“No stone-dwellers go armed across the Stallion Clan’s fields without a gathering of chiefs to say they can,” Hotvig had cried, and his fellows had echoed him. Fikolmij had fumed and threatened, but the laws of the Free Thrithings were the only immutable things in the clan-folk’s nomadic existence. The argument had ended with Hotvig and the other randwarders telling Earl Fengbald—“a foolish, dangerous man who likes himself well,” as Hotvig described him—that the only way the High King’s men could pursue Josua was to go around the Stallion Clan’s territory. Fengbald, outnumbered by ten to one or more, had no choice but to ride away, taking the shortest route back off the High Thrithings. The Earl of Falshire had made many angry threats before departing, promising that the grasslanders’ long days of freedom were over, that High King Elias would come soon and knock the wheels off their wagons once and for all.
Unsurprisingly, this public thwarting of Fikolmij’s authority brought on a terrible argument that several times almost erupted into deadly bloodshed. The disputing ceased only when Hotvig and several other randwarders took their families and followed Josua, leaving Fikolmij behind to curse and lick his wounds, his strength as March-thane weakened but by no means ended.
“No, he will not follow us,” Hotvig repeated. “That would say to all the clans that mighty Fikolmij cannot survive the loss of our few wagons, and that the stone-dwellers and their feuds are more important to the March-thane of all the High Thrithings than his own people. Now, we clan exiles will live near you for a while at your Farewell Stone and talk among ourselves about what we will do.”
“I cannot tell you how grateful I am for your help,” Josua said solemnly “You have saved our lives. If Fengbald and his soldiers had caught us, we would be going back to the Hayholt in chains. Then there would be no one to stop my brother.”
Hotvig looked at him keenly. “You may think so, but you do not know the strength of the Free Thrithings if you think we would be so easily overcome.” He hefted his long spear. “Already the men of the Meadow Thrithings are making things very difficult for the stone-dwellers of Nabban.”
Father Strangyeard, who had been listening carefully, made a worried face. “The king is not the only one we fear, Hotvig.”
The Thrithings-man nodded. “So you told me. And I would hear more, but now I must go back for the rest of my people. If your destination is as close as the woman says,” he indicated Geloë with careful respect, “then look for us before sunset tomorrow. The wagons can go no faster.”
“But do not delay,” the wise woman said. “I did not speak lightly when I said we must make haste ahead of this storm.”
“No one can ride like grasslander horsemen,” Hotvig said sternly. “And our wagon-teams are not much slower. We will be with you before tomorrow’s night.” He laughed, again showing his missing tooth. “Leave it to city folk to find stone in the middle of the meadowlands, then want to make their home there. Still,” he said to the prince, “I knew when you killed Utvart that things would never be the same for anyone. My father taught me to trust my hand and my heart.” He grinned. “My luck, too. I bet one of my foals on you, Josua, in your fighting with Utvart. My friends were ashamed to best me so easily, but they took my wager,” He laughed loudly. “You won four good horses for me!” He turned his mount toward the south, waving. “Soon we will meet again!”
“And no arrows this time,” cried Deornoth.
“Go safely,” Josua called as Hotvig and his men spurred away across the green lands.
Heartened by the encounter with the Thrithings-folk, the travelers rode cheerfully through the morning despite the threatening skies. When they stopped briefly to take their midday meal and water the horses, Sangfugol even convinced Father Strangyeard to sing with him. The priest’s surprisingly sweet voice blended well with the harper’s, and if Father Strangyeard did not quite understand what “The Ballad of Round-Heeled Moirah” was about, his enjoyment was the greater for it, and for the laughing praise given to him after.
When they were in the saddle once more, Deornoth found himself riding beside Geloë, who cradled Leleth before her on the saddle. She rode flawlessly, as one of long experience, Deornoth found himself wondering once more what the wise woman’s strange history might be. She was also still wearing the spare clothing he had brought out of the wagon-camp, as if she had come to that fateful copse of trees naked. After thinking for awhile about why that might be, and remembering the clawed thing that had struck at him in darkness, Deornoth decided that there were some things about which a God-fearing knight should not inquire.
