The Stone of Farewell (31 page)

“And what did you think?” Binabik asked.

“It's hard to say. About the world and how old it is. About how small I am. Even the Storm King is small, in a way.”

Binabik inspected Simon's face. The troll's brown eyes were serious. “Yes, he is perhaps small beneath the stars, Simon—as a mountain is small in comparing to the whole world. But a mountain is bigger than we, and if it falls on us, we will still be very dead in a very big hole.”

Simon fluttered his hand impatiently. “I know, I know. I'm not saying that I'm not afraid. It's just... it's hard to say.” He struggled for the proper words. “It's like the dragon's blood taught me another language, another way to see things when I think. How can you explain another language to someone?”

Binabik started to reply, then stopped, staring just over Simon's shoulder. Alarmed, Simon turned, but nothing was there but the oblique stone of the cavern and a patch of gray, white-flecked sky.

“What's wrong? Are you ill, Binabik?

“I have it,” the troll said simply. “I knew there was something of familiarity in it. But it was a confusion of language. They are translating differently, you see.” He bounced up onto his feet and trotted over to his bag. A few of his fellow trolls looked up. One started to say something, but broke off, deterred by Binabik's fixed expression. A few moments later the little man returned with an armful of new scrolls.

“What's going on?” Simon asked.

“It was language—the difference between tongues. You said: Stone of Farewell. ”

“That's what Geloë told me,” he answered defensively.

“Of course. But Ookequk's scrolls are not in the language you and I are now speaking. Some are copied from original Nabbanai, some are in Qanuc-tongue, and some few in the original speech of the Sithi. I was looking for ‘Stone of Farewell,' but in Sithi language, it would be named ‘Leavetaking Stone'—a small difference, but one that makes much differentness in the finding of it. Now wait.”

He began to read swiftly through the scrolls, his lips moving as he followed the movement of his stubby finger from one line to another. Sisqi returned, bearing two bowls of soup. One she sat beside Binabik, who was too preoccupied to do more than nod his thanks. The other bowl she offered to Simon. Not knowing what else to do, he bowed his head as he took it.

“Thank you,” he said, wondering if he should call her by name.

Sisqinanamook started to say something in reply, then stopped as if she could not remember the appropriate words. For a moment she and Simon stared at each other, an inclination toward friendship hindered by their inability to converse. At last, Sisqi bowed in return, then snuggled in next to Binabik, asking him a quiet question.

“Chash,”
he replied, “that is correct,” then went silent again, searching. “Ho ho!” he cried at last, thumping his palm on his hide-suited leg. “This is the answer. We have found it!”

“What?” Simon leaned in. The scroll was covered with strange marks, little drawings like the feet of birds and the tracks of snails. Binabik was pointing at one symbol, a square with rounded corners, full of dots and slashes.

“Sesuad‘ra,”
the little man breathed, stretching the word out as if examining fine cloth.
“Sesuad'ra
—Leavetaking Stone. Or, as Geloe spoke it, the Stone of Farewell. A Sithi thing it is, as I guessed.”

“But what is it?” Simon stared at the runes, but could not imagine getting meaning from it as he could from Westerling script.

Binabik squinted at the scroll. “It is the place, this is saying, where covenant was broken when the Zida‘ya and Hikeda'ya—the Sithi and the Norns—split asunder to be going their separate ways. It is a place of power and of great sorrow.”

“But where is it? How can we go there if we don't know where it is?”

“It was once being part of Enki-e-Shao'saye, the Summer-City of the Sithi. ”

“Jiriki told me about that,” Simon said, suddenly excited. “He showed it to me in the mirror. The mirror he gave me. Maybe we could find it there!” He fumbled in his pack, searching for Jiriki's gift.

“No need, Simon, no need!” Binabik laughed. “A fool I would truly be—and the poorest apprentice Ookequk could ever be having—if I did not know of Enki-e-Shao'saye. It was one of the Nine Cities, great in beauty and lore.”

“Then you know where the Stone of Farewell is?”

“Enki-e-Shao‘saye was at the southeast edge of the great forest Aldheorte.” Binabik frowned. “So it is not near, obviously. Many weeks of journeying we will have. Where the city was standing is on the far side of the forest from us, above the flat lands of the High Thrithings.” His expression brightened. “But we are knowing now our destination. That is good. Sesuad'ra.” He savored the word again reflectively. “I have never seen it, but words of Ookequk come to me. It is a strange and grim place, as legend speaks.”

“I wonder why Geloë chose it?” Simon said.

“Perhaps there was no other choosing she could make.” Binabik turned his attention to his cold soup.

The rams, understandably enough, did not like to walk with Qantaqa behind them. Even after several days, the smell of the wolf still troubled them deeply, so Binabik continued to ride ahead. Qantaqa picked her way deftly along the steep, narrow trails, the ram-riders following after, talking or singing quietly among themselves, keeping their voices low so as not to wake Makuhkuya, the avalanche goddess. Simon, Haestan, and Sludig trooped along at the rear, trying to stay out of the hoof-ruts and thereby keep the snow from creeping in over the tops of their well-oiled boots.

Where Mintahoq was rounded like an old man bent by years, Sikkihoq was all angles and steep sides. The troll-paths clung to the mountain's back, winding far out to swing around icy columns of rock, then passing out of the sunlight in the mountain's own shadow, following the inside line of a vertical crevice that dropped away beyond the path into mist and snow.

