The Stone of Farewell (57 page)

It seemed that the wind had already worn away the face of the land, leaving behind little that was remarkable or distinct. Had it not been for the widening line of forest on the horizon, he could have supposed that every morning found them back at the same cold, bleak starting place. Thinking morosely about his own warm bed in the Hayholt, he decided that even if the Storm King himself were to move into the castle, his minions numerous as snowflakes, Simon could still live happily in the servant's quarters. He wanted a home desperately. He was close to the point where he would take a mattress in Hell if the Devil would lend him a pillow.

As days wore by, the storm continued to grow behind them, a black pillar rising ominously in the northwestern sky. Great cloudy arms clutched at the firmament like the branches of a heaven-spanning tree. Lightning flickered between them.

“It's not moving very fast,” Simon said one day as they ate a sparse noontime meal. There was more nervousness in his voice than he would have liked.

Binabik nodded. “It grows, but its spreading is slow. That is something for being thankful about.” He wore an unusually dispirited expression. “The slower it is moving, the longer we are not beneath it—for I am thinking that when it comes, it will bring a darkness with it that will not be passing away, as with storms of the ordinary type.”

“What do you mean?” Now the tremor was plain to hear.

“It is not a storm with just snow and rain,” Binabik said carefully. “My thought is that it is exactly meant to bring fear where it goes. It rises from Stormspike. It has the look of something full of unnaturalness.” He raised his palms apologetically. “It is spreading, but as you said, not with great swiftness. ”

I do not know about such things,” Sludig said, ”but I must admit I'm happy we will be off the Waste soon. I wouldn't want to get caught in the open in any storm, and that one looks truly nasty.” He turned toward the south and squinted. ”Two days until we reach Aldheorte,” he said. “That will be some protection.”

Binabik sighed. “I hope you are right, but I am fearing that there will be no protection against this storm—or that the protection must be something other than forest trees or roofs.”

“Do you mean the swords?” Simon asked quietly.

The little man shrugged. “Perhaps. If we are finding all three, perhaps winter can be kept at spear-length-or even pushed back. But first we must go to where Geloë tells us. Otherwise, it is only worrying about things we cannot be changing; that is foolishness.” He mustered a smile. “‘When your teeth are gone,' we Qanuc say, ‘learn to like mush.' ”

 

The next morning, their seventh on the Waste, came laden with foul weather. Although the storm in the north was still only an inky blotch defacing the far horizon, steely gray clouds had gathered overhead, their edges stripped into sooty tatters by the rising wind. By noon, when the sun had vanished from view entirely behind the dismal pall, the snow began to fly.

“This is terrible,” Simon shouted, eyes narrowed against the stinging sleet. Despite his heavy leather gloves, his fingers were swiftly growing numb. “We're blinded! Shouldn't we stop and make shelter?”

Binabik, a small, snow-covered shadow atop Qantaqa's back, turned and called back to him: “If we go a little farther, we will reach the crossroads!”

“Crossroads!” Sludig bellowed. “In this wilderness?!”

“Ride nearer,” Binabik cried. “I will be explaining.”

Simon and the Rimmersman brought their mounts closer to the striding wolf. Binabik lifted his hand to his mouth, but still the wind's roar threatened to carry off his words. “Not far beyond here, I am thinking, this Old Tumet'ai Road meets the White Way, that is running along the northern edge of the forest. At the crossroad may be shelter, or at least the trees should be of more thickness there, closer to the woods. Let us go riding on a while longer. If there is nothing in that spot, we will make our camp there despite it.”

“As long as we stop well before dark, troll,” Sludig bellowed. “You are clever, but your cleverness may not be enough to make a decent camp in darkness in this blizzard. Having lived through all the madness I have seen, I do not want to die in the snow like a lost cow!”

Simon said nothing, saving his strength so he could more fully appreciate his misery. Aedon, it was cold! Would there never be an end to snow?

They rode on through the bleak, icy afternoon. Simon's mare plodded slowly, ankling through the new drifts. Simon leaned his head close to her mane, trying to stay out of the wind. The world seemed as formless and white as the inside of a flour cask, and only slightly more habitable.