“Forgive me, Valada Geloë,” he said, “but you look very grim. Is there something important you have not told us yet?” He indicated Sangfugol and Strangyeard, laughing with Duchess Gutrun as they rode. “Are we singing in the lich-yard, as the old saying goes?”
Geloë continued to watch the sky. From her lap, Leleth looked at him as though he were an interesting rock. “I fear many things. Sir Deornoth,” Geloë said at last. “The problem with being a ‘wise woman’ is that sometimes you know just enough to be truly afraid, while still not having any better answers than might the youngest child. I fear this coming storm. The one who is our true enemy—I will not say his name here in this land, not in the open—is reaching the summit of his power. We have already seen in this cold summer how his pride and anger speak in the winds and clouds. Now, black weather is swirling out of the north. I am sure it is his storm; if I am right, it will bring woe to those who resist him.”
Deornoth found himself following her gaze. Suddenly, the ominous clouds seemed an inky hand stretching across the sky from the north, blindly but patiently searching. The idea of waiting for that hand to find them sent a poisonous dread twisting through him, so that he had to look down at his saddle for a moment before he could lift his eyes to Geloë’s yellow stare.
“I understand,” he said.
Sunlight bled fitfully through chinks in the clouds. The wind turned, blowing into their faces, heavy and moist. As they followed the line of the valley, a broad bend in the Stefflod revealed for the first time the old forest, the Aldheorte. The great wood was much nearer than Deornoth would have guessed—the party’s return on horseback had been far swifter than their straggling march out across the Thrithings. Because of their descent into the river valley, the forest now stood on the heights above them, a solid line of vegetation like dark cliffs along the valley’s northern rim.
“It is not far now,” Geloë said.
They rode on through the afternoon as the curtained sun slid down the sky, glowing behind the gray murk. Another turn in the river’s course brought them around a cluster of shallow hills. They stopped short. “Merciful Aedon,” Deornoth breathed to himself.
“Sesuad’ra,” Geloë said. “There stands the Stone of Farewell.”
“That’s no stone,” Sangfugol said disbelievingly. “That’s a mountain!” A great hill rose from the valley floor before them. Unlike its low, rounded neighbors, Sesuad’ra thrust up from the meadows like the head of a buried giant, bearded with trees, crowned with angular stones that stood along the ridgeline. Beyond the spiky stones some shimmering whiteness lay along the hill’s very peak. An immense, upward-straining slab of weathered rock and clinging brush, Sesuad’ra loomed some five hundred cubits above the river. The uneven sunlight washed across the hill in wavering bands, so that the entire mass almost seemed to turn and watch them as they rode slowly down the watercourse.
“It is much like Thisterborg, near the Hayholt,” Josua said wonderingly. “That’s no stone,” Sangfugol repeated stubbornly, shaking his head. Geloë laughed harshly. “It is all stone. Sesuad’ra is a part of the very bones of the earth, thrust free of her body in the pain of the Days of Fire, but still reaching down into the very center of the world.”
Father Strangyeard was eyeing the massive hill nervously. “And we are going to…are going to…stay there? Live there?” The witch woman smiled. “We have permission.”
&nbs
p; As they neared, it became apparent that the Stone was not so sheer as distance made it seem. A path, a lighter streak through the choking trees and brush, snaked its way around the base of the hill, then appeared again farther up, spiraling summitward around the circumference of the rock until it disappeared near the crest.
“How can trees live on such a stone, let alone thrive?” Deornoth asked. “Can they grow in the very rock?”
“Sesuad’ra has been broken and worn over the eons of its existence,” Geloë answered. Plants will ever find a way, and they themselves help to further break the stone until it is crumbled to a dirt scarcely less rich than found on a Hewenshire freeholding.”
