The Stone of Farewell (74 page)

“Lluth is dead, I am told,” Guthwulf said slowly. He himself had been in King Lluth's house, the Taig. His blood had flowed hot in his veins as he insulted the sheep-herder king in the midst of Lluth's own court. That had been a few scant months ago. Why did he feel so terrible now, so unmanned? “Why are all these villains running away from their rightful homes?”

The castellain looked at him queerly, as though Guthwulf had suddenly asked which direction was up. “Why? Because of the wars and looting on their border, the chaos of the Frostmarch. And the White Foxes, of course.”

“The White Foxes?”

“Surely you know of the White Foxes, Lord.” The castellain was almost openly skeptical. “Surely, since they came to the aid of the army you commanded at Naglimund.”

Guthwulf looked up, pawing reflectively at his upper lip. “The Norns, you mean?”

“Yes, Lord. White Foxes is the name the common people give them, because of their corpse-pale skin and foxy eyes.” He suppressed a shudder. “White Foxes.”

“But what of them, man?” the earl demanded. When there was no immediate answer, his voice began to rise. “What do they have to do with my harvest, Aedon shake your soul?”

“Why, they are coming south, Earl Guthwulf,” the castellain said, surprised. “They are leaving their nest in Naglimund's ruins. People who must sleep in the open have seen them walking the hills by darkness, like ghosts. They travel at night, a few at a time, and always moving southward—heading for the Hayholt.” He looked around nervously, as if only now realizing what he had said. “Coming
here.”

 

After the castellain left, Guthwulf sat a long time drinking from a stoup of wine. He picked up his helm to polish it, staring at the ivory tusks that lifted from the crest, then put it back down, untouched. His heart was not in the task, even though the king expected him to lead the Erkynguard into the field a few days hence and his armor had not been thoroughly looked-to since the siege of Naglimund. Things had not gone right at all since the siege. The castle seemed ghost-ridden, and that damnable gray sword and its two blade-brothers haunted his dreams until he almost feared to go to bed, to fall asleep....

He set the wine down and stared at the flickering candle, then felt his melancholy spirits lift a little. At least he had not been imagining things. The countless odd night-sounds, the untethered shadows in the halls and commons, Elias' vanishing midnight visitors, all these and more had begun to make the Earl of Utanyeat doubt his own good mind. When the king had forced him to touch that cursed sword, Guthwulf had become sure that, whether by sorcery or no, some crack in his thoughts had let madness in to destroy him. But it was no whim, no fancy—the castellain had confirmed it. The Norns were coming to the Hayholt. The White Foxes were coming.

Guthwulf pulled his knife from his sheath and sent it whickering end over end into the door. It stuck, quivering in the heavy oak. He shuffled across the chamber and pulled it loose, then threw again, fetching it out with a swift jerk of his hand. The wind shrilled in the trees outside. Guthwulf bared his teeth. The knife thumped into the wood once more.

Simon lay suspended in a sleep that was not sleep, and the voice in his head spoke on.

The clown mask bobbed before Tiamak's eyes, gleaming with firelight, covered with strange plumes and horns. For a moment he felt confused. How had the Wind Festival come so soon? Surely the annual celebration of He Who Bends the Trees was months away? But here was one of the wind-clowns bowing and dancing before him—and what other explanation could there be for the way Tiamak's head ached but an excessive intake of fern beer, a sure sign that Festival Days were here?

The wind-clown made a soft clicking noise as it tugged at something in Tiamak's hand. What could the clown be doing? Then he remembered. It wanted his coin, of course: everyone was expected to carry beads or pieces of money for He Who Bends the Trees. The clowns gathered these glittering tributes in clay jars to shake at the sky, making a rattling, roaring noise that was the chief music of the Festival—a noise that brought the good will of the Tree-Bender, so that he would keep harmful winds and floods at bay.

Tiamak knew he should let the clown have his coin—wasn't that what he had brought it for?—but still, there was something about the insinuating way the wind-clown pawed at him that made Tiamak uncomfortable. The clown's mask winked and leered; Tiamak, fighting a growing sense of unease, clutched the metal more tightly. What was wrong... ?

As his vision suddenly cleared, his eyes widened in horror. The bobbing clown mask became the chitinous face of a ghant, hanging only a scant cubit above his boat, suspended by a vine from a branch that overhung the river. The ghant was prodding gently with its insectile claw, patiently trying to poke Tiamak's knife loose from his sleep-sweaty grasp.

The little man shouted with disgust and threw himself back toward the stern of his flatboat. The ghant rasped and clicked its mouth-feelers, waving a plated foreleg as though trying to reassure him that it had all been a mistake. A moment later Tiamak swept up his steering pole, swinging it broadside so that he caught the ghant before it could scurry back up the vine. There was a loud clack and the ghant flew out across the river, legs curled like a singed spider. It made only a small splash as it disappeared into the green water.

