them all? God did not fear a fight, the earl knew, or a little bloodwin
such ink were His intentions written, a philosopher had once said. But,
Usires curse it, this was different, was it not?


56                                     Tad Williams

    He sneaked another look at the king, his stomach churning. Elias was
listening closely to his counselor, red-robed Pryrates. The priest's hairless
head bobbed near the king's ear like a skin-covered egg.
    Guthwulf had considered killing Pryrates, but had decided it might
only make things worse, like killing the houndkeeper when the dogs
waited at one's throat. Pryrates might be the only one left who could
control the king--unless, as the Earl of Utanyeat sometimes felt sure, it
was the meddling priest himself who was leading Elias down the road to
perdition. Who could know, God damn them all? Who could know?
    Perhaps in response to something Pryrates said, Elias bared his teeth in a
smile as he looked over the sparseness of the cheering throng. It was not,
Guthwulf saw, the expression of a happy man.

 "I am very angry. My patience is strained by this ingratitude."
    The king had taken to his throne, his father John's great Dragonbone
Chair.
    "Your monarch returns from war, bringing news of a great victory, and
all that greets him is a paltry rabble." Elias curled his lip, staring at
Father Helfcene, a slightly-built priest who was also the chancellor of the
mighty Hayholt. Helfcene kneeled at the king's feet, the top of his bald
head facing the throne like a pitifully inadequate shield. "Why was there
no welcome for me?"
    "But there was, my Lord, there was," the chancellor stuttered. "Did I
not meet you at the Nearulagh Gate with all your household who re-
mained at the Hayholt? We are thrilled to have Your Majesty back in good
health, awed by your triumph in the north!"
    "My cringing bondsmen of Erchester did not appear to be either very
thrilled or awed." Elias reached for his cup. Ever-vigilant Pryrates handed
it to him, careful not to slosh the dark liquid over the rim. The king took
a long draught and made a face at its bitterness. "Guthwulf, did you feel
that the king's subjects showed him proper fealty?"
    The earl took a deep breath before speaking slowly. "Perhaps they were
 . . perhaps they had heard rumors . . ."
    "Rumors? Of what? Did we or did we not throw down my treacherous
brother's keep at Naglimund?"
    "Of course, my king," Guthwulf felt himself far out on a slender
branch. Elias' sea-green eyes stared at him, as insanely curious as an owl's.
"Of course," the earl repeated, "but our . . . allies . . . were bound to
cause rumor."
    Elias turned to Pryrates. The king's pale brow was furrowed, as though
he were genuinely puzzled. "We have acquired mighty friends, have we
not, Pryrates?"
  The priest nodded silkily. "Mighty friends, Majesty."
    "And yet they have served our will, have they not? They have done
what we wished done?"


STONE OF FAREWELL

57

    "To the exact length of your intent, King Elias." Pryrates snuck a glance
at Guthwulf. "They have done your will."
    "Well, then." Elias turned, satisfied, and regarded Father Helfcene once
more. "Your king has gone away to war and has destroyed his enemies,
returning with the allegiance of a kingdom older even than the long-gone
Imperium of Nabban." His voice wavered dangerously. "Why do my
subjects skulk like whipped dogs?"
    "They are ignorant peasants, sire," Helfcene said. A drop of sweat hung
on his nose.
    "I think that someone here has been stirring up trouble in my absence,"
Elias said with frightful deliberation. "I would like to know who has been
spreading tales. Do you hear me, Helfcene? I must find out who thinks
they know the good of Osten Ard better than does her High King. Go
now, and when I see you next, have something to tell me." He pulled at
the skin of his face, angrily. "Some of these be-damned, stay-at-home
nobles need to see the shadow of the gibbet, I think. That may remind
them who rules this land."
    The bead of sweat finally fell free of Helfcene's nose, spattering on the tile
floor. The chancellor nodded briskly and several other drops, strangely
numerous on a cool afternoon, leaped from his face.
    "Of course, my Lord. It is good, so good, to have you back once
more." He rose to a half crouch, bowed again, then turned and walked
quickly from the throne room.
    The thump of the great door closing echoed up amidst the the ceiling
beams and serried banners. Elias leaned back against the vast spreading
cage of yellowed bones, rubbing at his eye sockets with the backs of his
powerful hands.
    "Guthwulf, come here," he said, voice muffled. The Earl of Utanyeat
stepped forward, feeling a strange but compelling urge to flee the room.
Pryrates hovered at Elias' elbow, his face smooth and emotionless as marble.
    Even as Guthwulf reached the Dragonbone Chair, Elias dropped his
hands to his lap. The blue circles beneath his eyes made it seem as though
the king's gaze had pulled back farther into his head. For a moment it
almost seemed to the earl that the king was peering out of some dark hole,
some trap into which he had fallen.
    "You must protect me from treachery, Guthwulf." A ragged fringe of
desperation sounded in Elias' words. "I am vulnerable now, but there are
great things coming. This land will see a Golden Age such as the philoso-
phers and priests have only dreamed of--but I must survive. I must
survive, or all will be ruined. All will be ashes." Elias leaned forward,
grasping Guthwulfs callused hand with fingers cold as fish tails.
    "You must help me, Guthwulf." A powerful note ran through his
straining voice. For a moment, the earl heard his companion of many
battles and many taverns the way he remembered him, which only made


58                                     Tad Williams

the king's words all the more painful. "Fengbald and Godwig and the
rest are fools," Elias said. "Helfcene is a frightened rabbit. You are the
only one in all the world I can trust--besides Pryrates here, that is. You
are the only ones whose loyalty to me is complete."
    The king slumped back and covered his eyes again, clenching his teeth
as though in pain. He waved Guthwulfs dismissal. The earl looked up to
Pryrates, but the red priest only shook his head and turned to refill Elias'
goblet.
    As he pushed open the door of the chamber and walked out into the
lamplit hallway, Guthwulf felt a heavy stone of fear settle in his gut.
Slowly, he began to consider the unthinkable.

    Miriamele pulled away, freeing her hand from Count Streiwe's grasp.
She took a sudden step backward and fell into a chair that the man in the
skull mask had slid up behind her. For a moment she only sat, trapped.
    "How did you know it was me?" she asked at last. "That I was coming
here?"
    The count chuckled, extending a crabbed finger to tap the fox mask he
had discarded. "The strong rely on strength," he said. "The not-so-strong
must be clever and quick."
 "You haven't answered my question."
    Stre~we raised an eyebrow. "Oh?" He turned to his skull-faced helper.
"You may go, Lenti. Wait with your men outside."
    "It's raining," Lenti said mournfully, bone-white face bobbing, eyes
peering from the black sockets.
    "Then wait upstairs, fool!" the count said testily. "I will ring the bell
when I need you."
Lenti sketched a bow, then darted a glance at Miriamele and went out.
"Ah, that one," Stre~we sighed, "he is like a child sometimes. But still,
he does what he is told. That is more than I can say for many of those
who serve me." The count pushed the decanter of wine toward Brother
Cadrach, who sniffed at it suspiciously, obviously torn. "Oh, drink it,"
the count snapped. "Do you think I would go to all this trouble to drag
you across Ansis Pelipp~ and then poison you in one of my own resi-
dences? If I had wished you dead, you would have been facedown in the
harbor before you reached the end of the gangplank."
    "That doesn't make me any easier," Miriamele said, beginning to feel
like herself again--and more than a little angry. "If your intentions are
honorable, Count, then why were we brought here by the threat of knives?"
  "Did Lenti tell you he had a knife?" Stre~we asked.
    "He certainly did," Miriamele responded tartly. "Do you mean that he
doesn't?"


STONE OF FAREWELL

59

    The old man chortled. "Blessed Elysia, of course he does! Dozens of
the things, all shapes, all lengths, some sharpened on both sides, some
forked into a double blade--Lenti has more knives than you have teeth."
Stre~we chuckled again. "No, it's just that I keep telling him not to
announce it constantly. All around the town they call him Lenti 'Avi Stetto.'"
Strefiwe stopped laughing for a moment, wheezing slightly.
    Miriamele turned to Cadrach for explanation, but the monk was ab-
sorbed in a goblet of the count's wine, which he had apparently decided
was safe.
  "What does . . . 'Avi Stetto' . . . mean?" she finally asked.
    "It's Perdruinese for 'I have a knife.'" Stre~we shook his head fondly.
"He does know how to use his toys, though, that one does .... "
    "How did you know about us, sir?" Cadrach asked, wiping his lips with
the back of his hand.
  "And what are you going to do to us?" Miriamele demanded.
    "As to the first," Strefiwe said, "as I told you, the weak must have their
ways. My Perdruin is not a country whose might makes others tremble,
so we must instead have very good spies. Every port in Osten Ard is an
open market of knowledge, and all of the best brokers belong to me. I
knew you had left Naglimund before you reached the River Greenwade; I
have had people taking note of your progress ever since." He picked a
reddish fruit out of a bowl on the table top and began peeling it with
trembling fingers. "As to the second," he said, "well, that is a pretty
question."
    He was struggling with the fruit's tough rind. Miriamele, feeling a
sudden and unexpected sympathy for the old count, reached out and
gently took it from him.
  "Let me do it," she said.
    Stre~we raised an eyebrow, surprised. "Thank you, my dear. Very
kind. So, then, the question of what I should do with you. Well, now, I
must admit that when I first got word of your . . . temporarily detached
state . . . it occurred to me that there might be more than a few who
would pay for word of your whereabouts. Then, later, when it bec~me
clear you would be changing ship here in Ansis Pelipp~, I realized that
those who would find value in mere tidings might be willing to pay even
more for an actual princess. Your father or uncle, for instance."
    Furious, Miriamele dropped the fruit into the bowl, half-peeled. "You
would sell me to my enemies!?"
    "Now, now, my dear," the count said soothingly, "whoever said
anything about that? And who are you calling an enemy, in any case?
Your father the king? Your fond uncle josua? We are not talking of
handing you over to Nascadu slave-merchants for a few coppers. Be-
sides," he hastily added, "that alternative is now closed in any case."
  "What do you mean?"


60                                     Tad Williams

    "I mean I am not going to sell you to anyone," Strefiwe said. "Please,
do not worry about that."
     Miriamele picked up the fruit again. Now her hand was trembling.
 "What is going to happen to us?"
     "Perhaps the count will be forced to go locking us up in his deep, dark
 wine cellars, for our own protection," Cadrach said, gazing with fondness
 at the near-empty decanter. He seemed utterly and splendid drunk. "Ah,
 now wouldn't that be a terrible fate!"
  She turned away from him in disgust. "So?" she asked Stre~we.
     The old man took the slippery fruit from her hand and bit it carefully.
 "Tell me one thing," he said. "Do you go to Nabban?"
      Miriamele hesitated, wrestling with her thoughts. "Yes," she answered
 at last. "Yes, I do."  "Why?"
     "And why should I tell you? You have not harmed us, but you have not
 yet proved yourself a friend, either."
     Stre~we stared at her. A smile slowly spread across the lower part of his
 face. His eyes, red-rimmed, retained their hard edge. "Ah, I like a young
 woman who knows what she knows," he said. "Osten Ard is full to brim
 with sentiment and imprecise understanding--it is not sin, you know, but
 foolish sentiment that sets the angels to moaning in despair. But you,
 Miriamele, even when you were a small child you had the look of
 someone who would do something in this world." He pulled the decanter
 away from Cadrach and refilled his own goblet. The monk looked after it
 comically, like a dog whose bone had been stolen.
     "I said no one would sell you," Count Stre~we said at last. "Well, that
 is not quite true--no, do not glare so, mistress! Wait until you have heard
 all I have to say. I have a . . . friend, I suppose you would say, although
 we are not personally close. He is a religious man, but he moves in other
 circles as well--the best kind of friend I could ask for, since his knowledge
 is wide and his influence great. The only problem is, he is a man of rather
 irritating moral rectitude. Still, he has given help to Perdruin and to me
 many times, and--to put it simply--I owe him more than a few favors.
     "Now, I am not the only one who knew of your departure from
 Naglimund. This man, also, the religious fellow, had it through his own
 private sources...
     "He, too?" Miriamele demanded. She turned to Cadrach in anger.
 "What, did you send out a crier to trumpet the news?!"
     "Not a word passed my lips, m'lady," the monk said slurringly. Did
 she fancy that he was not as drunk as he pretended to be?
     ' "Please, Princess." Stre~we raised a shaking hand. "As I said, this friend
 is an influential man. Even those around him do not guess the breadth of
 his influence. His network of information, although smaller than mine, is
 of a depth and scope that often makes me shake my head in amazement.


                                          STONE OF FAREWELL                                                                 61

     "What I have been saying, thoughi is this. When my friend sent word
 to me---we each have a little flock of trained birds who carry our letters
 back and forthmhe told me about you. This was a thing I already knew.
 He, however, did not know of my plans for you--those plans I spoke of
 earlier."
  "Selling me, you mean."
     Streiwe coughed apologetically. For a moment it became a real cough.
 When he had regained his breath, he continued. "And, as I have said, I
 owe this man several favors. So when he asked me to prevent you going
 on to Nabban, I really had no choice . . ."
     "He asked you what?" Miriamele could not believe her ears. Would she
 never escape the meddling and interference of others?
  "He does not want you to go to Nabban. It is not the right time."
  "Not the right time? Who is this 'he,' and what right... ?"
     "He? He is a good man---one of the few of whom the term can be used.
 I do not have much respect for the type, myself. The 'right,' he says, is the
 saving of your life. Or at least your freedom."
    The princess felt her hair sticking to her forehead. The room was warm
and humid, and the baffling, irritating old man across the table was
smiling again, happy as a child who has learned a new trick.
    "You are going to keep me here?" she said slowly. "You are going to
imprison me and so protect my freedom?"
    Count Strefiwe reached a hand to his side and tugged at a dark rope that
hung nearly invisible before a rumpled wall hanging. Somewhere in the
building above a bell tolled faintly. "I am afraid that is true, my dear," he
said. "I must hold you until my friend sends to say otherwise. A debt is a
debt and a favor must be repaid." There was a sound of booted feet on the
doorstep outside. "It truly is to your advantage, Princess, although you
may not know it yet."
    "I'll be the judge of that," Miriamele snarled. "How could you? Don't
you know that there is a war brewing? That I am carrying important news
to Duke Leobardis?" She had to reach the duke, to convince him to join
with Josua. Otherwise, her father would destroy Naglimund and his
madness would never cease.
    The count cackled. "Ah, but my child, horses travel so much more
slowly than do birds--even birds who carry the weight of heavy tidings.
You see, Leobardis and his army left for the north nearly a month ago. If
you had not passed so swiftly, skulkingly, and secretively through the
towns of Hernystir, had you but spoken with a few people, you would
have known."
    As Miriamele slumped in her chair, dumbstruck, the count rapped his
knuckles loudly on the table. The door swung open and Lenti and his
two henchmen, still wearing their costumes, came into the room. Lenti
had taken off his Death mask; his sullen eyes peered out of a face that


62                                     Tad Williams

was pinker, but not a great deal livelier, than the one he had doffed.
    "Make them comfortable, Lenti," StreSwe said. "Then, lock the door
behind you and come back to help me into my litter."
    As the nodding Cadrach was rousted from his chair, Miriamele turned
on the count. "How could you do this?" she sputtered. "I had always
remembered you fondly--you and your treacherous garden!"
    "Ah, the garden," Stre~we said. "Yes, you would like to see that again,
wouldn't you? Don't be angry, Princess. We will talk more--I have much
to tell you. I am charmed to see you again. To think that pale, shy Hylissa
should have birthed such a fierce child!"
    As Lenti and the others hustled them out into the rain, Miriamele
caught a last glimpse of StreSwe. The count was staring at the gate, his
white-haired head nodding slowly up and down.

    They brought her to a tall house full of dusty hangings and ancient,
creaking chairs. StreSwe's castle, perched on a spur of Sta Mirore, was
empty but for a handful of silent servants and a few nervous-looking
messengers who crept in and out like stoats through a fence hole.
    Miriamele had her own room. It might have been pretty once, long,
long ago. Now the faded tapestries showed only dim ghosts of people and
places, and the straw of her mattress was so old and brittle and dry that it
whispered in her ears all night.
    She dressed every morning with the help of a heavy-faced woman who
smiled tightly and spoke very little. Cadrach was being kept somewhere
else, so she had no one to talk with during the long days and little to do
except read an old Book of the Aedon whose illuminations had faded until
the cavorting animals were mere outlines, as though carved in crystal.
    From the moment she was brought to StreSwe's house, Miriamel
schemed, dreaming of ways she might get free, but for all its air of stuffy
disuse, the count's decaying palace was harder to escape than the Hayholt's
deepest, dankest cells. The front hallway door of the wing in which she
was housed was kept firmly locked. The rooms along the passageway
were similarly barred. The woman who dressed her and the other servants
were brought in and out by a broad-boned and serious-looking warder.
Of all the potential routes of escape, only the door at the other end of the
long hallway was ever left open. Beyond this door lay Stre~we's walle~
garden, and that was where Miriamele spent most of her days.
    The garden was smaller than she remembered, but that was not surpris.
ing: she had been very young when she had seen it last. It seemec
older, too, as if the bright flowers and greenery had grown a bit weary.
    Banks of red and yellow roses lined the garden, but they were bein~
gradually supplanted by exuberantly snaking vines whose beautiful bell-
shaped- flowers shone the color of blood, and whose cloying scent minglec
with a myriad of other sweet, sad odors. Columbine clung to the wall:


STONE OF FAREWELL

63

and door-frames, its spurred blossoms dotting the twilight hke softly-
glowing stars. Here and there streaks of even wilder colors flashed among
the tree branches and flowering shrubs--the tails of shrill-voiced, onyx-
eyed birds from the Southern Islands.
    The top of the high-walled garden was open to the sky. Her first
morning in the garden Miriamele tried to climb the wall, but quickly
discovered that the stone was too smooth for fingerholds, the vines too
flimsy to offer support. As if to remind her of the proximity of freedom,
tiny hill birds frequently spiraled down through this sky-window, hop-
ping from branch to branch until something startled them and they leaped
away into the air once more. Occasionally a gull, swept far in from the
sea, flapped down to pace and preen before the more colorful denizens of
the garden, keeping an urchin's eye open all the while for scraps from
Miriamele's meals. But even with the unfenced sky churning with clouds
just a short distance away, the brilliantly-plumed island birds stayed where
they were, squawking resentfully in the green shadows.
    Some evenings StreSwe joined her in the garden, carried in by sullen
Lenti and propped in a high-backed chair, the count's useless, withered
legs covered with a figured lap robe. Unhappy in her captivity, Miriamele
deliberately made little response when he tried to amuse her with funny
stories or sailors' gossip and rumors from the port. Still, she found she
could not truly hate the old man, either.
    As the futihty of trying to escape became clear to her, and as the passing
days wore away the edge of her bitterness, she came to md an unexpected
comfort in sitting in the garden while late afternoon turned to evening. At
the end of each day, as the sky overhead turned slowly from blue to
pewter to black and the candles burned down in their sconces, Miriamele
mended garments she had torn on her journey south. While the night
birds sang their first hesitant notes, she drank calamint tea and pretended
not to listen to the old count's stories. When the sun had gone down, she
put on her riding cloak. It had been an uncommonly cold Yuven-month,
and even in the sheltered garden the nights were brisk.

