The Stone of Farewell (4 page)

“Butter!”

“Marvelous are the ways of all Mezumiiru's grandchildren,” Jiriki intoned 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.

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's Jiriki?” 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.

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: Simon'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 now—and 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 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 like 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 liked 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' important, 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 with Jiriki 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... like he's thinkin' on something' grand, d‘ye see? Somethin' 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.

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-bellied, 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 UbLingit,”a
voice said beside him, “—the House of the Ancestor.”

Simon jumped a little 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, Haestan.”

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 Haestan, who had not been trained, as Simon had, on the maddening circularities of Doctor Morgenes?