Tiamak shuddered in repugnance as he waited for it to bob back to the surface. A chorus of dry clacking came from above his head and he looked up quickly to see half a dozen more ghants, each the size of a large monkey, staring down at him from the safety of the upper branches. Their expressionless black eyes glittered. Tiamak had little doubt that if they guessed he could not stand, they would be upon him in a moment; still, it seemed strange for ghants to attack any full-grown human, even an injured one. Strange or not, he could only hope they didn't realize how weak he really was, or what sort of injuries the bloody bandage on his leg signified.

“That's right, you ugly bugs!” he shouted, brandishing his steering pole and knife. His own cry made his head hurt. Wincing, he prayed silently that he didn't faint from the exertion; if he did, he felt sure he would never wake up. “Come on down and I'll give you the same lesson I did your friend!”

The ghants chittered at him with offhanded malice, as much as to say that there was no hurry; if they didn't get him today, some other ghants would soon enough. Crusty, lichen-dotted carapaces scraped against the willow branches as the ghants dragged themselves higher up into the tree. Resisting a fit of shivers, Tiamak calmly but deliberately poled his flatboat toward the center of the watercourse, out from beneath the low-hanging limbs.

The sun, which had been only midway up the morning sky when he noticed it last, had moved shockingly far past the meridian. He must have fallen asleep sitting up, despite the early hour. His fever had taken a great deal out of him. It seemed to have abated, at least for the present, but he was still dreadfully weak, and his injured leg throbbed as if it were aflame.

Tiamak's sudden laugh was raw and unpleasant. To think that two days ago he had been making grand decisions about where he would go, about which of the mighty folk clamoring for his services would be lucky enough to get him and which would have to wait! He remembered that he had decided to go to Nabban as his tribal elders had requested, and to let Kwanitupul go for now, a decision that had caused him many hours of worrying deliberation. Now his careful choice had been reversed in a freakish instant. He would be lucky if he even made it to Kwanitupul alive: the long journey to Nabban was simply inconceivable. He had lost blood and was sick with wound-spite. None of the proper herbs to treat such an injury grew in this part of the Wran. Also, just to insure his continuing misery, a nest of ghants had now spotted him and made him out as soon-to-be easy pickings!

His heart raced. A gray cloud of weakness was descending on him. He reached a slender hand down into the rivercourse, then splashed cold water onto his face. That filthy thing had actually been touching him, sly as a pickpocket, trying to dislodge his knife so its brethren might drop on him unresisted. How could anyone think that ghants were only animals? Some of his tribesmen claimed that they were nothing but the overgrown bugs or crabs they much resembled, but Tiamak had seen the terrible intelligence lurking behind those remorseless jet eyes. The ghants might be products of They Who Breathe Darkness rather than She Who Birthed Mankind—as Older Mogahib so often proclaimed—but that did not make them stupid.

He swiftly surveyed the contents of his boat to make sure nothing had been taken by the ghants before he had awakened. All his meager lot—a few rags of formal clothing, the Summoning Stick from the tribal elders, a few cooking things, his throwing-sling, and his Nisses scroll in its oilskin bag—lay scattered in the bottom of the flatboat. Everything seemed as it should be.

Lying in the hull nearby were the skeletal remains of the fish whose capture had begun these latest troubles. Some time during the last two days of chills and madness he must have eaten most of it, unless birds had picked the bones naked while he slept. Tiamak tried to remember how the fever-time had passed, but all he could summon were visions of poling endlessly down the watercourse while the sky and water bled color like glaze running from a poorly-fired pot. Had he remembered to make a fire and boil the marsh-water before washing out his wound? He seemed to have a vague recollection of trying to lay a spark to some tinder piled in his clay cooking-bowl, but had no idea whether a fire had ever caught there.

Trying to remember made Tiamak's head swim. It was useless to fret over what had or had not happened, he told himself. He was obviously still sick; his only chance was to make his way to Kwanitupul before the fever returned. With a regretful head shake he dropped the fish carcass overboard—the size of the skeleton confirmed that it had indeed been a splendid fish—then donned his shirt as another bout of shivers ran through him. He slumped back against the stern of the boat, then reached for the hat he had woven from sand-palm fronds during his journey's first day. He pulled it down low in an effort to keep the harsh midday sun out of his smarting eyes. After dabbing a little more water on his eyelids, he began to push with the pole, laboriously forcing the flatboat along the wide channel while his aching muscles protested with every stroke.

 

The fever did return sometime during the night. When Tiamak escaped its clutches once more, it was to find himself floating in lazy circles, his flatboat becalmed in a marshy backwater. His leg, although swollen and tremendously painful, did not seem markedly worse. With luck, if he could get to Kwanitupul soon he would not lose it.

Shaking loose the cobwebs of sleep, he offered yet another prayer to He Who Always Steps on Sand—whose existence, despite Tiamak's generally skeptical nature, had come to seem a great deal more conceivable since the misadventure with the crocodile. Whether this weakening of his disbelief was due to the mind-dizzying fever, or to a resurgence of true faith brought on by the nearness of death, Tiamak did not much care. Neither did he scrutinize his feelings about the matter very deeply. The fact was, he did not want to be a one-legged scholar—or worse, a dead scholar. If the gods did not help him, then there was no resource available to him in this treacherous marsh other than his own fast-failing resolve. Faced with those simple alternatives, Tiamak prayed.