“What were they?” If the burning presence Maegwin described was what he thought it was, any clue to its plans—and by extension to the designs of its undead master—might help avert an endless age of blackness.
If I can even get back, he reminded himself. If I can escape this place. He pushed the disturbing thought away. Binabik had taught him to do only what he could at any give time. ‘You cannot catch three fish with two hands,’ the little man often said.
Maegwin hesitated, then the glow began to spread. “I will try to show you.”
In the valley of glass and shadows before them, something moved. It was another light, but where the one that Maegwin held against her breast was soft and warm, this one blazed with a fierce intensity; as Simon watched, four more points of radiance sprang up around it. A moment later the central light grew into a licking flame, stretching upward—but even as the flame grew, it changed color, becoming paler and paler until it was white as frost. The licking tendrils of fire stiffened into immobility even as they reached up and outward. Simon gaped at what they had become. At the center of the four-cornered ring of flames now loomed a tall white tree, beautiful and unearthly. It was the thing that had haunted him so long. The white tree. The blazing tower.
“It’s Green Angel Tower,” he murmured.
“This is where all the thoughts of the spirit in Naglimund are bent.” Maegwin’s voice was suddenly weary, as though showing Simon the tree had taken nearly all her strength. “That idea burns inside it, just as those flames burn around the tree.” The vision wavered and fell away, leaving only the shadowy, insubstantial landscape.
Green Angel Tower, Simon thought. Something is going to happen there.
“One other thing.” Maegwin had grown markedly fainter. “Somehow it thought of Naglimund as … the Fourth House. Does that mean something?”
Simon had a dim recollection of hearing something similar from the Fire Dancers on the hilltop over Hasu Vale, but at this moment it meant little to him. He was consumed by the thought of Green Angel Tower. The tower, and its mirror-phantom the White Tree, had haunted his dreams for almost a year. It was the last Sithi building in the Hayholt, the place where Ineluki had spoken the dreadful words that had slain a thousand mortal soldiers and had barred him forever from the living world of Osten Ard. If the Storm King desired some ultimate revenge, perhaps by giving some dread power to his mortal ally Elias, what more likely place for it to happen than the tower?
Simon felt a frustrated rage sweep over him. To know this, to see at last the outlines of the Enemy’s ultimate plan, but to be helpless to do anything—it was maddening! More than ever he needed to be able to act, yet instead he was condemned to wander as an unhomed spirit while his body hung useless and unihabited.
“Maegwin, I have to find a way out of this … this place. I must go back, somehow. Everything we have both fought for is there. Green Angel Tower in the Hayholt—that is the White Tree. I must go back!”
The shadowy figure beside him took a long time to respond. “You wish to go back to that pain? To all your suffering?”
Simon thought of all that had happened and still might happen, of his tormented body on the wheel and the agony he had fled in coming here, but it did not change his resolve. “Aedon save me, I have to. Don’t you want to go back, too?”
“No.” Maegwin’s dim form shuddered. “No. I have no strength left, Simon. If something was not keeping me here, I would already have let go of everything that held me.” She took what seemed to be a deep breath; when she spoke again, her voice trembled on the edge of weeping. “There are some I have loved, and I know now that many of them are still among the living. One in particular.” She steadied herself. “I loved him—loved him until I was sick with it. And perhaps he even cared for me a little and I was too stupidly prideful to see it … but that is not important now.” Her voice grew ragged. “No, that is not true. There is nothing in the living world more important to me than that love—but it is not to be. I would not go back and start again, even if I could.”
Her pain was so great that Simon was left without words. There were some things that could not be made better, he realized. Some sorrows were irreparable.
“But I believe that you must go back,” she said. “It is different for you, Simon. And I am glad to know that, to find that there are still those who wish to live in the world. I would not wish the way I feel on anyone. Return, Simon. Save those you love if you can—and those I love, too.”