Deornoth frowned slightly at this reference to his birthplace, then wondered how the wise woman knew of his father’s farm. He had certainly never mentioned it to her.
Soon they were walking in the sudden twilight of the hill’s long shadow, whipped by a chilly wind. The path that began at Sesuad’ra’s base lay before them, hugging the hillside, a trampled cut of grass and moss overhung by trees and twining creepers.
“And we are going up?” Duchess Gutrun asked in some consternation. “Up into this place?”
“Of course,” Geloë said, a touch of impatience in her rough voice. “It is the highest ground for leagues. We have need of high ground just now. Besides, there are other reasons—must I explain them all again?”
“No, Valada Geloë, please lead us,” Josua said. The prince seemed fired by some inner flame, his pale face alight with excitement. “This is what we have been searching for. This is where we will begin the long road back.” His face slackened somewhat. “I do wonder, though, how Hotvig and his folk will feel about leaving their wagons below. It is a pity there is no way to get them up the hill.”
The wise woman waved her callused hand. “You worry too soon. Step ahead and you will have a surprise.”
They rode forward. Beneath the straggling grass the path that wound up the hillside was as smooth as one of old Naglimund’s hallways and wide enough for any wagon.
“But how can this be?” Josua asked.
“You forget,” Geloë responded, “this is a Sithi place. Beneath this bramble is the road they built. It takes many, many centuries to destroy the handiwork of the Zida’ya.”
Josua was not cheered. “I am amazed, but now I am even more worried. What will keep our enemies from climbing as easily as we do?”
Geloë snorted in disgust. “First, it is easier to defend a high place than to take it from below. Secondly, the nature of the place itself is against it. Third, and perhaps most importantly, our enemy’s own rage may out-smart him and ensure our survival—at least for a while.”
“How so?” the prince demanded.
“You will see.” Geloë spurred her horse up the path, Leleth bobbing on the saddle before her. The child’s wide brown eyes took in everything without any show of feeling. Josua shrugged and followed.
Deornoth turned to see Vorzheva sitting upright on her horse, face set in lines of grim fear. “What is it, my lady?” he asked. “Is something amiss?”
She offered a nervous smile. “My people have hated and feared this valley forever. Hotvig is a clan-man and would not show it, but he fears this place, too.” She sighed shakily. “Now I must follow my husband upon this unnatural rock. I am afraid.”
For the first time since his prince had brought this odd woman to live in the castle at Naglimund, Deornoth felt his heart opening to her, filling with admiration. “We are all deathly afraid, my lady,” he said. “The rest of us are just not as honest as you.”
He tapped gently with his heels at Vildalix’s ribs and followed Vorzheva up the path.
The road was overhung with trailing vines and the tangled branches of trees, forcing the travelers to spend as much time ducking their heads as they did riding upright. As they slowly circled out of the shadow, like ants walking the perimeter of a sundial, the mist that clung to the hill lent an unusual sparkle to the afternoon glow.
Deornoth thought that the smell of the place was what seemed strangest of all. Sesuad’ra gave off a scent of timeless growth, of water and roots and damp earth in a place long undisturbed. There was an air of peace here, of slow, careful thought, but also a disturbing sensation of watchfulness. From time to time the stillness was broken by the trill of unseen birds whose songs were as somber and hesitant as children whispering in a high-ceilinged hall.
As the grassy meadow began to drop away below them, the travelers passed posts of standing stone, time-smoothed white shapes almost twice a man’s height that had in their unrecognizable outlines some hint of movement, of life. They passed the first as the path brought them around into direct sunlight for the first time.
“Marking pillars.” Geloë called over her shoulder. “One for each of the moons in the year. We’ll pass a dozen every time we circle around the hill until we reach the summit. They were carved to look like animals and birds once, I think.”
Deornoth stared at the rounded nob that might have been a head and wondered what beast it had once represented. Weathered by wind and rain, it was now as shapeless as melted wax, faceless as the forgotten dead. He shivered and make the sign of the Tree on his breast.
