The Stone of Farewell (104 page)

Swearing in fury, he started down the slope once more, but experienced the same feeling of leveling, swiftly followed by the resumption of an upward slant. He had gotten no closer to the bottom—he was still, as far as he could tell, only a third of the way through the ring of birch trees.

Attempts to turn away from the uphill slope also met with failure. The wind sighed in the branches, the birch leaves rustled, and Simon felt himself struggling as though in a dream, making no headway despite all his exertions. At last, in a paroxysm of frustration, he closed his eyes and ran. His terror turned into a moment of heady exhilaration as he felt the ground sloping away beneath his feet. Tree branches slapped at his face, but some peculiar luck kept him from striking any of the hundreds of trunks that lay in the path of his headlong flight.

When he stopped and opened his eyes, he was back at the top of the hillside once more. Maye'sa stood before him, her gauzy bit of skirt fluttering in the restless breeze.

“I told you, you may not go into the Year-Dancing Grove,” she said, explaining a painful truth to a child. “Did you think you could?” Stretching her sinuous neck, she shook her head. Her eyes were wide, inquisitive. “Strange creature.”

She vanished back down the hillside toward Jao é-Tinukai'i. A few moments later, Simon followed. Head down, watching his boot toes scuffing through the grass, he soon found himself standing on the path before Jiriki's house. Evening was coming on and the crickets were singing by the river-pond.

 

“Very good, Seoman,” Aditu said the next day. She examined the shent board, nodding. “Misdirection! To go away from that which you wish to gain. You are learning.”

“It doesn't always work,” he said glumly.

Her eyes glittered. “No. Sometimes you need a deeper strategy. But it is a beginning.”

Binabik and Sludig had not come far into the forest, only deep enough to shelter their camp from the bitter wind sweeping down the plains, a wind whose voice had become a ceaseless howling. The horses shifted uneasily on their tethers, and even Qantaqa seemed restless. She had just returned from her third excursion into the forest, and now sat with ears erect, as though listening for some expected but nonetheless dire warning. Her eyes gleamed with reflected firelight.

“Do you think we are any safer here, little man?” Sludig asked, sharpening his sword. “I think I would rather face the empty plains than his forest. ”

Binabik frowned. “Perhaps, but would you rather also be facing hairy giants like those we saw?”

The White Way, the great road that spanned the northern borders of Aldheorte, had turned at last by the forest's easternmost edge, leading them south for the first time since they had come down off the Old Tumet'ai Road with Simon many days earlier. Not long after the southward turn, they had spotted a group of white shapes moving in the distance behind them—shapes that they both realized could be nothing but Hunën. The giants, once unwilling to leave their hunting lands at the foot of Stormspike, now seemed to range the length and breadth of the northland. Remembering the destruction that a band of these creatures had wreaked on their large traveling party, neither troll nor Rimmersgarder had any false hopes that the two of them could survive an encounter with the shaggy monstrosities.

“What makes you sure we are any safer because we have come a few furlongs into the woods?” demanded Sludig.

“Nothing that is certain,” Binabik admitted, “but I know that the small, creeping diggers are reluctant to tunnel into Aldheorte. Perhaps the giants may be having similar reluctance.”

Sludig snorted and made the blade rasp loudly on the whetstone. “And the Hunë that Josua killed near Naglimund, when the boy Simon was found? That one was in the forest, was it not?”

“That giant was driven to there,” Binabik said irritably. He pushed the second of the leaf-wrapped birds into the coals. “There are no promises in life, Sludig, but it seems to me smarter to take fewer chances.”

After a short silence, the Rimmersman spoke up. “You speak rightly, troll. I am only tired. I wish we would get where we are going, to this Farewell Stone! I would like to give Josua his damnable sword, then sleep for a week. In a bed.”

Binabik smiled. “With certainty. But it is not Josua's sword, or at least I am not sure it is meant for him.” He stood and took the long bundle from where it leaned against a tree. “I am not sure what it is for at all.” Binabik's fingers unwrapped the blade, allowing its dark surface to show. The firelight revealed no more than its dark outlines. “Do you see?” Binabik said, hefting the bundle in his arms. “Thorn now seems to think it is acceptable for a small troll to carry it.”

“Don't talk about it as if it were alive,” Sludig said, sketching a hasty Tree in the air. “That is against nature.”

Binabik eyed him. “It may not be alive, as a bear or a bird or a man is alive, but there is something in it that is more than sword-metal. You know that, Sludig.”

“That may be.” The Rimmersman frowned. “No, curse it, I do know. That is why I do not like speaking of it. I have dreams about the cave where we found the thing.”

“That is not surprising to me,” the troll said softly. “That was a fearsome place.”

“But it is not just the place—not even the worm, or Grimmric's death. I dream of the damnable sword, little man. It was laying there among those bones as though it
waited
for us. Cold, cold, like a snake in its den ...”

Sludig trailed off. Binabik watched him, but said nothing.

The Rimmersman sighed. “And I still do not understand what good having it will do Josua. ”

“No more do I, but it is a powerful thing. It is good to remember that.” Binabik stroked the glinting surface as he might the back of a cat. “Look at it, Sludig. We have been so caught up in our trials and losses that we have almost been forgetting Thorn. This is an object that is making legends! Perhaps it is the greatest weapon ever to have come to light in Osten Ard—greater than Hern's spear Oinduth, greater than Chukku's sling. ”

“Powerful it may be,” Sludig grumbled, “but I have doubts as to how lucky it is. It didn't save Sir Camaris, did it?”