The sun was quite invisible, but a dimming of the already scarce light suggested that the afternoon was fading fast. Binabik, however, did not seem inclined to stop. As they passed yet one more unprepossessing stand of evergreens, Simon could stand it no longer.

“I'm freezing, Binabik!” he shouted angrily above the wind. “And it's getting dark! There's another bunch of trees gone and we're still riding. Well, it's almost night! By God's bloody Tree, I'm not going to go any farther!”

“Simon ...” Binabik began, striving to assume a placating tone while yelling at the top of his lungs.

“There's something in the road!” Sludig cried hoarsely.
“Vaer!
Something ahead! A troll!”

Binabik squinted. “It is being no such thing,” he shouted indignantly. “No Qanuc would be foolish enough to go wandering alone in such weather!”

Simon stared into the swirling gray dimness before them. “I don't see anything. ”

“As neither do I.” Binabik brushed snow from his hood lining.

“I saw something,” Sludig growled. “I may be snow-blinded, but I am not mad.”

“An animal, that is most likely,” the troll said. “Or, if we are unlucky, one of the diggers as a scout. Perhaps it is time to make shelter and fire, as you said, Simon. There is a stand of trees that looks to make better sheltering just ahead. There, over the rise.”

The companions chose the most protected spot they could find. Simon and Sludig wove branches among the tree trunks for a windbreak while Binabik, with the help of his yellow fire-powder, set flame to damp wood and began to boil water for broth. The weather was so unremittingly foul and cold that after sharing the thin soup, they all curled up in their cloaks and lay shivering. The wind was too loud for any but shouted conversation. Despite the proximity of his friends, Simon was alone with his cheerless thoughts until sleep came.

 

Simon woke with Qantaqa's steaming breath on his face. The wolf whined and nudged him with her great head, rolling him halfway over. He sat up, blinking in the weak rays of morning sun filtering into the copse. Snow drifts had piled against the woven branches, making a wall that kept the wind at bay, so the smoke from Binabik's campfire rose almost undisturbed.

“Good morning, Simon-friend,” Binabik said. “We have survived through the storm.”

Simon gently pushed Qantaqa's head out of his side. She made a noise of frustration, then backed away. Her muzzle was red-daubed.

“She has been unsettled all the morning,” Binabik laughed. “I am thinking that the many frozen squirrels and birds and such who have tumbled from the trees have fed her well, however.”

“Where's Sludig?”

“He is seeing to the horses.” Binabik poked at the fire. “I convinced him to take them downslope in the open, so the horses would not be stepping on my morning meal or your face.” He lifted a bowl. “This is the last of the broth. Since our dried meat is now almost finished, I suggest you enjoy it. Meals may be scarce if our own hunting must be relied on.”

Simon shivered as he wiped a handful of snow on his face. “But won't we reach the forest soon?”

Binabik patiently offered the bowl again. “Just so, but we will be traveling along it rather than through. It is a route more circuitous but less time-consuming, since we will not be cutting through underbrush. Also, in this frozen summer there may be few animals who are not sleeping in their dens and nests. Thus, if you are not soon taking this soup from my hands, I will drink it myself. I am no more interested in starving than you, as well as a great deal more sensible.”

“Sorry. Thank you.” Simon hunched over the bowl, enjoying a deep breath of the rising scent before he drank.

“You may be washing the bowl when you have finished,” the troll sniffed. “A nice bowl is a luxurious thing to have on a journey of such dangerousness. ”

Simon smiled. “You sound like Rachel the Dragon.”

“I have not met this Dragon-Rachel,” Binabik said as he stood up, brushing snow from his breeches, “but if she was given charge of you, she must have been a person of great patientness and kindness. ”

Simon chortled.

 

They reached the crossroads in late morning. The meeting of the two roads was marked only by a gaunt finger of stone set upright in the frozen ground. Gray-green lichen, seemingly impervious to frost, clung to it grimly.