    When Miriamele had been prisoned for nearly a week in StreSwe's
castle, he came to her sadly and told her of the death of her uncle Duke
Leobardis in combat before the walls of Naglimund. The duke's eldest son
Benigaris--a cousin that she had never much cared for--had returned to
rule Nabban from the throne of the Sancellan Mahistrevis. With help,
Miriamele presumed, from his mother Nessalanta, another relative who
had never been one of Miriamele's favorites. The news upset her: Leobardis
has been a kind man. Also, his death meant Nabban had quit the field,
leaving Josua without allies.
    Three days later, as the evening of the first day of Tiyagar-month came
on, StreSwe poured her a bowl of tea with his own trembling hand and


64                                     Tad Williams

told her that Naghmund had fallen. Rumor said there had been great
slaughter, that few had survived.
  He held her awkwardly in his dry-stick arms as she sobbed.

    The light was waning. The patches of sky that showed through the dark
embroidery of leaves were the unwholesome blue of bruised flesh.
    Deornoth stumbled on an unseen root and Sangfugol and Isorn crashed
to the ground beside him, Isorn losing his grip on the harper's arm as he
fell. Sangfugol rolled to a halt and lay groaning. The bandage around his
calf, strips of thin cloth from one of the ladies' underskirts, reddened with
fresh blood.
    "Oh, the poor man," Vorzheva said, limping forward. She squatted,
spreading out the skirt of her tattered dress, then took Sangfugol's hand.
The harper's eyes were fixed in an agonized stare on the tree limbs
overhead.
    "My lord, we must stop," Deornoth said. "It is growing too dark to
see."
    Josua turned slowly. The prince's thin hair was disarranged, his face
distracted. "We should walk until full dark, Deornoth. Every moment of
remaining light is precious."
    Deornoth swallowed. It made him feel almost ill to contradict his liege
lord. "We must make a secure place for the night, my prince. It will be
hard to do that after dark. And the wounded are even more at risk if we
continue to travel."
    Josua looked down at Sangfugol, his expression distant. Deornoth did
not like the change he was seeing in his prince. Josua had always been
quiet, and many thought him strange, but still he had been a decisive
leader--even in the last terrible weeks before Naglimund fell. Now he
appeared unwilling to do anything, in small matters as well as large.
  "Very well," the prince said at last. "If you think so, Deornoth."
    "I beg pardon, but might we not move just a little farther up this . . .
this defile?" Father Strangyeard asked. "It is only another few steps, and it
seems safer than making camp in the bottom of a gulley--doesn't it?" He
looked expectantly at Josua, but the prince only grunted. After a moment,
the archivist turned to Deornoth. "Do you think?"
    Deornoth looked around at the ragged party, at the white, frightened
eyes in the dirt-streaked faces. "That is a good idea, Father," he said. "We
shall do that."

    They made a tiny fire in a hastily-dug pit surrounded with stones, more
for light than anything else. Heat would have been most welcome--with
nightfall, the forest air was turning bitterly cold--but they could not risk


                                        STONE OF FAREWELL                                                                 65

so much of a display. There was nothing to eat, in any case. Their pace
had been far too hurried for any hunting.
    Together, Father Strangyeard and Duchess Gutrun were cleaning
Sangfugol's wound and rewinding the bandage. The white and black
feathered arrow, which had knocked the harper down late yesterday
afternoon, seemed to have struck the bone. Despite the care taken with its
removal, not all the arrowhead had come out. When Sangfugol could talk,
he complained that the feeling in his leg was nearly gone; at the moment,
he was in shallow, uneasy sleep. Vorzheva stood nearby, looking on
sorrowfully. She had been pointedly shunning Josua, who did not seem
much bothered.
    Deornoth silently cursed his thin cloak. If I had only known we would be
tramping the open woods, he lamented, I would have brought my fur-hooded
riding cloak. He smiled grimly at his own thoughts and suddenly laughed
aloud, a short bark of amusement that caught the attention of Einskaldir,
squatting nearby.
    "What's funny?" the Rimmersman asked, frowning as he worked his
hand-axe up and down a small whetstone. He held it up, testing the blade
with his callused thumb, then laid it back against the stone once more.
    "Nothing, really. I was just thinking about how stupid we've beenm
how unprepared."
    "Waste of time, crying," Einskaldir growled, his eyes never leaving the
blade as he lifted it to the red firelight. "Fight and live, fight and die, God
waits for all."
    "It's not that." Deornoth stopped for a moment and considered. What
had begun as an idle thought had grown into something more; suddenly,
he was afraid to lose his grip on it. "We have been pushed and pulled," he
said slowly, "driven and drawn. We have been chased for three days since
we escaped Naglimund, with barely a moment free from fear."
    "What is to fear?" Einskaldir said gruffly, tugging at his dark beard. "If
they catch us, they will kill us. There are worse things than to die."
    "But that's just it!" Deornoth said. His heart was pounding. "That's
just the point!" He leaned over, realizing that he had raised his voice
almost to a shout. Einskaldir had stopped scraping his axe-blade to stare.
"That is what I wonder," Deornoth said more quietly. "Why haven't they
killed us?"
  Einskaldir looked at him, then grunted. "They tried."
    "No." Deornoth was suddenly sure. "The diggers . . . the Bukken as
your people call them.., they tried. The Norns haven't."
      "You are mad, Erkynlander," Einskaldir said in disgust. Deornoth bit
back a retort and crawled around the fire pit toward Josua.  "My prince, I need to speak with you."
    Josua did not answer, again in one of his faraway moods. He sat, staring
at Towser. The old jester slept with his back against a tree, bald head



66                                     Tad Williams

bobbing on his chest. Deornoth did not see anything particularly interest-
ing about the old man's slumber, so he interposed himself between the
prince and the object of his attention. Josua's face was almost invisible, but
enough of a glow escaped the fire pit that Deornoth thought he saw
Josua's eyebrow lift in mild surprise.  "Yes, Deornoth?"
  "My prince, your people need you. Why are you so strange?"
  "My people are very few now, aren't they?"
    "They are your people still--and they need you all the more, since our
danger is so great."
    Deornoth heard Josua take a breath, as if in surprise or in preparation
for some angry remark. Instead, when the prince spoke, his voice was
calm. "We are in bad times, Deornoth. Everyone faces them in their own
way. Was this what you wished to discuss with me?"
    "Not all, my lord." Deornoth crept a little closer, until he sat within
arm's reach of the prince. "What do the Norns want, Prince Josua?"
    Josua chuckled ruefully. "I should think that was obvious enough. To
kill us."
  "Then why have they not done so?"
  There was a moment of silence. "What do you mean?"
    "Just what I asked. Why have they not killed us? They have had many
opportunities."
  "We have been fleeing them for..."
    Deornoth impetuously grasped Josua's arm. The prince was very thin.
"My lord, do you believe that the Norns--the Storm King's minions who
destroyed Naglimund--could not catch a dozen hungry and wounded
men and women?"
  He felt Josua's arm grown taut. "And that signifies... ?"
    "I don't know? Deornoth let go of the prince and picked up a stick
from the ground, nervously plucking at the bark with his fingernails. "But
I can't believe they couldn't have brought us to bay if they had wanted
tO."
    "Usires on the Tree," Josua breathed. "I am ashamed you have had to
take the responsibility that is rightfully mine, Deornoth. You are right. It
makes no sense."
    "Perhaps there is something more important than our deaths," Deornoth
said, thinking. "If they want us dead, why did they not surround us? If a
walking corpse could be upon us almost before we knew, why not the
Noms?"
    Josua pondered for a moment. "Perhaps they fear us." Again the prince
was silent. "Call the others," he said finally. "This is too grave to keep
between the two of us."
    When the rest were gathered, huddling around the small fire, Deornoth
looked over their numbers and shook his head. Josua, himself, Einskaldir


STONE OF FAREWELL

67

and Isorn, Towsermgroggy from sleep--and Duchess Gutrun; with
Strangyeard now finding a place, and Vorzheva tending Sangfugol, they
were all accounted for. Only nine leftmcould that be? They had buried
Helmfest and the young handmaiden two days ago. Gamwold, an older
guardsman with a gray mustache, had died from a long fall in the attack
that felled Sangfugol. They had not been able to retrieve Gamwold's
body, let alone bury him. Unwillingly, they had left him lying on a ledge
of the open ridge, surrendered to the attentions of wind and rain.  Nine left, he thought, Josua is right--it is a small kingdom, indeed.
  The prince had finished explaining. Strangyeard spoke up hesitantly.
    "I hate even to say this," he began, "but... but perhaps they are only
toying with us, as... as does a cat with a rat it has cornered."
    "What a horrible thought!" Gutrun said. "But they are heathen, so
anything is possible."
    "They are more than heathen, Duchess," Josua said, "they are immor-
tal. They have lived, many of them, since before Usires Aedon walked the
hills of Nabban."
  "They can die," Einskaldir said. "I know."
    "But they are terrible," Isorn said. His wide frame shuddered. "Now I
know that they are the ones who came out of the north when we were
held captive in Elvritshalla. Their very shadows are cold--like a wind
from Huelheim, the land of death."
    "Just a moment," Josua said. "You have reminded me of something.
Isorn, you said once that when you were captive, some of your fellows
were tortured."
  "Yes. I will never forget."
  "Who did it?"
    "The Black Rimmersmen, the ones who live in the shadow of Stormspike.
They were Skali of Kaldskryke's allies--although, as I think I told you,
Prince Josua, I don't believe Skali's men got what they bargained for. In
the end, they were almost as terrified as we prisoners."
    "But it was the Black Rimmersmen who tortured you. What about the
Norns?"
    Isorn thought for a moment, his broad face pensive. "No . . ." he said
slowly, "I don't believe the Norns had anything to do with it. They were
just black shadows in hooded cloaks, passing back and forth to Elvritshalla.
They seemed to take little notice of anything--although we did not see
them much, for which I was very grateful."
    "So," said Josua, "it does not seem that the Norns are interested in
torture."
    "It does not seem to bother them much," Einskaldir growled. "And
Naglimund showed that they do not love us."
    "Still, I somehow do not think they would follow us all the way
through Aldheorte Forest just for enjoyment." The prince frowned, think-


68                                     Tad Williams

ing. "I find it hard to think of why they might fear us, straggling lot that
we are. What else could they want?"
    "To put us in cages," Towser said grumpily, rubbing his sore legs. The
long day's walking had been harder on him than on anyone else except
Sangfugol. "To make us dance for them."  "Quiet, old man," Einskaldir snarled.
    "Do not order him," Isorn said, giving Einskaldir a purposeful look--a
difficult thing to do in near-darkness.
  "I think Towser is right," Strangyeard said in his quiet, apologetic way.
  "What do you mean?" Josua asked.
    The archive-master cleared his throat. "It seems to make sense," he
began, "--not that they want us to dance, I mean." He tried to smile.
"But the putting us in cages. They may want to capture us."
    Deornoth was excited. "I think Strangyeard has it! They did not kill us
when they might have. They must want us taken alive."
    "Or want some of us alive," Josua said carefully. "Perhaps that is why
they used the corpse of that poor young pikeman--to get safely among us
and then spirit one or more of us away."
    "No," Deornoth's excitement suddenly dissipated, "for why didn't they
surround us then, when they had the chance? I asked myself that earlier
and I still cannot answer."
    "If they wanted to . . . to capture one of our number," Strangyeard
offered, "perhaps they were afraid that one would be killed in a struggle."
    "If so," Duchess Gutrun said, "it is surely not me they are after. I am
scarcely of any use, even to myself. They are after Prince Josua." She
made the sign of the Tree over her breast.
    "Of course," Isorn said, putting his big arm around his mother's shoul-
der. "Elias sent them to capture Josua. He wants you alive, my lord."
    Josua looked uncomfortable. "Perhaps. But why are they shooting
arrows at us now?" He pointed to where Sangfugol lay, Vorzheva holding
the harper's head as she gave him a drink of water. "It seems that there is
even greater danger of accidentally killing their target, now that we are on
the move."
    No one could answer this. They sat uncomfortably for some long
while, listening to the sounds of the damp night.
    "Hold a moment," Deornoth said. "We are confusing ourselves, 1
think. When have we been attacked by them?"
      "Early in the morning after the night that.., that the young pikeman
came to our fire," Isorn said.  "And was anyone hurt?"
    "No," Isorn said, thinking back. "But we were lucky to escape. Many
of the arrows missed by very little."
     "One of'em took my hat offi" Towser said querulously. "My best hat!
 Lost!"


STONE OF FAREWELL

69

  "Pity it wasn't your best head," Einskaldir snapped.
    "But the Norns are very good archers," Deornoth continued, ignoring
the Rimmersman and the old jester. "And when has anyone else been
shot?"
      "Yesterday!" lsorn said, shaking his head. "You should know. Gamwold
dead, Sangfugol badly wounded."  "But Garnwold wasn't shot."
    Everyone turned to look at Josua. There was a sudden power in the
prince's voice that sent a thrill up Deornoth's back.
    "Gamwold fell," the prince said. "All of our party who've been killed
except for Gamwold died from our battles with the diggers. Deornoth has
it aright! The Norns have been chasing us for three dayswthree full daysw
and have fired upon us many times. Sangfugol is the only one who has
been hit."
    The prince stood up, his face disappearing from the fireglow. The
others could hear him pacing. "But why? Why did they risk an arrow
then? We were doing something that frightened them. Doing something--"
He stopped. "Or going somewhere . . ."
  "What do you mean, Prince Josua?" Isorn asked.
  "We were turning eastmtoward the heart of the forest."
    "That's true!" Deornoth said, thinking back. "We had been going south
since we came down the Stile from Naglimund. That was the first time
we tried to turn east, in toward the deeper part of the forest. Then, when
the harper was shot and Gamwold fell, we retreated back down the hill
and kept walking south along Aldheorte's outskirts thereafter."
 "We are being herded," Josua said slowly. "Like ignorant animals."
    "But that is because we tried to do something that wot'ried them,"
Deornoth pointed out. "They are trying to keep us from going east."
    "And we still do not really know what for," Isorn said. "Herded
toward capture?"
    "More likely to slaughter," Einskaldir said. "They just want to do the
killing at home. Have a feast. Invite guests."
    Josua actually smiled as he sat down, the fire catching a quick gleam of
teeth.
 "I have decided," he said, "to decline their invitation."

    An hour or two before dawn, Father Strangyeard came and tapped
Deornoth on the shoulder. Deornoth had heard the archive-master crawl-
ing about in the darkness, but the touch of a hand on his shoulder still
made him start.
    "Only me, Sir Deornoth," Strangyeard said hastily. "It is my turn to
take watch."
 "That's not necessary. I don't think I will sleep, anyway."
    "Well, then, perhaps we can . . . can share the watch. If my talk will
not irritate you."


70                                     Tad Williams

    Deornoth smiled to himself. "Not at all, Father. And you need not call
me 'Sir.' It is nice to have a calm hour or so--we have had precious little
calm lately."
     "It is just as well, I suppose, that I am not left to stand guard alone."
 Strangyeard said. "My sight is not good, you know--and that is in my
 one remaining eye." He chuckled apologetically. "There is nothing more
 frightening than to see the words in my beloved books growing fainter
 every day."
  "Nothing more frightening?" Deornoth asked gently.
     "Nothing." Strangyeard was firm. "Oh, not that I do not fear other
 things, but death, just for example--well, my Lord will take me when He
 knows it is time But to spend my last years in darkness, unable to see the
 writings that are my work on this earth . . ." The archivist broke off,
 embarrassed "I am sorry, Deornoth, I am babbling of trivialities. It is this
 hour of the night. At home in Naglimund, I often wake at this time, just
 before the sun comes up..." The priest paused again. Both men thought
 silently of what had happened to the place where they had lived.
     "When we are safe, Strangyeard," Deornoth began suddenly, "if you
 cannot read, I will come and read to you. My eyes are not as quick as
 yours, nor my mind, but I am stubborn as an unfed horse. I will grow
 better with practice. I will read to you."
     The archivist sighed, then was quiet. "That is too kind," he said a
 moment later. "But you will have more important things to do when we
 are safe again and Josua sits the high throne of Osten Ard--matters far
 graver than reading to an old book-shifter."  "No. No, I do not think so."
  They sat for a long while and listened to the wind.
     "So we will . . . will strike out toward the east today?" Strangyeard
 asked.
     "Yes. And I think the Norns will not be happy about such a plan. I fear
 that more of us will be wounded or killed. But we must seize our destiny
 with both hands. Prince Josua recognizes that, thank the Good God."
      Strangyeard sighed. "Do you know, I have been thinking. I feel quite
  . . quite ridiculous saying it, but..." He trailed into silence.  "What?"
  "Perhaps it is not Josua they seek to capture. Perhaps it is... me."
     "Father Strangyeard!" Deornoth was quite surprised. "Why would that
 be?"
     The priest bobbed his head, ashamed. "I know it seems foolish, but I
 must mention it. You see, I am the one who had studied Morgenes'
 manuscript telling of the Three Great Swords--and I am the one carrying it
 now." He tapped the pocket of his voluminous robe. "With Jarnauga, I
 searched and studied, trying to divine the whereabouts of Fingil's sword
 Minneyar. Now that he is dead--well, I hate to sound as if I were


STONE OF FAREWELL

71

shouting my own importance, but..." He held out something small that
swung from a chain, just visible in the growing light. "He gave me his
Scroll, the badge of his League. Perhaps that has made me dangerous to
the rest of the party. Maybe if I surrendered, they would let the rest of
you go?"
    Deornoth laughed. "If it is you they wish kept alive, Father, then we are
lucky to have you among us, else we would have already been flushed and
slaughtered like doves. Don't go anywhere."
 Strangyeard seemed uncertain. "If you say so, Deornoth..."
    "I do. Not to mention that we need your wits more than anything else
we have--except for the prince himself."
 The archivist smiled shyly. "That is very kind."
    "Of course," Deornoth said, and felt his mood souring, "if we are to
survive the coming day, we will need more than wits. It will take a great
deal of luck as well."

