Tad Williams - Memory Sorrow & Thorn 2 - Stone of Farewell

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Stone of Farewell
by Tad Williams
Book Two of Memory, Sorrow and Thorn
Foreword .................................................................................................................. 7
PART ONE: STORMY EYE......................................................................................... 9
The Music of High Places......................................................................................... 9
Masks and Shadows................................................................................................ 18
Oath-Breaker .......................................................................................................... 30
A Bowl of Calamint Tea.......................................................................................... 45
Singing Man’s House.............................................................................................. 60
The Nameless Dead ................................................................................................ 74
Spreading Fires ...................................................................................................... 86
On Sikkihoq’s Back............................................................................................... 105
Cold and Curses ................................................................................................... 121
The Mirror ............................................................................................................ 141
PART TWO: STORM’S HAND ............................................................................... 155
Bones of the Earth ................................................................................................ 155
Birdstreaks............................................................................................................ 171
The Stallion Clan .................................................................................................. 184
A Crown of Fire.................................................................................................... 198
Within God’s Walls............................................................................................... 212
The Unhomed........................................................................................................ 224
A Wager of Little Value ........................................................................................ 242
PART THREE: STORM’S HEART......................................................................... 259
The Lost Garden ................................................................................................... 259
Children of the Navigator..................................................................................... 270
A Thousand Steps.................................................................................................. 286
Prince of Grass..................................................................................................... 301
Through the Summer Gate.................................................................................... 314
Deep Waters ......................................................................................................... 329
Dogs of Erchester ................................................................................................. 342
Stuck in a Wild Storm ........................................................................................... 359
Painted Eyes ......................................................................................................... 376
The Black Sled ...................................................................................................... 387
Sparks ................................................................................................................... 401
This series is dedicated to my mother, Barbara Jean Evans, who taught to me a deep
affection for Toad Hall, the Hundred Aker Woods, the Shire, and many other hidden places
and countries beyond the fields we know. She also induced in me a lifelong desire to make
my own discoveries, and to share them with others. I wish to share these books with her.
. . . Of all the many changing things
In dreary dancing past us whirled,
To the cracked tune that Chronos sings,
Words alone are certain good.
Where are now the waning kings.
Word be-mockers? – By the Rood,
Where are now the warring kings?
An idle word is now their glory,
By the stammering schoolboy said,
Reading some entangled story:
The kings of the old time are dead;
The wandering earth herself may be
Only a sudden flaming word,
In clanging space a moment heard,
Troubling the endless reverie.
– William Butler Yeats
(from The Song of the Happy Shepherd)
Authors Note
I am indebted to Eva Cumming, Nancy Deming-Williams, Paul Hudspeth, Peter
Stampfel and Doug Werner, who all had a hand in the cultivation of this book. Their
insightful comments and suggestions have taken root – in some instances, putting forth
rather surprising blossoms. Also, and as usual, special thanks go to my brave editors, Betsy
Wollheim and Sheila Gilbert, who have labored mightily through both storm and drought.
(By the way, all the above mentioned are just the kind of folk I want at my side if I’m
ever ambushed by Norns. This might be construed as a somewhat dubious honor, but ’tis
mine own to bestow.)
Synopsis of
The Dragonbone Chair
For eons the Hayholt belonged to the immortal Sithi, but they had fled the great castle
before the onslaught of Mankind. Men have long ruled this greatest of strongholds, and the
rest of Osten Ard as well. Prester John, High King of all the nations of men, is its most
recent master; after a nearly life of triumph and glory, he has presided over decades of
peace from his skeletal throne, the Dragonbone Chair.
Simon, an awkward fourteen year old, is one of the Hayholt’s scullions. His parents
are dead, his only real family the chamber maids and their stern mistress, Rachel the
Dragon. When Simon can escape his kitchen-work he steals away to the cluttered
chambers of Doctor Morgenes, the castle’s eccentric scholar. When the old man invites
Simon to be his apprentice, the youth is overjoyed – until he discovers that Morgenes
prefers teaching reading and writing to magic.
Soon ancient King John will die, so Elias, the older of his two sons, prepares to take
the throne. Josua, Elias’ somber brother, nicknamed Lackhand because of a disfiguring
wound, argues harshly with the king-to-be about Pryrates, the ill-reputed priest who is one
of Elias’ closest advisers. The brothers’ feud is a cloud of foreboding over castle and
country.
