The Stone of Farewell (90 page)

Aditu led him forward, ducking beneath the hemlock bough and its burden of icicles. The stiff, snow-salted breeze that clawed at his face brought tears into his eyes. The forest before him was suddenly distorted, as though he were trapped inside one of the icicles, staring out. He heard his boots crunching in the snow, but it seemed to be happening at a great distance, as though his head floated treetop-high.

Aditu crooned. They walked, but if felt more like floating, or swimming.

They turned and clambered down into what should have been a gulley lined with evergreens; instead, to Simon's misted eyes the tree limbs resembled shadowy arms reaching out to enfold the two travelers. Branches swatted at his thighs as he passed, their scent spicy and strong. Sap-covered needles clung to his breeches. The wind—which breathed whisperingly among the swaying branches—was a little more moist, but still shiveringly cold.

Aditu paused before a bank of umber stone, which thrust from the snow at the bottom of the gulley like the wall of a ruined house. As she stood singing before it, the sunlight that fell through the trees abruptly shifted its angle; the shadows in the crevices of stone deepened, then overtopped their clefts like flooding rivers, sliding across the face of the rock as though the hidden sun were plummeting swiftly toward its evening berth.

They curved around the massive stone and suddenly found themselves on a down-slanting bank. Smaller outcroppings of dusky rock, pale pink and sandy brown, pushed up through the snowy ground. The trees that loomed against the sky were a darker green here, and full of quiet birdsong. Winter's bite was noticeably less.

They had traveled, but it seemed they had also passed from one kind of day to another, as though they somehow walked at right angles to the normal world, moving unrestrainedly as the angels that Simon had been told flew here and there at God's bidding. How could that be?

Staring up past the trees into the featureless gray sky, Aditu's hand clutched in his, Simon wondered if he might indeed have died. Might this solemn creature beside him—whose eyes seemed fixed on things he could not see—be escorting his soul to some final destination, while his lifeless body lay somewhere in the forest, slowly vanishing beneath a blanket of drifting snow?

Is it warm in Heaven?
he wondered absently.

He rubbed at his face with his free hand and felt the reassuring pain of his chapped skin. In any case, it mattered little: he was going where this one led him. His contented helplessness was such that he felt he could no more remove his hand from hers than remove his head from his body.

Aditu's voice rose and fell, her song's slow, thoughtful cadence blending with the birdsong as the waters of one river would meld indistinguishably into the flow of another. Each verse in the endless stream, each cycle of names and colors, was a jeweled puzzle whose solution always seemed to be at Simon's fingertips but never revealed itself. By the time he thought he might be making sense of something, it was gone, and something new was dancing on the forest air.

The two travelers passed from the bank of stones into deep shade, entering a thicket of dark green hedges pearled with tiny white flowers. The foliage was damp, the snow underfoot soggy and unstable. Simon clasped Aditu's hand more firmly. He tried to wipe his eyes, which had blurred again. The little white flowers smelled of wax and cinnamon.

And now, joining with the rising and falling melody of Aditu's song and the delicate trill of birds, came the sound of water splashing in shallow pools, tuneful as a musical instrument made of fragile glass. Shimmering light sparkled on melting snowdrops; as he listened in wonderment, Simon looked all around at the starry gleam of sun through water. The tree branches seemed to be dripping light.

They walked beside a small but active stream whose joyful voice reverberated through the tree-pillared forest halls. Melting snow lay atop the stones and rich black earth lay beneath the damp leaves. Simon's head was whirling. Aditu's melody ran through all his thoughts, just as the stream slid around and over the polished stones that made its bed. How long had they been walking? It had seemed only a few steps at first, but now it suddenly seemed they had marched for hours—days! And why was the snow vanishing away? Just moments ago it had covered everything!

Spring! he thought, and felt a nervous but exultant laughter bubbling inside him
I think we're walking into Spring!

They strode on beside the stream. Aditu's music chimed on and on like the water. The sun had vanished. Sunset was blooming in the sky like a rose, singeing all of Aldheorte's leaves and branches and trunks with fiery light, touching the stones with crimson. As Simon watched, the blaze flared and died in the sky, then was swiftly supplanted by spreading purple, which itself was devoured in turn by sable darkness. The world seemed to be spinning faster beneath him, but he still felt firmly grounded: one foot followed the other, and Aditu's hand was firm in his.

As she sang these words, a scattering of white stars indeed appeared against the vault of the heavens. They blossomed and faded in a succession of shifting patterns. Half-realized faces and forms coalesced, pricked in starlight against the blackness, then dissolved again just as rapidly.

As he walked beneath the velvet-black sky and wheeling stars, Simon felt as if an entire lifetime might be passing with incredible swiftness; simultaneously, the night journey seemed but a single moment of near-infinite duration. Time itself seemed to sweep through him, leaving behind a wild mixture of scents and sounds. Aldheorte had become a single living thing that changed all around him as the deathly chill melted away and the warmth came pushing through. Even in darkness he could sense the immense, almost convulsive alterations.

