The Stone of Farewell (112 page)

As she grew, becoming as tall as a man—but none the less comely for it—Eolair had watched her also become steadily more reserved, only occasionally showing the flashes of girlishness which had so delighted him before. She seemed to turn inward, like a rosebush balked by an overhanging roof that coiled in on itself until its own thorns rubbed its stems raw. She still reserved special attention for Eolair, but that attention was more and more confusing, more and more made up of awkward silences and her angry self-recriminations.

For a while he had thought she cared for him as more than just a friend of her family and distant kinsman. He had wondered whether two such solitary folk could ever find their way together—Eolair, for all his easy speech and cleverness, had always felt that the best part of himself was hidden far beneath the surface, just as his quiet hill-keep at Nad Mullach stood remote from the bustle of the Taig. But even as he had finally begun to think in earnest about Maegwin—even as his admiration for her honesty and for her impatience with nonsense had begun to ripen into something deeper—she had turned cold to him. She seemed to have decided that Eolair was only another of the legion of idlers and flatterers that surrounded King Lluth.

One long afternoon in eastern Utanyeat, as the snow stung his face and he wandered far away in thought, he suddenly wondered:
Was I wrong? Did she care for me all that time?
It was a horrifying thought, because it suddenly turned the world he knew on its head and gave vastly different meaning to everything that had transpired between them since Maegwin had become a woman.

After turning the idea over in his head for a long hour, he put it away again. It was too uncomfortable to consider any longer here in the middle of nowhere, with months or more between now and when he could see her again.

And she had sent him away in anger, had she not?

The wind picked restlessly at the unsettled snow.

 

He rode past Ach Samrath on a morning when the storm had abated somewhat, stopping his horse on a rise above the ancient battlefield where Prince Sinnach and ten thousand of his Hernystirmen had been destroyed by Fingil of Rimmersgard and the treachery of the Thrithings-lord Niyunort. As on the few other occasions he had visited this site, Eolair felt a shiver climb through him as he looked down at the great, flat field, but this time it was not prompted by the grisly past. With the freezing wind on his face and the cold, blank face of the north staring down at him, he suddenly realized that by the time this new and greater war had ended—whether on a battlefield or beneath a remorseless tide of black winter—it might be in a frenzy of death that would make Ach Samrath seem a petty dispute.

He rode on, his anger turning to ice inside him. Who had set this great thing in motion? Who had set this evil wheel to turning? Had it been Elias, or his pet serpent Pryrates? If so, there should be a special Hell prepared for them. Eolair only hoped he would be around to see them sent there—maybe on the end of Prester John's Bright-Nail, if the subterranean dwarrows spoke rightly.

 

As Eolair came to the edge of Aldheorte, he reverted once more to night riding. The storm's teeth seemed a little duller here in Elias' realm, only a dozen leagues from the outskirts of Erchester, and he also thought it safer not to count on the infrequency of meeting other travelers any longer—here, that infrequent other traveler was likely to be one of the High King's Erkynguard.

Beneath the shadow of the great wood, the silent, snow-blanketed farmlands seemed to wait apprehensively for whatever might come next, as though this storm were only the precursor of some darker deed. Eolair knew that these were his own feelings, but also felt strongly that they were not his alone: a sense of dread hung over Erkynland, filling the air like a terrible, will-sapping fog. The few lone farmers and woodsmen whose wagons he saw on the road did not respond to his greetings except to make the sign of the Tree as they passed him on the moonless roads, as though Eolair might be some demon or walking dead man. But their torches revealed that it was their own faces that had gone slack and pale as the masks of corpses, as though the fearful winds and constant snow had leached the very life from them.

He approached Thisterborg. The great hill stood only a few leagues from Erchester's gates, and was the closest he would come to the Hayholt—from which, on certain of the blackest nights, he could almost feel Elias' sleepless malice burning like a torch in a high tower. It was only the High King, he reminded himself, a mortal man whom he had once respected, although never liked. Whatever mad plans Elias had made, whatever dreadful bargains, he was still only a man.

Thisterborg's peak seemed to flicker as the count drew nearer, as though high on the hillcrest great watchfires burned. Eolair wondered if Elias had made it a guard post, but could think of no reason why. Did the High King fear some invasion from the ancient forest, the Aldheorte? It mattered little, in any case. Eolair was firmly resolved to circle Thisterborg on the far side from Erchester, and felt no urge whatsoever to investigate the mysterious lights. The black hill had an evil reputation that extended back far beyond the days of even Elias' father, King John. Stories about Thisterborg were many, none of them pleasant to hear. In such days as these, Eolair wished he could avoid coming any closer than a league or so, but the forest—another dubious place to be at night—and the walls of Erchester prevented such a judiciously wide swing.

He had just started around the north of the hill, his mount picking its way through the ever-thickening trees of Aldheorte's fringe, when he felt a wave of fear sweep over him that was unlike anything he had ever experienced. His heart hammered and a chill sweat broke out on his face, then turned almost immediately to fragile ice; Eolair felt like a fieldmouse that, too late for escape, suddenly perceived the stooping hawk. He had to restrain himself from digging in his spurs and riding madly in whatever direction he was already facing. He whirled, looking wildly for whatever might be the cause of such dreadful terror, but could see nothing.

At last he slapped his horse's flank and rode a short distance farther into the shielding trees. Whatever had caused him to feel this way, it seemed a product of the unprotected snows rather than the shadowy forest.

