The Stone of Farewell (13 page)

“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 nothing.' ” 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.

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 not alive. Ineluki is his name. Have you heard of him? Ineluki? He is
terrible!”

He leaned forward, his balance abruptly uncertain, and goggled at the alarmed faces of Herder and Huntress and their daughter Sisqinanamook.

“He is terrible ...” he said again, staring straight into the troll maiden's 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 a rat. Suddenly he was tumbling forward, down a long, spinning shaft. The dark eyes of Sisqinanamook deepened and grew, then changed. A moment later, the troll woman was gone, her parents, Simon's friends, and all of Chidsik ub Lingit vanished with her. But the eyes remained, transmuted now into another grave stare that slowly filled his field of vision. These brown eyes belonged to one of his own kind—the child who had haunted his dreams ... a child he finally recognized.

Leleth,
he thought.
The little girl we left in the house in the forest, because her wounds were so awful. The girl we left with ...

“Simon,”
she said, her voice reverberating oddly in his head,
“this is my last opportunity. My house will soon fall and I will flee into the forest—but first there is something I must tell you.”

Simon had never heard the girl Leleth speak. The reedy tones seemed fitting for a child her age—but something about the voice was wrong: it was too solemn, too articulate and heavy with self-knowledge. The pace and the phrasing sounded like a grown woman's, like ...

“Geloë?”
he said. Although he did not think he actually spoke, he heard his voice echo out through some empty place.

“Yes. I have no time left. I could not have reached you, but the child Leleth has abilities ... she is like a burning-glass through which I can narrow my will. She is a strange child, Simon.”
Indeed, the nearly expressionless child's face that spoke the words did seem somehow different than that of any other mortal child. There was something in the eyes that saw through him, beyond him, as though he himself were insubstantial as mist.

“Where
are
you?”

Simon felt a chilly twist of fear in his stomach.
“And Miriamele?”

“What? Where is this stone?”
Naglimund fallen? Simon felt despair settle into his heart. Then all was truly lost.
“Where is the stone, Geloë?”

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. Geloë's parting words floated in his head.

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.

“Geloë 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.

Sunlight
filtered through the swollen clouds, falling mutedly on a great part 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 of their helms like men who feared to be recognized.

Not all appeared so dismayed. Earl Fengbald, soon to be a duke, rode at the head of the king's party beneath Elias' green and sable dragon-banner and his own silver falcon. Fengbald's long black hair spilled down his back, held only by a scarlet band knotted around his temples. He smiled and waved a gauntleted fist in the air, eliciting cheers from the several 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 beyond doubt that the siege of Naglimund had changed everything.

He had always envisioned the day when his old comrade Elias would reign as king and Guthwulf would stand at his side. Well, Elias was king 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 notice ... or too ambitious to let it bother him.

Guthwulf had shorn his graying hair close to his head before the siege had started. Now his helmet fit loosely. Even though he was a strong man still in the prime of his health, he felt almost as though he were shrinking away inside of his armor, becoming smaller and smaller.

Was he the only one uneasy, he wondered? Perhaps he had grown soft 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 fortnight ago his heart had beaten very swiftly, but that had been the racing pulse of exhilaration, not of fear. He had laughed as his enemies had swept down 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 unsettling 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, Guthwulf 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 blood—in such ink were His intentions written, a philosopher had once said. But, Usires curse it, this was different, was it not?

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.