“Now Simon stood, trying to find his balance, and Miriamele was screaming at him to hurry, hurry, and Binabik was shouting, too. Simon leaped and landed, and as he did, most of the porch dropped away, crashing into the snow beneath. We all three caught at him and pulled him to safety before he toppled off the wall.
“A few moments later the entire tower collapsed in on itself with a noise like nothing I have ever heard, louder than any thunderstorm … but you heard it. You know. Pieces of stone bigger than this tent smashed past us, but none hit the wall. Most of the tower fell inward, and a cloud of dust and snow and streaming smoke rose up as high as the tower had reached, then spread out across the castle grounds.”
Tiamak took a deep breath. “We stood for a long time staring. It was as though I watched a god die. I learned later what Miriamele and the others had seen in the towertop, and that must have been stranger still. When we could think of moving again, Simon led us down through the throne room, past that astounding chair of bones, and out to meet you and the rest. I thanked my Wran deities that the fighting was all but over—I could not have lifted a hand if a Norn had put a knife to my neck.”
He sat for a while, shaking his head.
Isgrimnur cleared his throat. “So nothing could have survived, then. Even if Josua or Camaris lived until the end, they would have been crushed.”
“We will never know from what remains in that rubble,” Tiamak said. “I cannot think we could recognize …” He remembered Isorn. “Oh, Isgrimnur, please, please forgive me. I forgot.”
Isgrimnur shook his head. “The doors to the antechamber came open a short while before the end—I suppose Pryrates’ dying put an end to his deviltry, his magical wall or whatever it was. Some of the soldiers nearby pulled out those of the fallen they could before the tower began to collapse. I, at least, have my son’s body.” He looked down, struggling for composure, then sighed. “Thank you, Tiamak. I am sorry to make you remember.”
Tiamak laughed shakily. “I have not been able to stop talking about it. We are all of us in this camp babbling away at each other like children, and have been since the tower fell, since … since everything happened.”
The duke stood, slowly and painfully. “I see Strangyeard coming. The others will meet us. Will you come along, Tiamak? These are important matters, and I would like you to be with us when we talk. We need your wisdom.”
The Wrannaman gently bowed his head. “Of course, Isgrimnur. Of course.”
Simon wandered through the rubble of the Inner Bailey. The melting snow had shrunk away to reveal patches of dead grass, and here and there a freshet of new plant life which the sorcerous winter had not destroyed. The different hues of green and brown were soothing to his eyes. He had seen enough of black, ice-white, and blood-red to last him several lifetimes.
He only wished that everything followed such ordinary patterns of renewal. It was a short two days since the tower had fallen and the Storm King had been vanquished, a time when he and his friends should have been rejoicing over their victory, yet here he was, wandering and brooding.
He had slept through the night and the first day after their escape, a thick, bone-weary slumber. Binabik had come to him the second night, telling him stories, explaining, commiserating, then finally sitting with him in silence until Simon fell asleep once more. Others had visited him throughout the morning of this second day, friends and acquaintances reaching out, proving to themselves that he lived, just as the sight of these visitors showed Simon that the world still made a kind of sense.
But Miriamele had not come.
When the unclouded sun had begun to slide down past noon, he had nerved himself to go and see her. Binabik had assured him the night before that she lived and was not badly hurt, so he did not fear for her health, but the troll’s reassurances had only made his other unhappiness stronger. If she was well, why had she not come to him or sent a message?
He had found her at her tent, in conversation with Aditu, who earlier that morning had been one of his own visitors. Miriamele had greeted him in a friendly enough fashion, and had exclaimed sorrowfully over his various wounds, as he had over hers, but when he expressed his sadness over the deaths of her uncle and father, she had suddenly grown cold and remote.
