The Stone of Farewell (2 page)

The dwarfish newcomer is a troll named
Binabik,
who rides a great gray wolf. He tells Simon he was only passing by, but now he will accompany the boy to Naglimund. Simon and Binabik endure many adventures and strange events on the way to Naglimund: they come to realize that they have fallen afoul of a threat greater than merely a king and his counselor deprived of their prisoner. At last, when they find themselves pursued by unearthly white hounds who wear the brand of Stormspike, a mountain of evil reputation in the far north, they are forced to head for the shelter of
Geloë's
forest house, taking with them a pair of travelers they have rescued from the hounds. Geloë, a blunt-spoken forest woman with a reputation as a witch, confers with them and agrees that somehow the ancient Norns, embittered relatives of the Sithi, have become embroiled in the fate of Prester John's kingdom.

Pursuers human and otherwise threaten them on their journey to Naglimund. After Binabik is shot with an arrow, Simon and one of the rescued travelers, a servant girl, must struggle on through the forest. They are attacked by a shaggy giant and saved only by the appearance of Josua's hunting party.

The prince brings them to Naglimund, where Binabik's wounds are cared for, and where it is confirmed that Simon has stumbled into a terrifying swirl of events. Elias is coming soon to besiege Josua's castle. Simon's serving-girl companion was Princess Miriamele traveling in disguise, fleeing her father, whom she fears has gone mad under Pryrates' influence. From all over the north and elsewhere, frightened people are flocking to Naglimund and Josua, their last protection against a mad king.

Then, as the prince and others discuss the coming battle, a strange old Rimmersman named
Jarnauga
appears in the council's meeting hall. He is a member of the
League of the Scroll,
a circle of scholars and initiates of which Morgenes and Binabik's master were both part, and he brings more grim news. Their enemy, he says, is not just Elias: the king is receiving aid from
Ineluki the Storm King,
who had once been a prince of the Sithi—but who has been dead for five centuries, and whose bodiless spirit now rules the Norns of Stormspike Mountain, pale relatives of the banished Sithi.

It was the terrible magic of the gray sword Sorrow that caused Ineluki's death—that, and mankind's attack on the Sithi. The League of the Scroll believes that Sorrow has been given to Elias as the first step in some incomprehensible plan of revenge, a plan that will bring the earth beneath the heel of the undead Storm King. The only hope comes from a prophetic poem that seems to suggest that “three swords” might help turn back Ineluki's powerful magic.

One of the swords is the Storm King's Sorrow, already in the hands of their enemy, King Elias. Another is the Rimmersgard blade
Minneyar,
which was also once at the Hayholt, but whose whereabouts are now unknown. The third is
Thorn,
black sword of King John's greatest knight,
Sir Camaris.
Jarnauga and others think they have traced it to a location in the frozen north. On this slim hope, Josua sends Binabik, Simon, and several soldiers off in search of Thorn, even as Naglimund prepares for siege.

Others are affected by the growing crisis. Princess Miriamele, frustrated by her uncle Josua's attempts to protect her, escapes Naglimund in disguise, accompanied by the mysterious monk
Cadrach.
She hopes to make her way to southern Nabban and plead with her relatives there to aid Josua. Old Duke Isgrimnur, at Josua's urging, disguises his own very recognizable features and follows after to rescue her.
Tiamak,
a swamp-dwelling Wrannaman scholar, receives a strange message from his old mentor Morgenes that tells of bad times coming and hints that Tiamak has a part to play.
Maegwin,
daughter of the king of Hernystir, watches helplessly as her own family and country are drawn into a whirlpool of war by the treachery of High King Elias.

Simon and Binabik and their company are ambushed by
Ingen Jegger,
huntsman of Stormspike, and his servants. They are saved only by the reappearance of the Sitha
Jiriki,
whom Simon had saved from the cotsman's trap. When he learns of their quest, Jiriki decides to accompany them to Urmsheim mountain, legendary abode of one of the great dragons, in search of Thorn.

By the time Simon and the others reach the mountain, King Elias has brought his besieging army to Josua's castle at Naglimund, and though the first attacks are repulsed, the defenders suffer great losses. At last Elias' forces seem to retreat and give up the siege, but before the stronghold's inhabitants can celebrate, a weird storm appears on the northern horizon, bearing down on Naglimund. The storm is the cloak under which Ineluki's own horrifying army of Norns and giants travels, and when the
Red Hand,
the Storm King's chief servants, throw down Naglimund's gates, a terrible slaughter begins. Josua and a few others manage to flee the ruin of the castle. Before escaping into the great forest, Prince Josua curses Elias for his conscienceless bargain with the Storm King and swears that he will take their father's crown back.

Simon and his companions climb Urmsheim, coming through great dangers to discover the Uduntree, a titanic frozen waterfall. There they find Thorn in a tomblike cave. Before they can take the sword and make their escape, Ingen Jegger appears once more and attacks with his troop of soldiers. The battle awakens
Igjarjuk,
the white dragon, who has been slumbering for years beneath the ice. Many on both sides are killed. Simon alone is left standing, trapped on the edge of a cliff; as the ice-worm bears down upon him, he lifts Thorn and swings it. The dragon's scalding black blood spurts over him as he is struck senseless.

Simon awakens in a cave on the troll mountain of Yiqanuc. Jiriki and
Haestan,
an Erkynlandish soldier, nurse him to health. Thorn has been rescued from Urmsheim, but Binabik is being held prisoner by his own people, along with
Sludig
the Rimmersman, under sentence of death. Simon himself has been scarred by the dragon's blood and a wide swath of his hair has turned white. Jiriki names him “Snowlock” and tells Simon that, for good or for evil, he has been irrevocably marked.