“But I can’t.” And now his thwarted anger at last gave way to desolation. There was no way to return. He and Maegwin would be here discussing the minutiae of their lives for eternity. “I don’t know why I even said it, because I can’t. I’ve tried. I don’t have the strength to find my body again.”
“Try. Try once more.”
“Don’t you think I did? Don’t you believe I tried as hard as I could? It’s out of my reach!”
“If you are right, we have forever. It will do no harm to try once more.”
Simon, who knew that he had already exerted his powers to the utmost and failed, choked down bitter words. She was right. If he were to be any help to his friends, if he were to have even a remote chance to gain revenge for all he and Maegwin and thousands of others had suffered, he must try again—however unlikely success might be.
He tried to empty his mind of all his fears and distractions. When he had achieved a small measure of calm, he called up the image of the waterwheel, willing it into existence so that it turned in a great smoky circle over the ghostly valley. Then he summoned the image of his own face, his particular and only face, paying special attention this time to what was behind the features as well, the dreams and thoughts and memories that made him Simon. He tried to make the shadowy figure bound to the wheel come alive with Simon-ness, but already felt himself at the limits of his strength.
“Can you help me, Maegwin?” As the wheel grew more substantial she had grown dimmer; she was now little more than a glow of hazy light. “I can’t do it.”
“Try.”
He struggled to keep the wheel before him, tried to summon the pain and terror and unending loneliness that went with it. For a moment he almost felt the rough wood scraping his back, heard the splashing of the wheels and the grating clash of the great chains, but then it began to slip away once more. Fading, the wheel trembled like a reflection in a rippling pond. It had been so close, but now it was receding from his reach. …
“Here, Simon.”
And suddenly Maegwin’s presence was all around him—even, somehow, inside of him. The glow that she had cradled as long as they spoke she now passed to him; it felt warm as the sun. “I think this is why I was brought here to wait. It is time for me to go on—but it is time for you to return.”
Her strength filled him. The wheel, the forge chamber, the gnawing pain of his living body, all the things that at this moment meant life to him were suddenly very close.
But Maegwin herself was far away. Her next words seemed to come from a great distance, faint and dwindling rapidly.
“I am going on, Simon. Take what I give you and use it: I do not need my life any more. Do what you must. I pray it will be enough. If you meet Eolair … no, I will tell him myself. Someday. In another place …”
Her brave words did not mask her fear. Simon felt every bit of her terror as she let go and allowed herself to slip away into the dark unknown.
“Maegwin! Don’t!”
But she was gone. The glow she had held was part of Simon, now. She had given him the only thing she had left—the bravest, most terrible gift of all.
Simon fought as he had never fought before, determined not to waste Maegwin’s sacrifice. Although the living world was so close he could feel it, still some inexplicable barrier separated him from the body he had left behind—but he could not let himself fail. Using the strength Maegwin had given him, he forced himself closer, embracing the agony, the fear, even the helplessness that would be his if he retu
rned. There was nothing he could do unless he accepted what was real. He pushed and felt the barrier ripping. He pushed again.
Murky gray turned to black, then red. As he passed back from the nether realms into the waking world, Simon screamed. He hurt. Everything hurt. He was reborn into a world of pain.
The scream continued, rasping from his dried throat and cracked lips. His hand was on fire, full of scorching agony.
“Quiet!” The frightened voice was very close. “I am trying …”
He was back on the wheel. His head was pounding, and splintered wood rubbed against his skin. But what was wrong with his hand? It felt as though someone were trying to tear it from his wrist with hot pincers. …
It moved! He could move his arm!
Again there came a tremulous whisper. “The voices say I must hurry. They will be coming soon.”
Simon’s left arm was free. As he tried to flex it, a flaming bolt of pain leaped into his shoulder—but the arm moved. He opened his eyes and goggled dizzily.
A figure hung upside down before him; beyond, the forge cavern itself was inverted as well. The dark shape was sawing at his right arm with something that caught the gleam of one of the torches at the far side of the cavern. Who was it? What was it doing? Simon could not make his crippled thoughts follow each other.