A little while later Geloë stopped and pointed downward toward the northwest part of the valley, where the rim of the old forest reached out almost to the very banks of the Stefflod. The river was a tiny streak of quicksilver along the valley’s emerald floor.
“Just beyond the river,” she said, “do you see?” She gestured again at the forest’s dark breakfront, which might have been a frozen sea-wave awaiting only spring’s thaw before it swept across the low ground. “There, in the forest’s fringe. Those are the ruins of Enki-e-Shao’saye, which some say was the most beautiful city ever built in Osten Ard since the world began.”
As his companions whispered and shaded their eyes, Deornoth moved to the edge of the path, squinting at the distant forest. He saw nothing but what might have been a crumbled wall of lavender, a flash of gold.
“There’s not much to see,” he said quietly.
“Not in this age,” Geloë replied.
Up they climbed as the day waned. Each time they circled around to the hill’s northern slope, coming out of shade into ever-decreasing afternoon light, they could see the spreading knot of blackness on the horizon. The storm was moving in swiftly. It had now swallowed the far borders of great Aldheorte, so that all the north seemed a gray uncertainty.
As they finished their twelfth circuit around the hill, passing the one hundred and forty-fourth of the marking pillars—a small enough diversion, but still Deornoth had kept score—the travelers emerged at last from the shadowing greenery, clambering up a final slope until they stood on the hill’s windy summit. The sun had fallen away into the west; only a reddish sliver remained.
The top of the hill was nearly flat and scarcely less wide than Sesuad’ra’s base. All around its perimeter jutted fingers of upright stone, not smoothed like the marking pillars, but great, raw standing stones, each as tall as four men, made of the same gray rock veined with white and pink that formed the hill.
In the center of the plateau, in the midst of a field of waving grass, stood a vast, low building of opalescent stone, tinged with the sunset’s red glow.
At first it seemed a temple of some sort, like the great old buildings of Nabban from the days of the Imperium, but its lines were plainer. Its unassuming but affecting style made it seem almost to spring from the hill itself. It was plain that this structure belonged on this windy hilltop, beneath this incredibly wide sky. The grandeur and self-interest that spoke from every angle of houses of human worship, however finely wrought, was a language alien to whoever had built this. The passage of unguessable years had in places brought its walls to collapse. Unhindered for centuries, trees had thrust up through the building’s very roof, or pushed their way in at the arched doorways like unwanted guests.
Still, the simplicity and b
eauty of the place were so plain—and at the same time so inhuman—that for a long time no one ventured to speak.
“We are here,” Josua said at last, his tones solemn but exalted. “After all our danger and all our suffering, we have found a place where we can stop and say: we go no farther.”
“It is not forever, Prince Josua.” Geloë spoke gently, as if unwilling to break his mood, but the prince was already striding confidently across the hilltop toward the white walls.
“It need not be forever,” he called. “But for now, we will be safe!” He turned and waved his hand for the others to follow, then continued turning, gazing around him on all sides. “I take back what I said!” he shouted to Geloë. “With a few good folk behind me, I could make a stand here and Sir Camaris himself could not defeat me, not with all the knights of my father’s Great Table at his side!”
He bounded away toward the pale walls that now showed a touch of blue. Evening was coming on. The others went after him, talking quietly among themselves as they passed through the swaying grass.
25
Stuck in a Wild Storm
“It’s a silly game,” Simon said. “It doesn’t make any sense.”
Aditu lifted an eyebrow.
“It doesn’t!” he insisted, “I mean, look! You could win if you just moved here…” he pointed, “and there…” he pointed again. Looking up, he found Aditu’s golden eyes upon him, laughing, mocking. “Couldn’t you…?” he finished.
“Of course, Seoman.” She moved the polished stones across the gaming board as he had suggested, from one golden island to another over a sea of sapphire-blue waves. The mock-ocean was surrounded by scarlet flames and murky gray clouds. “But then the game is over, and only the shallowest waters have been explored.”