Tiamak shook his head. “If anything dangerous comes toward us, I hope you will tell me. This is not my marsh, and I do not know where the dangerous sands lie.”
“Where we go was our place once,” Aditu said seriously. “But no more.”
“Do you know your way?” Tiamak looked around at the sloping tunnel, the countless crevices and nearly identical cross-passages, black beyond the range of the lighted globes. The thought of being lost here was terrifying.
“My mother does, or at least she soon will. Chiya also lived here.”
“Your mother lived in this place?”
“In Asu’a. She lived there for a thousand years.”
Tiamak shivered.
The company followed no logical path that Tiamak could see, but he had long resigned himself to trusting the Sithi, although there was much about them that frightened him. Meeting Aditu on Sesuad’ra had been strange enough, but she had been singular, a freak, as Tiamak himself must have seemed to the drylanders. Seeing them together, either in their great numbers on the hillside east of the Hayholt, or here in a group that, despite making many decisions without discussion, seemed always in accord, he felt for the first time the true force of their strangeness. They had ruled all of Osten Ard once. History said they had been kind masters, but Tiamak could not help wondering if they had been truly kind, or had just given no attention at all, tyrannical or otherwise, to their mortal inferiors. If that was true, they had been cruelly repaid for their heedlessness.
Kuroyi halted and the others stopped with him. He said something in the liquid Sithi speech.
“Someone is there,” Aditu quietly told Tiamak.
“Josua? Camaris?” He did not want to think it could be something worse.
“We will find out.”
Kuroyi turned into a passageway and took a few steps downward. A moment later he danced back out, hissing. Aditu pushed past Tiamak and ran to Kuroyi’s side. “Do not run!” she called into the dark space. “I am Aditu!”
After a few moments a figure appeared, sword leveled.
“Prince Josua!” Relief flowed through Tiamak. “You are safe.”
The prince stared at them for a long moment, blinking in the light of the crystal globes. “Aedon’s Mercy, it is truly you.” He sank down heavily onto the floor of the tunnel. “My … my torch burned out. I have been in darkness some time. I thought I heard footsteps, but you walk so quietly I could not be sure. …”
“Have you found Camaris?” Tiamak asked.
The prince shook his head miserably. His eyes were haunted. “No. I lost sight of him soon after I followed him in. He would not stop, no matter how I called. He has gone! Gone!” He struggled to control himself. “I have left my men without a leader—deserted my people! Can you take me back?” He looked imploringly around the circle of Sithi.
“The mortal Duke Isgrimnur is performing ably in your place,” said Likimeya. “We cannot afford the time to return you, nor any of our number, and you could not find your way back alone.”
Josua lowered his head, bowed by shame. “I have done a foolish thing, and failed those who trusted me. It was all to find Camaris … but he has gone. And he has taken Thorn with him.”
“Do not worry yourself over what is done, Prince Josua.” Aditu spoke with surprising gentleness. “As for Camaris, do not fear. We will find him.”
“How?”
Likimeya stared at Josua for a moment, then turned her glance up the passageway. “If the sword is being drawn toward Sorrow and the other blade, as seems true from what you have told us, then we know where he is bound.” She looked at Chiya, who nodded. “We will go there by the straightest route, or close to it. Either we will find him, or we will reach the upper levels before him and can wait.”
“But he could wander down here forever!” Josua said unhappily, and Tiamak remembered his own earlier thought.
“I do not think so,” said Likimeya. “If some convergence of power is drawing the swords together—which may be our greatest hope, for it will bring Bright-Nail, too—then he will find his way, even with his wits as troubled as you say they were. He will be like a blind man searching for the fire in a cold room. He will find his way.”
Jiriki extended his hand to the prince. “Come, Prince Josua. I have some food and water. Take some nourishment, then we will find him.”
As the prince looked at him some of the hard edge of worry softened. “Thank you. I am grateful you found me.” He took Jiriki’s hand and stood, then laughed, mocking himself. “I thought … I thought I heard voices.”
