The Stone of Farewell (24 page)

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 invisible 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 unmitigated 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 discovery 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 failed me, mortal,”
she said at last.
“But know this: I am not unpleased. I have learned many useful 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.

“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!”

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.

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 Deornoth'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 downward 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.

“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 Norn 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 mortal's 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 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 discovered 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?” Isorn'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 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 information.” 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.”