The Stone of Farewell (73 page)

The knight stared in amazement. “But, Highness ...”

“Let them go. He paused to find breath. ”I will fight my own battle. If you love me, release them.” Josua rubbed blood from his eyes, blinking.

Deornoth turned to Isorn and Sangfugol, who held spears on three more guards. They returned his astonished stare. “Release them,” he said at last. “The prince bids us release them.”

Isorn and Sangfugol lowered their spears, allowing the Thrithings-men to step away. They promptly did, scrambling out of reach of the spear points before they remembered their original roles as captors and stopped, muttering angrily. Isorn ignored them. Beside him, the harper was trembling like a wounded bird. Geloe, who had not moved through all the furor, shifted her yellow eyes back to Josua.

“Come, Utvart,” the prince said haltingly, his smile a bitter slash of white across a bloody mask. “Forget them. We are not finished.”

Fikolmij, who stood close by, champing with his open mouth as though at a bit, started to say something. He never had the chance.

Utvart leaped forward, battering at Josua's guard. The moment's respite had not returned Josua's strength: he fell backward unsteadily before the Thrithings-man's attack, fending off the curved blade only by the slimmest of margins. At last a swinging blow slid past, nicking Josua's chest, then the following attack landed the flat of Utvart's blade on Josua's elbow, springing Naidel from his grasp. The prince scuttled after it, but as his fingers closed on the bloody hilt his feet slipped from beneath him and he sprawled on the trampled turf.

Seeing his advantage, Utvart lunged forward. Josua was able to lift his sword and turn the stroke downward, but his awkward position as he rose from the ground allowed Utvart to grapple him in a hugely-muscled arm and begin to pull the prince in toward the cutting edge of the curved sword. Josua brought up his knee and right arm to try to hold his attacker at bay, then managed to raise his other arm, keeping his blade locked against Utvart's guard, but the stronger Thrithings-man pushed his sword up slowly against the prince's stiffened wrist, forcing Naidel back as the crescent blade rose toward Josua's throat. The prince's lips skinned back in a grimace of ultimate exertion and sinews knotted along his slender arm. For a moment, his supreme effort halted the rising blade. The two men stood grappling chest to chest. Sensing the prince's flagging strength, Utvart tightened his grip around his smaller foe and smiled, drawing Josua toward him in a movement almost ritually slow. Despite the agonized play of the prince's muscles, the long edge of the curved blade continued inexorably upward, coming lovingly to rest against the side of Josua's throat.

The crowd stopped shouting. Somewhere overhead a crane threw out its clattering call, then silence swept back over the field.

“Now,” the Thrithings-man exulted, breaking his long silence, “Utvart kills you.”

Josua suddenly ceased resisting and flung himself forward into his enemy's grasp, snapping his head to one side. The curved blade slid along the outside of his neck, slicing the flesh deeply, but in that fractional instant of freedom the prince drove a knee into Utvart's groin.

As Utvart grunted in painful surprise, Josua hooked a foot around the Thrithings-man's calf and pushed against him. Utvart could not find his balance and tumbled backward. Josua fell with him, the Thrithings-man's blade flailing past his shoulder. When Utvart struck the ground with a hiss of released breath, Naidel snaked free. A moment later its point slid beneath the Thrithings-man's chin and was hammered upward a hand's-width or more, through the jaw and into the braincase.

Josua rolled himself free of Utvart's spastic clutch and struggled to his feet, dripping scarlet. He stood for a moment, legs shaking, arms dangling limp and helpless, and stared at the body on the ground before him.

“Tall man,” he gasped, “it is ...
you...
who talks too much.”

A moment later his eyes rolled up beneath his lids and he fell heavily across the Thrithings-man's chest. They lay together, their blood commingling, and across the entire grasslands it seemed that nothing spoke or moved for a long time. Then the shouting began.

After
a long sojourn in soundless velvet emptiness, Simon returned at last to the dim borderlands between slee and waking. He came to awareness in darkness, on the edge of dream, and realized that once again a voice was speaking within his thoughts, as on the nightmarish flight out of Skodi's abbey. Some door had been opened inside him: now it seemed that anything might enter.

But this uninvited guest was not the taunting flame-thing, the Storm King's minion. The new voice was as different from that ghastly other as the quick from the dead. The new voice did not mock or threaten—in fact, it did not even seem to be speaking to Simon at all.

It was a womanly voice, musical yet strong, shining in Simon's lightless dream like a beacon. Though its words were sorrowful, it brought him a strange sense of comfort. Even though Simon knew that he slept, and was sure that it would only be the work of an instant to wake into the real world, the voice captivated him so that he did not wish to awaken just yet. Remembering the wise, beautiful face he had seen in Jiriki's mirror, he was content to hover on the edge of wakefulness and listen, for this was the same voice, the same person. Somehow, when that door into Simon had been opened, it was the mirror-woman who had come through. Simon was infinitely thankful for that. He remembered a little of what the Red Hand had promised him, and even in the shelter of sleep he felt frost upon his heart.

Simon realized that even though the voice sang through his dream, these words were not meant for his ears. He felt like a beggar child spying on a rich and powerful family through a crack in a wall. But just as the wealthy family might have sorrows a beggar could not understand-miseries unrelated to hunger or cold or physical pain—so the voice in Simon's dream, for all its majesty, seemed weighted with quiet anguish.

“Of course, it was long before we realized it. The new shadow grew slowly, first in our hearts, then in our eyes and hands, but now the evil it caused has become greater than anyone could have suspected. It is stretching across all this land that we loved, the land to which we hastened long ago as to the arms of a lover—or as a son to the arms of his mother
...

Something else was now competing for his attention, but Simon could only lie helplessly, unwilling or unable to awaken. It seemed that somewhere outside of this dream-that-was-not-a-dream, his name was being called. Did he have friends or family who searched for him? It did not matter. He could not break away from the woman. Her terrible sadness twisted within him like a sharpened stick or a bit of broken pot: it would be cruel to leave her alone with her sorrow. At last the voices that faintly called for him vanished.

The woman's presence remained. It seemed that she wept. Simon did not know her, and could not guess to whom she spoke, but he wept with her.

Guthwulf was feeling confused and irritated. As he sat polishing his shield he tried to listen to the report of his castellain, who had just ridden down from Guthwulf's hold in Utanyeat. He was not having much luck with either chore.

The earl spat citril juice into the floor rushes. “Say it again, man, you are making no sense at all.”

The castellain, a round-bellied, ferret-eyed fellow, firmly repressed a sigh of weariness—Guthwulf was not the kind of master before whom one displayed imperfect patience—and started in again on his explanation.

“It is simply this, Lord: your holdings in Utanyeat are nearly empty. Wulfholt is deserted but for a few servants. Almost all the peasants have left. There will be no one to bring in the oats or barley, and harvest can wait little more than a fortnight.”

“My serfs have left?” Guthwulf stared distractedly at the boar and silver spears that sparkled on his black shield, the spearheads picked out in mother-of-pearl. He had loved that coat of arms, once, loved it as he would a child. “How do they dare leave? Who but me has fed the ugly louts all these years? Well, hire others for harvest, but do not let those who fled come back again. Not ever.”

Now the castellain did make the smallest noise of despair. “My lord, Earl Guthwulf, I fear you have not been listening to me. There are not enough free folk left in Utanyeat to hire. The barons, your liege men, have their own problems and few workers to spare. Fields everywhere in eastern and northern Erkynland are going to seed unharvested. Skali of Kaldskryke's army across the river in Hernystir has cut a swath through all the border towns near Utanyeat, and will probably cross the river soon, having exhausted Lluth's country.”