    After sitting with the archivist for a while longer, Deornoth decided to
find himself a more comfortable spot to snatch an hour of sleep before
dawn came. He nudged Strangyeard, whose head had sunk to his chest.
  'Tll let you finish out, Father."
     "Mmmm... ? Oh! Yes, Sir Deornoth." The priest nodded vigorously,
demonstrating his alertness. "Certainly. You go and sleep."
  "The sun will be up soon, Father."
  "Just so." Strangyeard smiled.
    Deornoth went only a few dozen paces before settling on a level patch
of ground in the lee of a fallen tree. A bitter wind ranged across the forest
floor as though hunting for warm bodies. Deornoth wrapped his cloak
tightly around himself and tried to find a comfortable position. After a
long, chilly interval, he decided that there was scant chance he would ever
fall asleep. Grumbling quietly, so as not to wake the others who were
sleeping nearby, he rose to his feet and rebuckled his sword belt, then
headed back toward Father Strangyeard's sentry post.
    "It's me, Father," he said quietly, as he stepped out of the trees into the
small clearing. He stopped, astonished. A startlingly white face looked
up, black eyes narrowing. Strangyeard was slumped in the arms of this
dark-clad attacker, sleeping or senseless. A knife blade like the thorn of a
great ebony rose lay against the priest's exposed neck.
    Even as Deornoth threw himself forward, he saw two more pallid,
slit-eyed faces in the night-shadows and called them by their old name.
"White Foxes.TM he shouted. "The Norris.t We are attacked,t"
    Bellowing, he struck the pale-skinned thing and grappled it with his
arms. They toppled, the archivist tangled with them, so that for a moment
Deornoth was lost in a welter of flailing limbs. He felt the thing reach out
for him, its thin limbs full of slithery strength. Hands grasped at his face


72                                     Tad Williams

and pushed back his chin to expose his neck. Deornoth flung out his fist,
which landed on something hard as bone. He was rewarded by a hissing
cry of pain. Now he could hear crashing and shouting in the trees all
around. He wondered dimly whether it meant more foes, or that his
friends were awake at last.
 Sword! he thought. Where's my sword?
    But it was caught in the scabbard, twisted around on his belt. The
moonlight seemed to burst into brilliance. The white face rose before him
once more, lips skinned back, teeth bared like a drowning cur. The eyes
that locked with his were as coldly inhuman as sea-stones. Deornoth
fumbled for his dagger. The Norn grasped at his throat with one hand; its
other hand, a pale blur, lifted free.
    He has a knit! Curiously, Deornoth felt as though he were floating on a
wide river, carried forward on a slow and generous current, but at the
same moment panicky thoughts flew around his head like grassflies. Damn
me, I forgot his kn~.t
    He stared for another endless instant at the Norn before him, at the thin,
otherworldly features, the white spiderweb hair matted across the brow,
the faint lips drawn tight against the red gums. Then Deornoth swung his
head forward, smashing his forehead into the cadaverous face. Before he
had even felt the first shock, he threw himself forward again into yet
another red impact. A great shadow mushroomed inside him. The shrieks
and night wind faded to a muted and diminishing hum and the moon was
drenched with clinging darkness.
    When he could think again, he looked up to see Einskaldir, who
seemed to be swimming toward him, arms windmilling, his war-axe a
shimmering smear. The Rimmersman's mouth was open as though he
shouted, but Deornoth heard no sound. Josua came just behind. Deornoth's
two companions flung themselves against another pair of shadowy fig-
ures. Blades whirled and glinted, slicing the darkness with stripes of
reflected moonlight. Deornoth wanted to stand and help them, but a
weight lay upon him, some amorpbous, unshakable burden. He strug-
gled, wondering where his strength had gone, until the burden fell away
at last and left him exposed to the rasping wind.
    Josua and Einskaldir were still moving before him, their faces weird
masks in the blue night. Other two-legged shapes were beginning to
appear from the forest shadows, but Deornoth could not tell if they were
friends or foes. His sight seemed to be obscured--something was in his
eyes, something that stung. He moved his hands questingly over his face.
It was wet and sticky. His fingers, when he held them up to catch the
light, were black with blood.


STONE OF FAREWELL

73

    A long, damp tunnel led down through the hillside. A narrow, torchlit
staircase ran through it, half a thousand mossy, centuried steps that snaked
down through the very heart of Sta Mirore, from Count Stre~we's great
house to a small, hidden dock, Miriamele guessed that the tunnel had been
the salvation of many an earlier nobleman, forced to flee his stately
quarters by night when the peasantry became unexpectedly frisky or
turned disputatious about the rights of the privileged.
    After the end of a foot-wearying journey under the watchful eyes of
Lenti and another of the count's closed-faced servants, Miriamele and
Cadrach found themselves standing on a stone landing beneath an over-
hanging arch of cliff, the slate-colored harbor waters spread before them
like a disheveled carpet. Just below, a small rowboat bobbed at the end of
its painter.
    A few moments later Stre~we himself arrived by another path, carried
down the winding cliff roads in his carved and becurtained litter by four
brawny men wearing sailors' garb. The old count wore a heavy cloak and
muffler against the night fog. Miriamele thought that the sallow light of
dawn made him look ancient.
    "So," he said, waving for his bearers to lower him to the stone plat-
form, "our time together is at an end." He smiled ruefully. "I feel a deep
regret at letting you go--not least because the Victor of Naglimund, your
beloved father Elias, would pay much for your safe return." He shook his
head and coughed. "Still, I am a honorable man, and an obligation unpaid
is a ghost unshriven, as we say here in Perdruin. Say hello to my friend
when you meet him. Extend my regards."
    "You haven't told us who this 'friend' is," Miriamele said tightly. "The
one to whom we are being given."
    Strefiwe waved his hand dismissively. "If he wishes you to know his
true name, he will tell you himself."
    "And you will be setting us across to Nabban on the open sea in this
tiny little isgbahta," Cadrach growled, "--this fishing boat?"
    "It is scarcely a stone's throw," the count said. "And you will have
Lenti and Alespo along to protect you from kilpa and such." He indicated
the two servants with a wave of his trembling hand. Lenti was chewing
sullenly at something. "You don't think I would let you go alone, do
you?" Stre~we smiled. "How could I ever be sure you would reach my
friend and resolve my debt?"
    He waved for his servants to lift the litter. Miriamele and Cadrach were
herded into the pitching boat, squeezed side by side into the tiny bow.
    "Do not think unkindly of me, Miriamele and Padreic, I beg you,"
Stre~we called as his servants wrestled him back up the slippery stairs.
"My little island must maintain a delicate balance, a very delicate balance.
Sometimes the adjustments seem cruel." He pulled the curtain closed
before him.


74                                     Tad Williams

    The one whom Streiwe had called Alespo untied the rope and Lenti
reached out with his oar to push the little wooden boat away from the
dock. As they drifted slowly away from the light of the dockside lanterns,
Miriamele felt her heart sinking. They were going to Nabban, a place that
now held little hope for her. Cadrach, her only ally, had been sullenly
quiet since they had been reunited--and what name had Streiwe called
him? Where had she heard that before? Now she herself was being sent to
some unknown friend of Count Strelwe's, a pawn in some sort of strange
business arrangement. And everyone, from the local nobles to the hum-
blest peasant, seemed to know her affairs better than she did herself. What
else could go wrong?
 Miriamele let out a sigh of grief and frustration.
    Lenti, seated across from her, stiffened. "Don't try anything, now," he
growled. "I have a knife."


5


S~[O~ slapped a hand against the cold stone wall of the cave and felt
a strange satisfaction at the pain. "Bleeding Usires!" he swore. "Bleeding
Usires, Usires bleeding on the Tree!" He raised an arm to strike the wall
again, but instead dropped it to his side and dug furiously at his breeches-
leg with his fingernails.
 "Calm y'rself, boy," Haestan said. "Was naught we c'do."
    "I won't let them kill him!" He turned to Haestan imploringly. "And
Gelo~ said we must go to the Stone of Farewell. I don't even know where
that is!"
    Haestan shook his head unhappily. "Whatever this stone may be. I've
not understood ye right since fell down and struck y'r head this afternoon.
Y've been talkin' moon-mad. But about th' troll an' Rimmersman--what
can we do?"
    "I don't know!" Simon barked. He put out his aching hand to lean
against the wall. The night wind keened beyond the door-flap. "Free
them," he said at last. "Free them both--Binabik and Sludig." The tears he
had felt himself holding back were gone. He suddenly felt cold-minded
and full of strength.
    Haestan started to reply, then checked himself. He looked at the youth's
trembling fists and the livid scar striping his cheek. "How, then?" he
asked quietly. "Two 'gainst a mountain?"
 Simon stared furiously. "There must be a way!"
    "Th'only rope trolls took with Binabik's pack. Down a deep hole they
are, lad. With guards 'round."
    After a long moment, Simon turned and slid down to sit on the cave
floor, pushing away the sheepskin rug to bring himself as close as possible
to the unforgiving rock.
    "We can't just let them die, Haestan. We can't. Binabik said his people
would throw them from the cliffs. How can they be such ... such
demons!?"

75


76                                     Tad Williams

    Haestan squatted and poked the coals with his knife. 'Tve no under-
standing of heathens and suchlike," the bearded guardsman said. "They be
tricksy folk. Why should they prison them and give us freedom--an' leave
our weapons besides?"
    "Because we've got no rope," Simon said bitterly, and shivered. He
was finally beginning to feel the cold. "Besides, even if we killed the
guards, what good would it do us? They'd throw us down the mountain
as well, and no one would ever take Thorn back to Josua." He thought.
"Perhaps we could steal some rope?"
    Haestan looked doubtful. "In darkness, in a strange place? Like as not
we'd just rouse guards an' get spear-stabbed."
    "Damnation and sin! We must do something, Haestan! Are we cowards?
We can't just stand by." A sharp wind stabbed in past the door curtain. He
hugged his arms tight around his chest. "At the very least, I'm going to
have that Herder's rotten little head off. Then they can kill me, too, and I
won't care."
     The guardsman smiled sadly. "Ah, boy, y'r talkin' stupid. Said y'rself
 someone must take that black sword t'Prince Josua." He indicated cloth-
 wrapped Thorn lying beside the cavern wall. "If the sword be not taken
 t'prince, Ethelbearn and Grimmric died for naught. That'd be cruel shame.
 Too many hopes, slender 'uns though may be, rest on yon blade."
 Haestan chuckled. "'Sides, lad, d'ye think they'd spare one if th' other
 killed their king? Y'r bound t'get me killed, too." Haestan poked at the fire
 again. "No, no, ye be green yet an' don't understand th' world. Ye've not
 been in war, lad, like me--not seen what I have. Didn't I see two of my
 fellows die just since we left Naglimund? The Good God saves his justice
 and such for th' Day of Weighin' Out. 'Til then, we have t'look t'ourselves."
 He leaned forward as he began to warm to the topic. "Each 'un must do
 his best, but things can't always be made right, Simon..."
     He stopped abruptly, staring at the doorway. Seeing the look of surprise
 on the soldier's round face, Simon turned swiftly. A figure had stepped
 past the flap of hide.
     "Th' troll girl," Haestan breathed softly, as though she might startle
 and bolt like a fawn. Sisqinanamook's eyes were wide with apprehension,
 but Simon also saw determination in the set of her jaw. He thought she
 looked readier to fight than to flee.
  "Do you come to gloat?" he asked angrily.
     Sisqinanamook steadfastly returned his stare. "Help me," she said at
 last.
  "Elysia, Mother of God," Haestan gasped, "she can talk!"
     The troll maiden shied back at the guardsman's outburst, but held her
 ground. Simon clambered up onto his knees before her. Kneeling, he was
 still taller than Binabik's once-betrothed.
  "Can you speak our tongue?"


STONE OF FAREWELL

77

    She looked at him for a moment as if puzzled, then made a sign with
crossed fingers. "Little," she said. "Little talk. Binabik teach."
    "I should have guessed," Simon said. "Binabik has been trying to
pound things into my head as long as I've known him."
    Haestan snorted. Simon gestured for Sisqinanamook to enter. She slithered
away from the door-flap, crouching near the cave's entrance with her back
against the wall. A snow serpent carved in relief upon the stone coiled
about her head like a saint's halo.
  "Why should we help you?" Simon said. "And help you do what?"
    She stared at him uncomprehendingly. He repeated himself more slowly.
"Help Binbinaqegabenik," she replied at last. "Help me, help Binabik."
    "Help Binabik?" Haestan hissed in surprise. "Why, y'r what's got him
in trouble!"
 "How?" Simon asked. "Help Binabik how?"
    "Go away," Sisqinanamook replied. "Binabik go away Mintahoq." She
reached under her thick hide jacket. For a moment Simon feared some
kind of trick--had she understood enough of what they had been saying to
know they were discussing a rescue?--but when her small hand appeared
again it bore a coil of slender gray rope. "Help Binabik," she repeated.
"You help, I help."
 "Merciful Aedon," said Simon.

    They quickly gathered up all their belongings, throwing them into two
packs with little concern for order. When they were finished and had
donned their fur-lined cloaks, Simon went to the corner of the room
where the black sword Thorn lay--the object, as Haestan had said, of
many hopes, fruitless or otherwise. In the dim firelight it was only a
sword-shaped hole in the furs that cradled it. Simon pressed its cold
surface with his fingers, remembering how it had felt when he raised it
before the onrushing Igjarjuk. For a moment it seemed to grow warm
beneath his hand.
 Someone touched him on the shoulder.
    "No,' no kill," Sisqinanamook said. She pointed frowningly at the
sword, then tugged gently at his arm. Simon wrapped his hand around
Thorn's cord-wrapped hilt and hefted: it was too heavy to lift without
using both arms. As he struggled upright, he turned to the troll maiden.
    "I'm not bringing it to kill anybody. This is the reason we went to the
dragon-mountain. No kill."
 She stared at him, then nodded.
 "Let me carry it, lad," Haestan said. "I'm rested."
    Simon bit back a sullen retort and let him take the sword. It seemed no
lighter in the burly guardsman's hands, but no heavier either. Haestan
reached over his head and carefully eased Thorn's black length down
through a pair of thick loops on the back of his pack.


78                                     Tad Williams

    It's not my sword, Simon reminded himself. I knew that already. And
Haestan's right to take it--I'm too weak. He felt his thoughts wandering. It
doesn't belong to anyone. It belonged to Sir Camaris once, but he's dead. Seems
almost to have a spirit of its own . . .
    Well, if Thorn wanted to leave this God-cursed mountain, it would
have to go down with them.
      They extinguished the fire and went silently out past the door-flap. The
chill night air made Simon's head throb. He stopped in the doorway.
  "Haestan," he whispered, "you must promise me something."
  "What's that, lad?"
    "I don't feel very . . . strong. It's going to be a long walk to wherever
we're going. In the snow, too. So if anything happens to me ..." he
hesitated for a moment, "if anything happens to me, please bury me
'someplace warm." He shivered. 'Tm tired of being cold."
    For a moment Simon had the embarrassing idea that Haestan might cry.
The guardsman's bearded face screwed up in a strange grimace as he
leaned in to look closely at Simon. A moment later he grinned, although
the smile seemed a bit forced, and wrapped one of his bearlike arms
around Simon's quaking shoulders. "Here now, lad, no way t'talk," he
whispered. "It'll be long march, an' cold, too, that's sure--but not as bad
as y'think. We'll all make it through." Haestan snuck a look at Sisqinan-
amook, who was staring impatiently at them from the porch outside the
cavern. "Jiriki left us horses," he hissed into Simon's ear, "at mountain-
bottom, stabled in cave. Told me where. So dunna fear, lad, dunna fear. If
we but knew where 'tis we go--why, we'd be halfway there!"
    They pushed out onto the stone track, squinting their eyes against a
fierce wind that scraped the face of Mintahoq like a razor. The mists had
blown away. A cat's-eye sliver of yellow moon glared down on the
mountain and shadow-blanketed valley. Staggering under their heavy
loads, they turned to follow the one small shadow that was Sisqinanamook.
    It was a long, silent trek around the edge of Mintahoq, stumbling
through the buffeting wind. After a few hundred paces Simon already felt
his steps slowing. How would he ever climb all the way down the
mountain? And why couldn't he shake off this cursed weakness?
    At last the troll maiden gestured them to a halt, then directed them into
a crevice, off the pathway and back into the shadows. It was a tight
squeeze because of their bulky packs, but with the help of Sisqinanamook's
small hands they managed to slide in. A moment later she was gone. They
stood, pinioned, and watched their breath fill the mouth of the crevice,
glittering in the moonlight.
  "What d'ye think she's about?" Haestan whispered at last.
    "I don't know." Simon was happy just to lean against the stone. Out of
the wind, he suddenly felt flushed and dizzy. The White Arrow given to
him by Jiriki was digging at his spine through the heavy cloth of his pack.


STONE OF FAREWELL

79

    "We be coney-catched, an' no mistake . . ." Haestan began, but the
sound of voices on the path silenced him. As the voices grew louder,
Simon caught his breath and held it.
    A triumvirate of trolls stumped down the trail past the crevice, dragging
the butts of their sharp spears carelessly along the stone, talking in their
low, grumbling tongue. All three carried shields of stretched hide. One
had a ram's horn dangling from his belt; Simon had no doubt that a call
from that instrument would bring well-armed trolls tumbling out of the
caves all around like ants from a shaken nest.
    The horn-bearer said something and the group paused just before the
hiding spot. Simon struggled to hold his breath and felt his head whirl. A
moment later the trolls burst into a fizz of quiet laughter as the story was
completed, then continued their march back around the face of the moun-
tain. In a few moments their quiet chatter had dwindled away.
    Simon and Haestan waited a long while before peering out of the
opening in the rock. The moon-painted path stretched on either side,
untenanted. Haestan wriggled out of the narrow entrance, then helped
Simon to emerge.