“The Old Tumet'ai Road runs through the forest.” Binabik gestured to the barely distinguishable path of the south road, which coiled away through a stand of firs. “Since I am thinking it is nevermore used and likely quite overgrown, we should instead follow the White Way. Perhaps we will find some deserted habitations where we may be finding supplies.”

The White Way proved a slightly newer road than the one leading from the ancient site of Tumet'ai. There were a few marks of recent human visitation—a rusted and broken iron wheel-rim dangling from a roadside branch, where it had doubtless been thrown by an irate wagon owner; a sharpened spoke perhaps used as a tent-spike, discarded by the shoulder; a circle of charred stones half-covered in snow.

“Who lives out here?” Simon asked. “Why is there a road at all?”

“There were once several small settlements east of St. Skendi's monastery,” Sludig said. “You remember Skendi's—the snow-buried place we passed on our way to the dragon-mountain. There were even a few towns here—Sovebek, Grinsaby, some others, as I remember. I think also that a century or so ago, people traveled this way around the great forest when they came north from the Thrithings, so there may have been a few inns.”

“In days more than a century gone,” Binabik intoned, “this part of the world was being much traveled. We Qanuc—some of us, that is to say—traveled farther south in summer, sometimes to the edges of the lowlander countries. Also, the Sithi themselves were everywhere in their wandering. It is only in these late and sad days that all this land has become empty of voices.”

“It does seem empty now,” Simon said. “It seems like no one could live here anymore.”

They followed the winding course of the road through the short afternoon. The trees were gradually becoming thicker here at the forest's edge, in spots growing so closely about the road that it seemed as if the companions had already entered Aldheorte, whether they wished to or not. At last they came to another standing stone, this one leaning forlornly by the roadside, with no crossing or other possible landmark in sight. Sludig dismounted to take a closer look.

“There are runes on it, but faint and weathered.” He peeled back some of the frozen moss. “I think they say that Grinsaby is nearby.” He looked up, smiling in his frosty beard. “Someplace with a roof or two, perhaps, even if nothing else. That would be a nice change.” His step a little springier, the Rimmersman vaulted back into his saddle. Simon, too, was heartened. Even a deserted town would be a vast improvement over the comfortless waste.

The words of Binabik's song came back to him.
You have slipped into cold shadows ...
He felt a moment's pang of loneliness. Perhaps the town would not be deserted, after all. Maybe there would be an inn with a fire, and food ...

As Simon yearned for the comforts of civilization, the sun vanished for good behind the forest. The wind rose and the early northern twilight came down upon them.

 

There was still light in the sky, but the snowy landscape had turned blue and gray, soaking up shadow like a rag dipped in ink. Simon and his companions were nearly ready to stop and make camp, and were discussing the subject in loud voices over the monotonous wind when they came upon the first outbuildings of Grinsaby.

As if to disappoint even Sludig's modest hopes, the roofs of these abandoned cottages had collapsed under the weight of snow. The paddocks and gardens were also long untended, knee-deep in swirling white. Simon had seen so many emptied towns in his northern sojourn that it was hard to believe that the Frostmarch and the Waste had once been inhabited, that people had led their lives here just as they did in the green fields of Erkynland. He ached for his own home, for familiar places and familiar weather. Or had winter already crawled over the entire land?

They rode on. Soon Grinsaby's deserted houses began to appear in greater profusion on either side of the road Binabik had named the White Way. Some still bore traces of their once-residents—a rusted axe with a rotted handle standing in a chopping block before a snow-buried front door; an upright broom sticking out of the roadside drifts like a flag or the tail of a frozen animal—but most of the dwellings were as empty and desolate as skulls.

“Where do we stop?” Sludig called. “I think we may not find a roof after all. ”

“We may not, so let us be looking for good walls,” Binabik replied. He was about to say more when Simon tugged at his arm.

“Look! It is a troll! Sludig was right!” Simon pointed off to the side of the road, where a short figure stood motionless but for its wind-flung cloak. The last rays of sunlight had found a thin spot in the forest fringe behind Grinsaby, throwing the stranger into relief.