Simon wanted to believe it was no more than the justifiable bitterness of someone who had lived through a terrible time and had lost her family—not to mention her own unhappy role in her father’s death—but he could not fool himself that there was nothing more to her reaction than that. She had been reacting to him, too, as though something about Simon still made her dreadfully uncomfortable. It made him miserable to see that distance in her eyes after all they had been through together, but he had also felt fury, wondering why he should be treated as though it had been his cruelty to her that had marred their trip into Erkynland, instead of the other way around. Although he had struggled to hide this anger, things had only grown chillier between them, and at last he had excused himself and gone out into the wind.
Into the wind and up the hill he had gone, to wander now through the slushy grounds of the abandoned Hayholt.
Simon paused, staring at the great pile of spread rubble that had once been Green Angel Tower. Small figures moved in the ruins, Erchester-folk scavenging for anything worth saving, either to trade for food or as a keepsake of what was already a fabled event.
It was strange, Simon reflected. He had gone as deep into the earth as anyone could, and had climbed equally as high, but he had changed very little. He was a little stronger, perhaps, but he guessed that was a strength mostly caused by the inflexibility of scarred places; other than that, he was much the same. A kitchen boy, Pryrates had called him. The priest had been right. Despite his knighthood, despite all else that had happened, there would always be the heart of a scullion inside him.
Something caught his eye and he bent forward. A green hand lay at the bottom of the gulley beside his feet, fingers protruding from the mud in a frozen gesture of release. Simon leaned forward and scraped away some of the soggy clay, exposing an arm, then finally a bronze face.
It was the angel of the towertop, fallen to the earth. He poured a handful of puddle water over the high-boned face, clearing the eyes. They were open, but no life was in them. It was a tumbled statue, nothing more.
Simon stood up and wiped his hands on his breeches. Let someone else drag it from the muck and take it home. Let it sit in the corner of someone’s cottage and whisper to them beguiling stories of the depths and heights.
But as he trudged away across the commons yard, turning his back on the wreckage of the tower, the angel’s voice—Leleth’s voice—came back to him.
“These truths are too strong,” she had said, “the myths and lies around them too great. You must see them and you must understand for yourself. But this has been your story.”
And she had showed him important things indeed. The proof of that, at least in part, lay scattered over a thousand cubits of ground behind him. But there had been more, something that had teased at the edge of his understanding, but which time and circumstance had kept him from pondering. Now the curious thread of memory came back to him, and would not be denied. He had come closest to seeing it in the throne room. …
His footsteps echoed across the tiles. There was no other sound. This was a place no one had yet come to scavenge—the mute specter of the Dragonbone Chair was enough to raise fearful hackles in the best of times, and these had not been the best of times.
The afternoon light, warmer than the last time he had been here, spilled down from the windows and gave a little color to the strew of fading banners, although the malachite kings were still cloaked in their own black stone shadows. Simon remembered a void of spreading nothingness and hesitated, his heart pounding, but he swallowed his momentary fear and stepped forward. That blackness was gone. That king was dead.
In full daylight the great throne looked less daunting than he remembered it. The great toothy mouth still menace
d, but some vitality it had once had seemed gone. There was nothing in the eye sockets but cobwebs. Even the massive cage of wired bones sagged in places, and it was clear that some were missing, although none lay around the chair. Simon had a dim recollection of seeing yellowed bones somewhere else, but pushed it away: something different had caught his attention.
Eahlstan Fiskerne. He stood before the stone statue and examined it, trying to find the thing that would scratch the itching spot in his memory. When he had seen the martyr-king’s face in his Dream Road vision, there had been something familiar about it. In the throne room before, on his way to the tower, he had thought the resemblance was to the statue he had looked at so often. But now he knew there was something else familiar about the face. It was much like another, one he had also seen many times—in Jiriki’s mirror, in reflecting ponds, in the shiny surface of a shield. Eahlstan looked much like Simon.
He lifted his hand and stared at the golden ring, remembering. The Fisher King’s people had gone into exile, and Prester John had later come to claim the killing of the dragon and with it the throne of Erkynland. Morgenes had entrusted him with the ring that told that secret.
“This is your story,” the angel had said. Who else to entrust with the knowledge and record of Eahlstan’s house than … Eahlstan’s heir?