    The moon had slipped past the mouth of the pit, plunging the prisoners
back into near-complete darkness. Sludig was breathing quietly but not
sleeping. Binabik lay on his back, short legs outstretched, staring up at the
wheeling stars as the wind gusted noisily across the opening of their
prison.
    A head appeared at the rim of the pit. A moment later, a coil of rope
hissed down from above to smack onto the stone. Binabik stiffened but
did not stir, staring intently at the shadowy silhouette above.
    "What?" Sludig growled in the darkness. "Do they not even wait until
dawn in this barbaric place? Must they kill us at midnight to hide their
deed from the sun? Still God will know." He reached out and gave the
rope a tug. "Why should we climb? Let us sit here. Maybe they will send
a few guards down to get us." The Rimmersman chuckled unpleasantly.
"Then ! will break some necks. At the least, they will have to spear us in
our hole like bears."
    "Qinkipa's Eyes!" a voice hissed in the troll language. Binabik sat
upright. "Grab the rope, you Jbol!"
  "Sisqi?" Binabik gasped. "What are you doing?"
    "Something I will never forgive myself for--as I also would not forgive myself
if I left it undone. Now be silent and climb!"
    Binabik pulled gingerly at the rope. "But how can you hold it? There is
nothing to tie it to and the edge is slippery."
 "Who are you talking to?" Sludig asked, disconcerted by the Qanuc speech.


80                                     Tad Williams

     "I have brought allies," Sisqinanamook called softly. "Climb! The guards
 will return when Sedda touches on Sikkihoq's peakl"
     Binabik, after explaining swiftly, sent Sludig up the line. The Rim-
 mersman, weakened by imprisonment, made his slow way to the top and
 disappeared over the rim into darkness, but Binabik did not follow.
     Sisqi appeared once more at the rim. "Hurry, before I regret my stupidity!
 Climb!"
"I cannot. I will not run from the justice of my people." Binabik sat down.
"Are you mad? What do you mean? The guards will be back very soon!" Sisqi
could not keep the fear from her voice. "You will get your lowlander friends
killed with this foolish trick."
    "No, Sisqi, take them. Help them get away. You will have my gratitude. You
already do."
    She bounced up and down, shiveringly anxious. "Ah, Binabik, you are a
curse to me! First you humiliate me before our people, now you talk madness fi'om
the bottom of a hole! Come out! Come out!"  "I will not break another oath."
    Sisqinanamook stared up at the moon. "Qinkipa Snow Maiden save me.
Binbinaqegabenik, why are you so stubbornl Would you die to prove that you are
right!?"
    Astonishingly Binabik began to laugh. "Would you save my li~ just to
prove me wrong?"
    Two more heads appeared at the edge of the hole. "Damnation, troll,"
Sludig growled, "why do you wait? Are you hurt?" The Rimmersman
dropped to his knees as though to scramble back down the rope.
    "No!" Binabik cried in the Westerling tongue. "Do not be waiting for
me. Sisqinanamook can take you to a place of safeness where you can
begin your trip down-mountain. You can be beyond the Yiqanuc bound-
aries by sunrise."
  "What is keeping you here?" Sludig asked, amazed.
    "I am condemned by my people," Binabik said. "I broke my oath. I
will not break it for a second time."
  Sludig muttered in confusion and anger.
    The dark figure beside him leaned out. "Binabik," he said. "It's me,
Simon. We have to go. We have to find the Stone of Farewell. Gelo~ said
so. We have to take Thorn there."
    The troll laughed again, but hollowly."And without me, no going, no
Stone of Farewell?"
    "Yes!" Simon's desperation was clear. Time was running short. "We
don't know where it is! Gelo~ said you must take us there! Naglimund has
fallen. We may be Josua's only hope---and your people's only hope!"
    Binabik sat in silence at the bottom of the pit, thinking. At last he
reached out to grasp the dangling rope and began to make his way up the
sheer wall. When he reached the top, he stumbled over into Simon's fierce


STONE OF FAREWELL

81

embrace. Sludig thumped the little man on the shoulder, a comradely
blow that nearly toppled Binabik back into the pit. Haestan stood by,
breath steaming in his beard, thick hands now hurriedly coiling the rope
up from below.
    Binabik pulled away from Simon. "You are not looking very well,
friend. Your wounds are troubling you." He sighed. "Ah, this is cruel. I
cannot be leaving you to the mercies of my folk, but I have no wishes to
break another oath. I do not know what I should do." He turned toward
the fourth figure. "So," he said in troll speech, "you have rescued me---or at
least my companions. Why have you changed your mind?"
    Sisqinanamook eyed him, her arms wrapped tightly around herself. "I
am not certain I have," she replied. "I heard what this strange one with the
white streak said," she indicated Simon, watching in bewildered silence. "It
had the ring of truth--that is, I believed there truly was something you thought
more important even than our pledge." She glowered. "I am not a lovesick fool
who will Jbrgive you anything, but neither am I a vengeful demon. You are flee.
Now go."
    Binabik moved uneasily. "This thing that kept me flom you," he said, "it is
not only important to me, but to everybody. A terrible danger is coming. There is
only slim hope of resistance, but even that hope must be nurtured." He lowered
his eyes for a moment, then raised them and boldly met her gaze. "My
love for you is as strong as the mountain's rocky bones. It has been so since l first
saw you on your Walk of Womanhood, lovely and graceful as a snow otter
beneath the stars of Chugik Mountain. But even for that love I could not stand by
and see the whole world blighted by unending black winter." He took her
jacketed arm. "Now tell me this: what will you do, Sisqi? You sent the guards
away, then the prisoners escaped. You might just as well mark your name-rune in
the snow."
    "That will be between me and my .~ther and mother," she said angrily,
pulling free of his grasp. "I have done what you wanted. You are flee. Why do
you waste that fleedom trying to convince me of your innocence? Why do you
throw Chugik up to me? Go!"
    Sludig did not speak the language, but be understood Sisqi's gestures.
"If she wants us to leave, Binabik, then she speaks rightly! Aedon? We
must be swift."
    Binabik waved a hand. "Go, I soon will catch you." His friends did not
move as he turned again to face his once-intended. "I will stay," he said.
"Sludig is innocent, and it is a great kindness that you have helped him, but I will
stay and honor my people's will. I have done a good share already in the struggle
against the Storm King . . ." he glanced toward the west, where the moon
had entered a murk of inky clouds, "... and others can now carry my load.
Come, let you and I go lead the guards a chase so my fliends can make their
escape."
  A look of fear animated Sisqi's round face. "Curse you, Binbinaqegabenik,


82                                     Tad Williams

will you go now?! I do not wish to see you killed!" Angry tears stood in her
eyes. "There, are you pleased!? I still ~el for you, although you have torn my
heart into pieces!"
    Binabik stepped toward her and caught at her arms again, pulling her
close. "Then come with me!" he said, his voice suddenly full of wild
possibility. "I will not be separated d%m you again. Run away and come with
me, and my oath be broken and damned! You can see the worl~---even in these
dark days, there are things beyond our mountains that would fill you with
wonder!"
  Sisqi pulled away, turning her back. She seemed to be weeping.
    After a long moment, Binabik turned to the others. "Whatever will be
happening," he said in Westerling speech, his face lit with a strange,
unstable smile, "--stay or go, flee or fight--it is first to my master's cave
we must go."
  "Why?" asked Simon.
    "We have not my casting-bones or other things. They have likely been
thrown into the cave that I shared with Ookequk my master, since my
people would not dare to go destroying things that were the Singing
Man's. But even more of importance, unless I am looking into the scrolls,
little chance there will be that I can find your Stone of Farewell."
    "Then move, troll," Haestan growled. "I dunna know how y'r lady-
friend lured guards away, but no doubt they'll be back."
    "You are correct." Binabik beckoned to Simon. "Come, Simon-friend,
we must be running again. Such, it is seeming, is the nature of our
companionship." He gestured to the troll maiden. She came without a
word, leading the way up the path.

    They followed the main trail back, but after only a few dozen ells Sisqi
suddenly stepped off the track, taking them onto a trail so narrow that it
would have been hard to see even in daylight, a slender defile that
traversed the broad side of Mintahoq at a sharp upward angle. It was little
more than a gouge running between the rocks, and though there were
handholds aplenty, progress was cruelly slow in the near-total darkness.
Simon's booted shin struck painfully on many stones.
    The track led upward, cutting across the grain of two more spirals of
the main track, then angled sharply back, still climbing. Pale Sedda was
sliding across the sky toward the dark bulk of one of Mintahoq's neigh-
bors, making Simon wonder how they would see at all when the moon
had vanished for good. He slipped, waving his arms until he regained his
balance, and promptly remembered that they were all clambering up a
narrow track on the face of a very dark mountain. Clutching at a hand-
hold, Simon stood in place and closed his eyes, bringing an instant of true
blackness as he listened to Haestan's laboring breath behind him. He still
felt the weakness that had troubled him all through Yiqanuc. It would be


STONE OF FAREWELL

83

sweet to lie down and sleep, but it was a fruitless hope. After a moment he
made the sign of the Tree and started forward again.
    At last they reached level ground, a fiat porch before a small cave that
was set back in a deep crevice in the mountainside; Simon thought that
there was something familiar to the moonlight and the shapes of the
stones. Just as he realized that Qantaqa had once led him through the
darkness to this very place, a gray-white shape leaped from the mouth of
the cave.
    "Sosa, Qantaqa!" Binabik called quietly; a second later he was bowled
over by an avalanche of fur. His companions stood by awkwardly for a
moment as he was laved by the wolf's steaming tongue. "Muqang, friend,"
the troll gasped at last, "--that's enough! I am sure that you have been
bravely guarding Ookequk's house." He struggled to his feet as Qantaqa
backed away, her entire body aquiver with delight. "I am more in danger
from the greetings of friends than the spears of enemies," Binabik grinned.
"We must hurry to the cave. Sedda is hastening west."
    He went in standing up, Sisqi after him. Simon and the others had to
stoop through the low doorway. Qantaqa, determined not to be left
outside, made a jarring rush past Simon's and Haestan's legs, nearly
tripping them.
    They stood for a moment in a darkness thick with Qantaqa's musky scent
and a host of other, stranger odors. Binabik struck sparks from a flint
until a small flower of yellow fire appeared and was quickly set to
growing on the end of an oil-soaked torch.
    The Singing Man's cave was a quite singular place. In contrast to the
low door, the curving roof stretched high overhead, up into shadows the
torch could not dispel. Like a beehive, the walls were riddled with a
thousand alcoves that seemed to have been gouged into the very rock of
the cavern. Each niche held something. One contained only the dried
remains of a single small flower, others were crammed with sticks and
bones and covered pots. But most were filled with rolled skins, more than
a few stuffed so full that some of the rolls dangled halfway from the niche,
like the imploring hands of beggars.
    Qantaqa's week-long residence had left its mark. In the middle of the
floor, close to the wide fire pit, were the remains of what once had been a
complex circular picture made entirely from small colored stones. The
wolf had apparently used this for scratching her back, since the design
bore the distinct marks of having been rolled upon. All that remained was
part of the rune-wrapped border and an edge of some white thing beneath
a sky filled with twirling red stars.
    Numerous other objects showed traces of Qantaqa's attention as well.
She had pulled a great pile of robes into the cave's far corner and poked
the garments into a suitable wolf-nest. Beside this bed lay several much-
chewed articles, including the remains of a few of the rolled skins--the


84                                     Tad Williams

fragments crawling with writing unfamiliar to Simon--and Binabik's walk-
ing stick.
    "I could have wished you were finding something else for chewing,
Qantaqa," the troll said, frowning as he picked it up. The wolf tipped her
head to one side and whined uneasily, then padded over to Sisqi, who was
looking into some of the alcoves, and who distractedly pushed the wolf's
large head away. Qantaqa flopped down on the floor and began disconso-
lately scratching herself. Binabik held his stick up to the torch's light. The
toothmarks were not deep.
     "Chewing more for comfort of Binabik-smell than any other thing,"
 the troll smiled. "Fortunately."
     "What is it you seek?" Sludig said urgently. "We must be going while
 darkness holds."
     "Yes, you speak correctly," Binabik said, sliding his stick in beneath his
 belt. "Come, Simon, help me as we make a quick searching."
     With Haestan and Sludig joining in, Simon pulled down scrolls from
 the niches that Binabik himself could not reach. They were made of
 thin-pounded hide, so thoroughly greased that they were slimy to the
 touch; the runes that covered them were burned directly into the hide, as
 though with a hot poker. Simon handed one after another to Binabik,
 who perused each quickly before tossing it onto one of several growing
 piles.
     Looking around at the great rocky honeycomb and all the scrolls,
 Simon marveled at what an arduous job it must have been to create such a
 library--and it was just that, he realized, as much as Father Strangyeard's
 archive at Naglimund or Morgenes' workshop full of heavy volumes, even
 though these books were furls of hide, scribed with fire instead of ink.
     At last Binabik had a pile of a dozen or so that seemed to interest him.
 These he spread fiat and rolled together into one heavy bundle, then
 dropped the whole mass into his sack, which he had found near the cave's
 entrance.
     "Now we can go?" Sludig asked. Haestan was rubbing his hands
 together, trying to keep them warm. He had taken off his clumsy gloves
 to help with the scrolls.
     "As soon as we are putting these back into the holes." The troll
 indicated the large pile of discarded skins.
     "Are ye mad?" Haestan said heatedly. "Why waste precious time doin'
 such?"
     "Because these are rare, precious things," Binabik said calmly, "and if
 we are leaving them here on cold ground, they will be soon ruined. 'He
 who is not bringing in his flock at night gives away free mutton'--that is
 what we Qanuc say. It will be taking a moment, only."
     "S'Bloody Tree," Haestan swore. "Lend me help, Simon-lad," he grunted,
 stooping to the pile, "else we'll be here 'til dawn-time."


STONE OF FAREWELL

85

     Binabik directed Simon in the filling of some of the empty upper niches.
 Sludig watched impatiently for a moment before joining the effort. Sisqi
 had been quietly rummaging through the alcoves until she had amassed
 her own pile of rolled skins, which she had then rolled up and slipped
 under her hide jacket, but now she suddenly turned and called in rapid
 Qanuc. Binabik pushed past a wad of tangled furs to stand at her side.
     She held out a scroll tied shut with a black leather thong. The cord was
 wrapped not only around the middle of the roll of skin, but around both
 ends as well. Binabik took it from her, touching two fingers to his
 forehead in a gesture of seeming reverence.
     "This is Ookekuq's knot," he said quietly to Simon. "There is no
 doubting of that."
    "This is Ookekuq's cave, too, isn't it?" Simon said, puzzled. "Why is a
knot surprising?"
    "Because this knot tells it is something of importance." Binabik ex-
plained. "It is also something I have not seen before--something that was
hidden from me, or that my master was making just before we left on the
journey where he died. And this knot, I am thinking, was only used for
things of great power, messages and spells that were for certain eyes
only." He again ran his fingers over the knot, his brow wrinkled in
thought. Sisqi stared at the scroll, her eyes bright.
    "Well, that's last of th'damnable things," Haestan said. "If that be some-
thin' y'want, little man, bring it with. We've no more time for wastin'."
    Binabik hesitated for a moment, caressing the knot gently while he
looked once more around the cavern, then slipped the knotted scroll into
his sleeve. "Time it is," he agreed. He gestured the others to the cavern
doorway ahead of him, extinguishing the torch in a depression in the stone
floor as he followed them out.
    The rest of the troll's companions had stopped, huddled before the cave
like a herd of wind-rattled sheep. Sedda, the moon, had at last vanished
in the west behind Sikkihoq, but the night was suddenly full of light.
    A large troop of trolls was moving toward them. Faces grim in their
hoods, spears and firebrands in their hands, they had fanned out around
Ookequk's cave and now held the path on both sides. Even in force, the
trolls were so quiet that Simon could hear the burning hiss of their torches
before the sound of a single footfall reached him.
    "Chukku's Stones," Binabik said bleakly. Sisqi dropped back to take his
arm, her eyes wide in the torchlight, her mouth set in a grim line.

    Uammannaq the Herder and Nunuuika the Huntress guided their rams
forward. They both wore belted robes and boots. Their black hair flowed
loose, as though they had dressed hurriedly. As Binabik stepped forward
to meet them, armed trolls moved in behind him, hemming his compan-
ions in a thicket of spears. Sisqinanamook stepped out of the encirclement


86                                     Tad Williams

to join him, standing at his side with her chin lifted defiantly. Uammannaq
avoided his daughter's eyes, staring down instead at Binabik.
    "So, Binbinaqegabenik," he said, "you will not stand and face the justice of
your people? I had thought more of you than that, however low your birth."
    "My ~iends are innocent," Binabik replied. "I held your daughter as hostage
until the Rimmersman Sludig had made it to saJ~ty with the others."
    Nunuuika rode forward until her mount stood shoulder to shoulder
with her husband's. "Please credit us with some wisdom, Binabik, even though
we are not either of us as clever as your master was. Who sent the guards away?"
She peered down at Sisqi. The Huntress' face was cold, but showed a trace
of harsh pride. "Daughter, I thought you were a fool when you determined to
marry this wizardling. Now--well, I will say at least that you are a loyal fool,"
She turned to Binabik. "Because you have recharmed my daughter, do not think
you will escape your sentence. The Ice House is unmelted. Winter has killed the
Spring. The Rite of Quickening went unper~rmed---and instead you return to us
with childish tales. Now you are back hatching devil-tricks in your master's cave
that your pet wolf has guarded for you." Nunuuika was in the grip of a rising
fury. "You have been judged, oath-breaker. You will go to the ice cl~ of
Ogohak Chasm and you will be thrown over!"
    "Daughter, go back to our home," Uammannaq growled. "You have done
great wrong."
    "No!" Sisqi's cry caused a stir among the watching trolls. "I have
listened to my heart, yes, but listened to what wisdom I have gained as well. The
wolf has kept us fiom Ookequk's house--but that has not been to Binbiniqegabenik's
benefit." She pulled the thong-tied scroll from Binabik's sleeves and thrust
it forward. "This I found there. None of us thought to see what Ookequk had
lefi behind."
    "Only a Jbol hurries to rummage in the ejects of a Singing Man," Uammannaq
said, but his expression had subtly changed.
    "But Sisqi," Binabik said, nonplussed, "we do not know what the scroll
contains! It could be a spell of great peril, or..."
    "I have a good idea," Sisqi said grimly. "Do you see whose knot this is?"
she asked, handing the scroll to her mother.
    The Huntress looked at it briefly and made a dismissive gesture as she
handed it to her husband. "It is Ookequk's knot, yes . . ."
    "And you know what kind of knot as well, Mother," Sisqi turned to her
father. "Has it been opened?"
  Uammannaq frowned. "No . . ."
  "Good. Father, open it and read it, please."
  "Now?"
"If not now, when? Aider the one to whom I am pledged has been executed?"
Sisqi's breath hung in the air after her angry rejoinder. Uammannaq
carefully picked the knot and removed the black thong, then slowly unrolled
the sheet of hide, beckoning for one of the torch-bearers to move nearer.