The wind
sawed across the empty battlements, yowling like a thousand condemned souls crying for mercy. Brother Hengfisk, despite the bitter cold that had sucked the air from his once-strong lungs and withered and peeled the skin of his face and hands, took a certain grim pleasure in the sound.

Yes, that is what they will all sound like, all the sinful multitude who scoffed at the message of Mother Church—
including
,
unfortunately, the less rigorous of his Hoderundian brothers.
How they will cry out before God's just wrath, begging for mercy, when it is far, far too late....

He caught his knee a wicked blow on a stone lying tumbled from a wall, and pitched forward into the snow with a crack-lipped squeal. The monk sat whimpering for a moment, but the painful bite of tears freezing on his cheek forced him back onto his feet. He hobbled forward once more.

The main road that climbed through Naglimund-town toward the castle was full of drifting snow. The houses and shops on either side had nearly disappeared beneath a smothering blanket of deadly white, but even those buildings not yet covered were as deserted as the shells of long-dead animals. There was nothing on the road but Hengfisk and the snow.

As the wind changed direction, the whistling of the fluted battlements at the top of the hill rose in pitch. The monk squinted his bulging eyes up at the walls, then lowered his head. He trudged on through the gray afternoon, the crunch of his footsteps a near-silent drumbeat accompanying the skirling wind.

It is no wonder the townspeople have fled to the keep,
he thought, shivering. All around him gaped the black idiot-mouths of roofs and walls staved in by the weight of snow. But inside the castle, under the protection of stone and great timbers, there they must be safe. Fires would be burning, and red, cheerful faces—sinners' faces, he reminded himself scornfully: damned, heedless sinners' faces—would gather around him and marvel that he had walked all this way through the freakish storm.

It is Yuven-month, is it not?
Had his memory suffered so, that he could not remember the month?

But of course it was. Two full moons ago it had been spring—a little cold, perhaps, but that was nothing to a Rimmersman like Hengfisk, reared in the chill of the north. No, that was the freakish thing, of course, that it should be so deadly cold, the ice and snow flying, in Yuven—the first month of summer.

Hadn't Brother Langrian refused to leave the abbey, and after all Hengfisk had done to nurse him back to health?
“It's more than foul weather, Brother,”
Langrian had said.
“It's a curse on God's entire creation. It's the Day of Weighing-Out come in our lifetimes.”

Ah, that was well enough for Langrian. If he wanted to stay in the burned wrack of Saint Hoderund's abbey, eating berries and such from the forest—and how much fruit would there be anyway, in such unseasonable cold? —then he could do as he pleased. Brother Hengfisk was no fool. Naglimund was the place to go. Old Bishop Anodis would welcome Hengfisk. The bishop would admire the monk's clever eye for what he had seen, the stories that Hengfisk could tell of what had happened at the abbey, the unseasonable weather. The Naglimunders would welcome him in, feed him, ask him questions, let him sit before their warm fire....

But they must know about the cold, mustn't they?
Hengfisk thought dully as he pulled his ice-crackling robe closer about him. He was in the very shadow of the wall now. The white world he had known for so many days and weeks seemed to have come to an ending, a precipice that vanished into stony nothingness.
That is, they must know about the snow and all. That's why they've all left the town and moved into the keep. It's the damnable, demon-cursed weather that's keeping the sentries off the walls, isn't it? Isn't it!?

He stood and surveyed with mad interest the pile of snow-mantled rubbish that had been Naglimund's greater gate. The huge pillars and massive stones were charred black beneath the drifts. The hole in the sagging wall stood large enough to hold twenty Hengfisks standing abreast, shoulder to bony, trembling shoulder.

Somebody must be scourged for such negligence. Doubtless Bishop Anodis had his hands full trying to keep such an unruly flock in line. Hengfisk would be only too happy to help that fine old man minister to such slackers. First, a fire and some warm food. Then, a little monasterial discipline. Things would soon be brought to rights....

Hengfisk stepped carefully through the splintered posts and white-covered stones.

 

The thing of it was, the monk slowly realized, in a way it was quite... beautiful. Beyond the gate, all things were covered in a delicate tracery of ice, like lacy veils of spiderweb. The sinking sun embellished the frosted towers and ice-crusted walls and courtyards with rivulets of pale fire.

The cry of the wind was somewhat less here within the battlements. Hengfisk stood for a long while, abashed by the unexpected quiet. As the weak sun slid behind the walls, the ice darkened. Deep violet shadows welled up in the corners of the courtyard, stretching laterally across the faces of the ruined towers. The wind softened to a feline hiss, and the pop-eyed monk lowered his head in numb recognition.

Deserted.
Naglimund was empty, with not a single soul left behind to greet a snow-bewildered wanderer. He had walked leagues through the storm-ridden white waste to reach a place that was as dead and dumb as stone.

But,
he wondered suddenly,
if that is so ... then what are those blue lights that flicker in the windows of the towers?

And what were these figures who approached him across the shambles of the courtyard, moving as gracefully over the icy stones as blowing thistledown?

His heart raced. At first, as he saw their beautiful, cold faces and pale hair, Hengfisk thought them angels. Then, as he saw the fell light in their black eyes, and their smiles, he turned, stumbling, and tried to run.

 

The Norns caught him effortlessly, then carried him back with them into the depths of the desolated castle, beneath the shadowed, ice-mantled towers and the ceaselessly flickering lights. And when Naglimund's new masters whispered to him in their secretive, musical voices, his screams for a while overtopped even the howling wind.