The Stone of Farewell (76 page)

“The ladder.” Tiamak waved his steering pole. “I can't reach the ladder. ”

The old man looked kindly from Tiamak to the ladder, then seemed for some time to reflect gravely on the whole question. At last he nodded, his smile widening. Tiamak, despite extreme weariness and the pain of his throbbing leg, found himself smiling back at this strange old bird. After this exchange of unspoken good cheer had gone on for some little while, the man abruptly turned and disappeared back into the doorway.

Tiamak howled despairingly, but the old man reappeared a few moments later with a boat-hook clutched in his long-fingered hand which he used to jiggle the ladder free; it uncoiled the rest of the way and the bottom splashed into the green water. Tiamak, after a moment of muddled deliberation, took a few things from the boat and began to climb. The Wrannaman found he had to stop twice during the short three-fathom trip to rest. His crocodile-bitten leg was burning with a pain like fire.

By the time he reached the top his head was reeling worse than it had all day. The old man had gone, but when Tiamak dragged the heavy door open and hobbled through he found him again, now sitting in the corner of an enclosed courtyard on a pile of blankets that looked as though they served as his bed, surrounded by skeins of rope and various other tools. Most of the space in the damp courtyard was taken by a pair of upturned boat-hulls. One had been badly slashed, as though by a sharp rock. The other was half-painted.

As Tiamak made his way around the jars of white paint that cluttered the path across the courtyard, the old man smiled foolishly at him once more, then settled back into his blankets as though to fall asleep.

The door at the far side of the courtyard led into the inn itself. This bottom floor seemed to contain only a dowdy common room with a handful of stools and a few long tables. A sour-faced Perdruinese woman, heavy-armed and with gray-shot hair, stood pouring beer from one jug to another.

“What do you want?” she said.

Tiamak paused in the doorway. “Are you ... he at last remembered the former nun's name, ”... Xorastra?”

The woman made a face. “Dead three years. She was my aunt. Mad as a mudlark. Who are you? You're a swamp man, aren't you? We don't take beads or feathers here for payment.”

“I need a place to stay. My leg is injured. I am a friend of Father Dinivan and of Doctor Morgenes Ercestres.”

“Never heard of them. Blessed Elysia, but you do speak decent Perdruinese for a savage, don't you? We have no rooms available. You can sleep with old Ceallio out there. He's simple-minded but he does no harm. Six cintis a night, nine if you want food. ” She turned away, gesturing absently at the courtyard beyond.

As she finished speaking a trio of children thundered down the stairs, smacking at each other with switches, laughing and shrieking. They almost knocked Tiamak down as they pushed past him and went through into the courtyard.

“I must have help with my leg.” Tiamak swayed as dizziness washed over him. “Here.” He reached into his belt-pouch and pulled out the two gold Imperators he had been saving for years. He had brought them with him for just such an emergency, and what good would money be to him if he died? “Please, I have gold.”

Xorastra's niece turned. Her eyes bulged. “Rhiappa and her large Pirates!” she swore. “Look at that, now!”

“Please, good lady. I can bring you back many more of these.” He couldn't, but there was a much better chance this woman would help keep him alive if she thought he could. “Just get a barber or a healer to see to my leg, and give me food and a place to sleep.”

Her mouth, still gaping in surprise at the appearance of the glittering golden coins, widened even further as Tiamak pitched over at her feet, senseless as a stone.

Simon was beginning to lose himself in this strange dream, to feel as though it were to him that the patient, pained voice spoke: he felt bad for having been so long absent, for bringing further suffering to such a high yet afflicted soul.

The stars seemed very naked over Stormspike, gleaming white as polished bone, cold as knobs of ice. Ingen Jegger thought them very beautiful.

He stood beside his horse on the road before the mountain. The bitter wind whistled through the ivory muzzle of his snarling, dog-faced helm. Even his Norn-stallion, bred in the world's blackest, coldest stables, was doing its best to duck the brutal sleet that the wind flung like arrows—but Ingen Jegger was exalted. The shrill of the wind was a lullabye, the sting of freezing sleet a caress. Ingen's mistress had set him a great task.