“I have no doubt you did,” said Jiriki. “And you will hear more.”
Tiamak could not help noticing that even the impassive Sithi did not look entirely comfortable with Jiriki’s remark.
Slowly, almost imperceptibly, Tiamak’s surroundings began to change. As he and Josua followed the immortals through the twisting passages, he first noticed that the floors seemed more level, the tunnels a little more regular. Soon he began to see the undeniable marks of intelligent shapers, hard angles, arches of stone that braced the wider crossings, even a few patches in the rock walls that seemed to have been carved, although the decorations were little more than repetitive patterns like waves or twining grass stems.
“These outermost reaches were never finished,” Aditu told him. “Either they were built too late in Asu’a’s life, or were abandoned in favor of more useful paths.”
“Abandoned?” Tiamak could not imagine such a thing. “Who would do all the work of gouging through this stone and then abandon it?”
“Some of these passages were built by my people, with the help of the Tinukeda’ya—the dwarrows as mortals call them,” she explained. “And that stone-loving folk carved some just for themselves, unconcerned with finishing or keeping, as a child might make a basket of grass stems and then toss it away when it is time to run home.”
The marsh man shook his head.
Mindful of their mortal companions, the Sithi stopped at last for a rest in a wide grotto whose roof was covered with a tracery of slender stalactites. In the mellow light of the globes, Tiamak thought it looked entirely magical; for a moment, he was glad he had come. The world below, it seemed, was full of wonders as well as terrors.
As he sat eating a piece of bread and a savory but unfamiliar fruit the Sithi had brought, Tiamak wondered how far they had come. It seemed they had walked most of a day, but the full distance on the surface between where they had begun and the walls of the Hayholt would not have taken a fourth of that time. Even with the circuitous track of the tunnels, it seemed they should have reached something, but they were still wandering through largely featureless caverns.
It is like the spirit-hut of Buayeg in the old story, he decided, only half in jest. Small outside, big inside.
He turned to ask Josua if he had noticed the same oddity; the prince was staring at his own piece of bread as though he was too tired or distraught to eat. Abruptly the cavern shuddered—or seemed to: Tiamak felt a sensation of movement, of sudden slippage, but neither Josua or the Sithi seemed to move in response to it. Rather, it was as though everything in the grotto had slid to one side, but the people inside had slid effortlessly with it. It was a frightening wrench, and for a long moment after it had passed Tiamak felt as though he occupied two places at the same time. A thrill of terror ran up his spine.
“What is happening!?” he gasped.
The obvious uneasiness of the Sithi did nothing to make him feel better. “It is that which I spoke of before,” said Aditu. “As we draw closer to Asu’a’s heart, it is getting stronger.”
Likimeya stood and slowly looked around, but Tiamak felt sure that she was using more than her eyes. “Up,” she said. “Time is short, I think.”
Tiamak scrambled to his feet. The look on Likimeya’s stern face frightened him badly. He suddenly wished he had kept his mouth closed, that he had stayed above ground with the rest of his mortal companions. But it was far too late to turn b
ack.
“Where are we going?” Miriamele gasped.
Yis-hadra, who had replaced her wounded husband as leader, turned to stare. “Going?” said the dwarrow. “We are fleeing. We run to escape.”
Miriamele stopped, bending over to catch her breath. The Norns had attacked them twice more as they fled through the tunnels, but without archers they had been unable to overcome the terrified dwarrows. Still, two more of the stone-tenders had fallen in the fighting, and the white-skinned immortals had by no means given up. Since the last struggle, Miriamele had already spotted the pursuers once when she had entered a passageway long and straight enough to permit a backward look; in that glimpse they had truly seemed creatures of the lightless depths—pale, silent, and remorseless. The Norns seemed in no hurry, as if they were merely trailing Miriamele and her companions until more of their kind came bearing bows and long spears. It had been as much as she could do not to sink to the ground in surrender.