STONE OF FAREWELL                                           87

    "Binabik," Simon shouted from behind a circle of spear-heads, "what is
happening?"
    "Stay, all of you, and do nothing for a moment," Binabik called to him
in Westerling. "I will tell you all when I can."
 "Know this," Uammannaq read,

"... That I am Ookequk, Singing Man of Mintahoq, of Chugik, Tutusik.
Rinsenatuq, Sikkihoq and Namyet, and all other mountains of Yiqanuc."

    The Herder read slowly, with long, squint-eyed pauses as he puzzled
out the sense of the blackened runes.

    "I go on a long journey, and in such times that I cannot know I will come
back. So, I lay my death-song on this hide, that it can be my voice when I
am gone."

    "Clever, clever, Sisqi," Binabik said quietly as her father's voice droned,
"it is you who should have been Ookequk's student, not me! How could you know.t?''
    She waved a hand to quiet him. "I am a daughter of Chidsik ub Lingit,
where all the petitions for judgment come fiom all the mountains. Do you think I
would not recognize the knot used on a death testament?"

"I must warn those who remain after me,"

Uammannaq continued with Ookequk's words,

"... That I have seen the coming of a great cold darkness, the like of which
my people have never seen. It is a dreadful winter that will come fiom the
shadow of Vihyuyaq, the mountain of the immortal Cloud Children. It will
blast the lands of Yiqanuc like a black wind fiom the Lands of the Dead,
cracking the very stone flour mountains in cruel fingers . . ."

    As the Herder read these words, several of the listening trolls cried out,
hoarse voices echoing down the night-shrouded mountainside. Others
swayed, so that the torchlight flickered.

    "My student, Binbinaqegabenik, I will bring with me on my journey. In the
time that remains I will instruct him in the small things and long stories that
may help our people in this foul time. There are other ones beyond Yiqanuc
who have prepared lamps against this coming darkness. I go to add my light
to theirs, small as it may shine against the storm that threatens. If I cannot
return, young Binbinaqegabenik will come in my stead. I ask you to honor
him as you would me, Jbr he is eager in his learning. One day he may grow
to be a greater Singing Man than I.


88

Tad Williams

    "Now I end my death song. I give my farewell to mountain and sky. It
has been good to be alive. It has been good to be one of the Children of
Lingit, and to live my lift on the beautiful mountain Mintahoq."

    Uammannaq lowered the scroll, blinking. A low wail bubbled up
among the watchers in response to the Singing Man Ookekuq's final song.
    "He did not have enough time," Binabik murmured. Tears welled in his
eyes. "He was taken away too quickly and told me nothing--or at least not
enough. Oh, Ookequk, how we will miss you/ How could you have left your
people with no wall between them and the Storm King but an untrained weanling
like Binabik!" He dropped to his knees and touched his forehead to the
snow.
  An awkward silence fell, pierced only by the lamenting wind.
    "Bring the lowlanders," Nunuuika said to the spearmen, then turned a
stiff, painful glance on her daughter. "We will all go to the House of the
Ancestor. There is much to think about."

    Simon awakened slowly, and stared at the inconstant shadows on the
craggy ceiling of Chidsik ub Lingit fro' a long time while he tried to
remember where he was. He felt a little better now, more clearheaded, but
the scar on his cheek stung like fire.
    He sat up. Sludig and Haestan were leaning against the wall a short
distance away, sharing a skin of some drink and a muttered conversation.
Simon untangled himself from his cloak and looked around for Binabik.
His friend was near the center of the room, squatting before the Herder
and Huntress as if in supplication. For a moment Simon was fearful, but
others squatted there too, Sisqinanamook among them. As he listened to
the rise and fall of guttural voices, he decided it seemed more a council
than a judgment. Other small groups of trolls were discernible here and
there in the deep shadows, crouched in little circles throughout the vast
stone room. A few scattered lamps burned like bright stars in a sky full of
thunderheads.
    Simon curled up again, wriggling to find a smooth place on the floor.
How terribly strange, to be in this place! Would he ever have a home
again, a place where he would wake up every morning in the same bed,
unsurprised to find himself there?
    He drifted slowly back into half-sleep, into a dream of cold mountain
passes and red eyes.

    "Simon-friend!" It was Binabik, gently shaking him. The troll looked
drawn, the circles under his eyes visible even in the half-light, but he was
smiling. "It is time for waking."


                                  STONE OF FAREWELL                                                  89

  "Binabik," Simon said groggily, "what is happening?"
     "I have brought for you a bowl of tea and some tidings. It appears I am
 no longer bound for an unfortunate plunging," the troll grinned. "No
 longer are Sludig and myself to be thrown into Ogohak Chasm."
     "But that's wonderful!" Simon gasped. He felt his heart ache inside
 him, a fierce wrench of released tension. He leaped to embrace the small
 man and his sudden lunge toppled the troll. The tea puddled on the stone.
     "You have been too long in the company ofQantaqa," Binabik laughed,
 extricating himself. He looked pleased. "You have gained her liking for
 the giving of exuberant greetings."
     Other heads in the room turned to watch this strange spectacle. Many
 Qanuc tongues muttered in amazement at the mad and lanky lowlander
 who hugged trolls as if he were a clansman. Simon saw the stares and
 ducked his head in embarrassment. "What have they said?" he asked. "Can
 we go?"
    "Put with simpleness: yes, we can go." Binabik sat down beside him.
He was carrying his bone walking stick, recovered from Ookequk's cave.
He proceeded to examine it as he spoke, frowning at the numerous
toothmarks Qantaqa had added. "But much there is to be decided.
Ookequk's scroll has convinced the Herder and Huntress on the truth of
my tellings."
  "But what is there to decide?"
    "Many things. If I go with you to take Thorn back to Josua, then my
people are again without a Singing Man. But I am thinking I must accom-
pany you. If Naglimund has fallen truly, then we should be following the
words of Gelo~. She may be the last one of great wisdom that remains.
Besides, it is seeming more certain that our only hope is in the getting of
the other two swords, Minneyar and Sorrow. Not for nothing should
your gallantry on the dragon-mountain be."
    Binabik gestured at Thorn, which stood against the wall near where
Haestan and Sludig sat. "If the Storm King's rising is unchecked," he said,
"then no use there will be my staying on Mintahoq, since none of the craft
Ookequk taught me will keep away the winter we fear." The little man
made a broad gesture. "So, 'when the snowslide takes your house,' as we
troll folk say, 'do not stay to hunt for potshards.' I have told my people
they should be moving down-mountain, to the spring hunting grounds--
even though there will be no spring there, and small hunting."
    He stood, tugging down the hem of his thick jacket. "I wanted you to
know that there was no danger now to Sludig and myself." He smirked.
"A bad joke. We are all, it is obvious, in terrible danger. But the danger is
not from my own people any longer." He laid a small hand on Simon's
shoulder. "Sleep again, if you can. We will likely leave at dawn. I will go
and speak to Haestan and Sludig, then there is much planning still ahead
this night." He turned and walked across the cave. Simon watched his
small form pass in and out of the shadows.


                    90                                     Tad Williams

                   A great deal of planning has been done already, he thought grumpily, and I
                   : ~ve not been invited ~o much of it~ Someone always has a plan, and l always                            ~ :
                                                       ei ~me~nezzize~seizzzzde~ideszzzzzwherezzzzzz~zzgozz2zzzzzxzzzfeelzzzzz zlikezzza zzzl zzzYzzlzzzz lz z zzi zzzi Yzll zzz