Elias’ reign as king starts well. but a drought comes and plague strikes several of the
nations of Osten Ard. Soon outlaws roam the roads and people begin to vanish from
isolated villages. The order of things is breaking down, and the king’s subjects are losing
confidence in his rule, but nothing seems to bother the monarch or his friends. As
rumblings of discontent begin to be heard throughout the kingdom, Elias’ brother Josua
disappears – to plot rebellion, some say.
Elias’ misrule upsets many, including Duke Isgrimnur of Rimmersgard and Count
Eolair, an emissary from the western country of Hernystir. Even King Elias’ own daughter
Miriamele is uneasy, especially about the scarlet-robed Pryrates, her father’s trusted
adviser.
Meanwhile Simon is muddling along as Morgenes’ helper. The two become fast
friends despite Simon’s mooncalf nature and the doctor’s refusal to teach him anything
resembling magic. During one of his meanderings through the secret byways of the
labyrinthine Hayholt, Simon discovers a secret passage and is almost captured there by
Pryrates. Eluding the priest, he enters a hidden underground chamber and finds Josua, who
is being held captive for use in some terrible ritual planned by Pryrates. Simon fetches
Doctor Morgenes and the two of them free Josua and take him to the doctor’s chambers,
where Josua is sent to freedom down a tunnel that leads beneath the ancient castle. Then,
as Morgenes is sending off messenger birds bearing news of what has happened to
mysterious friends, Pryrates and the king’s guard come to arrest the doctor and Simon.
Morgenes is killed fighting Pryrates, but his sacrifice allows Simon to escape into the
tunnel.
Half-maddened, Simon makes his way through the midnight corridors beneath the
castle, which contain the ruins of the old Sithi palace. He surfaces in the graveyard beyond
the town wall, then is lured by the light of a bonfire. He witnesses a weird scene: Pryrates
and King Elias engaged in a ritual with black-robed, white-faced creatures. The pale things
give Elias a strange gray sword of disturbing power, named Sorrow. Simon flees.
Life in the wilderness on the edge of the great forest Aldheorte is miserable, and
weeks later Simon is nearly dead from hunger and exhaustion, but still far away from his
destination, Josua’s northern keep at Naglimund. Going to a forest cot to beg, he finds a
strange being caught in a trap – one of the Sithi, a race thought to be mythical, or at least
long-vanished. The cotsman returns, but before he can kill the helpless Sitha, Simon strikes
him down. The Sitha, once freed, stops only long enough to fire a white arrow at Simon,
then disappears. A new voice tells Simon to take the white arrow, that it is a Sithi gift.
The dwarfish newcomer is a troll named Binabik, who rides a great gray wolf. He tells
Simon he was only passing by, but now he will accompany the boy to Naglimund. Simon
and Binabik endure many adventures and strange events on the way to Naglimund: they
come to realize that they have fallen afoul of a threat greater than merely a king and his
counselor deprived of their prisoner. At last, when they find themselves pursued by
unearthly white hounds who wear the brand of Stormspike, a mountain of evil reputation in
the far north, they are forced to head for the shelter of Geloë’s forest house, taking with
them a pair of travelers they have rescued from the hounds. Geloë, a blunt-spoken forest
woman with a reputation as a witch, confers with them and agrees that somehow the
ancient Norns, embittered relatives of the Sithi, have become embroiled in the fate of
Prester John’s kingdom.
Pursuers human and otherwise threaten them on their journey to Naglimund. After
Binabik is shot with an arrow, Simon and one of the rescued travelers, a servant girl, must
struggle on through the forest. They are attacked by a shaggy giant and saved only by the
appearance of Josua’s hunting party.
The prince brings them to Naglimund, where Binabik’s wounds are cared for, and
where it is confirmed that Simon has stumbled into a terrifying swirl of events. Elias is
coming soon to besiege Josua’s castle. Simon’s serving-girl companion was Princess
Miriamele traveling in disguise, fleeing her father, whom she fears has gone mad under
Pryrates’ influence. From all over the north and elsewhere, frightened people are flocking
to Naglimund and Josua, their last protection against a mad king.
Then, as the prince and others discuss the coming battle, a strange old Rimmersman
named Jarnauga appears in the council’s meeting hall. He is a member of the League of
the Scroll, a circle of scholars and initiates of which Morgenes and Binabik’s master were
both part, and he brings more grim news. Their enemy, he says, is not just Elias: the king is
receiving aid from Ineluki the Storm King, who had once been a prince of the Sithi – but
who has been dead for five centuries, and whose bodiless spirit now rules the Norns of
Stormspike Mountain, pale relatives of the banished Sithi.