 

“No other Queen's Hunter has ever been granted such a responsibility,” she had told him as the indigo light of the Well filled the Chamber of the Harp. As she spoke, the groans of the Singing Harp—a great, translucent and ever-changing thing cloaked by the mists of the Well—had made the very stones of Stormspike shudder. “We have brought you back from the outlands of Death's Country.” Utuk'ku's glittering mask threw back the Well's blue radiance so fiercely that her face was obscured, as though a flame burned between shoulders and crown. “We have also given you weapons and wisdom no other Queen's Hunter has ever had. Now we offer you a task of terrible difficulty, a task like no one, mortal or immortal, has ever faced.”

“I will do it, Lady,” he had said, and his heart had throbbed within him as though it would burst from joy.

 

Standing now on the royal roadway, Ingen Jegger looked at the ruins of the old city that lay all about him, skeletal litter on the lower slopes of the great ice-mountain. When the huntsman's progenitors were scarcely more than savages, he thought, ancient Nakkiga had stood beneath the night sky in her full beauty, a needle-forest of alabaster and white witchwood, a chalcedony necklace around the mountain's throat. Before the huntsman's people had known fire, the Hikeda'ya had built pillared chambers within the very mountain itself, each chamber blazing with a million crystalline facets of glittering lamplight, a galaxy of stars burning in the darkness of the earth.

And now he, Ingen Jegger, was their chosen instrument! He wore the mantle no mortal had ever borne! Even to one of his training, of his horrifying discipline, it was a maddening thought.

The wind gentled. His steed made a noise of impatience, a large pale shape beside him in the flurrying snow. He stroked the horse with his gloved hand, letting his touch rest on its powerful neck, feeling the quick pulse of life. He put a boot into the stirrup and lifted himself into the saddle, then whistled for Niku‘a. A few moments later the great white hound appeared on a rise nearby. Nearly as large as the huntsman's horse, Niku'a filled the night with his steaming breath; the dog's short fur was pearled with mist so that it glowed like moonlit marble.

“Come,” Ingen Jegger hissed. “Great deeds lie before us!” The road stretched before him, leading down from the heights and into the unsuspecting lands of sleeping men. “Death is behind us. ”

He spurred his horse forward. The hooves fell on the icy road like hammers.

The woman's voice was only a whisper, the merest breath, but still Simon could feel its bitterness.
“The eldest are always the loneliest, my quiet one, but no one should be left behind for so long by those whom they, had loved ...”

And then she was gone.

 

Simon awakened slowly out of the extended darkness that had held him. His ears seemed to echo strangely, as though the absence of the voice to which he had listened so long left a greater emptiness. When he opened his eyes, light flowed in, dazzling him; when he closed them, rings of bright color spun before his shuttered lids. He assayed a more careful view of the world and found that he was in a tiny forest dell blanketed in new-fallen snow. Pale morning light streamed down through the overhanging trees, silvering the naked branches and speckling the forest floor.

He was very cold. He was also completely alone.

“Binabik!” he cried. “Qantaqa!” A moment later he added “Sludig!” as an afterthought. There was no reply.

Simon untangled himself from his cloak and clambered unsteadily to his feet. He shook off a coating of powdery snow, then stood for a moment rubbing his head to clear the shadows. The dingle mounted up steeply on either side of him; judging by the array of torn branches piercing his shirt and breeches, he had tumbled down from above. He felt himself gingerly, but other than the long, healing wound on his back and some ugly toothmarks on his leg, he seemed only bruised and scraped and very, very stiff. He grabbed a protruding root in his hand and clambered painfully up the side of the dell. His legs were trembling as he scrambled over the edge and stood up. A monotonous profusion of snow-robed trees stretched away in all directions. There was no sign of his friends or his horse; in fact, there was no sign of anything but endless white forest.

Simon tried to remember how he had come to this place, but drew only a shuddering memory of the last mad hours in Skodi's abbey, of a hateful, icy voice that had plagued him, and of riding into blackness. Afterward there had been a gentler, sadder voice that had spoken long in his dreams.

He looked around, hoping at least to find a saddlebag, but with no luck. His empty scabbard was tied to his leg; after some searching, he finally spotted the bone knife from Yiqanuc lying at the bottom of the dingle. With many a self-pitying curse, Simon climbed back down to retrieve it. He felt a little better to have something sharp close to hand, but it was a very tiny consolation. When he reached the top once more and looked around at the inhospitable expanse of wintery woods, a sense of desertion and fear crept over him that had been absent for a long while. He had lost everything—everything! The sword Thorn, the White Arrow, the things that he had won, all were gone! And his friends were gone, too.