ii
z zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz~m~se~~~~~~~~~~
  ~~~~He~thoughtab~tthisashe~wait~d~fors~eep~~~%~~~%~: i :

              As it turned out, the sun had risen high in the gray sky before the final
          arrangements were finished--a span of time Simon was more than happy
          to spend sleeping.
              Simon, his companions, and a large number of trolls trooped out onto
          the byways of Mintahoq, following the Herder and Huntress in the
          strangest parade Simon had ever seen. As they wound in and out through
          Mintahoq's most populous sections, hundreds of trolls stopped on the
          swinging bridges or came dashing out of their caves to watch the com-
          pany pass, standing amazed beneath the swirling smokes of their cooking
          fires. Many clambered down the thong ladders and joined the procession.
              Much of the journey was uphill, and the vast crowd strung out along
          the narrow track made the going slow. It seemed quite a long while before
          they made their way around to the northern face. As they trudged on,
          Simon found himself slipping into a kind of numbed dreaminess. Snow
          flurried in the gray void beyond the pathway; Yiqanuc's other peaks stood
          up along the valley's far side like teeth.
              The march stopped at last on a long stone porch atop a promontory that
          stood out above the northern part of Yiqanuc's valley. Another path
          hugged the mountainside below them, then the rock walls of Mintahoq
          fell sharply away, down into white obscurity touched with patches of
          bright sunsplash. Staring down, Simon was stuck by a memory of dream,
          of a dim white tower lapped by flames. He turned away from the unset-
          tling view to find the rocky ledge on which he stood dominated by the
          tall, egg-shaped snow-building he had seen his first day out of the cave.
          Closer this time, he could clearly see the marvelous care with which the
          triangular blocks of snow had been cut and fitted together, the bold
          carvings that seemed to slice down into the blocks themselves, so that the
          Ice House was as multifaceted as a cut diamond, its walls alive with hidden
          interior angles, prisms that reflected cyan and pink.
              The row of armed trolls who guarded the Ice House stood respectfully
          to one side as Nunuuika and Uammanaq moved past them to stand
          between the pillars of tight-packed snow that framed the door. Simon
          could see nothing of the Ice House's interior but a blue-gray hole beyond
          the doorway. Binabik and Sisqi took places on the icy step below, mittened
          hands clasped. Qangolik the Spirit Caller clambered up beside them.


STONE OF FAREWELL

91

Though Qangolik's face was hidden by his ram-skull mask, Simon thought
the muscular troll seemed rather subdued. The Spirit Caller, who had
pranced like a courting bird before the judgment in Chidsik ub Lingit, now
slumped like a weary harvest hand.
    As the Herder lifted his crook-spear and spoke, Binabik translated for
his lowlander companions.
    'Strange days are upon us." Uammannaq's eyes were deep-shadowed.
"We have known that something was wrong. We live too closely with the
mountain, which is of the bones of the earth, not to sense the unease in the
lands around us. The Ice House is still here. It has not melted." The wind
rose, whistling, as if to underscore his words. "Winter will not leave. At
first we blamed Binabik. The Singing Man or his apprentice has always
sung the Rite of Quickening; Summer has always come. But now we are
told that it is not failure to perform the Rite that keeps Summer hidden.
Strange days. Things are different." He shook his head heavily, his beard
wagging.
    "We must break with tradition," Nunuuika the Huntress added. "The
word of the wise should be law to those of less wisdom. Ookequk has
spoken as if he were here among us. Now we know more of the thing that
we feared, b,~ c~a~ ne, t name. My husband speaks truly: strange days are
upon us. Tradition served us, but now it shackles us. Thus, Huntress and
Herder declare that Binbinaqegabenik is free from his punishment. We
would be fools to kill one who has been striving to protect us from the
storm of which Ookequk spoke. We would be worse than fools, it is now
clear, to kill the only one who knew cokequk's heart."
    Nunuuika paused, waiting for Binabik to complete his reinterpretation,
then continued, passing her hand across her forehead in some ritual ges-
ture. "The Rimmersman Sludig is an even stranger problem. He is no
Qanuc, so he was not guilty of oath-breaking, as we declared Binabik.
But he is of an enemy people, and if the tales of our farthest-ranging
hunters are true, Rimmersmen in the east have grown even more savage
than before. However, Binabik assures us that this Sludig is different, that
he fights the same fight as Ookequk. We are not sure, but in these days of
madness we cannot say it is not so. Thus, Sludig is also declared freed
from punishment and may leave Yiqanuc as he wishes--the first Croohok
so pardoned since the Battle of Huhinka Valley in my great-grandmother's
day, when the snows ran red with blood. We call on the spirits of high
places, pale Sedda and Qinkipa of the Snows, Morag Eyeless, bold Chukku,
and all the rest, to protect the people if our judgment is faulty."
    When the Huntress had finished, Uammannaq stood beside her and
made a broad gesture, as though to break something in two and cast it
away. The watching trolls chanted one sharp syllable, then lapsed into
excited whispering.
 Simon turned and clasped Sludig's hand. The northerner smiled tightly,


92                                     Tad Williams

jaw set behind his yellow beard. "The little people speak rightly," he said.
"Strange times indeed."
    Uammannaq raised his hand to still the murmur of conversation. "The
lowlanders shall now leave. Binbinaqegabenik, who if he returns will be
our next Singing Man, may go with them to take this strange, magical
object--" he pointed to Thorn, which Haestan held propped on the
ground before him, "--to the lowlanders, who he says can use it to
frighten away the winter.
    "We shall send with them a party of hunters, led by our daughter
Sisqinanamook, who shall be their escort until they leave the lands of the
Qanuc. The hunters will then go to the spring city by Blue Mud Lake and
prepare for the coming of the rest of our clans." Uammannaq made a
gesture and one of the other trolls stepped forward with a skin bag that
had been covered nearly completely in delicate tracings of colored embroi-
dery. "We have gifts we wish to give you."
    Binabik brought his friends forward. The Huntress presented Simon
with a sheath of supple hide, the leather subtly tooled and studded with
stone beads the color of a spring moon. The Herder then gave him a knife
to put in it, a beautiful pale blade made from a single piece of bone. The
handle was wrought with smoothed carvings of birds.
    "A magical lowlander sword is very good for fighting snow-worms,"
Nunuuika told him, "but a humble Qanuc knife is easier to hide and easier
to use in close quarters."
    Simon thanked them politely and stepped aside. Haestan was given a
capacious drinking skin decorated with ribbons and stitchery, filled to the
stopper with Qanuc liquor. The guardsman, who had drunk enough of
the sour stuff during the previous evening to finally develop a bit of taste
for it, bowed, mumbled some words of gratitude, then withdrew.
    Sludig, who had come to Yiqanuc as a prisoner but was now leaving
more or less as a guest, received a spear with a viciously sharp head hewn
from shiny black stone. The haft was uncarved, since it had been hurriedly
constructed--the trolls did not use spears of a length that would have been
appropriate--but it was nicely balanced and could double as a walking
stave.
    "We hope you also appreciate the gift of your life," Uammannaq said,
"and will remember that the justice of the Qanuc is stern but not cruel."
    Sludig amazed them by dropping quickly to a knee. "I will remember,"
was all he said.
    "Binbinaqegabenik," Nunuuika began, "you have already received the
greatest gift it is in our capacity to bestow. If she will still have you,
we renew our permission for you to marry our youngest daughter
When the Rite of Quickening can be performed next year, you will be
joined."
  Binabik and Sisqi clasped hands and bowed on the step before the


STONE OF FAREWELL

93

Herder and Huntress as words of blessing were said. The ram-faced Spirit
Caller came forward. He chanted and sang as he daubed their foreheads
with oil, but with what Simon thought was a very dissatisfied air. When
Qangolik finished and stalked grumpily back down the steps of the Ice
House, the betrothal had been reinstated.
    The Huntress and Herder said a brief personal farewell to the company,
Binabik interpreting. Though she smiled and touched his hand with her
small, strong fingers, Nunuiika still seemed cold and hard as stone to
Simon, sharp and dangerous as her own spearhead. He had to force
himself to smile back and retreat slowly when she had finished.

    Qantaqa was waiting for them, curled in a nest of snow outside of
Chidsik ub Lingit. The noon sun had disappeared behind a spreading fog;
the wind set Simon's teeth to chattering.
    "Down the mountain we must now go, friend," Binabik said to him. "I
am wishing you and Haestan and Sludig were not so large, but there are
no rams strong enough for your riding. It will make our going slower
than I would wish."
    "But where are we going?" Simon asked. "Where is this Stone of
Farewell?"
    "All things in their season," the troll replied. "I will look at my scrolls
when we stop tonight, but we should leave now as soon as we can. The
mountain passes will be treacherous. I smell more snow upon the wind."
 "More snow," Simon repeated, shouldering his pack. More snow.


6

Tile Nameless Dea~

"... So Drukhi Jbund her,"

Maegwin sang,

"Beloved Nenais'u, wind-footed dancer,
Stretched on the green grass, as silent as stone.
Her dark eyes sky-watching,
Only her shining blood gave him answer,
Her head lay uncradled, her black hair undone."

    Maegwin drew her hand over her eyes, shielding them from the sting-
ing wind, then leaned forward to rearrange the flowers on her father's
cairn. Already the wind had scattered the violets across the stones; only a
few dried petals remained on Gwythinn's grave nearby. Where had the
treacherous summer gone? And when would the flowers bloom again, so
she could tend her loved ones' resting places as they deserved?
 As the wind rattled the skeletal birch trees, she sang again.

"Long time I~e held her,
Through gray-shadowed evening, beneath shameJhced night,
Matching the hours she had lain there alone.
His bright eyes unblinking,
Drukhi sang songs of the East's timeless light.
He whispered to her they would wait for the sun.

"Dawn, golden-handed,
Caressed but could not warm the nightingale's child.
Nenais'u's swift spirit had fled unhomed.
Close Drukhi clutched her,
His voice echoed out through woods and through wild.
Where two hearts had sounded now beat only one . . ."

94


                                          STONE OF FAREWELL                                                                 95

     She broke off, wondering absently if she had once known the rest of the
 words. She remembered her nurse singing it to her when she was young,
 a sad song about the Sithi-folk--"The Peaceful Ones," as her ancestors
 had named them. Maegwin did not know the legend behind it. She
 doubted her old nurse had known, either. It was only that, a sad song
 from happier times, from her childhood in the Taig... before her father
 and brother died.
     She stood, brushing the dirt from the knees of her black skirt, and
 scattered a few last withered flowers among the slender spears of grass
 pushing up from Gwythinn's cairn. As she turned back up the path,
 clasping her cloak tight against the gnawing wind, she wondered once
 more why she should not join her brother and father Lluth here in peace
 on the mountainside. What did life hold for her?
    She knew what Eolair would say. The Count of Nad Mullach would
tell her that her people had no one else but Maegwin to inspire and guide
them. "Hope," Eolair often said, in that quiet but fox-clever way of his,
"is like the belly-strap on a king's saddle--a slender thing, but if it snaps
the world turns topside-down."
    Thinking of the count, she felt a rare flash of anger. What could he
knowwwhat could anyone know about death who was as alive as Eolair,
to whom life seemed a gift from the gods? How could he understand the
dreadful weight of waking up each day, knowing that the ones she loved
most were gone, that her people were uprooted and friendless, doomed to
a slow, humiliating extinction? What gift of the gods was worth the gray
burden of pain, the unceasing rut of bleak thoughts?
    Eolair of Nad Mullach came to her often these days, speaking to her as
he would to a child. Once, long ago, Maegwin had fallen in love with
him, but she had never been so foolish as to believe he might feel for her
in turn. Tall as a man, clumsy and blunt in her words, far more like a
farmer's daughter than a princess--who could ever love Maegwin? But
now that she and her bewildered young stepmother Inahwen were all that
remained of Lluth ubh-Llythinn's house, now Eolair was concerned.
    Not out of any base motives, though. She laughed out loud and did not
like the sound of it. Oh, gods, base motives? Not honorable Count Eolair.
That was the thing she hated in him more than anything else: his unrelent-
ing kindness and honor. She was sick to death of pity.
    Besides, even if--impossibly--he could have thought of profiting at such
a time, how would joining his fate to hers benefit him in any case? Maegwin
was the last daughter of a broken house, the ruler of a shattered nation.
The Hernystiri had become wild creatures living in the woodlands of the
Grianspog Mountains, driven back to their primeval caves by the whirl-
wind of destruction brought down on them by High King Elias and his
Rimmersman tool, Skali of Kaldskryke.
    So perhaps Eolair was right. Perhaps she did owe her life to her people.
She was the last of Lluth's bloodwa thin tie to a happier past, but the only


96                                     Tad Williams

such link that the survivors of Hernysadharc retained. She would live,
then--but whoever would have thought that merely living could become
a burdensome duty!
    As Maegwin made her way along the steep trail, something wet touched
her face. She looked up. A host of tiny spots swarmed against the leaden
sky. Another bit of wetness flecked her.
    Snow. The realization made her cold heart even colder. Snow in mid-
summer, in Tiyagar-month. Brynioch of the Skies and all the other gods have
truly turned their backs on the Hernystiri.

    A single sentry, a boy of perhaps ten summers with a red and dripping
nose, greeted her as she entered the camp. A few fur-wrapped children
played on the mossy rocks before the cavern, trying to catch the now
fast-falling snowflakes on their tongues. They scrambled back, wide-eyed,
as she walked past with her black skirts swirling in the wind.
    They know the princess is mad, she thought sourly. Anyone would. The
princess talks to herself, but to no one else for days at a time. The princess speaks
of nothing but death. Of course the princess is mad.
    She thought it might be good to smile for the fearful-looking children,
but as she looked down at their dirty faces and their tattered rags of
clothing, she decided that such an effort might frighten them further.
Instead, Maegwin hurried past into the cave.
    Am I mad? she wondered suddenly. Is this crushing weight what madness
.~els like? These heavy thoughts that make my head .~el like the arms of a
drowning swimmer, struggling, ~iling. . . ?
    The wide cavern was largely empty. Old Craobhan, recovering slowly
from wounds received in the futile defense of Hernysadharc, lay by the
banked fire talking quietly to Arnoran, who had been one of her father
Lluth's favorite harpers. They looked up as she approached. She could see
them both studying her, trying to divine her mood. As Arnoran began to
rise, she waved him back down.  "It's snowing," she said.
    Craobhan shrugged. The ancient knight was nearly bald but for a few wisps
of white hair, his scalp a puzzle of delicate blue veins. "Not good, Lady.
That's not good. We've little livestock, but we're close-quartered in these
few caves as it is, and that's with most of us outside during the day."
    "More crowding." Arnoran shook his head. He was not nearly as old as
Craobhan, but was even more frail. "More angry folk."
    "Do you know 'The Leavetaking Stone'?" Maegwin asked the harper
suddenly. "It's an old song about the Sithi, about someone named Nenais'u
dying."
    "I think I knew it once, long ago," Arnoran said, squinting his eyes as he
stared into the fire and tried to think. "It is a very old song--very, very old."
  "You don't have to sing the words," Maegwin said. She settled cross-


STONE OF FAREWELL

97

 legged beside him, her skirt tight as a drumhead between her knees. "Just
 play the melody for me."
    Arnoran scrabbled for his harp, then played a few tentative notes. "I'm
not sure I remember how to..."
    "It doesn't matter. Try." She wished she could think of something to
say that would bring a smile to their faces, even for a moment. Did her
people deserve to see her always in mourning? "It will be good," she said at
last, "to think of other times."
    Arnoran nodded and plucked briefly at his strings, eyes closed, his quarry
easiest sought in darkness. He finally began a delicate air, full of strange
notes that quavered just on the edge of dissonance without ever crossing
over. As he played, Maegwin, too, shut her eyes. She could once again
hear the voice of her nurse from long ago, telling her the story of Drukhi
and Nenais'u--what strange names they had in old ballads!--telling of
their love and tragic deaths, their warring families.
    The music went on for a long while. Maegwin's thought swirled with
images of the distant and not-so-distant past. She could see pallid Drukhi
bent in grief, swearing vengeance--but he wore her brother Gwythinn's
anguished face. And Nenais'u, sprawled lifeless on the greensward: was
that not Maegwin herself?.
    Arnoran had stopped. Maegwin opened her eyes, not knowing how
long the music had been silent.
    "When Drukhi died avenging his wife," she said as if continuing an earlier
conversation, "his family could not live with Nenais'u's family anymore."
Arnoran and Craobhan exchanged glances. She ignored them and went on.
"I remember the story now. My nurse used to sing the song to me.
Drukhi's family fled away from their enemies, went far away to live
apart." After a pause, she turned to look at Craobhan. "When will Eolair
and the others return from their expedition?"
    The old man counted on his fingers. "They should be back by the new
moon, in a little less than a fortnight."
    Maegwin stood up. "Some of these caverns run deep into the moun-
tain's heart," she said. "Is that not true?"
    "There were always deep places in the Grianspog," Craobhan nodded
slowly, trying to understand her. "And some were delved even deeper,
for mining."
    "Then we will start exploring tomorrow at dawn. By the time the
count and his men come back, we will be ready to move."
"Move?" Craobhan squinted, surprised. "Move where, Lady Maegwin?"
"Farther into the mountains," she said. "It came to me as Arnoran sang.
We Hernystiri are like Drukhi's family in the song: we cannot live here
anymore." She rubbed her hands together, trying to ward off the chill of
the cavern. "King Elias has destroyed his brother Josua. Now there is
nothing and no one left to drive Skali away."


98                                     Tad Williams

    "But my lady!" Arnoran said, startled into interrupting her. "Still there is
Eolair, and with him many other brave Hernystirmen remaining . . ."
    "mThere is no one to drive Skali away," she continued harshly, "and
the Thane of Kaldskryke will doubtless find Hernystir's meadows a more
hospitable home in this freezing summer than his own lands in Rimmersgard.
If we stay here, we shall be trapped eventually, slaughtered before our caves
like rabbits." Her voice grew stronger. "But if we go deeper, they will
never find us. Then Hernystir will survive, far away from the madness of
Elias and Skali and the rest!"
    Old Craobhan looked up at her worriedly. She knew he was wondering
what everyone else wondered: had Maegwin been unbalanced by her
losses--by all their losses?
  Perhaps I have, she thought, but not in this. In this, I am sure I am right.
    "But, Lady Maegwin," the old counselor said, "how will we eat? What
will we do for cloth, for grain... ?"
    "You said it yourself," she responded. "The mountains are shot through
with tunnels. If we learn and explore them, we can live deep in stone and
be safe from Skali, yet come out wherever we wish--to hunt, to gather
stores, even to raid Kaldskryke's own camps if we choose!"
    "But ... but . . ." The old man turned to Arnoran, but the harper
could offer no support. "But what will your mother Inahwen think of
such a plan?" he said at last.
    Maegwin snorted in contempt. "My stepmother spends her days sitting
with the other women, complaining about how hungry she is. Inahwen is
less use than a child."
  "Then what will Eolair think? What of the brave count?"
    Maegwin stared at Craobhan's shaking hands, his rheumy old eyes. For
a moment she felt sorry for him, but that did not quell her anger. "What
the Count of Nad Mullach thinks, he may tell usmbut remember,
Craobhan: he does not command me. He has taken the oath to my father's
house. Eolair will do what I say!"
    She walked away, leaving the two men whispering beside the fire. The
biting chill outside the cave could not cool her heated face, even though
she stood in the snowy wind for a long time.

Earl Guthwulf of Utanyeat awakened to hear the Hayholt's midnight
bell, high above in Green Angel Tower, shuddering into silence.
    Guthwulf closed his eyes, waiting for sleep to return, but slumber was
elusive. Picture after picture appeared before his shuttered gaze, images
of battles and tournaments, the dry repetitions of court etiquette, the
chaos of the hunt. Foremost in every scene was King Elias' face--the flash
of panicky relief, quickly hidden, that had greeted Guthwulf as he broke


STONE OF FAREWELL

99

through a ring of attackers to rescue his friend during the Thrithings wars;
the blank, black stare with which Elias received confirmation of his wife
Hylissa's death; and most disturbing of all, the secretive, gleeful, yet at the
same moment shamefaced stare that the king now wore whenever he and
Guthwulf met.
 The earl sat up, cursing. Sleep had fled and would not return soon.
    He did not light the lamp, but dressed in darkness, relying on the
sprinkle of starlight from the narrow window to help him step over his
manservant, who lay dozing on the floor at the foot of Guthwulf's bed.
He pulled a cloak over his nightshirt and donned a pair of slippers, then
made his way out into the corridor. Addled with such foolish, troubled
thoughts, he decided he might as well walk for an hour.
    The halls of the Hayholt were empty, with not a guard or servant in
sight. Here and there torches burned fitfully in their wall sconces, con-
sumed almost to the socket. The halls were untenanted, but still faint
murmurs swept through the darkened passageways--voice of sentries on
the walls, the earl decided, rendered bodiless and spectral by distance.
    Guthwulf shivered. What I need is a woman, he thought. A warm body in
the bed, a prattling voice to silence when I wish and to fill the quiet when I let. This
monkish living would unman anyone.
    He turned and strode down the hall, heading for the servant's quarters.
There was a saucy, curly-headed chambermaid who wouldn't say no--hadn't
she told him her intended had died at Bullback Hill, that she was all alone?
 /./'that one is in mourning--hah! Then I will become a monk!

    The great door to the servant's quarters was locked. Guthwulf snarled
and tugged, but the bolt was shot on the inner side. He contemplated
banging on the heavy oak with his fist until someone came to open
it--someone who would swiftly feel Utanyeat's wrathmbut decided against
it. Something about Hayholt's silent corridors made him unwilling to
attract attention. Besides, he told himself, the curly-haired wench was not
worth the beating down of doors.
    He stepped away, rubbing his bristled chin, and saw something pale
moving at the turning of the hall, near the edge of his vision. He whirled,
startled, but found nothing there. He walked a few steps and leaned
around the corner. The hall beyond was also empty. A breathless whisper
drifted along the passageway--a woman's low voice, muttering as if in
pain. Guthwulf turned on his heel and stalked back toward his chamber.
    Night tricks, he grumbled to himself. Doors locked, corridors empty--the