It was the terrible magic of the gray sword Sorrow that caused Ineluki’s death – that,
and mankind’s attack on the Sithi. The League of the Scroll believes that Sorrow has been
given to Elias as the first step in some incomprehensible plan of revenge, a plan that will
bring the earth beneath the heel of the undead Storm King. The only hope comes from a
prophetic poem that seems to suggest that “three swords” might help turn back Ineluki’s
powerful magic.
One of the swords is the Storm King’s Sorrow, already in the hands of their enemy,
King Elias. Another is the Rimmersgard blade Minneyar, which was also once at the
Hayholt, but whose whereabouts are now unknown. The third is Thorn, black sword of
King John’s greatest knight, Sir Camaris. Jarnauga and others think they have traced it to a
location in the frozen north. On this slim hope, Josua sends Binabik, Simon, and several
soldiers off in search of Thorn, even as Naglimund prepares for siege.
Others are affected by the growing crisis. Princess Miriamele, frustrated by her uncle
Josua’s attempts to protect her, escapes Naglimund in disguise, accompanied by the
mysterious monk Cadrach. She hopes to make her way to southern Nabban and plead with
her relatives there to aid Josua. Old Duke Isgrimnur, at Josua’s urging, disguises his own
very recognizable features and follows after to rescue her. Tiamak, a swamp-dwelling
Wrannaman scholar, receives a strange message from his old mentor Morgenes that tells of
bad times coming and hints that Tiamak has a part to play. Maegwin, daughter of the king
of Hernystir, watches helplessly as her own family and country are drawn into a whirlpool
of war by the treachery of High King Elias.
Simon and Binabik and their company are ambushed by Ingen Jegger, huntsman of
Stormspike, and his servants. They are saved only by the reappearance of the Sitha Jiriki,
whom Simon had saved from the cotsman’s trap. When he learns of their quest, Jiriki
decides to accompany them to Urmsheim mountain, legendary abode of one of the great
dragons, in search of Thorn.
By the time Simon and the others reach the mountain. King Elias has brought his
besieging army to Josua’s castle at Naglimund, and though the first attacks are repulsed,
the defenders suffer great losses. At last Elias’ forces seem to retreat and give up the siege,
but before the stronghold’s inhabitants can celebrate, a weird storm appears on the northern
horizon, bearing down on Naglimund. The storm is the cloak under which Ineluki’s own
horrifying army of Norns and giants travels, and when the Red Hand, the Storm King’s
chief servants, throw down Naglimund’s gates, a terrible slaughter begins. Josua and a few
others manage to flee the ruin of the castle. Before escaping into the great forest, Prince
Josua curses Elias for his conscienceless bargain with the Storm King and swears that he
will take their father’s crown back.
Simon and his companions climb Urmsheim, coming through great dangers to
discover the Uduntree, a titanic frozen waterfall. There they find Thorn in a tomblike cave.
Before they can take the sword and make their escape, Ingen Jegger appears once more and
attacks with his troop of soldiers. The battle awakens Igjarjuk, the white dragon, who has
been slumbering for years beneath the ice. Many on both sides are killed. Simon alone is
left standing, trapped on the edge of a cliff; as the iceworm bears down upon him, he lifts
Thorn and swings it. The dragon’s scalding black blood spurts over him as he is struck
senseless.
Simon awakens in a cave on the troll mountain of Yiqanuc. Jiriki and Haestan, an
Erkynlandish soldier, nurse him to health. Thorn has been rescued from Urmsheim, but
Binabik is being held prisoner by his own people, along with Sludig the Rimmersman,
under sentence of death. Simon himself has been scarred by the dragon’s blood and a wide
swath of his hair has turned white. Jiriki names him “Snowlock” and tells Simon that, for
good or for evil, he has been irrevocably marked.
Foreword
The wind sawed across the empty battlements, yowling like a thousand condemned
souls crying for mercy. Brother Hengfisk, despite the bitter cold that had sucked the air
from his once-strong lungs and withered and peeled the skin of his face and hands, took a
certain grim pleasure in the sound.
Yes, that is what they will all sound like, all the sinful multitude who scoffed at the
message of Mother Church – including, unfortunately, the less rigorous of his Hoderundian
brothers. How they will cry out before God’s just wrath, begging for mercy, when it is far,
far too late...