Trudging down the narrow trails hour after hour, constantly wiping the fluttering snow from his eyes, Simon found himself praying they would reach the bottom soon. Returning strength or no, he was not meant for mountain life. The thin air hurt his lungs and made his legs feel heavy and weak as sodden loaves of bread. When he tried to sleep at the end of the day, his muscles were so painfully tight they almost seemed to hum.

The very heights in which they traveled also disturbed him. He had always thought of himself as a fearless climber, but that had been before he left Hayholt for the wide world. Now, Simon found it much easier to keep his eyes fastened to the back of Sludig's brown boots as they lifted and fell than to look elsewhere. When his gaze swung away to the leaning masses of stone above them or the empty depths below, he found it difficult to remember level ground. Somewhere, he reminded himself, there were places where a person could turn and walk in any direction without risking a death-fall. He had lived in such a place, so they must still exist. Somewhere mile after flat mile lay like a deep carpet, waiting for Simon's feet.

 

They had stopped at a wider place to rest. Simon helped Haestan take off his pack, then watched as the guardsman slumped down onto a snow-dampened stone, breathing so heavily that he soon surrounded himself with a fog of vapors. Haestan slipped his hood off for a moment, then shivered as the high wind struck him. He quickly pulled it back on. Ice crystals glimmered in his dark beard.

“S'cold, lad,” he said. “Bitter.” He suddenly looked old.

“Do you have a family, Haestan?” Simon asked.

The guardsman paused for a moment as if taken aback, then laughed. “Of sorts. I've a woman, a wife, but no little‘uns. First baby died, we've gotten none since. I've not seen her since 'fore winter.” He shook his head. “She be safe, though. Gone t‘live with folk in Hewenshire—Naglimund be too dangerous, told her. War comin'.” He shook his head. “Now if y'r witch woman speaks true, war's over an' Prince Josua lost.”

“But Geloë said he escaped,” Simon put in hurriedly.

“Aye, that be somethin'.”

They sat in silence for a while, listening to the wind among the rocks. Simon looked down at the sword Thorn lying atop Haestan's pack, gleaming blackly, dotted with melting snowflakes. “Is the sword too heavy for you? I could carry it for a while.”

Haestan considered him for a moment before grinning. “Y‘r welcome to it, Simon-lad. Y'should have sword, what with that first manly beard an' all. Thing is, hard t‘say if it be any good as a sword, if y'take my meaning. ”

“I know. I know how it changes.” He remembered Thorn in his own hands. At first it had been cold and heavy as an anvil. Then, as he stood poised, balanced on the cliffs edge staring into the dragon's milky blue eyes, it had become light as a birch-staff. The glossy blade had seemed inspirited, as though it breathed. “It's almost like it's alive. Like an animal or something. Is it heavy for you now?”

Haestan shook his head, looking up at the flurrying snow. “No, lad. Seems it wants t‘go where we're goin'. Thinks it be goin' home, mayhap.”

Simon smiled to hear them both talking about a sword as though it were a dog or a horse. Still, there was an undeniable tension to the thing, like a spider still in a web, or a fish hanging suspended in the cold darkness of a river bottom. He looked at it again. The sword, if it
was
alive, was a wild thing. The blackness of it devoured light, leaving only a thin residue of reflection, sparkling crumbs in a miser's beard. A wild thing, a dark thing.

“It's going where we're going,” Simon said, then considered for a moment. “But that's not going to be home. Not my home.”

 

As he lay that night in a narrow cavern which was little more than a nick in Sikkihoq's muscular stone back, Simon dreamed of a tapestry. It was a moving tapestry, hanging on a wall of absolute blackness. In it, as in the religious pictures of the Hayholt's chapel, a great tree stood, arms rising to heaven. This tree was white and smooth as Harcha marble. Prince Josua hung upon it head down, like Usires Aedon Himself in His suffering.

A shadowy figure stood before Josua, driving nails into him with a great, gray hammer. Josua did not speak or cry out, but his followers all around were moaning. The prince's eyes were wide with patient suffering, like the carved face of Usires that had hung on the wall of Simon's boyhood home in the servant's quarters.

Simon could not bear to see any more. He thrust himself through into the tapestry itself and ran at the shadow-figure. As he ran, he felt a weighty something dangling in his hand. He lifted his arm to swing it, but the murky thing reached up and caught his hand, pulling Simon's weapon away. He had been holding a black hammer. But for its color, it was the twin of the gray.

“Better,”
the thing said. It hefted the ebony mallet in its other shadowy hand and began once more to drive nails. This time Josua screamed with each blow, screamed and screamed ...

... Simon awakened to find himself shivering in darkness, the raspy breathing of his traveling companions all around him, vying with the wind that moaned as it searched the mountain passes outside the cavern. He wanted to waken Binabik, or Haestan, or Sludig—anybody who could speak to him in his own tongue—but could not find any of them in the dark, and knew even in his fear that he should not startle the others awake.

He lay down once more, listening to the crooning wind. He was afraid to go back to sleep, afraid he would hear those awful screams once more. He strained to see in the darkness so he would know his eyes were open, but there was nothing.

Some time before light returned, exhaustion overmatched his fretting mind and he at last fell asleep. If more dreams troubled him, he did not remember them on awakening.