As they walked in bright starlight beside the chattering, laughing river, Simon thought he could sense green leaves springing from bare boughs and vibrant flowers forcing their way out of the frozen ground, fragile petals unfurling like the wings of butterflies. The forest seemed to be shaking off winter like a snake shrugging its old, useless skin.

Aditu's song wound through everything like a single golden thread in a tapestry woven of muted colors.

Morning light began to permeate Aldheorte, spreading evenly, as though it had no single source. The forest seemed alive, every leaf and branch poised, waiting. The air was filled with a thousand sounds and numberless scents, with birdsong and bee-drone, the musk of living earth, the sweet rot of toadstools, the dry charm of pollen. Unmuffled by clouds, the sun climbed into a sky that showed purest pale blue between the towering treetops.

Aditu sang triumphantly, and the forest seemed to throb around them as though it had one vast and indivisible pulse.

She stopped in her tracks and released Simon's hand; his arm fell to his side, limp as a boned fish. Aditu stood on her toes and stretched, lifting her upraised palms to the sun. Her waist was very slender.

It took a long time before Simon could speak. “Are we ...” he tried at last, “are we... ?”

“No, but we have traveled the most difficult part,” she said, then turned on him with a droll look. “I thought you would break my hand, you clutched so hard.”

Simon remembered her calm, strong grip and thought how unlikely that was. He smiled dazedly, shaking his head. “I have never ...” He couldn't make the words come. “How far have we come?”

She seemed to find this a surprising question and thought hard for a moment. “Quite far into the forest,” she said at last. “Quite far in.”

“Did you make the winter go away by magic?” he asked, turning in a stumbling circle. On all sides the snow was gone. The morning light knifed down through the trees and splashed on the crush of damp leaves underfoot. A spider web quivered, afire in a column of sunlight.

“The winter has not gone away,” she said. “We have gone away from the winter.”

“What?”

“The winter you speak of is false—as you know. Here, in the forest's true heart is a place the storm and cold have not penetrated.”

Simon thought he understood what she was saying. “So you are keeping the winter away by magic.”

Aditu frowned. “That word again. Here the world dances its true dance. That which would
change
such a truth is ‘magic'—dangerous magic—or so it seems to me.” She turned away, obviously tiring of the subject. There was little of imposture in Aditu's character, at least when it was a matter of her time being wasted in niceties. “We are almost there now, so there is no need to rest. Are you hungry or thirsty?”

Simon realized that he was ravenous, as if he had not eaten for days. “Yes! Both.”

Without another word, Aditu slipped between the trees and vanished, leaving Simon standing alone by the stream. “Stay,” she called, her voice echoing so that it seemed to come from every side at once. A few moments later she reappeared with a reddish sphere held delicately in each hand.
“Kraile,”
she said. “Sunfruits. Eat them.”

The first sunfruit proved sweet and full of yellowy juice, with a spicy aftertaste that made him quickly bite into the second. By the time he had finished both, his hunger was pleasantly blunted.

“Now, come,” she said. “I would like to reach
Shao Irigú
by noon today.”

“What's ‘Shao Irigú'—and what day is it today, anyway?”

Aditu looked annoyed, if such a mundane expression could be said to exist on so exotic a face. “Shao Irigú is the Summer Gate, of course. As for the other, I cannot do all the measurements. That is for those like First Grandmother. I think you have a moon-span you call ‘Ahn-ee-tool'?”

“Anitul is a month, yes.”

“That is as much as I can say. It is that ‘month,' by your reckoning.”

Now it was Simon's turn to be annoyed: he could have told her that much himself—although months did tend to sneak past when one was on the road. What he had been hoping to discover, in a roundabout way, was how long it had taken them to get here. It would have been easy to ask straight out, of course, but somehow he knew that the answer Aditu gave him would not be very satisfying.

The Sitha-woman moved forward. Simon scrambled after her. Despite his irritation, he more than half-hoped she would ask for his hand again, but that part of the journey seemed to be over. Aditu picked her way down the slope beside the stream without looking back to see if he was following.

Nearly deafened by the cheerful cacophony of birds in the trees overhead, bewildered by all that had happened, Simon opened his mouth to complain about her evasions, then stopped suddenly in his tracks, shamed by his own short-sightedness. His weariness and crossness abruptly fell away, as though he had sloughed off a heavy blanket of snow dragged with him out of winter. This
was
a wild sort of magic, whatever Aditu said! To have been in a deadly storm—a storm that covered all the northern world, as far as he could tell—and then to follow a song into sunlight and clear skies! This was as good as anything Simon had ever heard in one of Shem Horsegroom's stories. This was an adventure even Jack Mundwode never had. Simon the scullion was going to the Kingdom of the Fair Folk!

He hastened after her, chortling. Aditu looked back at him curiously.