Binabik showed a small, secretive smile. “But he did not have it when he was swept over the side in Firannos Bay: Towser the jester told that to us. That is why we were able to discover it on the dragon-mountain. Otherwise it would be at ocean's bottom—like Camaris. ”

The wind shrieked, rattling the branches overhead. Sludig waited an appropriate interval, then moved closer to the comforting fire. “How could such a great knight fall off a boat? God grant that I die more honorably, in battle. It only proves to me, if I had any doubts, that boats are things best left alone.”

Binabik's yellow grin widened. “To be hearing such words from one whose ancestors were the greatest sailors mankind has known!” His expression grew serious. “Although it must be told that some doubt Camaris was swept into the sea. Some there are who say that he was drowning himself. ”

“What? Why in Usires' name would he do such a thing?” Sludig poked at the fire indignantly.

The troll shrugged. “It is only being rumor, but I do not ignore such things. Morgenes' writings are filled with many strange stories. Qinkipa! How I wish I had found more time for reading the doctor's book! One thing Morgenes was telling in his life-story of Prester John was that Sir Camaris was much like our Prince Josua: a man of strange, melancholy moods. Also, he was much in admiration of John's queen, Ebekah. King Prester John had made Camaris her special protector. When the Rose of Hernysadharc—as many were naming her—died in the birthing of Josua, Camaris was said to be much upset. He grew fell and strange, and railed against his God and Heaven. He gave up sword and armor and other things, as one who takes up a life of religion—or, as one who knows he will die. He was making his way back to his home in Vinitta after a pilgrimage to the Sancellan Aedonitis. In a storm he was lost in the ocean off Harcha-island. ”

Binabik leaned forward and began pulling the wrapped birds out of the fire, exerting caution so as not to burn his stubby fingers. The fire crackled and the wind moaned.

“Welladay,” Sludig said at last. “What you say only makes me more sure that I will avoid the high and the mighty whenever possible. But for Duke Isgrimnur, who has a good level head on his shoulders, the rest of them are drifty and foolish as geese. Your Prince Josua, if you will pardon my saying it, first among them.”

Binabik's grin returned. “He is not my Prince Josua, and he
is
—what was your wording?—drifty. But not foolish. Not foolish at all. And he may be our last hope for staving off the coming storm.” As though he had stumbled into an uncomfortable subject, the troll busied himself with their supper. He pushed a smoking bird over to the Rimmersman. “Here. Have something to eat. Perhaps if the Hunën are enjoying the cold weather, they will be leaving us alone. We can then gain ourselves a good night sleeping. ”

“We will need it. We have a long road before we can give away this damnable sword.”

“But we owe it to those who have fallen,” Binabik said, staring out into the dark reaches of the surrounding forest. “We do not have the freedom of making a failure. ”

As they ate, Qantaqa rose and paced about the campsite, listening intently to the wailing wind.

Snow was blowing savagely across the Waste, flung hard enough by the howling wind to strip the very bark from the trees along the Aldheorte's ragged north fringe. The great hound, not hindered in the least by such unfriendly weather, bounded lightly back through the blinding flurries, stone-hard muscles coiling and uncoiling beneath its short fur. When the dog reached Ingen's side, the Queen's Huntsman reached into his vest and produced a length of gnarled, dried meat that had at one end something suspiciously like a fingernail. The white hound crunched it in a second, then stood peering out into the darkness, cloudy little eyes full of eagerness to be moving once more. Ingen scratched carefully behind the dog's ears, his gloved fingers trailing across a bulgingly muscled jaw that could crush rock.

“Yes, Niku'a” the huntsman whispered, voice echoing within his helm. His own eyes were as madly intent as those of the hound. “You have the scent now, do you not? Ah, the Queen will be so proud. My name will be sung until the sun turns black and rotten and drops from the sky.”

He lifted his helmet and let the stinging wind batter his face. As certainly as he knew that frosty stars shone somewhere above the darkness, so, too, he knew that his quarry was still before him, and that he drew nearer to it with every day that passed. At this moment he did not feel himself to be the stolid, tireless hound that was his sigil, and whose snarling face made the mask of his helm; he was instead some subtler, more feline predator, a creature of fierce but quiet joy. He felt the freezing night on his face and knew that nothing that lived beneath the black sky could escape him for long.

Ingen Jegger slid the crystalline dagger from his sleeve and held it before him, staring at it as though it were a mirror in which he could see himself, the Ingen who had feared to die in obscurity. Catching some hardy beam of moonlight or starshine, the translucent blade burned with a chilly blue fire; its carvings seemed to writhe like serpents beneath his fingers. This was all he had dreamed, and more. The Queen in the Silver Mask had set him a great task, a task befitting the making of a legend. Soon—he felt it with a certainty that made him tremble—soon that task would be accomplished. Ingen let the dagger slide back into his sleeve.

“Go, Niku'a,” he whispered, as though the hidden stars might betray him if they heard. “It is time to hunt our prey to ground. We will run.” Ingen vaulted into the saddle. His patient mount stirred as if awakening.