A throbbing, burning pain now crept into his right hand. What was happening?
“You brought me food. I … I could not leave you. But the voices say I must hurry!”
It was hard to think with both of his arms on fire, but slowly Simon began to understand. He was hanging head-downward on the wheel. Someone was cutting him free. Someone …
“… Guthwulf …?”
“Soon the others will notice. They will come. Do not move—I cannot see and I fear I will cut you.” The blind earl was working furiously.
Simon ground his teeth as the blood rushed back into his arms, trying to choke back another scream. He had not believed such misery was possible.
Free. It will be worth it. I’ll be free. … He shut his eyes again, his jaws clamped together. His other arm was loose, and now both dangled beside his head. The change of position was excruciating.
He dimly heard Guthwulf wade a few steps, then felt the rhythmic sawing begin on his ankle.
Only a few moments, Simon promised himself, trying desperately to stay silent. He remembered what the chambermaids had told him when, as a child, he had wept over a small hurt. “It won’t mean anything tomorrow. You’ll be happy then.”
One ankle came free, and the misery of its release was equaled by the strain now put on the other. Simon turned his head and sank his teeth into his own shoulder. Anything to keep from making noise that might bring Inch or his minions.
“Almost …” said Guthwulf hoarsely. There was an instant of slow movement, a sense of slippage, then Simon abruptly fell. Stunned, he found himself drowning in cold water. He thrashed helplessly, but could not feel his limbs. He did not know which direction was up.
Something grasped his hair and yanked. A moment later, another hand curled chokingly around his neck beneath his chin. Simon’s mouth came up out of the water, and he gasped in a long breath. For a moment his face was pressed against Guthwulf’s lean stomach while his rescuer struggled to get a better grip. Then Simon was dragged forward and dumped onto the rim of the sluice. His hands still did not work properly; he clung in place with his elbows, almost oblivious to the shrieking pain of his joints. He did not want to go back into that water again.
“We must …” he heard Guthwulf begin, then the blind man gasped and something smashed against Simon, who slid backward and only barely retained his hold on the edge of the sluice.
“What happens here?!” Inch’s voice was a dreadful rumbling growl. “You do not touch my kitchen boy!”
Simon felt hope fade, replaced with sick terror. How could this happen? It was wrong! That he should have come back from death, from nothingness, only to have Inch show up a few moments too soon—how could Fate play such a monstrous trick?
Guthwulf gave a choking cry, then Simon could hear nothing but frenzied splashing. He slowly let himself back down until his feet touched the slippery bottom of the sluice. Putting weight on his wounded legs sent a blinding cloud of black fire through his back and head, but he stood. After his torments he knew he should not even be able to move, but he still retained some of the strength given to him by Maegwin’s sacrifice; he felt it smoldering in him like a low-banked fire. He forced himself to remain upright in the slow-moving water until he could see again.
Inch had waded into the sluice, and now stood waist-deep in the center like some beast of the swamps. In the dim torchlight, Simon saw Guthwulf burst up from beneath the water, struggling wildly to escape the overseer’s clutches. Inch grabbed the blind man’s head and pushed him back under.
“No!” Simon’s crippled voice was barely louder than a whisper. If it carried across the short distance, Inch gave him no heed. Still, the silence nagged at Simon in some obscure way. Was he deaf? No, he had heard both Guthwulf and Inch. So why did the chamber seem so quiet?
Guthwulf’s arms jerked above the surface, but the rest of him remained submerged in the dark waters.
Simon stumbled toward them, thrashing against the slow current. The great wheel hung unmoving above the waterway. As he saw it, Simon realized why the cavern was strangely quiet: Guthwulf had somehow managed to lift the wheel so he could cut Simon free.
As he neared Inch, the cavern began to grow lighter, as though dawn had somehow found its way down through the rock. Shadowy figures were approaching, a few of them bearing torches. Simon thought they must be soldiers or Inch’s henchmen, but when they came a little closer he saw their wide, frightened eyes. The forge workers had been roused, and now came hesitantly forward to see what was causing the uproar.