She knew that they had been lucky to escape the dwarrows’ cavern at all. If the White Foxes had anticipated any resistance, they had doubtless expected it to be close combat in a narrow corner. Instead, the dwarrows’ desperate attack in the dark and the avalanches of falling stone they had engineered had caught the immortals by surprise, permitting Miriamele and her companions to flee. But she had no illusions they could trick the cunning Norns twice.
“We could be forced to run this way forever,” she told Yis-hadra. “Perhaps you can outlast them, but we can’t. In any case, our people are in danger up above.”
Binabik nodded. “She speaks truth to you. Escaping is not enough for us. We have need of finding our way out from this place.”
The dwarrow did not reply, but looked to her husband who was limping up the passageway toward them, trailed by the last of the dwarrows and Cadrach. The monk’s face was ashen, as though he had been wounded, but Miriamele saw no injuries. She turned away, unwilling to waste sympathy on him.
“They are a distance behind us, now,” said Yis-fidri wearily. “They seem full content to let us run ahead.” He leaned back against the wall, letting his head rest against the stone. Yis-hadra went to him and probed gently with her wide fingers at the arrow wound in his shoulder. “Sho-vennae is dead, and three others,” he groaned, then fluted a few words to his wife, who gave a cry of grief. “Smashed like delicate crystals. Gone.”
“If we had not run, they would all be dead anyway—and you and the rest of us would be, too.” Miriamele paused to fight back her anger and her horror of the pursuing Norns. “Forgive me, Yis-fidri. I am sorry about your people. I am truly sorry.”
Sweat beaded on the dwarrow’s brow, glimmering in the light of the batons. “Few mourn for the Tinukeda’ya,” he replied softly. “They make us their servants, they steal from us the Words of Making, they even beg our help when they are in need—but they seldom mourn us.”
Miriamele was ashamed. Surely he meant that she was as guilty of using the dwarrows—and Niskies, too, she thought, remembering Gan Itai’s sacrifice—as even their one-time masters, the Sithi.
“Take us to where we can reach the world above,” she said. “That is all I ask. Then go with our blessing, Yis-fidri.”
Before the dwarrow could reply, Binabik suddenly spoke up. “The Words of Making. Were all the Great Swords being forged with these Making-Words?”
Yis-fidri looked at him with more than a little suspicion, then winced at something his wife was doing to his shoulder. “Yes. It was needful to bind their substance—to bring their being within the Laws.”
“What laws are these?”
“Those Laws that cannot be changed. The Laws that make stone be stone, make water be water. They can be …” he searched for a word, “stretched or altered for a short time, but that brings consequences. Never can they be undone.”
One of the dwarrows at the rear of the tunnel spoke anxiously.
“Imai-an says he can feel them coming,” Yis-hadra cried. “We must run.”
Yis-fidri pushed himself away from the tunnel wall and the group began its uneven progress once more. Miriamele’s weary heart was racing. Would there never be an end to this? “Help us reach the surface, Yis-fidri,” she begged. “Please.”
“Yes! It is more than ever important!”
Miriamele turned at the distraught tone of Binabik’s voice. The little man looked terrified. “What is it?” she asked him.
Sweat was running on his dark forehead. “I must think on this, Miriamele, but I have never had such fear as I do now. For the first time I believe I see behind the shadow that has been all our consideration, and I am thinking—Kikkasut! To be saying such words!—that the monk may have spoken rightly. There may be nothing left for our doing at all.”
With those words hanging in the air, he turned from her and hastened after the dwarrows. As though his sudden despair had passed to her like a fever, she felt hopelessness enwrap her.
55
The Hand of the North
The winds shrieked around Stormspike’s summit, but beneath the mountain all was silent. The Lightless Ones had fallen into a deep slumber. The corridors of Under-Nakkiga were nearly empty.
Utuk’ku’s gloved fingers, slender and brittle as cricket legs, flexed upon the arm of her throne. She settled her ancient bones against the rock and let her thoughts move through the Breathing Harp, following its twistings and turnings until Stormspike fell away and she became pure mind moving through the black between-spaces.