As he stood before the statue, the sudden, certain knowledge splashed him like cold water, raising goosebumps of fear and wonder.
Much of the afternoon slid by as Simon paced back and forth across the empty throne room, lost in thought. He was staring at Eahlstan’s statue again when he heard a noise in the doorway behind him. He turned to see Duke Isgrimnur and a few others filing into the chamber.
The duke looked him over carefully. “Ah. So you know, do you?”
The young man said nothing, but his face was full of conflicting emotions. Isgrimnur observed Simon carefully, wondering how this could be the same person as the stripling brought to him on the plains south of Naglimund a year before, draped like a sack across the saddle of a riderless horse.
He had been tall even then, although surely not this tall, and the thick reddish beard had been only soft boy-whiskers—but there was more to the change. Simon had developed an air of calm, a stillness that might have been either strength or unconcern. Isgrimnur worried more than a little about what the boy might have become: what had happened to Simon seemed to have changed that stripling of a year ago beyond reclaiming, almost beyond recognizing. His childhood had been burned away, and now only manhood remained.
“I think I have realized some things, yes,” Simon said at last. He carefully smoothed all expression from his face. “But I do not think they matter very much—even to me.”
Isgrimnur made a noncommittal sound. “Well. We have been looking for you.”
“Here I am.”
As the group moved forward, Simon nodded toward the duke, then greeted Tiamak, Strangyeard, Jiriki, and Aditu. As Simon said a few quiet words to the Sithi, Isgrimnur saw for the first time how like them the young man had become, at least at this moment—reserved, careful, slow to speak. The duke shook his head. Who would ever have imagined such a thing?
“Are you well, Simon?” asked Strangyeard.
The youth shrugged and offered a half-smile. “My wounds are healing.” He turned to Isgrimnur. “Jeremias brought me your message. I would have come to your tent, you know, but Jeremias insisted you would come to me when you were ready.” He looked around the small company, his face closed and careful. “It looks like you’re ready now, but you’ve come a long way up from camp to find me. Do you have more questions to ask?”
“Among other things.” The duke watched the others seat themselves on the stone floor and made a face. Simon smiled with good-natured mockery and motioned to the Dragonbone Chair. Isgrimnur shook his head, shuddering.
“Very well, then.” Simon collected a stack of fallen banners and put them down on the step below the throne dais.
With only one good arm, Isgrimnur took a little time to lower himself to the makeshift seat, but he was determined to do it without leaning on anyone. “I am glad to see you up and around, Simon,” he said when he could talk without breathing hard. “You did not look well this morning.”
The young man nodded and eased down beside him. He moved slowly, too, nursing many hurts, but Isgrimnur knew he would heal soon. The duke could not help feeling a sharp twinge of envy. “Where are Binabik and Miriamele?” asked Simon.
“Binabik will be here soon,” Strangyeard offered. “And … and Miriamele …”
The youth’s calm evaporated. “She’s still here, isn’t she? She hasn’t run off, or been hurt?”
Tiamak waved his hand. “No, Simon. She is in camp and healing, just as you. But she …” He turned to Isgrimnur, seeking help.
“But there are things to be discussed without Miriamele here,” the duke said bluntly. “That is all.”
Simon absorbed this. “Very well. I have questions.”
Isgrimnur nodded. “Ask them.” He had been expecting this since he saw Simon standing in mute absorption before the statue of Eahlstan.
“Binabik said yesterday that bringing the swords was a trick, a ‘false messenger’—that Pryrates and the Storm King wanted them all the time.” Simon pushed at one of the sodden banners with the heel of his boot. “They needed them so they could turn back time to before Ineluki’s last spell, before all the wards and prayers and whatnot had been laid on the Hayholt.”