“Help!” Simon rasped. “Help us! He cannot stop you all!”
The tattered men stopped, as though Simon’s words alone might make them traitors, liable to Inch’s punishment. They stared, too cowed even to whisper among themselves.
Inch was paying neither Simon nor his slave labor any attention. He had allowed Guthwulf to surface briefly, gasping and spitting, and now was shoving him back into the water again. Simon lifted his hands, still numb with their long binding, and struck at Inch as hard as he could. He might as well have kicked a mountain. Inch turned to look at him. The overseer’s scarred face was curiously expressionless, as though the act of violence in which he was engaged took all his attention.
“Kitchen boy,” Inch boomed. “You do not run away. You are next.” He reached out a huge hand and jerked Simon forward. He released his grip on drowning Guthwulf long enough to pick Simon up with both hands and throw him out of the sluiceway onto the hard stone. All Simon’s breath blew out, and another rush of pain coursed through him, fiercer even than the simmering agony of his limbs. For a moment he could not make his battered body respond.
Simon sensed somebody stooping over him. Certain it was Inch come to finish the job, he curled into a ball.
“Here, lad,” someone whispered, and tried to help him into a sitting position. Stanhelm, the forge worker who had befriended him, was crouching at his side. The older man seemed barely able to move: one arm curled uselessly in front of his chest, and his neck was bent at an odd angle.
“Help us.” Simon struggled to rise. His chest felt dagger-stabbed with each breath.
“Nothing left of me.” Even Stanhelm’s speech was slurred. “But look to yon wheel, lad.”
While Simon fought to make sense of this, one of Inch’s helpers strode over.
“Don’t touch him,” he snarled. “He’s Doctor’s.”
“Shut your mouth,” said Stanhelm. The henchman lifted his hand as if to strike, but suddenly several other forge men moved in on either side of him. Some of them held bits of iron scrap, heavy and sharp-edged.
“You heard,” one of them growled quietly at Inch’s man. “Shu
t your mouth.”
The man looked around, judging his chances. “You’ll pay pretty when Doctor hears. He’ll be done with that’un in a moment.”
“Then go watch,” spat another of the forge workers. The men seemed frightened, but somehow they had drawn a line: if they were not yet willing to fight back against the hulking overseer, neither would they stand by and see Inch’s crony harm Simon or Stanhelm. The henchman cursed and backed off, then hurried to the safety of his master’s vicinity.
“Now, lad,” Stanhelm whispered. “Look to yon wheel.”
Dizzied by all that was happening, Simon stared at the forge man as he tried to make sense out of his words. Then he turned slowly and saw.
The great wooden paddlewheel had been lifted up so that it hung almost twice a man’s height above the watercourse. Inch, who had pursued floundering Guthwulf a short way down the sluice, now stood beneath the wheel.
Stanhelm extended a bent and shaking arm. “There. Them are the works.”
Simon struggled to his feet and took a few shaky steps toward the vast framework. The lever which he had seen Inch use was cocked, secured by a rope. Simon slowly tugged the rope free, straining his burning muscles and cramped hands, then grasped the lever itself in slippery, numbed fingers. Inch had pushed Guthwulf under again; he watched his victim’s suffering with calm interest. The blind man was floundering away from his tormentor, toward Simon, and now appeared to be beyond the wheel’s rim.
Simon said the few words of the Elysia prayer that he could remember, then heaved on the wooden lever. It moved only slightly, but the frame that held the wheel groaned. Inch looked up and around, then gradually turned his monocular gaze toward Simon.
“Kitchen boy! You …”
Simon heaved again, this time lifting his feet from the ground so that all his weight hung on the lever. He screamed with the pain of holding on. The frame groaned again, then, with a grating squeal, the lever banged down and the wheel shuddered and dropped into the sluice with a thunderous splash. Inch tried to dive forward out of the way, but disappeared beneath the huge paddles.