He caught his knee a wicked blow on a stone lying tumbled from a wall, and pitched
forward into the snow with a crack-lipped squeal. The monk sat whimpering for a moment,
but the painful bite of tears freezing on his cheek forced him back onto his feet. He
hobbled forward once more.
The main road that climbed through Naglimund-town Coward the castle was full of
drifting snow. The houses and shops on either side had nearly disappeared beneath a
smothering blanket of deadly white, but even those buildings not yet covered were as
deserted as the shells of long-dead animals. There was nothing on the road but Hengfisk
and the snow.
As the wind changed direction, the whistling of the fluted battlements at the top of the
hill rose in pitch- The monk squinted his bulging eyes up at the walls, then lowered his
head. He trudged on through the gray after-noon, the crunch of his footsteps a near-silent
drumbeat accompanying the skirling wind.
It’s no wonder the townspeople have fled to the keep, he thought, shivering. All around
him gaped the black idiot-mouths of roofs and walls staved in by the weight of snow. But
inside the castle, under the protection of stone and great timbers, there they must be safe.
Fires would be burning, and red, cheerful faces – sinners’ faces, he reminded himself
scornfully: damned, heedless sinners’ faces – would gather around him and marvel that he
had walked all this way through the freakish storm.
It is Yuven-month, is it not? Had his memory suffered so, that he could not remember
the month?
But of course it was. Two full moons ago it had been spring – a little cold, perhaps,
but that was nothing to a Rimmersman like Hengfisk, reared in the chill of the north. No,
that was the freakish thing, of course, that it should be so deadly cold, the ice and snow
flying, in Yuven – the first month of summer. Hadn’t Brother Langrian refused to leave the
abbey, and after all Hengfisk had done to nurse him back to health? “It’s more than foul
weather, Brother,” Langrian had said. “It’s a curse on God’s entire creation. It’s the Day
of Weighing-Out come in our lifetimes.”
Ah, that was well enough for Langrian. If he wanted to stay in the burned wrack of
Saint Hoderund’s abbey, eating berries and such from the forest – and how much fruit
would there be anyway, in such unseasonable cold? – then he could do as he pleased.
Brother Hengfisk was no fool. Naglimund was the place to go. Old Bishop Anodis would
welcome Hengfisk. The bishop would admire the monk’s clever eye for what he had seen,
the stories that Hengfisk could tell of what had happened at the abbey, the unseasonable
weather. The Naglimunders would welcome him in, feed him, ask him questions, let him
sit before their warm fire...
But they must know about the cold, mustn’t they? Hengfisk thought dully as he pulled
his ice-crackling robe closer about him. He was in the very shadow of the wall now. The
white world he had known for so many days and weeks seemed to have come to an ending,
a precipice that vanished into stony nothingness. That is, they must know about the snow
and all. That’s why they’ve all left the town and moved into the keep. It’s the damnable,
demon-cursed weather that’s keeping the sentries off the walls, isn’t it? Isn’t it!?
He stood and surveyed with mad interest the pile of snow-mantled rubbish that had
been Naglimund’s greater gate. The huge pillars and massive stones were charred black
beneath the drifts. The hole in the sagging wall stood large enough to hold twenty
Hengfisks standing abreast, shoulder to bony, trembling shoulder.
Look how they’ve let things go. Oh, they’ll shriek when their judgment comes, shriek
and shriek with never a chance to make amends. Everything has been let go – the gate, the
town, the weather.
Somebody must be scourged for such negligence. Doubtless Bishop Anodis had his
hands full crying to keep such an unruly flock in line. Hengfisk would be only too happy to
help that fine old man minister to such slackers- First, a fire and some warm food. Then. a
little monasterial discipline. Things would soon be brought to rights...
Hengfisk stepped carefully through the splintered posts and white-covered stones.
The thing of it was, the monk slowly realized, in a way it was quite... beautiful.
Beyond the gate, all things were covered in a delicate tracery of ice, like lacy veils of
spiderweb. The sinking sun embellished the frosted towers and ice-crusted walls and
courtyards with rivulets of pale fire.
The cry of the wind was somewhat less here within the battlements. Hengfisk stood
for a long while, abashed by the unexpected quiet. As the weak sun slid behind the walls,
the ice darkened. Deep violet shadow swelled up in the comers of the courtyard, stretching
laterally across the faces of the ruined towers. The wind softened to a feline hiss, and the
pop-eyed monk lowered his head in numb recognition.
Deserted. Naglimund was empty, with not a single soul left behind to greet a snow-
bewildered wanderer. He had walked leagues through the storm-ridden white waste to
reach a place that was as dead and dumb as stone.