whole damnable, Bleeding Usires castle might as well be deserted!
    He stopped, suddenly, looking around. What hallway was this? He did
not recognize the polished tiles, the oddly-shaped banners hanging shad-
owed on the dark wall. Unless he had made a wrong turning and lost his
way, this should be the chapel's walking-hall. He retraced his way back to


100                                   Tad Williams

the forking of the hall and turned, taking the other route. Now, although
this new corridor was featureless but for a few window-slits, he was sure
he had found his way once more.
    He grabbed at the base of one of the windows and pulled himself up,
hanging by his strong arms. Outside would be either the front or side of
the chapel courtyard ....
    Startled, Guthwulf let go and slid the short distance back to the ground.
His knees buckled, dropping him to the floor. He rolled quickly to his feet,
heart pounding, and reached for the window slit to haul himself up again.
  It was the chapel courtyard, sunk in deep night, just as it should be.
  But what then had he seen the first time? There had been white walls
  and the forest of looming spires that he had first taken for trees, then
  recognized in an instant later as towers--a forest of slim minarets, ivory
  needles that caught the moonlight and glowed as if full-charged with it!
  The Hayholt had no such towers!
    But there! Again the evidence of his eyes confirmed that all was
right and usual. There was the courtyard, the chapel door and awning, the
shrubs standing beside the pathways like drowsy sheep. Beyond, he could
just make out the moonbathed silhouette of Green Angel Tower--a soli-
tary sky-pointing finger where a moment before he had seen a dozen
hands raised in supplication.
    He dropped to his feet and leaned against the cold stone. Then what had
he seen that first time? Night tricks? No, this was more! This was
sickness, or madness.., or witchcraft!
    After a moment he collected himself. Steady, you fool. He stood up,
shaking his head. These aren't thefruits of madness, but of too much pondering, too
much womanish worry. My sire used to sit up at night staring wide-eyed at the fire
and claimed he saw ghosts there. Still, he was fit enough in his head when he died,
and lived a full seventy summers. No, it is all this thought about the king that is
preying on me. Black witchcraft may be all around us--God knows, I'm last to
argue against it after what I've seen this cursed yearmbut not here in the Hayholt.
    Guthwulf knew the castle had belonged to the Fair Folk once, many
hundreds of years ago, but now it was so wound about with spells and
charms against them that surely there was no other spot on earth in which
they were less welcome.
    No, he thought, it is the way the king has changed that fills my mind with
strange thoughts: how Elias shifts.~om moment to moment, J~om lunatic anger to
childish worry.
    He walked to the door at the end of the hallway and out into the
courtyard. Everything was as he had last seen it. A solitary light burned in
one of the windows across the garden, in the king's private rooms.
    Elias is awake. He pondered this for a moment. He has not slept well since
Josua first began plotting against him.
  Guthwulf strode across the courtyard toward the king's residence, the


STONE OF FAREWELL

101

unseasonable breeze frisking about his bare ankles. He would talk to his
old friend Elias, here in the empty hours of night when men told the
truth. He would demand to know about Pryrates and about the horrible
army Elias has summoned, the host that had come down on Naglimund
like a plague of white locusts. Guthwulf and the king had been comrades
in arms too long for the earl to allow their friendship to fall apart like
rusting armor. Tonight they would talk. Guthwulf would find out just
what dire troubles caused his old comrade to act so strangely. It would be
their first chance in a year to speak without Pryrates hovering close by,
watching with those black ferret's eyes, listening to every word.
    The courtyard doorway was locked, but the great key Elias had given
him on his succession to the throne still hung on a cord around Guthwulfs
neck. His soldier's practicality had not allowed him to take it off, even
though it had been many months since Elias had called on him to under-
take a secret mission.
    The locks had not been changed. The heavy door swung inward without
a sound; Guthwulf was grateful for that, although he did not know why.
As he mounted the stairs toward the king's residence, he was astonished to
find not even a single guard in place before the inner door. Was Elias so
sure of his power that he did not even fear assassination? Surely that did
not accord with his behavior since he had returned from the siege of
Naglimund?
    At the top of the stairs Guthwulf heard muffled voices. Suddenly full of
misgivings, he leaned forward, placing his ear near the keyhole.
    He frowned. I should've known, he thought sourly. I would recognize
Pryrates' jackal-barking anywhere. Curse the unnatural bastard, can he give the
king no peace?
    As he debated whether he should knock, he heard the king's low
murmur. A third voice froze Guthwulfs hand in midair, knuckles
poised before the doorframe.
    This last voice was high-pitched and sweet, but there was something
alien in its tone, something inhuman in its music. It acted on his senses like
a plunge in cold water, bringing up the hair on the back of his arms and
setting a shiver into his breath. He thought he recognized the words
"sword" and "mountains" before the numbing fear overcame him. He
stepped back from the door so quickly he almost tumbled down the stairs.
    Have those hell-things come here? he wondered. He wiped his sweating
palms on his nightshirt and retreated a step down from the landing. What
devil's work is this? Has Elias lost his mind? His soul?
    The voices rose in volume, then the door squeaked as someone lifted the
inside bolt. All thought of confronting Elias gone, the Earl of Utanyeat
knew only that he did not want to be found listening at the keyhole--did
not want to meet the thing that spoke so strangely. He looked around
distractedly for a place to hide, but the staircase was narrow. He vaulted


102                                   Tad Williams

down the steps in a rush, but had only just reached the outer door whel
he heard footsteps on the landing above. Guthwulf ducked into the alcov,
beneath the stairway, pushing himself back into the shadows as the step
creaked. Two figures, one more distinct than the other, paused in th,
doorway.
    "The king is pleased with this news," Pryrates was saying. The darke
shape beside him said nothing. A smear of white face gleamed in th~
depths of its dark hood. Pryrates stepped through the door, his scarle
garments showing deep violet-blue in the moonlight as he pivoted his bal~
head this way and that, looking carefully. A shadow followed him oc
into the garden.
    Anger suddenly rose inside Guthwulf, overwhelming even his unre~
soning fear. That the master of Utanyeat should cower under stairs--an
from something that the cursed priest treated as companionably as
country uncle!
    "Pryrates!" Guthwulf cried, stepping out from beneath the stairwa~
"I would have a word with you . . ."
    The earl's slippered feet crunched to a halt on the gravel. The prie,
stood before him, alone in the middle of the path. The wind sighed in th
hedges, but there was no other sound, no other movement but the fair
rippling of leaves.
    "Earl Guthwulf," Pryrates said, wrinkling his hairless brow in apparer
surprise, "what are you doing out here? And at such an hour." He looke
Guthwulfs costume up and down. "Have you had trouble sleeping?"
    "Yes . . . no . . . damn you, priest, that's not important! I was just c
my way to see the king!"
    Pryrates nodded. "Ah. Well, I've just left His Majesty. He's just take
his sleeping draught, so whatever you desire to speak of should wait unt
morning."
    Guthwulf looked up at the mocking moon, then around the courtyar~
It was empty but for the two of them. He felt dizzy, betrayed by his ow
senses. "You were alone with the king?" he asked at last.
    The priest stared at him for a moment. "But for his new cupbeare
yes. And a few body-servants in the outer rooms. Why?"
    The earl felt the last bit of ground sliding from beneath his fee
"Cupbearer? That is, I just wanted to know . . . I thought..." Guthwt
struggled to regain his poise. "There's no guard posted on that door." I-
pointed.
    "With such a doughty warrior as yourself stalking the gardens," Pryrat
smiled, "there is scarce need for one--but you are correct. I will speak
the chief constable about it. Now, if you'll excuse me, my lord, I must
to my narrow bed. I have had a long, wearying day of statecraft. Good night.
    With a swirl of his robe, the priest turned and walked away, vanishi~
in a cluster of shadows at the far side of the courtyard.


STONE OF FAREWELL                                          103

    The traveler's spirit came back to him as he rode through the endless
snows, but his name did not. He could not remember how he came to be
riding the horse, or if the beast was his. Neither did he know where he
had been, or what had happened to cause the dreadful pain that ran
through his body, twisting and crippling his limbs. He knew only that he
must ride on toward a spot behind the horizon, following a curved seam
of stars that burned in the northwestern skies at night. He could not
remember what place he would find there.
    He stopped only seldom for sleep: the ride itself was a kind of waking
dream, a long white tunnel of wind and ice that seemed never--ending.
Ghosts attended him, a vast crowd of homeless dead walking at his
stirrups. Some of these were of his own making--or so it seemed from the
reproach written on their pale faces---others were the importuning spirits
for whom he had killed. But none of them held any power over him now.
Without his name, he was as much a phantom as were they.
    So they traveled together, the unnamed man and the nameless dead: a
lone rider and a whispering, insubstantial horde that accompanied him like
foam carried on before an ocean wave.

    Each time the sun died and the star-crescent bloomed in the shimmering
northwest sky, he made a slash with his knife in the leather of his saddle.
Sometimes when the sun vanished, the wind filled the dark sky with sleet
and the stars did not appear. Still, he marked his saddle. Seeing the pale
weals in the oil-darkened leather reassured him, proved that something
could change in this eternal sameness of mountains and stones and snowy
plain, and suggested that he was not merely crawling in a pointless circle
like a blind insect on the rim of a cup. The only other measure of time's
passage was his hunger, which now shouted above even the most terrible
of his other pains. And that, too, was a queer comfort. To starve was to
live. Dead, he might find himself condemned to join the throng of
whispering shades that surrounded him, doomed to flitter and sigh in this
lifeless waste forever. While he lived, there was at least a faint, cold
hope--although what it was that he might hope for he could not quite recall.
    There were eleven slashes on the saddle when his horse died. One
moment they were striding forward, breasting a drift of new snow; the
next moment his mount sank slowly to its knees, quivering, then toppled
over, a silent spray of white thrown up all around. After a while he pulled
himself free, his pain a voice as distant as the stars he followed. He
clambered to his feet and began, unsteadily, to walk.
    Two more suns rose and fell as he trudged on. Even his ghosts disap-
peared at last, scrubbed away by the howling snows. He thought the
weather might be getting colder, but could not remember for certain what
cold was.


104                                   Tad Williams

    When the next sun climbed, it was into a freezing, slate-gray sky. The
wind had subsided and the swirling snows had dropped back down into
feathery drifts. Before him, looming jagged and severe as a shark's tooth
against the horizon, stood the mountain. A grim crown of iron-gray
clouds hung about its shadowed peak, fed by smokes and steam that
issued from cracks along its icy flanks. Seeing it, he fell forward onto his
knees and uttered a silent prayer of thanks. He still did not know his
name, but he knew that this was what he sought.
    When another darkness and light had passed, he found himself nearing
the mountain's shadow, walking in a land of icy hills and dark dales.
Mortal men and women lived here, pale-haired, suspicious-eyed, huddling
in clan-houses made of muddied stone and heavy black beams. He did not
pass through their bleak villages, though he thought them dimly familiar.
When the inhabitants hailed him and approached, coming no closer than
superstition allowed, he ignored them and stumbled on.
    Another day of painful trudging carried him beyond the dwellings of
the pale-haired folk. Here the mountain blocked the sky so that even the
sun seemed small and remote, and a kind of perpetual evening covered the
land. Sometimes staggering, sometimes crawling, he climbed the steps of
the old, old road through the hills at the mountain's foot, through the
silvery, frost-veiled ruins of a long-dead city. Pillars like broken bones
pushed up through the snowy crust. Arches like the long-vacant eyes of
skulls loomed against the mountain's shadowed ridges.
    His strength was fading at last, so near to his goal. The crumbling, icy
road ended at a great gate in the face of the mountain, a gate taller than a
tower, made of chalcedony quartz, shining alabaster, and witchwood,
hung on hinges of black granite and graven with strange shapes and
stranger runes. It was before this gate that he stopped, the last dregs of life
leaking from his tortured frame. As the final blackness began to descend
on him, the mighty gate opened. A flock of white figures came forth,
beautiful as ice in the sun, terrible as winter. They had watched him come.
They had witnessed his every failing step across the white wilderness.
Now, their unfathomable curiosity somehow satisfied, they brought him
at last into the fastness of the mountain.

    The nameless traveler awakened in a great pillared chamber within
the mountain's blue-lit heart. Smoke and vapor from the titan well at the
chamber's center rose to mix with the snow that flurried beneath the
impossibly high ceiling. For a long while he could only lie staring up at
the swirling clouds. When he could move his eyes further, he saw before
him a great throne of black rock, covered all over with a patina of frost.
Upon this seat was a white-robed figure whose silver mask glowed like an
azure flame, reflecting the light that spilled from the great well. He was
suddenly filled with exaltation, but also with horrible, horrible shame.


STONE OF FAREWELL

105

     "Mistress," he cried as remembrance came flooding back, "destroy me,
 mistress! Destroy me, for I have failed you!"
    The silver mask tilted toward him. A wordless chant arose in the
shadows of the chamber, where eyes glittered down at him from a crowd
of watchers, as if the ghosts that had accompanied him through the waste
had come now to judge him and witness his undoing.
    "Be silent," said Utuk'ku. Her terrible voice seized him with invis-
ible hands, laying a spell of chill that reached down into his very heart,
making him stone. "I will find out what I wish to know."
    After his dreadful wounds and his hideous journey across the snows, his
pain had become so general that he had forgotten there was any other kind
of sensation. He had worn his torment as unheedingly as he had his
namelessness, but that had been pain only of the body. Now he was
reminded--as were most who visited Stormspike--that there were agonies
that far outstripped any corporeal injuries, and suffering that was unmiti-
gated by the possibility of death's release.
    Utuk'ku, the mountain's mistress, was old beyond comprehension and
had learned many things. She could, perhaps, have gained the knowledge
she sought from him without inflicting terrible torture. If such mercy was
possible, she chose not to exercise it.
  He screamed and screamed. The great chamber echoed.
    The icy thoughts of the Queen of the Norns crept through him, wrenching
at his very being with cold, heedless claws. It was an agony beyond
anything, beyond fear, or imagination. She emptied him, and he was a
helpless witness. All that had happened, all his experiences, leaped from
him, his inmost thoughts and private self ripped out and exhibited; it felt
as though she had slit him open like a fish and pulled free his struggling soul.
    He saw again the pursuit up Urmsheim Mountain, his quarry's discov-
ery of the sword they had sought, his own battle with the mortals and
Sithi. He witnessed once more the coming of the snow-dragon and his
own terrible wounding, how he had been crushed and bloodied, buried
beneath blocks of centuried ice. Then, as if he observed a stranger, he
watched a dying creature struggling across the snows toward Stormspike,
a nameless wretch who had lost his quarry, lost his company, and had
even lost the hound-helm that marked him as the first mortal ever to be
Queen's Huntsman. At last, the spectacle of his shame faded.
    Utuk'ku nodded again, her silver mask seeming to stare into the tumult
of fogs above the Well of the Breathing Harp. "It is not for you to say
whether or not you have j~iled me, mortal," she said at last. "But know this: I
am not unpleased. I have learned many usefi~l things today. The world still spins,
but it spins toward us."
    She raised a hand. The chant swelled in the shadows of the chamber.
Something vast seemed to move in the depths of the Well, setting the
vapors to dancing. "I give you back your name, Ingen Jegger," Utuk'ku said.


106                                   Tad Williams

"You are still the Queen's Hunter." From her lap she lifted a new helm of
gleaming white shaped like the head of a questing hound, eyes and lolling
tongued worked in some scarlet gem, the serried teeth daggers of ivory in
the gaping jaw. "And this time I will give to you a quarry such as no mortal has
ever hunted,t"
    A billow of radiance leaped in the Well of the Harp, splashing the high
pillars; a roar as of thunder rang through the chamber, so deep it seemed
to set the underpinnings of the mountain itself to shaking. Ingen Jegger
felt his spirit surge. He made a thousand silent promises to his wonderful
mistress.
    "But first you must sleep deeply and be healed," the silver mask said, '7'or
you have crossed Jhrther into the realms of death than mortals may usually go and
yet return. You will be made stronger, Jbr your coming task will be a hard one."
    The light abruptly vanished, as though a dark cloud had rolled over
him.

    The forest was still deep in night. After the shouting, the silence seemed
to ring in Deomoth's ears as burly Einskaldir helped him to his feet.
    "Usires on the Tree, look there," the Rimmersman said, panting. Still
stunned, Deornoth looked around, wondering what he had done that
would make Einskaldir stare so strangely.
 "Josua," the Rimmersman called, "come here!"
    The prince slid Naidel back into its sheath and stepped forward. Deornoth
could see the other members of the company pressing in.
    "For once they have not just struck and melted away," Josua said
grimly. "Deornoth, are you well?"
    The knight shook his head, still confused. "My head hurts," he said.
What were they all looking at?
    "It... it had a knife to my throat," Father Strangyeard said, wonderingly.
"Sir Deornoth saved me."
    Josua bent toward Deornoth, but surprised him by continuing down-
ward until he crouched on one knee. "Aedon save us," the prince said
softly.
    Deornoth looked down at last. On the ground by his feet was the
crumpled, black-garbed form of the Norn with whom he had struggled.
The moonlight played over the corpselike face, spatters of blood in dark
relief against the white skin. A wickedly slender knife was still clutched in
the Norn's pallid hand.
 "My God!" Deornoth said, and swayed.
    Josua leaned nearer to the body. "You struck a strong blow, old friend,"
he said, then his eyes widened and he sprang up. Naidel whicked out of its
scabbard once more.


                                  STONE OF FAREWELL                                                  107

     "He moved," Josua said, striving to keep his voice level. "The Norn is
 alive."
     "Not long," Einskaldir said, raising his axe. Josua's hand shot out, so
 that Naidel lay between the Rimmersman and his intended victim.
 "No." Josua motioned the others back. "It would be foolish to kill him."
 "It tried to kill us!" Isorn hissed. The duke's son had just returned,
 bearing a torch he had lit with his flint-stone. "Think of what they did to
 Naglimund."
    "I do not speak of mercy," Josua said, dropping the tip of his sword to rest
on the Norn's pale throat. "I speak of the chance to question a prisoner."
    As if from the pricking of his flesh, the Norn stirred. Several in the
company gasped.
  "You are too close, Josua!" Vorzheva cried. "Step away!"
    The prince turned a cold look on her but did not move. He lowered
Naidel's point a little, pushing it against the prisoner's breastbone. The
Norn's eyes fluttered open as he sucked a great rasp of breath past his
blooded lips.
    "Ai, Nakkiga," the Nora said hoarsely, flexing his spidery fingers,
"o'do 'tke stazho .... "
    "But he's heathen, Prince Josua," Isorn said. "He can't speak a human
tongue."
    Josua said nothing, but prodded again. The Norn's eyes caught the
torchlight, throwing back a strange violet reflection. The slitted gaze slid
up the blade of the sword balanced on his slender chest until it settled at
last on the prince.
    "I speak," the Norn said slowly. "I speak your tongue." His voice was
high and cold, brittle as a glass flute. "Soon it will be spoken only by the
dead." The creature sat up and swiveled his head, looking carefully all
around him. The prince's sword followed each movement. The Norn
seemed jointed in strange places, his motions fluid where a mortars would
be awkward, but elsewhere full of unexpected hitches. Several of those
watching started away, frightened that the stranger was strong enough to
move without show of pain, despite the bleeding ruin that had been his
nose and the marks he bore of numerous other wounds.
    "Gutrun, Vorzheva . . ." Josua spoke without looking away from the
prisoner. Beneath the web of drying blood, the Norn's face seemed to
glow like a moon. "You, too, Strangyeard," the prince said. "The harper
and Towser are alone. Go see to them and start a fire. Then make ready to
depart. There is no use in our trying to hide now."
"There never was, mortal man," said the thing on the ground.
Vorzheva visibly bit back a response to Josua's command. The two
women turned away. Father Strangyeard followed after them, making the
sign of the Tree and clucking worriedly.
 "Now, hell-wight, speak. Why do you follow us?" Though his tone


108                                   Tad Williams

was harsh, Deornoth thought he saw a sort of fascination on the prince's
face.
    "I will tell you nothing." The thin lips parted in a smirk. "Pitiful,
short-lived things. Are you not yet used to dying with your questions
unanswered?"
    Infuriated, Deornoth stepped forward and kicked at the thing's side
with his booted foot. The Norm grimaced, but showed no other sign of
pain. "You are a devil-spawn, and devils are masters of lies," Deornoth
snarled. His head hurt fiercely, and the sight of this grinning, bony creature
was almost too much to bear. He remembered them swarming through
Naglimund like maggots and felt his gorge rising.
    "Deornoth . . ." Josua said warningly, then addressed the prisoner once
more. "If you are so mighty, why do your fellows not slay us and be done
with it? Why waste your time on ones so much lower than you?"
    "We will not wait much longer, never fear." The Norn's taunting voice
took on a note of satisfaction. "You have caught me, but my fellows discov-
ered all that we need to know. You may as well offer up your death-
prayers to that little man-on-a-stick that you worship, for nothing will
stop us now."
    Now it was Einskaldir who moved with a growl toward the Norn.
"Dog! Blaspheming dog!"
    "Silence," Josua snapped. "He does it purposefully." Deornoth laid a
cautious hand on Einskaldir's muscled arm. One did not grab heedlessly at
the Rimmersman, who had a cold but swift temper. "Now," Josua said,
"what do you mean, 'discovered what you need to know'? What might
that be? Speak, or I shall let Einskaldir have you."
    The Norn laughed, the sound of wind in dry leaves, but Deornoth
thought he had seen a change in the purple eyes when Josua spoke. It seemed
the prince had struck close to some delicate spot. "Kill me, then--swiftly
or slowly," the prisoner taunted. "I will say no more. Your time---the
time of all mortals, shifty and annoying as insects---is nearly over. Kill me.
The Lightless Ones will sing of me in the lowest halls of Nakkiga. My
children will remember my name with pride."
