The Stone of Farewell (5 page)

“Is this where the king of the trolls lives?” he asked aloud.

“And the queen of the trolls, as well,” Jiriki nodded. “Although they are not really called a king and queen in the Qanuc language. It would be closer to say the Herder and Huntress.”

“Kings, queens, princes, and none of them are what they are called,” Simon grumbled. He was tired and sore and cold. “Why is the cave so big?”

The Sitha laughed quietly. His pale lavender hair fluttered in the sharp wind. “Because if the cave were smaller, young Seoman, they would doubtless have found another place to be their House of the Ancestor instead. Now we should go inside—and not only so that you can escape the cold.”

Jiriki led them between two of the centermost statues, toward flickering yellow light. As they passed between pillarlike legs, Simon looked up to the eyeless faces beyond the polished bulges of the statues' great stone bellies. He was reminded again of the philosophies of Doctor Morgenes.

He felt a twinge of pain along his face, then a needle of cold in his gut. The Doctor, as was so often the case, had spoken nothing but the truth.

 

Inside, the great cavern was full of trolls and dense with the sweetly sour odors of oil and fat. A thousand yellow lights blazed.

All around the craggy, high-ceilinged stone room, in wall-niches and in the very floor, pools of oil bloomed with fire. Hundreds of such lamps, each with its floating wick like a slender white worm, gave the cavern a light that far outshone the gray day outside. Hide-jacketed Qanuc filled the room, an ocean of black-haired heads. Small children sat pickaback, like seagulls floating placidly atop the waves.

At the room's center an island of rock protruded above the sea of troll folk. There, on a raised stone platform hewn from the very stuff of the cavern floor, two smallish figures sat in a pool of fire.

It was not exactly a pool of pure flame, Simon saw a moment later, but a slender moat cut into the gray rock all the way around, filled with the same burning oil that fueled the lamps. The two figures at the center of the ring of flames reclined side by side in a sort of hammock of ornately-figured hide bounded by thongs to a frame of ivory. The pair nested unmoving in the mound of white and reddish furs. Their eyes were bright in their round, placid faces.

“She is Nunuuika and he is Uammannaq,” Jiriki said quietly, “—they are the masters of the Qanuc ...”

Even as he spoke, one of the two small figures gestured briefly with a hooked staff. The vast, packed horde of troll folk drew back to either side, pressing themselves even closer together, forming an aisle that stretched from the stone platform to the place where Simon and his companions stood. Several hundred small, expectant faces turned toward them. There was much whispering. Simon stared down the open length of cavern floor, abashed.

“Seems clear enough,” Haestan growled, giving him a soft shove. “Go on, then, lad. ”

“All of us,” Jiriki said. He made one of his oddly-articulated gestures to indicate that Simon should lead the way.

Both the echoing whispers and the scent of cured hides seemed to increase as Simon made his way toward the king and queen...

—Or the Herdsman and Huntress,
he reminded himself.
Or whatever.

The air in the cavern suddenly seemed stiflingly thick. As he struggled to get a deep breath he stumbled and would have fallen had not Haestan caught at the back of his cloak. When he reached the dais he stood for a moment staring at the floor, struggling with dizziness, before looking up to the figures on the platform. The lamplight glared into his eyes. He felt angry, although he didn't know at whom. Hadn't he more or less just gotten out of bed today for the first time? What did they expect? That he would leap right out and slay some dragons?

The startling thing about Uammannaq and Nunuuika, he decided, was that they looked so much alike, as though they were twins. Not that it wasn't instantly obvious which was which: Uammannaq, on Simon's left, had a thin beard that hung from his chin, knotted with red and blue thongs into a long braid. His hair was braided as well, held in intricate loops upon his head with combs of black, shiny stone. As he worried at his beard gently with small, thick fingers, his other hand held his staff of office, a thick, heavily carved ram-rider's spear with a crook at one end.

His wife—if that was the way things worked in Yiqanuc—held a straight spear, a slender, deadly wand with a stone point sharpened to translucency. She wore her long black hair high on her head, held in place with many combs of carved ivory. Her eyes, gleaming behind slanting lids in a plump face, were flat and bright as polished stone. Simon had never had a woman look at him in quite that cold and arrogant way. He remembered that she was called Huntress, and felt out of his depth. By contrast, Uammannaq seemed far less threatening. The Herder's heavy face seemed to sag in loose lines of drowsiness, but there was still a canny edge to his glance.

After the brief moment of mutual inspection, Uammannaq's face creased in a wide yellow grin, his eyes nearly disappearing in a cheerful squint. He lifted his two palms toward the companions, then pressed his small hands together and said something in guttural Qanuc.

“He says you are welcome to Chidsik Ub Lingit and to Yiqanuc, the mountains of the trolls,” Jiriki translated. Before he could say more, Nunuuika spoke up. Her words seemed more measured than Uammannaq's, but were no more intelligible to Simon. Jiriki listened to her carefully.

“The Huntress also extends' her greetings. She says you are quite tall, but unless she is very mistaken in her knowledge of the Utku people, you seem young for a dragon-slayer, despite the white in your hair.
Utku
is the troll word for lowlanders,” he added quietly.

