The Stone of Farewell (116 page)

The Mist Lamp throbbed. The white mountain loomed closer, steaming beneath the cold black skies. Then, suddenly, it began to fade back into darkness. A few moments later it was gone, leaving only sable emptiness.

A long interval passed. Simon, who had been hanging on the Sitha woman's every word, felt suddenly adrift. The crackling tension in the air was back, stronger than ever.

“Oh!” Amerasu gasped, startled.

All around Simon the Sithi were shifting, murmuring, as questioning turned to uneasiness and the seeds of fear began to grow inside them. A gleam of silver appeared in the center of the Mist Lamp, then spread outward like oil on a pond, filling the darkened silhouette. The silver smeared and ran until it became a face, a woman's face, unmoving but for pale eyes that peered from the darkened slits.

Simon watched the silver mask helplessly, his eyes smarting as they filled with frightened tears. He could not look away. She was so old and strong ... so strong ...

“It has been many turns of the year, Amerasu no‘e-Sa'onserei.”
The Norn Queen's voice was surprisingly melodious, but the sweetness could not entirely hide the vast corruption beneath.
“It has been long, granddaughter. Are you ashamed of your northern kin, that you have not invited us back among you before?”

“You mock me, Utuk'ku Seyt-Hamakha.” There was a quaver in Amerasu's voice, a frightening note of dismay. “All know the reasons for your exile and the separation of our families.”

“You always loved righteousness, little Amerasu.”
The scorn in the Norn Queen's voice made Simon feel as though a fever ran through him. “
But
the righteous soon become meddlers, and so it has always been with your long-reaching clan. You would not scourge the mortals from the land, which might have saved all. And even after they have destroyed the Gardenborn, you cannot leave the mortals be.”
Utuk'ku's breath hissed in and out.
“Ah. I see, there is one among you even now!”

Simon's heart seemed to grow, pushing up into his throat until he could scarcely breathe. Those terrible eyes staring at him—why didn't Amerasu make her go away?! He wanted to shout, to run, but could not. The Sithi-folk around him seemed equally nerveless, struck to stone.

“You oversimplify, grandmother,” Amerasu said at last. “When do you not simply lie.”

Utuk'ku laughed, and the sound was something that could set stones to weeping.

“Fool!”
she cried.
“I oversimplify? You have overreached. You have long concerned yourself with the doings of mortals, but you have missed the most important things. That will prove your death!”

“I know what you plan!” Amerasu said. “You may have taken from me what remains of my son, but even through death, I have discerned his mind. I have seen ...”

“Enough!”
Utuk'ku's angry cry blew through the Yásira, a chill gust of wind that bent the grass and set the butterflies to panicky fluttering.
“Enough. You have spoken your last and condemned yourself. It is death!”

Terrifyingly, Amerasu began to quiver in the dim light, struggling against some invisible restraint, her eyes wide, her mouth moving without sound.

“And you will not interfere further—any of you!”
The Norn Queen's voice was rising to a dreadful pitch.
“The false peace is over! Over! Nakkiga renounces you all!”

All around the Y ásira the Sithi were shouting with amazement and anger. Likemeya rushed forward to the darkened figure of Amerasu, even as Utuk'ku's face shimmered and vanished from the Mist Lamp. The Witness fell dark for a moment, but only a moment. A tiny spot of red kindled in the Lamp's center, a small spark which grew steadily until it was a rippling blaze that outlined the startled features of Jiriki's parents and mute Amerasu with scarlet light. Two dark holes opened in the flame, lightless eyes in the face of fire. Simon felt himself seized in a grip of frozen horror, clutched so tight by it that his muscles quivered. Chill dread beat outward from that wavering face, as heat would rise from an ordinary fire. Amerasu stopped struggling, becoming as still as if she had turned to stone.

Another blackness gaped in the billowing flame, beneath the empty eyes. Bloodless laughter issued forth. Sickened, Simon struggled desperately to get away—he had seen this horror-mask before.

The Red Hand!
He meant it to be a shout, but fear choked his words into helpless, whistling breath.