The angry Dark One was gone from the Harp. He had moved himself to the place—if it could be called a place—where he could act in concert with her to enact the final step of their centuried scheme, but she could still feel the weight of his hatred and envy, personified in the net of storms that spread across the land above.
In Nabban, where the upstart Imperators had once ruled, snow piled high in the streets; in the great harbor high waves flung the anchored ships against each other, or drove them into the shore where their splintered timbers lay like the bones of giants. The kilpa, frenzied, struck at everything that moved across the water, and even began to make sluggish forays into the coastal towns. And deep within the heart of the Sancellan Aedonitis, the Clavean Bell hung silent, immobilized by ice just as the mortals’ Mother Church was frozen by fear.
The Wran, although its interior was sheltered from the worst of the storm, nevertheless turned chillingly cold. The ghants, undeterred as a group, though countless individuals died in the harsh weather, continued to boil out of the swamps and harry the coastal villages. Those few mortals of Kwanitupul who braved the icy winds to walk outside went only in groups, armed with iron weapons and wind-whipped torches against the ghants who now seemed to be crawling in every shadowy place. Children were kept inside, and doors and windows were shuttered even during those few hours when the storm abated.
Even Aldheorte Forest slept beneath a blanket of white, but if its ageless trees suffered beneath the freezing hand of the North, they did so in silence. In the heart of the woods Jao é-Tinukai’i lay empty, misty with cold.
All the mortal lands lay trembling beneath Stormspike’s hand. The storms kept Rimmersgard and the Frostmarch an icy wasteland, and Hernystir suffered only a little less. Before the Hernystiri could truly reclaim the homes from which they had been driven by Skali of Kaldskryke, they had been forced back into the caves of the Grianspog. The spirit of the people the Sithi had loved, a spirit which had flamed high for a short time, sank back to a guttering flicker.
The storm hung low over Erkynland. Black winds bent and broke the trees and piled snow high on the houses; thunder growled like an angry beast up and down the length of the land. The storm’s malevolent heart, as it seemed, full of whirling sleet and jagged lightning, pulsed above Erchester and the Hayholt.
Utuk’ku noted all this with calm satisfaction, but did not pause to savor the terror and hopelessness of the hated mortals. She had something to do, a task she had awaited since her son Drukhi’s pale, cold body h
ad been set before her. Utuk’ku was old and subtle. The irony that it was her own great-great-grandchild who had led her to her revenge at last, that he was also a scion of the very family that had destroyed her happiness, was not lost on her. She almost smiled.
Her thoughts raced on, out along the whispery threads of being until they passed into the farther regions, the places only she of all the living could go. When she felt the presence of the thing she sought, she reached out for it, praying to forces that had been old in Venyha Do’sae that it would give her what she needed to accomplish her final, long-awaited goal.
A flare of joy passed through her. The power was there, more than enough for her purposes; now all that remained was to master it and make it hers. The hour was approaching, and Utuk’ku had no need to be patient any longer.
“My eyes are not good at the best of times,” Strangyeard complained. “And with this sunless day and the blowing snow, I cannot see anything! Sangfugol, tell me what is happening, please!”
“There’s nothing to see, yet.” They were perched on the side of one of Swertclif’s foothills, looking down on Erchester and the Hayholt. The tree beneath which the pair huddled and the low wall of stones they had made provided scant protection against the wind. Despite his hooded cloak and the two blankets he had wrapped around himself, the harper was shivering. “Our army is before the walls and the heralds have blown the trumpets. Isgrimnur or someone must be reading the Writ of Demand. I still don’t see any of the king’s soldiers … no, there are some shapes moving on the battlements. I had begun to wonder if anyone was inside at all. …”
“Who? Who is on the battlements?”
“Aedon’s mercy, Strangeyeard, I can’t tell. They are shapes, that’s all.”
“We should be closer,” the priest said fretfully. “This hillside is too distant in weather like this.”
The harper darted a glance at him. “You must be mad. I am a musician, you are a librarian. We are too close as it is—we should have stayed in Nabban. But here we are, and here we will stay. Closer, indeed!” He blew into his cupped palms.