The storm was much less fierce here, as it had been since he had entered Aldheorte's lee: but for a sprinkling of snow, the sky was clear. A vast yellow moon hung in the eastern sky, turning all the landscape to a sickly shade of bone. The Count of Nad Mullach looked up at the looming bulk of Thisterborg, wondering if that could be the source of his sudden fright, but could see or hear nothing extraordinary. A part of him wondered if he had not been riding too long alone with his morbid thoughts, but that part was easily ignored. Eolair was a Hernystirman. Herynstiri remembered.

A thin sound, an unidentifiable but persistent scraping, began to make itself heard. He looked down from secretive Thisterborg and turned his gaze westward across the snows, toward the direction from which he had come. Something was moving slowly across the white plain.

The chill of fear grew deeper, spreading through him like a prickling frost. As his horse moved uncomfortably, Eolair put a trembling hand on its neck; the beast, as if it perceived his own terror, suddenly became very still. Their twin plumes of breath were the only moving things in the shadow of the trees.

The scraping grew louder. Eolair could now see the shapes moving closer over the snows, a mass of luminous white followed by a lump of blackness. Then, with the stark unreality of a nightmare, the gleaming shapes came clear.

It was a team of white goats, shaggy pelts glowing as though with captured moonlight. Their eyes were red as embers, and their heads seemed somehow gravely wrong: when he thought of it afterward he could never say why, except that the shapes of their hairless muzzles seemed to suggest some kind of unpleasant intelligence. The goats, nine in all, drew behind them a great black sled; it was the sound of the runners crunching through the snow that he had heard. Seated on the sled was a hooded figure that even across a distance of some hundred cubits seemed too large. Several other, smaller black-robed figures marched solemnly alongside, hoods tilted downward like monks in meditation.

An almost uncontrollable horror ran up Eolair's spine. His horse had turned to stone beneath him, as if fright had stopped its heart and left it dead upon its feet. The ghastly procession scraped past, agonizingly slow, silent but for the noise of the sled. Just as the robed figures were about to vanish into the darkness of Thisterborg's lowest slopes, one of the hooded shapes turned, showing Eolair what he fancied was a flash of skeletal white face, black holes that might have been eyes. The part of his shrieking thoughts that was still coherent thanked the gods of his and all other peoples for the shadows of the forest's fringe. The hooded eyes turned away at last. The sled and its escort vanished into the snowy woods of Thisterborg.

Eolair stood a long time, allowing himself to tremble, but did not move from the spot until he was sure it was safe. His teeth had been so tightly clenched that his jaws ached. He felt as though he had been stripped raw and tumbled down a long black hole. When he dared to move at last, he threw himself onto his horse's neck and galloped away into the east as swiftly as he could. His mount, eager as he, needed no spurs, no crop. They whirled away in a cloud of snow.

As Eolair fled Thisterborg and its mysteries, running eastward beneath the mocking moon, he knew that everything he had feared was true, and that there were things in the world that were worse even than his fears.

Ingen Jegger stood beneath the spreading arms of a black hemlock, unmindful of the bitter wind or the frost growing in his close-cropped beard. But for the impatient life in his pale blue eyes, he might have been a luckless traveler, frozen to death waiting for a morning's warmth that came too late.

The huge white hound crouching in the snow at his feet stirred, then made an inquiring sound like the scrape of rusty hinges.

“Hungry, Niku'a?” A look almost of fondness ran across Ingen's taut features. “Quiet. Soon, you will have your fill.”

Motionless, Ingen watched and listened, sifting the night like a whiskered beast of prey. The moon crept from one gap in the overhanging trees to another. The forest, but for the wind, was silent.

“Ah.” Satisfied, he took a few steps and shook the snow from his cloak. “Now, Niku'a. Call your brothers and sisters. Howl up the Stormspike pack! It is time for the last chase.”

Niku‘a leaped up, quivering with excitement. As if it had understood Ingen's every word, the great hound trotted out into the middle of the clearing before settling back on its haunches and lifting its snout to the sky. Powerful throat muscles convulsed, and a coughing howl shattered the night. Even as the first echoes died, Niku'a's strident voice burst out again, hacking and baying. The very branches of the trees trembled.

They waited, Ingen's gloved hand resting on the dog's wide head. Time passed. Niku'a's cloudy white eyes gleamed as the moon slid along between the trees. At last, as night's coldest hour crept in, the faint cries of hounds came sweeping down the wind.

The belling rose until it filled the forest. A host of white shapes appeared from the darkness, filtering into the clearing like four-legged ghosts. The Stormspike hounds wove in and out among the tree roots, narrow, sharklike heads questing and sniffing. Starlight gleamed on muzzles smeared with blood and spittle. Niku'a went among them, nipping, snarling, until at last the whole pack crouched or lay in the snow around Ingen Jegger, red tongues lolling.

The Queen's Huntsman calmly looked over his strange congregation, then picked his snarling, dog-faced helm from the ground.

“Too long have you been roaming free,” he hissed, “harrying the forest fringes, stealing babies like kennel cubs, running down foolish travelers for the joy of the chase. Now your master has come back. Now you must do what you were bred to do.” The milky eyes followed him as he moved to his horse, which waited with supernatural patience beneath the hemlock. “But this time
I
will lead, not you. It is a strange chase, and Ingen alone has been taught the scent.” He pulled himself up into the saddle. “Run silently.” He lowered the helmet onto his head, so that hound looked at hounds. “We take death to the Queen's enemies.”

A low growling rose from the dogs as they rose and came together, sliding against one another, snapping at each other's faces and tails in fierce anticipation. Ingen spurred his horse forward, then turned. “Follow!” he cried. “Follow to death and blood!”