The Stone of Farewell (8 page)

Nothing had been right since then. It was as though her father had drunk of some slow poison when her mother had died, some terrible venom that had festered within, turning him into stone.

Where was he? What was High King Elias doing at this moment?

Miriamele looked up at the shadowy, mountainous island and felt her moment of joy swept away as the wind might snatch a kerchief from her hand. Even now, her father was laying siege to Naglimund, venting his terrible rage on the walls of Josua's keep. Isgrimnur, old Towser, all of them were fighting for their lives even as she floated in past the harbor lights, riding the ocean's dark, smooth back.

And the kitchen boy Simon, with his red hair and his awkward, well-meaning ways, his unconcealed concerns and confusions—she felt a pang of sorrow as she thought of him. He and the little troll had gone into the trackless north, perhaps gone forever.

She straightened up. Thinking of her former companions had reminded her of her duty. She was posing as a monk's acolyte—and a sick one at that. She should be below decks. The ship would be docking soon.

Miriamele smiled bitterly. So many impostures. She was free now of her father's court, but she was still posing. As a sad child in Nabban and Meremund, she had often pretended happiness. The lie had been better than answering the well-meaning but unanswerable questions. As her father had retreated from her she had pretended not to care, even though she had felt that she was being eaten away from within.

Where was God, the younger Miriamele had wondered; where was He when love was slowly hardening into indifference and care becoming duty? Where was God when her father Elias begged Heaven for answers, his daughter listening breathlessly in the shadows outside his chamber?

Perhaps He believed my lies,
she thought bitterly as she walked down the rain-slicked wooden steps onto the lower deck.
Perhaps He wanted to believe them, so He could get on with more important things.

 

The city on the hillside was bright-lit and the rainy night was full of masked revelers. It was Midsummer Festival in Ansis Pelippé: despite the unseasonable weather, the narrow, winding streets were riotous with merrymakers.

Miriamele stepped back as a half-dozen men dressed as chained apes were led past, clanking and staggering. Seeing her standing in the shadowy doorway of one of the shuttered houses, a drunken actor turned, his false fur matted with rainwater, and paused as if to say something to her. Instead, the ape-man belched, smiled apologetically through the mouth hole of his skewed mask, then returned his sorrowful gaze to the uneven cobblestones before him.

As the apes tumbled away, Cadrach reappeared suddenly at her side.

“Where have you been?” she demanded. “You have been gone nearly an hour. ”

“Not so long, lady, surely.” Cadrach shook his head. “I have been finding out certain things that will be useful. Very useful.” He looked around. “Ah, but it's a riotous night, is it not?”

Miriamele tugged Cadrach out into the street once more. “You'd never know there was war in the north and people dying,” she said disapprovingly. “You wouldn't know that Nabban may soon be at war, too, and Nabban's just across the bay.”

“Of course not, my lady,” Cadrach huffed, matching his shorter strides to hers as best he could. “It is the way of the Perdruinese not to know such things. That is how they remain so cheerfully uninvolved in most conflicts, managing to arm and supply both the eventual victor and the eventual vanquished—
and
turn a neat profit.” He grinned and wiped water from his eyes. “Now there's something your Perdruin-folk would be going to war about: protecting their profit.”

“Well, I'm surprised no one's invaded this place.” The princess wasn't sure why the heedlessness of Ansis Pelippé's citizens should nettle her so, but she was nevertheless feeling exceedingly nettlesome.

“Invade? And muddy the waterhole from which all drink?” Cadrach seemed astonished. “My dear Miriamele ... your pardon, my dear
Malachias—
I must remember, since we will soon be moving in circles where your true name is not unfamiliar—my dear Malachias, you have much to learn about the world.” He paused for a moment as another gang of costumed folk swirled by, engaged in a loud, drunken argument about the words to some song. “There,” the monk said, gesturing after them, “there is an example of why that which you say will never come to pass. Were you hearing that little debate?”

Miriamele pulled her hood lower against the slanting rain. “Some of it,” she replied. “What does it matter?”

“It is not the subject of the argument that matters, but the method. They were all Perdruinese, unless my ear for accents has gone wrong from all that ocean roar—yet they were arguing in the Westerling tongue.”

“So?”

“Ah,” Cadrach squinted his eyes as if looking for something down the crowded, lantern-lit street, but continued speaking all the while. “You and I are speaking Westerling, but except for your Erkynlandish fellowcountrymen—and not even all of them—no one else speaks it among their own people. Rimmersmen in Elvritshalla use Rimmerspakk; we Hernystiri speak our own tongue when in Crannhyr or Hernysadharc. Only the Perdruinese have adopted your grandfather King John's universal language, and to them it is now truly their first language.”

Miriamele stopped in the middle of the slickened roadway, letting the press of celebrants eddy around her. A thousand oil lamps raised a false dawn above the housetops. “I'm tired and hungry, Brother Cadrach, and I don't understand what you are getting at.”

“Simply this. The Perdruinese are what they are because they strive to please—or, put more clearly, they know which way the wind is blowing and they run that direction, so the wind is always at their backs. If we Hernystir-folk were a conquering people, the merchants and sailors of Perdruin would be practicing their Hernystiri. ‘If a king wants apples,' as the Nabbanai say, ‘Perdruin plants orchards.' Any other nation would be foolish to attack such a compliant friend and helpful ally.”

“Then you are saying that the souls of these Perdruin-folk are for sale?” Miriamele demanded. “That they have no loyalty to any but the strong?”