“All of us outside saw the castle change,” the duke said slowly, caught off balance by Simon’s question. He had been certain the youth would want to ask about his newly-discovered history. “Even as we fought against the Norns, the Hayholt just … melted away. There were strange towers everywhere, and fires burning. I thought I saw … ghosts, I suppose they were—ghosts of Sithi and Rimmersmen in ancient costume. They were at war, right in the midst of our own battle. What else could it have been?” The clean afternoon light flooding in through the high windows suddenly made it all seem unreal to Isgrimnur. Just days ago, the world had been gripped by sorcerous madness and deadly winter storms. Now a bird twittered outside.
Simon shook his head. “I believe that. I was there. It was worse inside. But why did they need us to bring the swords? Bright-Nail was less than a league away from Pryrates for two years. And surely, if they had really tried, they could have taken Thorn, either when we were coming back from Yiqanuc or when it was lying on a stone slab in Leavetaking House up on Sesuad’ra. It doesn’t make sense.”
Jiriki spoke up. “Yes, this is perhaps the hardest matter of all to understand, Seoman. I can explain some of it. As we were struggling with Utuk’ku at the Pool of Three Depths, much of her thought was revealed to us. She did not shield herself, but rather used that strength in her fight to capture and use the Pool. She believed there was little at that point we could do even if we understood the truth.” His slow hand-spread seemed a gesture of regret. “She was correct.”
“You held her off a long while,” Simon pointed out. “And at a great price, from what I heard. Who knows what might have happened if the Storm King hadn’t been forced to wait?”
Jiriki smiled thinly. “Of all of who fought beside the Pool, Likimeya understood the most in the short time we touched Utuk’ku’s thoughts. My mother is recovering very slowly from the battle with her ancestor, but she has confirmed much that the rest of us suspected.
“The swords were almost living things. That will come as no surprise to anyone who bore one of them. A large part of their might was, as Binabik of Mintahoq suspected, the unwordly forces bound by the Words of Making. But almost as much of their power was in the effect those Words had. Somehow, the swords had life. They were not creatures like us—they had nothing in them that humans or even Sithi can fully understand—yet they lived. This was what made them greater than any other weapons, but it was also what made them difficult for anyone to rule or control. They could be called—their hunger to be tog
ether and to release their energies would eventually draw them to the tower—but they could not be compelled. Part of the terrible magic the Storm King needed for his plan to succeed, perhaps the most important part, was that the swords must come to the summoning themselves at the proper time. They must choose their own bearers.”
Isgrimnur watched Simon think carefully before speaking. “But Binabik also told me that the night Miriamele and I left Josua’s camp, the Norns tried to kill Camaris. But the sword had already chosen him—chosen him a long time ago! So why would they want him dead?”
“I may have the beginning of the answer to that,” Strangyeard spoke up. He was still nearly as diffident as when Isgrimnur had first met him years before, but a little boldness had begun to show through in recent days. “When we fled Naglimund, the Norns who pursued us behaved very strangely. Sir Deornoth was the first to realize that they were … oh!” The archivist looked up, startled.
A gray shape had rushed into the throne room. It bounded up onto the steps before the dais, knocking Simon onto his side. The young man laughed, tangling his fingers in the wolf’s hackles, trying to keep the probing muzzle and long tongue from his face.
“She is full of gladness to see you, Simon!” Binabik called. He was just coming through the doorway, trotting in a futile effort to keep pace with Qantaqa. “She has been waiting long to bring you greeting. I was keeping her away before, while your wounds were new-bandaged.” The troll hurried forward, distractedly greeting the rest of the company as he wrestled Qantaqa to the stone floor beside the dais. She yielded, then stretched out between Binabik and Simon, huge and content. “You will be pleased for knowing I have found Homefinder this afternoon,” the troll told the young man. “She wandered away from the fighting and was roaming in the depths of the Kynswood.”
“Homefinder.” Simon said the name slowly. “Thank you, Binabik. Thank you.”
“I will take you for seeing her later.”
When all had settled in once more, Strangyeard continued. “Sir Deornoth was the first to see that they were not so much chasing us as … herding us. They drove us out in fright, but they did not kill us when they surely could have. And they only became desperate to stop us when we turned toward the innermost depths of Aldheorte.”