Simon looked at the two royal personages for a moment. “Tell them that I'm pleased to have their welcome, or whatever should be said. And please tell them that I didn't slay the dragon—likely only wounded it—and that I did it to protect my friends, just as Binabik of Yiqanuc did for me many other times.”

When he finished the long sentence he was momentarily out of breath, bringing a rush of dizziness. The Herder and Huntress, who had been watching curiously as he spoke—both had frowned slightly at the mention of Binabik's name—now turned expectantly to Jiriki.

The Sitha paused for a moment, considering, then rattled off a long stream of thick trollish speech. Uammannaq nodded his head in a puzzled way. Nunuuika listened impassively. When Jiriki had finished, she glanced briefly at her consort, then spoke again.

Judging by her translated reply, she might not have heard Binabik's name at all. She complimented Simon on his bravery, saying that the Qanuc had long held the mountain Urmsheim—
Yijarjuk,
she called it—as a place to be avoided at all costs. Now, she said, perhaps it was time to explore the western mountains again, since the dragon, even if it had survived, had most likely disappeared into the lower depths to nurse its wounds.

Uammannaq seemed impatient with Nunuuika's speech. As soon as Jiriki finished relaying her words the Herder responded with some of his own, saying that now was hardly the time for such adventures, after the terrible winter just passed, and with the evil
Croohokuq
—the Rimmersmen—so malevolently active. He hastened to add that of course Simon and his companions, the other lowlander and the esteemed Jiriki, should stay as long as they wished, as honored guests, and that if there was anything he or Nunuuika could grant them to ease their stay, they had only to ask.

Even before Jiriki finished converting these works to the Westerling speech, Simon was shifting his weight from one foot to the other, anxious to respond.

“Yes,” he told Jiriki, “there is something they can do. They can free Binabik and Sludig, our companions. Free our friends, if you would do us a favor!” he said loudly, turning to the fur-swaddled pair before him, who regarded him with incomprehension. His raised voice caused some of the trolls crowded around the stone platform to murmur uneasily. Simon dizzily wondered if he had gone too far, but for the moment was beyond caring.

“Seoman,” Jiriki said, “I promised myself that I would not mistranslate or interfere in your speech with the lords of Yiqanuc, but I ask you now as a favor to me, do not ask this of them. Please. ”

“Why not?”

“Please. As a favor. I will explain later; I ask you to trust me.”

Simon's angry words spilled out before he could control them. “You want me to desert my friend as a favor to you? Haven't I already saved your life? Didn't I get the White Arrow from you? Who owes the favors here?”

Even as he said it he was sorry, fearing that an unbreachable barrier had suddenly grown between himself and the Sitha prince. Jiriki's eyes burned into his. The audience began to fidget nervously and mutter among themselves, sensing something amiss.

The Sitha dropped his gaze. “I am ashamed, Seoman. I ask too much of you. ”

Now Simon felt himself sinking like a stone into a muddy pool. Too fast! It was too much to think about. All he wanted was to lie down and not know anything.

“No, Jiriki,” he blurted out, “I'm ashamed. I'm ashamed of what I said. I'm an idiot. Ask the two of them if I can speak to them tomorrow. I feel sick.” Suddenly the dizziness was horribly real; he felt the whole cavern tilt. The light of the oil lamps wavered as though in a stiff wind. Simon's knees buckled and Haestan caught his arms, holding him up.

Jiriki turned quickly to Uammannaq and Nunuuika. A rumble of fascinated consternation ran through the trollish throng. Was the red-crested, storklike lowlander dead? Perhaps such long thin legs were not capable of bearing weight for long, as some had suggested. But then, why were the other two lowlanders still standing upright? Many heads were shaken in puzzlement, many whispered guesses exchanged.

“Nunuuika, keenest of eye, and Uammannaq, surest of rein: the boy is still sick and very weak.”
Jiriki spoke quietly. The multitude, cheated by his soft speech, leaned forward.
“I ask a boon, on the primeval friendship of our people.”

The Huntress inclined her head, smiling slightly.
“Speak, Elder Brother,”
she said.

“I have no right to interfere in your justice, and will not. I do ask that the judgment of Binabik of Mintahoq not go forward until his companions—including the boy Seoman—have a chance to speak in his behalf. And that the same be granted also for the Rimmersman, Sludig. This I ask of you in the name of the Moon-woman, our shared root.”
Jiriki bowed slightly, using only his upper body. There was no suggestion of subservience.

Uammannaq tapped the shaft of his spear with his fingers. He looked to the Huntress, his expression troubled. At last he nodded.
“We cannot refuse this, Elder Brother. So shall it be. Two days, then, when the boy is stronger—but even if this strange young man had brought us Igjarjuk's toothy head in a saddlebag, that would not change what must be. Binabik, apprentice of the Singing Man, has committed a terrible crime.”

“So I have been told,”
Jiriki replied.
“But the brave hearts of the Qanuc were not the only thing that gained them the esteem of the Sithi. We loved the kindness of trolls as well.”

Nunuuika touched the combs in her hair, her gaze hard.
“Kind hearts must never overthrow just law, Prince Jiriki, or all Sedda's spawn—Sithi as well as mortals—will return naked to the snows. Binabik shall have his judgment.”

Prince Jiriki nodded and made another brief bow before turning away. Haestan half-carried the stumbling Simon as they walked back across the cavern, down the gauntlet of curious trolls, back out into the cold wind.