Cadrach smiled. “That has the ring of disdain, my lady, but it seems an accurate summing up, yes.”

“Then they're no better than—” she looked around carefully, fighting down anger, “—no better than whores!”

The monk's weathered face took on a cool, distant cast; his smile was now a mere formality. “Not everyone can stand up and be a hero, Princess,” he said quietly. “Some prefer to surrender to the inevitable and salve their consciences with the gift of survival.”

Miriamele thought about the obvious truth of what Cadrach had said as they walked on, but could not understand why it made her so unutterably sad.

 

The cobbled paths of Ansis Pelippé not only wound tortuously, in many places they climbed in gouged stone steps up the very face of the hill, then spiraled back down, doubling and redoubling, crossing each other at odd angles like a basket of serpents. On either side the houses stood shoulder to shoulder, most with windows shadowed like the closed eyes of sleepers, some ablaze with light and music. The foundations of the houses tilted upward from the streets, each structure clinging precariously to the hillside so that their upper stories seemed to lean over the constricted roads. As her hunger and fatigue began to make her giddy, Miriamele felt at times that she was back beneath the close-stooping trees of Aldheorte Forest.

Perdruin was a cluster of hills surrounding Sta Mirore, the central mountain. Their lumpy backs rose up almost directly from the island's rocky verges, looking over the Bay of Emettin. Perdruin's silhouette thus resembled a mother pig and her feeding young. There was little flat land anywhere, except in the saddles where high hills shouldered together, so the villages and towns of Perdruin clung to the faces of these hills like gulls' nests. Even Ansis Pellipé, the great seaport and the seat of Count Streáwe's house, was built on the steep slopes of a promontory that the residents called Harborstone. In many places the citizens of Ansis Pellipé could stand on one of the capital's hill-hugging streets and wave to their neighbors on the thoroughfare below.

“I must eat something,” Miriamele said at last, breathing heavily. They stood at a turnout of one of the looping streets, a place where they could look down between two buildings to the lights of the foggy harbor below. The dull moon hung in the clouded sky like a chip of bone.

“I am also ready to stop, Malachias,” panted Cadrach.

“How far is this abbey?”

“There is no abbey, or at least we are not going to such a place.”

“But you told the captain... oh.” Miriamele shook her head, feeling the damp heaviness of her hood and cloak. “Of course. So, then, where are we going?”

Cadrach stared at the moon and laughed quietly. “Wherever we wish, my friend. I do think there is a tavern of some repute at the top of this street: I must confess I was leading us in that general direction. Certainly not because I enjoy climbing these
goirach
hills.”

“A tavern? Why not a hostel, so we can find a bed after we eat?”

“Because, begging your pardon, it is not eating that I am thinking about. I have been aboard that abominable ship longer than I care to think. I will take my rest after I have indulged my thirst.” Cadrach wiped his hand across his mouth and grinned. Miriamele did not much like the look in his eyes.

“But there was a tavern every cubit down below...” she began.

“Exactly. Taverns full of drunken tale-passers and minders of others' business. I cannot be taking my well-deserved rest in such a place.” He turned his back on the moon and began stumping away up the road. “Come, Malachias. It is only a little farther, I am sure.”

 

It seemed that during Midsummer Festival there was no such thing as an uncrowded tavern, but at least the drinkers in
The Red Dolphin
were not cheek to cheek, as they were in the dockside inns, only elbow to elbow. Miriamele gratefully slid down onto a bench set against the far wall and let the wash of conversation and song flow over her. Cadrach, after putting down his sack and walking stick, moved off to find himself a mug of Traveler's Reward. He returned after only a moment.

“Good Malachias, I had forgotten how nearly beggared I am from paying our sea passage. Do you have a cintis-piece or two I might employ in the removal of thirst?”

Miriamele dug in her purse and produced a palm full of coppers. “Get me some bread and cheese,” she said, pouring the coins into the monk's outstretched hand.

As she sat wishing she could take off her wet cloak to celebrate being out of the rain, another group of costumed celebrants banged in through the door, shaking water from their finery and calling for beer. One of the loudest wore a mask shaped like a red-tongued hound. As he thumped his fist on a table, his right eye lit on Miriamele for a moment and seemed to pause. She felt a rush of fear, suddenly remembering another hound mask, and flaming arrows slashing through the forest shadows. But this dog quickly turned back to his fellows, making a jest and throwing his head back in laughter, his cloth ears swinging.

Miriamele pushed her hand against her chest as if to slow down her speeding heart.

Cadrach was gone a surprisingly long time. Miriamele was just starting to feel restive, wondering if she should go and look for him, when he returned with a jar of ale in each hand. A half-loaf of bread and an end of cheese were prisoned between the jars.

“A man could die of thirst a-waiting for beer, tonight,” the monk said.

Miriamele ate greedily, then took a long swallow of the ale, which was bitter and dark in her mouth. The rest of the jar she left for Cadrach, who did not protest.

When the last crumbs were licked from her fingers and she was pondering whether she was hungry enough to eat a pigeon pie, a shadow fell across the bench she and the monk shared.

The raw-boned face of Death stared down at them from a black cowl.

Miriamele gasped and Cadrach sputtered ale on his gray robe, but the stranger in the skull mask did not move.

“A very pretty joke, friend,” Cadrach said angrily, “and merry midsummer to you, too.” He swiped at the front of his garments.

The mouth did not move. The flat, unexcited voice issued from behind the bared teeth.
“You come with me.”

Miriamele felt the skin on the back of her neck crawl. Her recently-consumed meal felt very heavy in her stomach.