    "Children?" lsorn's surprise was clear in his voice. The prisoner turned
a look of icy contempt onto the blond northerner, but did not speak,
    "But why?" Josua demanded. "Why should you ally yourself with
mortals? And what threat are we to you, far up in your northern home?
What does your Storm King gain from this madness?" The Norn only stared.
  "Speak, damn your pale soul to hell!"
 Nothing.
    Josua sighed. "Then what do we do with him?" he murmured, almost
to himself.
    "This!" Einskaldir stepped away from Deornoth's restraining arm and
lifted his axe. The Norn stared up at him for a silent heartbeat, angled face



STONE OF FAREWELL

109

 like a blood-smeared mask of ivory, before the Rimmersman brought the
 hand-axe around, shearing through the skull and smashing the prisoner
 back against the earth. The Norn's thin frame began to writhe, doubling
 over, straightening, then snapping forward once more as though he were
 hinged in the middle. A fine mist of blood sprayed from his head. The
 death-throes were as horribly monotonous as the contortions of a smashed
 cricket. After several moments, Deornoth had to turn away.
    "Curse you, Einskaldir,"Josua said at last, voice ragged with rage. "How
dare you? I did not tell you to do that!"
    "And if I didn't, then what?" Einskaldir said. "Take him with us? Wake
up with that grinning corpse-face over yours some night?" He seemed a
little less sure than he sounded, but his words were stiff with anger.
    "By the Good God, Rimmersman, can you never wait before you
strike? If you have no respect for me, what of your Master Isgrimnur,
who bade you obey me?" The prince leaned forward until his agonized
face was only a hand's breadth from Einskaldir's bristling dark beard. The
prince held Einskaldir's eye, as though trying to see something hidden,
Neither man spoke.
    Staring at his prince's profile, at Josua's moon-painted face so full of
fierceness and sorrow, Deornoth was reminded of a painting of Sir Camaris
riding to the first Battle of the Thrithings. King John's greatest knight had
worn just such a look, proud and desperate as a starving hawk. Deornoth
shook his head, trying to clear the shadows away. What a night of
madness this had become!
    Einskaldir turned aside first. "It was a monster," he grumbled. "Now it
is dead. Two of its fellows are wounded and driven away. I will go clean
the fairy blood from my sword."
    "First you will bury the body," Josua said, "Isorn, help Einskaldir.
Search the Norn's clothing for anything that might tell us more. God help
us, we know so little."
  "Bury it?" Isorn was respectful but dubious.
    "Let us not give away anything that might save us--including informa-
tion.'' Josua sounded tired of talking. "If the Norn's fellows do not find
the body, they may not know he is dead. They may wonder what he is
telling us."
    Isorn nodded without much conviction and bent to the unpleasant task.
Josua turned and took Deornoth by the arm.
  "Come," the prince said. "We must talk."
    They walked a little way from the clearing, staying within hearing of
the campsite. The shards of night sky visible through the thick trees had
gone dark blue, beginning to warm to dawn. A solitary bird whistled.
    "Einskaldir means well, Prince Josua," Deornoth said, breaking the
stillness between the two men. "He is fiery, impatient--but not a traitor."
 Josua turned to him in surprise. "Heaven save us, Deornoth, do you


110                                   Tad Williams

think I do not know? Why do you think I said so little? But Einskaldir
acted rashly--I would have wished to hear more from the Norn, though
the end would have to have been the same. I hate cold-blooded killing, but
what would we have done with the murderous creature? Still, Einskaldir
considers me too much a thinker to be a good warrior." His laugh was
melancholy. "He is probably correct." The prince raised his hand to still
Deomoth's response. "But that is not why I wanted to speak alone. Einskaldir
is my affair. No, I wanted to hear your thoughts on the Norn's words."
  "Which, Highness?"
    Josua sighed. "He said that his fellows had found what they wanted. Or
learned what they wished to know. What could that mean?"
  Deornoth shrugged. "My skull is still rattling, Prince Josua."
    "But you said yourself that there must be a reason that they haven't
'killed us." The prince sat down on the mossy trunk of a toppled tree,
motioning the knight to join him. The bowl of sky was turning lavender
overhead. "They send a walking dead man to come among us; they shoot
arrows but don't kill us, to prevent us from turning east--and now they
send a few of their creatures to sneak into our camp like thieves. What do
they want?"
    No answer would come, no matter how hard Deornoth thought. He
could not shake his memory free from the Norn's mocking smile. But there
had been another look, too, that momentary glimmer of unease...
    "They fear . . ." Deornoth said, feeling the idea very close, "... they
fear..."
  "The swords," Josua hissed. "Of course! What else would they fear?"
  "But we have no magical sword," Deornoth said.
    "Perhaps they do not know that," Josua said. "Perhaps that is one of the
virtues of Thorn and Minneyar--that they are invisible to the Norns'
magic." He slapped at his thigh. "Of course! They must be, or the Storm
King would have found them and destroyed them! How else could weap-
ons deadly to him still exist!?"
  "But why have they tried to prevent our going east?"
    The prince shrugged. "Who can say? We must think on this more, but I
believe it is the answer. They fear we already have one or both of the
swords and they are afraid to come against us until they know."
    Deornoth felt his heart sinking. "But you heard what the creature said.
They know now."
    Josua's smile faded. "True. Or at least they must be fairly sure. Still, it
is a piece of knowledge that might still work in our favor, somehow.
Somehow." He stood. "But they are no longer afraid to approach us. We
must travel even more swiftly. Come."
     Wondering how a company so injured and dispirited could make any
 greater haste, Dcornoth followed the prince back through the dawn light
 to camp.


7

Spreaufitu3 Fires

r'rlf_.. ~
               whee~g in the gr~y morning sky ba~e~, echoed
the creaking of~ne oarlocks. The rhythmic squeak, squeak, squeak of the

oars was like an insistent finger digging at her side. Miriamele felt her
anger building. At last, she turned on Cadrach in a fury. "You... you traitor!" she spat.
The monk goggled at her, his round face growing pale with alarm
"What?" Cadrach looked as though he would have liked to move away,
and quickly, but they were cramped together in the rowboat's narrow
stern. Lenti, StreSwe's sullen servitor, watched them in irritation from the
rowing bench where he and the other servant pulled languidly at the
handles. "My lady . . ." Cadrach began, "I don't . . ."
    His feeble denials only made her angrier. "Do you think I'm a fool?"
she snarled "I am slow to realize, but if I think long enough, I get there
The count called you Padreic--and he's not the first to call you by that
name!"
    "A confusion, lady. The other was a dying man, if you remember--
maddened by pain, his life leaking out on the Inniscrich . . ."
    "You swine,t And I suppose it's a coincidence that Stre~we knew I had
left the castle---practically before I knew I was going myself?. You have
had a fine time, haven't you? Pulling both ends of the rope, that's what
you've been doing, isn't it? First you took Vorzheva's gold to escort me,
then you've taken mine while we were on the road, borrowing for a jug of
wine here, cadging a meal there . . ."
 "I am only a poor man of God, my lady," tried Cadrach gamely.
    "Be quiet, you . . . you treacherous drunkard! And you took gold from
Count Stre~we, too, didn't you? You let him know I was coming--I
wondered why you kept sneaking away when we were first in Ansis
Pellip& And while I was prisoner, where were you? Run of the castle?
Suppers with the count?" She was so upset she could hardly speak. "And
 .  and you probably also passed the word on to whoever it is I'm being

111


112                                   Tad Williams

sent to now, didn't you? Didn't you! How can you wear religious robes?
Why doesn't God just . . . just kill you for your blasphemy? Why don't
you just burst into flames on the spot?" She stopped, choking on angry
tears, and tried to catch her breath.
    "Here now," Lenti said ominously, his single eyebrow creasing down-
ward toward his nose, "stop all this shouting. And don't you try any
tricks!"
  "Shut your mouth!" Miriamele told him.
    Cadrach thought he saw his chance. "That's right, sirrah, don't you get
to insulting the lady. By Saint Muirfath, I can't believe..."
    The monk never got to finish his sentence. With an inarticulate shout of
rage, Miriamele leaned into him and pushed hard. Cadrach huffed out a
surprised breath, waved his arms briefly trying to keep his balance, then
toppled into the Bay of Emettin's green waves.
    "Are you mad?" Lenti roared, dropping his oar and leaping upright.
Cadrach disappeared under a wash of jade water.
    Miriamele stood to shout after him. The boat rocked, dropping Lenti
back down into his seat; one of his blades slipped from his hands, diving
into the bay like a silvery fish. "You faithless rogue!" she screamed at the'
monk, who was not currently in view. "Damn you to hell!"
    Cadrach broke the surface, spewing a great plume of salty water. "I'll
drown!" he gurgled. "Drown! Help me!" He slid back under.
    "So drown, you traitor!" Miriamele shouted, then shrieked as Lenti grabbed
her arm and dragged her down onto her seat, twisting it cruelly in the
process.
  "Mad bitch!" he shouted.
"Let him die," she panted, struggling to pull free. "What do you care?"
He reached out and slapped her on the side of the head, bringing fresh
tears to her eyes. "Master said carry two to Nabban-side, you mad bitch.
Show up with one, that's the end of me."
    Meanwhile, Cadrach had bobbed up spluttering once more, thrashing
and making noises that indeed sounded as though they came from a
drowning man. Strelwe's other servant, wide-eyed, had continued to pull
at his oar, so that by lucky accident the little boat was now coming about,
turning toward where Cadrach splashed and shouted.
     The monk saw them coming, panic in his bulging eyes. He began to
 strain toward them, but his untutored movements dipped him forward so
 that his head sank beneath the waves once more. A moment later he was
 up again, the look of panic on his face even more raw.
     "Help!" he screeched breathlessly, flinging his arms about in a parox-
 ysm of horror. "Something's... ! Something's in here... !"
     "Aedon and the saints!" Lenti snarled, leaning over the side, fighting to
 keep his own balance. "What now, sharks?"
  Miriamele huddled sobbing in the bow, uncaring. Lenti snatched up the


STONE OF FAREWELL

113

tie-rope and flung it toward the monk. Cadrach did not see it at first as he
beat wildly against the water, but in a few moments his arm had become
tangled in one of the coils.
 "Grab it, you fool!" Lenti shouted. "Grab hold!"
    At last the monk did, grasping the rope with both hands. He was
hauled through the water toward the boat, legs kicking like a frog's. When
Lenti had pulled him close enough, the other servant let go of his oar and
leaned forward to help. After a couple of failed attempts and a great deal
of cursing they managed to heave his sodden weight up over the wale.
The rowboat pitched. Cadrach lay in the bottom, choking and vomiting
bay water.
    "Take your cloak and dry him off," Lenti told Miriamele as the monk
subsided at last into hoarse breathing. "If he goes and dies, I'll have you
swimming all the way to shore."
 She grudgingly complied.

    The brown and sable hills of Nabban's northeastern coast rose steadily
before them. The sun was climbing toward noon, burnishing the surface
of the bay with a fierce, coppery glare. The two men rowed, the boat
rocked back and forth, and the oarlocks creaked and creaked and creaked.
    Miriamele was still furious, but it had become a fiat, hopeless anger.
The eruption was over, the fires burning down to ashen coals.
    How could I have been so foolish? she wondered. I trusted him--worse, I was
even beginning to like him! I enjoyed his company, halfidrunken though it usually
was.
    Only a few moments before, as she had shifted position on the bench,
she had heard something clinking in the pocket of Cadrach's robe. When
removed, this proved to be a purse embossed with the seal of Count
Streiwe, half full of silver quinis-pieces and a pair of gold Imperators. This
indisputable proof of the monk's treachery momentarily brought back her
rage. She considered pushing him back overboard, suffering Lenti's pun-
ishment if necessary, but after a little deliberation she decided that she was
no longer angry enough to kill him. In fact, Miriamele was a little
surprised that her earlier fury had burned as hotly as it had.
    She looked down at the monk, who lay curled in exhausted, fitful sleep,
his head propped on the bench beside her. Cadrach's mouth was open, his
breath coming in little gasps as though even in his dreams he battled for
air. His pink face was becoming even pinker. Miriamele lifted her hand
and peered upward at the sun through shielding fingers. It had been a cold
summer, but here in the middle of the water the sun beat down mercilessly.
    Without thinking about it too much, she took her threadbare cloak and
draped it over Cadrach's forehead, shading his face. Lenti, watching
silently from the rowing bench, scowled and shook his head. In the bay
beyond his shoulder, Miriamele saw something smooth break the water,
then slip sinuously back into the deeps.

LIBRARY


114                                   Tad Williams

    For a while she watched the gulls and pelicans whirling through the air,
returning to the coastal rocks to land with a great back-flapping of wings.
The gulls' cold cries reminded her of Meremund, her childhood home on
the coast of Erkynland.
    I could stand on the southern wall there and watch the rivermen pushing up and
down the Gleniwent. From the western wall I could see the ocean. I was a
princess, trapped by my position, yet I had every thing I wanted. Now look at me.
  She snorted in disgust, occasioning another unpleasant stare from Lenti.
    Now l'm J~ee to adventure, she thought, and I'm more a prisoner than ever. I
go about in disguise, yet thanks to this traitorous monk, I am better-announced than
I ever was at court. People I hardly know deliver me .~om hand to hand like a
J~vorite trinket. And Meremund is lost to me Jbrever, unless . . .
  The wind ruffled her shorn hair. She felt quite hollow.
    Unless what? Unless my J~ther changes? He will never change. He has
destroyed Uncle Josua--killed Josua! Why should he ever turn back? Nothing
will ever be as it was. The only hope of things getting better died with Naglimund.
All their plans, the old Rimmersman Jarnauga's legends, the talk of magical
swords . . . and all the people who lived there--gone. So what is left? Unless
Father changes or dies, I will be a fugitive jbrever.
But he will never change. And zf he dies--what is left of me, I'll die, too.
Stating out at the Bay of Emettin's metallic sheen, she thought about
her father as he once had been, remembering the time when she had been
three years of age and he had first lifted her onto a horse. Mitiamele could
picture that moment as clearly as if it had been only days ago instead of
her whole life. Elias had grinned with pride as she clung, terrified, to what
seemed a monster's back. She had not fallen, and she had stopped crying
as soon as he swung her back down.
    How can one person, even a king, let such ugliness loose on the land as my
J~ther has? He loved me, once. Perhaps he still does--but he has poisoned my li~.
Now he seeks to poison all the world.
    The waves slapped as the rocks drew nearer, gold-capped by the late
morning sun.

    Lenti and the other servitor unshipped the oars, using them to guide the
boat between the craggy rocks that thrust up on every side. As they came
close to the shore and the water became more translucent, Miriamele again
saw something break the surface close by. There was a brief shimmer of
glossy gray before it vanished with a splash, then reappeared a moment
later on the far side of the boat, a long stone's throw away.
    Lenti saw her staring and turned to look over his shoulder. What he saw
brought a look of fear to his stolid face. After a muttered exchange, he and
his companion redoubled their efforts, hurrying the boat in toward shore.
  "What is it," the princess asked, "a shark?"
 Lenti did not look up. "Kilpa," he snapped, rowing hard.


STONE OF FAREWELL

115

    Miriamele stared, but now saw only low waves breaking into spray
against the rocks. "Kilpa in the Bay of Emettin?" she said incredulously.
"Kilpa never come in so far! They are deep-sea dwellers."
    "Not nowadays," Lenti growled. "Been deviling ships all along the
coast. Any fool knows so. Now be quiet!" He panted, pulling at the oars.
Disquieted, Miriamele continued to stare. Nothing else disturbed the bay's
placid surface.
    When the keel rasped on sand, Lenti and the other rower leaped out and
quickly dragged the boat up onto the beach. Together they lifted Cadrach
out and dumped him unceremoniously onto the ground, where he lay,
quietly moaning. Miriamele was left to shift for herself. She waded the
half-dozen steps with her monk's robe held high.
    A man in a priest's black cassock was picking his way down to the
beach by the steep cliff path. He reached the bottom and came striding
across the sand toward them.
    "I suppose this is the slave trader I am to be delivered to?" Miriamele
said in her frostiest tone as she squinted at the approaching figure. Lenti
and his companion, staring nervously at the bay, did not reply.
    "Ho, there!" the black-robed man called. His voice was loud and cheerful
above the sea's somnolent roar.
    Miriamele looked at him, then looked again, astonished. She took a
couple of steps toward the newcomer. "Father Dinivan?" she asked halt-
ingly. "Could it be you?"
    "Princess Miriamele!" he said happily. "Here you are. I am so glad."
His wide, homely smile made him look like a young boy, but the curly
hair around his shaven scalp was touched with gray. He dropped briefly to
a knee before rising to look her over carefully. "I wouldn't have known
you from much farther away than this. I was told you were traveling as a
boy--quite effective. And you've turned your hair black."
    Miriamele's mind was awhirl, but a great burden seemed abruptly lifted
from her spirit. Of all those who had visited her father's households in
Meremund and the Hayholt, Dinivan had been one of the few who had
been a real friend, giving her truth where others offered only flattery,
bringing her both outland gossip and good advice. Father Dinivan was
chief secretary to Lector Ranessin, the master of Mother Church, but he
had always been so humble and forthcoming that Miriamele often had to
remind herself of the exalted position he held.
    "But... what are you doing here?" she said at last. "Have you come
to... to what? To save me from the slave traders?"
    Dinivan laughed. "I am the slave trader, my lady." He tried to compose
a more serious expression, but had little luck. "'Slave traders'--Blessed
Usires, what did old Stre~we tell you? Well, time for that later." He
turned to Miriamele's captors. "You two. Here is your master's seal." He
held up a parchment with an "S" mark in red wax at the bottom. "You
may go back and give the count my thanks."


116                                   Tad Williams

 Lenti inspected the seal in a cursory way. He looked worried.
 "Well?" said the priest impatiently. "Is anything wrong?"
 "There's kilpa out there," Lenti declared mournfully.
    "There are kilpa everywhere in these evil times," Dinivan said, then
smiled charitably. "But it is midday, and you are two strong men. I think
you have little to fear. Are you armed?"
    Stre$we's servant drew himself up to his full height and stared imperi-
ously at the priest. "I have a knife," he said sternly.
  "Ohd, vo stetto," his companion echoed in Perdruinese.
    "Well, I'm sure you'll have no problems," Dinivan said reassuringly.
"The protection of the Aedon be on you." He made a desultory sign of
the Tree in their general direction before turning his back on them to
address Miriamele once more. "Let us go. We shall stay here tonight, but
then we must hurry. It is a good two days journey or more to the
Sancellan Aedonitis, where Lector Ranessin is anxious to hear your news."
    "The lector?" she said, astonished. "What does he have to do with
this?"
    Dinivan waved a placating hand, looking down on Cadrach, who lay on
his side, face shrouded in his sodden hood. "We will talk about this and
many other things soon. It appears that Stre~we told you even less than I
told him--not that I am surprised. He is a clever old jackal." The priest's
eyes narrowed. "What's wrong with your companionmhe is your com-
panion, am I right? Stre~we said there was a monk traveling with you."
"He almost drowned," Miriamele said flatly. "I pushed him overboard."
One of Dinivan's thick eyebrows shot up. "You did? The poor man!
Well, then your Aedonite duty is to help get him on his feet--unless you
fellows would like to lend a hand?" He turned back to the two servants,
who were wading gingerly back to the boat.
    "Can't," was Lenti's sullen reply. "Got to get back before night. Before
dark."
    "I thought as much. Oh, well, Usires gives us burdens out of His
love." Dinivan bent, catching Cadrach under the armpits. Dinivan's robe
tightened across his broad, muscular back as he wrestled the monk into a
sitting position. "Come now, Princess," he said, then stopped as the
monk groaned. The priest stared at Cadrach's face. An unrecognizable
expression crept onto Dinivan's thick features.  "It's... it's Padreic," he said quietly.
      "You, too?? Miriamele exploded. "What has this idiot been doing? Did
he send a crier to every town between Nascadu and Warinsten?"
  Dinivan was still staring, as if quite dumbfounded. "What?"
    "Stre~we knew him also--it was Cadrach here who sold me out to the
count! So he told you of my leaving Naglimund as well?"
    "No, princess, no." The priest shook his head. "This is the first I knew
about him being with you. I haven't seen him for years." Reflectively,


                             STONE OF FAREWELL                                          117

he made the sign of the Tree. "Truth to tell, I thought he was dead."
    "Usires in His suffering!" Miriamele swore. "Will someone tell me what
this is all about?!"
    '"We must get to sheltermand privacy. The beacon tower on the
cliff top is ours tonight." He pointed to a stone spire on the headland west
of where they stood. "But it will be no festival game getting him there if
he cannot walk."
    "I'll make him walk," Miriamele promised grimly. Together they bent
to hoist mumbling Cadrach onto his feet.

    The tower was smaller than it looked from the beach, a squat pile of
masonry with a wooden hoarding cobbled around the uppermost story.
The door was tight-swollen by the ocean air, but Dinivan wrenched it
open and they entered, supporting the monk between them. The circular
room was empty but for a rough-hewn table and chair and a ragged carpet
that had been rolled and tied, then left to lie at the base of the stone
staircase. Sea air swirled through the unshuttered window. Cadrach, who
had not spoken during the walk up the cliff path, staggered a few paces
away from the door and sank down onto the wooden floor, laying his
head on the carpet and falling quickly back into sleep.
    "He is exhausted, poor man," Dinivan said. He took a lamp from the
table and lit it from another already burning, then stopped to look care-
fully at the monk. "He has changed, but perhaps some of it is the result of
his mishap."
  "He was in the water a long time," Miriamele said, a little guiltily.
    "Ah, well, then." Dinivan stood up. "We shall leave him to sleep and
go upstairs. There is much to talk about. Have you eaten?"
    "Not since last night." Miriamele was suddenly ravenous. "I need
water, too."
    "All shall be yours," Dinivan smiled. "Go on up. I am going to get
your companion out of these wet clothes, then I will join you."
    The room upstairs was better furnished, with a cot, two chairs, and a
large chest that stood against the wall. A door, swinging gently, led out
onto the hoarding. On top of the chest sat a plate covered with a kerchief.
Miriamele lifted the cloth to reveal cheese, fruit, and three round loaves of
brown bread.
    "The grapes grown over the hill in Teligure are really splendid," the
priest said from the doorway. "Help yourself."
    Miriamele fell to without having to be invited again. She took a whole
loaf and a lump of cheese, then pulled loose a large bunch of grapes and
retired to one of the chairs. Pleased, Dinivan watched her eat for a
moment, then disappeared down the stairs. He returned shortly with a
sloshing pitcher.
 "The well is nearly empty, but the water is good," he said. "Well,