Likimeya stepped forward, her husband beside her, helping to shield Amerasu. She raised her arms before the Mist Lamp and the fiery thing that surged within it. A kind of silvery glow surrounded her. “Go back to your shriveled mistress and dead master, Corrupted One,” she cried. “You are not one of us any more.”

The flame-thing laughed again.
“No. We are more, far more! The Red Hand and its master have grown strong. All of creation must fall beneath the Storm King's shadow. Those who betrayed us will squeak and chitter in that darkness!
”

“You have no power here!” Shima'onari cried, grasping his wife's upraised hand. The glow around the two of them intensified, until the fog of silvery moonlight had grown to encompass the fiery face as well. “This place is beyond you! Go back to your cold mountain and black emptiness!”

Even as the hollow voice echoed through the Y ásira, overwhelming the Sithi-folk's cries of rage and alarm, the thing in the Mist Lamp suddenly billowed
outward,
expanding into a vast pillar of flame, its shapeless head flung back in a thundering cry. It spread its blazing arms wide, as though to grasp all before it in a crushing, burning embrace.

As the sun-hot fires leaped up, the butterflies clinging to the silken threads overhead began to puff into flame. A million of them seemed to spring into the air at once, a great cloud of fire and smoking wings. Burning, they flew through the air like cinders, careening into the shouting Sithi, crumbling as they struck the trunk of the great ash tree. The Y ásira was in chaos, plunged in a blackness shot with spinning, whirling sparks.

The towering thing at the room's center laughed and blazed, but gave no light. It seemed instead to suck all brightness into its own interior, so that it fattened and grew taller still. A wild, writhing knot of bodies leaped around it, the heads and waving arms of clamoring Sithi-folk silhouetted against the red blaze.

Simon looked around in panic. Jiriki was gone.

Another sound was now rising through the chaos, swelling until it equaled the terrible mirth of the Red Hand creature. It was the raw-throated baying of a hunting pack.

A horde of pale shapes came flooding into the Y ásira. White hounds were suddenly everywhere, their slit eyes reflecting the hellish light of the thing at the chamber's center, their howling red mouths snapping and barking.

“Ruakha, ruakha Zida‘yei!”
Simon heard Jiriki shouting somewhere nearby.
“T'si e-isi'ha as-Shao Irigú!”

Simon moaned, searching desperately for some weapon. A lithe white shape vaulted past him, carrying something in its dripping mouth.

A memory forced itself into Simon's head. As though the blaze without had kindled a blaze within, a burning tongue of remembrance leaped up inside him: the black depths beneath the Hayholt, a dream of tragedy and ghostly fire.

The tempest of disorder rose and grew wilder, a thousand throats wailing in the spark-flurrying darkness, a broil of flailing limbs and terrified eyes and the maddening voices of the Stormspike pack. Simon tried to stand, then quickly threw himself back to the ground. The scrambling Sithi had found their bows: arrows were flying through the smoky air, visible only as streaks of light.

A hound stumbled toward Simon and sagged to the ground at his feet, a blue-fletched arrow through its neck. Revolted, Simon crawled away from the corpse, feeling the grass and the parchment ashes of butterflies between his fingers. His hand closed upon a rock, which he lifted and clutched. He crept forward like a blind mole toward where the heat and noise were greatest, driven by nothing he could describe, helplessly reliving something he might have experienced in a dream, a vision of spectral figures that ran in fearful panic while their home died in flames.

A huge beast, the largest hound Simon had ever seen, had driven Shima‘onari back toward the trunk of the great ash tree, forcing the lord of the Sithi up against the blackened and smoldering bark. Shima'onari's robe was smoking. Weaponless, Jiriki's father held the dog's massive head in his bare hands, struggling to keep the clashing jaws from his face. Strange lights flickered around them, blue and glaring red.

Near where his father struggled, Jiriki and several others had surrounded the bellowing fire-creature. The prince was a small figure standing before the beast of the Red Hand, his witchwood sword Indreju a black tongue of shadow held upraised against the shimmering flames.

Simon lowered his head and crawled forward, still struggling toward the center of the Y ásira. The din was deafening. Bodies pushed past him, some of the Sithi racing forward to help Jiriki fight the invader, others running like maddened creatures, their hair and clothes afire.

