The Stone of Farewell (44 page)

As Binabik relayed his words, Sisqi stared at Simon, her eyes intent and serious. When the troll had finished, Sisqi bowed her head toward them, stiff and prideful. Simon and Sludig did the same. The other Qanuc pressed forward, touching those who were about to leave as though to send something with them. Simon found himself surrounded by small, black-haired heads, and again had to remind himself that the trolls were not children, but mortal men and women who loved and fought and died just as bravely and seriously as any knight of Erkynland. Callused fingers squeezed his hand and many things that sounded kind were said to him in words he could not understand.

Sisqi and Binabik had wandered off from the others, back toward the sleeping cave. When they got there, Sisqi ducked in, emerging a moment later with a long spear in her hands, its shaft busy with carvings.

“Even if they are not.”
Binabik tried to smile, but could not. He took the spear from her and rested it against the facing of the cave.
“When we meet again, may it be granted that it is beneath no shadow. I will hold you in my heart, Sisqi.
”

“Hold me against you now,”
she said quietly, and they stepped forward into each other's arms.
“Blue Mud Lake is cold this year.”

“I will be back ...”
Binabik began.

Their faces came together, vanishing as their hoods touched each other, and they stood that way for a long time. They were both trembling.

It
was often said that of all the lands of men in Osten Ard, secrets ran deepest in Hernystir. Not that the land itself was hidden, like the fabled Trollfells lurking beyond the icy fence of the White Waste, or the land of the Wrannamen, shrouded in treacherous swamps. The secrets Hernystir kept were hidden in the hearts of its people, or below its sunny meadows, deep in the earth.

Of all mortal men, the Hernystiri once had known and loved the Sithi best. They learned much from them—although the things they had learned were now mentioned only in old ballads. They had also traded with the Sithi, bringing back to their own grassy country articles of workmanship beyond anything the finest smiths and craftsmen of Imperial Nabban could produce. In return, the Hernystirmen offered their immortal allies the fruits of the earth—nightblack malachite, ilenite and bright opal, sapphire, cinnabar, and soft, shiny gold—all painstakingly mined from the thousand tunnels of the Grianspog Mountains.

The Sithi were gone now, vanished absolutely from the earth as far as most men knew or cared. Some of the Hernystiri knew better. It had been centuries since the Fair Ones had fled their castle Asu'a, deserting the last of the Nine Cities accessible to mortal man. Most mortals had forgotten the Sithi entirely, or saw them only through the distorting veil of old stories. But among the Hernystiri, an open-hearted and yet secretive folk, there were still a few who looked at the dark holes that pitted the Grianspog and remembered.

Eolair was not particularly fond of caves. His childhood had been spent upon the grasslands in the meadows of western Hernystir, at the conjoining of the Inniscrich and the Cuimnhe rivers. As Count of Nad Mullach, he had ruled over that territory; later, in service to his king, Lluth ubh-Llythinn, he had traveled to all the great cities and courts of Osten Ard, carrying out Hernystir's wishes beneath the lights of countless lamps and the skies of every nation.

Thus, although his bravery was questioned by no one, and though his oath to King Lluth meant he would follow Lluth's daughter Maegwin to the fires of perdition if that were his duty, he was not altogether pleased to find himself and his people living deep in the rock of the mighty Grianspog.

 

“Bagba bite me!” Eolair cursed. A drop of burning pitch had fallen on his sleeve, scorching his arm through the thin cloth in the time it took him to put it out. The torch was guttering and would not last much longer. He considered lighting the second, but that would mean it was time to turn back; he was not ready to do that. He briefly weighed the risks of finding himself stuck without light in an unfamiliar tunnel deep in the bowels of the earth, then cursed again, quietly. If he had not been such a hasty idiot, he might have remembered to bring his flints with him. Eolair did not like making that sort of mistake. Too many errors of such an obvious sort and one's luck would at last run out.

His sleeve extinguished, he turned his attention back to the forking of the tunnel, squinting at the floor in the vain hope of seeing something that would help him decide which way to go. Seeing nothing, he hissed in exasperation.

“Maegwin!”
he called, and heard his voice go rolling out into darkness, echoing down the tunnels. “My lady, are you there?”

The echoes died. Eolair stood in silence with a dying torch and wondered what to do.