A sudden blow flung Simon to the turf. One of the dogs was upon him, its corpselike snout thrusting for his throat, blunt claws scraping at his arms as he tried frantically to twist out from under it. He groped unseeing until he found the stone that had slipped from his grasp, then struck at the creature's head. It yelped wetly and dug its teeth into his shirt, gouging his shoulder as it tried to reach his neck. He struck again, struggled to free his weary arm, then brought the stone down once more. The dog went limp and slid down his chest. Simon rolled over and kicked the body away.

A scream abruptly shuddered out, overtopping the tumult, and a wintry wind howled through the Y ásira, a freezing gale that seemed to pass right through him. Fanned by that wind, the fiery figure at the center of the chamber grew even larger for a moment, then fell back into itself in a burst of billowing flame. There was a sound like thunder, then Simon felt a great percussive slap against his ears as the creature of the Red Hand vanished in a rain of hissing sparks. Another rush of wind threw Simon and many others flat on the ground as air hurried to fill the space where the blazing thing had been. After that, a strange sort of quiet came down over the Y ásira.

Stunned, Simon lay on his back staring upward. The sheen of natural twilight slowly returned, gleaming through the mighty tree whose limbs were now empty of living butterflies, but studded with their blackened remains. Groaning, Simon clambered up onto his shaky legs. All around him the inhabitants of Jao é-Tinukai'i were still milling in shocked disorder. Those Sithi who had found spears and bows were putting an end to the remaining dogs.

Had that terrible scream been the fire-creature's death shriek? Had Jiriki and the others somehow destroyed it? He stared into the cloudy murk in the middle of the chamber, trying to see who it was that stood beside the Mist Lamp. He squinted and took a step forward. Amerasu was there ... and someone else. Simon felt his heart lurch.

A figure with a helmet made in the image of a snarling dog stood at First Grandmother's shoulder, wreathed in the smoke curling up from the scorched earth. One of this intruder's leather-clad arms was around her waist, clutching her slight, sagging form as closely as it might hold a lover. The other hand slowly lifted the hound-helm free, revealing the tanned mask of Ingen Jegger.

“Niku'a!” he shouted.
“Yinva!
Come to me!” The huntsman's eyes gleamed scarlet, reflecting the smoldering bark of the great tree.

Near the trunk of the ash, the huge white hound rose unsteadily. Its fur was scorched and blackened, its ragged maw all but toothless. Shima‘onari remained unmoving on the ground where the beast had crouched, a bloodied arrow clutched in the Sithi-lord's fist. The dog took a step, then fell clumsily and rolled onto its side. Innards gleamed from the opening in its belly as Niku'a's broad chest moved slowly up and down.

The huntsman eye's widened. “You've killed him!” Ingen screamed. “My pride! The best of the kennels!” He carried Amerasu before him as he took a few steps toward the dying hound. First Grandmother's head bobbed limply. “Niku'a!” Ingen hissed, then turned and looked slowly around the Y ásira. The Sithi stood unmoving all around, their faces blood-stained and ash-smeared as they silently returned the huntsman's stare.

Ingen Jegger's thin mouth contorted in sorrow. He lifted his eyes to the scorched limbs of the ash tree and the gray sky above. Amerasu was pinned against his chest, her white hair curtaining her face.

“Murder!” he cried, then there was a long moment of silence.

“What do you want from First Grandmother, mortal?”

It was Likemeya who spoke so calmly. Her white dress was smeared with ashes. She had come to kneel beside her fallen husband, and she held his reddened hand in hers. “You have caused enough heartache. Let her go. Leave this place. We will not pursue you.”

Ingen stared at her as at some long-forgotten landmark seen after a hard journey. His frown stretched into a ghastly smile and he shook Amerasu's helpless form until her head wobbled. He lifted his hound-helm-the fist that clutched it was crimson-drenched-and waved it in mad joy.

“The forest witch is dead!” he howled. “I have done it! Praise me, mistress, I have done your bidding!” He lifted his other hand to the skies, letting Amerasu slump to the ground like a discarded sack. Blood shone dully on her gray robe and golden hands. The translucent hilt of the crystal dagger stood out from her side. “I am immortal!” cried the Queen's Huntsman.