It was painfully evident that Maegwin knew her way about this underground maze far better than he did, so perhaps his concern was misplaced. Surely there were no bears or other animals dwelling this far in the depths, or they would have made themselves apparent by now. The tattered remainder of Hernysadharc's citizens had already spent a fortnight in the mountain deeps, building a new home for an unhomed people among the bones of the earth. But there were other things to fear down here beside wild beasts; Eolair could not so lightly dismiss danger. Strange creatures walked in the heights of the mountains, and there had been mysterious deaths and disappearances all across the face of the land long before Skali of Kaldskryke's army came at King Elias' bidding to put down the rebellious Hernystirmen.

Other, more prosaic dangers might await as well: Maegwin could fall and break a leg, or tumble into an underground river or lake. Or she might overestimate her own knowledge of the caverns and wander lost and lightless until she died from starvation.

There was nothing to do but go on. He would walk a short way farther, but turn to go back before his torch was half-consumed. That way, by the time darkness overcame him he should be within hailing distance of the caverns that now housed the greatest remnant of the Hernystiri nation-in-exile.

 

Eolair lit his second torch with the smoldering remains of the first, then used the smoking butt of the expired brand to mark the wall at the forking of the tunnels with the signature runes of Nad Mullach. After a moment's consideration he chose the wider of the two ways and started forward.

This tunnel, like the one he had just left, had once been part of the mines that crisscrossed the Grianspog. At this depth within the mountains it knifed through solid rock. A moment's thought brought home the unimaginable labor that must have gone into its making. The cross-timbers that braced it up were broad as the trunks of the greatest trees! Eolair could not help admiring the careful but heroic work of the vanished workmen—his and Maegwin's ancestors—who had burrowed their way through the very stuff of the world to bring beautiful things back to the light.

The old tunnel slanted downward. The bobbing torch shone on strange, dim marks scratched into the walls. These tunnels were long-deserted, but still there seemed an expectant air to them, as though they waited for some imminent return. The sound of Eolair's boots on the stone seemed loud as a god's heartbeat, so that the Count of Nad Mullach could not help but think of Black Cuamh, the master of deep places. The earth-god suddenly seemed very real and very near, here in a darkness the sun had never touched since Time's beginning.

Slowing to look more closely at the shallow carvings, Eolair suddenly realized that many of the curious shapes scratched on the walls were crude pictures of hounds. He nodded as understanding came. Old Criobhan had once told him that the miners of elder days called Black Cuamh “Earthdog,” and left him offerings in the farthest tunnels so that he would grant his protection against falling rocks or bad air. These carvings were pictures of Cuamh surrounded by the runes of miner's names, tokens that begged the god's favor. Other offerings implored the help of Cuamh's servants, the deep-delving dwarrows, supernatural beings presumed to grant favors and wealthy ore-veins to lucky miners.

Eolair took the snuffed torch and made his initials again beneath a round-eyed hound.

Maegwin. Now there was a distressing thought. Had she no feeling for her responsibilities? Her father and brother were dead. The late king's wife Inahwen was little older than Maegwin herself and far less capable. Lluth's heritage was in the princess' hands—and what was she doing with it?

Eolair had not objected so much to the idea of moving deeper into the caverns: summer had brought no respite from the cold or from Skali's armies, and the slopes of the Grianspog Mountains were not the kind of place to last out a siege of either sort. The Hernystiri who had survived the war were scattered throughout the farthest wildernesses of Hernystir and the Frostmarch, but a large and important part was here with the shreds of the king's household. This was indeed where the kingdom would endure or fail: it was time to make it a more permanent and defensible home.

What
had
worried Eolair, though, was Maegwin's wild fascination with the depths of the earth, with moving ever deeper into the mountain's heart. For days now, long after the shifting of the camps was finished, Maegwin had been wandering away on unspecified errands, disappearing into remote and unexplored caverns for hours at a stretch, returning at sleeping-time with her face and hands dirty and her eyes full of a preoccupation that looked much like madness. Old Criobhan and the others asked her not to go, but Maegwin only drew herself up and coldly declaimed that they had no right to question Lluth's daughter. If she was needed to lead the people in defense of their new home, she said, or to tend the wounded, or to make decisions of policy, she would be there. The rest of the time was her own. She would use it as she saw fit.