But, he wondered suddenly, if that is so... then what are those blue lights that flicker in
the windows of the towers?
And what were these figures who approached him across the shambles of the
courtyard, moving as gracefully over the icy stones as blowing thistle down?
His heart raced. At first, as he saw their beautiful, cold faces and pale hair, Hengfisk
thought them angels. Then, as he saw the fell light in their black eyes, and their smiles, he
turned, stumbling, and tried to run.
The Norns caught him effortlessly, then carried him back with them into the depths of
the desolated castle, beneath the shadowed, ice-mantled towers and the ceaselessly
flickering lights. And when Naglimund’s new masters whispered to him in their secretive,
musical voices, his screams for a while overtopped even the howling wind.
PART ONE: Stormy Eye
The Music of High Places
Even in the cave, where the crackling fire sent gray ringers of smoke up to the hole in
the stony roof, and red light played across the wallcarvings of twining serpents and tusked,
staring-eyed beasts, the cold still gnawed at Simon’s bones. As he floated in and out of
fevered sleep, through curtained daylight and chill night, he felt as though gray ice grew
inside him, stiffening his limbs and filling him with frost. He wondered if he would ever be
warm again.
Fleeing the chill Yiqanuc cave and his sickened body, he wandered the Road of
Dreams, slipping helplessly from one fantasy to the next. Many times he thought he had
returned to the Hayholt, to his castle home as it once had been, but would never be again: a
place of sun-warmed lawns, of shadowed nooks and hiding-holes – the greatest house of
all, full of bustle and color and music. He walked again in the Hedge Garden, and the wind
that sang outside the cave in which he slept sang in his dreams as well, blowing gently
through the leaves and shaking the delicate hedges.
In one strange dream he seemed to travel back to Doctor Morgenes’ chamber. The
doctor’s study was now at the top of a tall tower, with clouds swimming past the high-
arched windows. The old man hovered fretfully over a large, open book. There was
something frightening about the doctor’s single-mindedness and silence. Simon did not
seem to exist at all for Morgenes; instead, the old man stared intently at the crude drawing
of three swords that stretched across the splayed pages.
Simon moved to the windowsill. The wind sighed, though he could feel no breeze. He
looked down to the courtyard below. Staring up at him with wide, solemn eyes was a child,
a small, dark-haired girl. She lifted a hand in the air, as if in greeting, then suddenly was
gone.
The tower and Morgenes’ cluttered chamber began to melt away beneath Simon’s feet
like a receding tide. Last to vanish was the old man himself. Even as he slowly faded, like
a shadow in growing light, Morgenes still did not lift his eyes to Simon’s; instead, his
gnarled hands busily traced the pages of his book, as though restlessly looking for answers.
Simon called out to him, but all the world had turned gray and cold, full of swirling mists
and the tatters of other dreams...
He awakened, as he had so many times since Urmsheim, to find the cave night-
darkened, and to see Haestan and Jiriki bedded down near the rune-scrawled stone wall.
The Erkynlander was curled sleeping in his cloak, beard on breastbone. The Sitha stared at
something cupped in the palm of his long-fingered hand. Jiriki seemed deeply absorbed.
His eyes gleamed faintly, as though whatever he held reflected the last embers of the fire.
Simon tried to say something – he was hungry for warmth and voices – but sleep was
tugging at him again.
The wind is so loud...
It moaned in the mountain passes outside, as it did around the tower tops of the
Hayholt... as it had across the battlements of Naglimund.
So sad... the wind is sad...
Soon he was asleep once more. The cave was quiet but for faint breathing and the
lonely music of high places.
It was only a hole, but it made a very sufficient prison. It plunged twenty cubits down
into the stone heart of Mintahoq Mountain, as wide as two men or four trolls lying head to
foot. The sides were polished like the finest sculptor’s marble, so that even a spider would
have been hard-pressed to find a foothold. The bottom was as dark and cold and damp as
any dungeon.
Though the moon ranged above the snowy spires of Mintahoq’s neighbors, only a fine
spray of moonlight reached down to the bottom of the pit, where it touched but did not
illuminate two unmoving shapes. For a long while since moonrise it had been this way: the
pale moon-disk – Sedda, as the trolls called her – the only moving thing in all the
nightworld, crossing slowly through the black fields of the sky.
Now something stirred at the mouth of the pit. A small figure leaned over, squinting
down into the thick shadows.
“Binabik...” the crouching shape called at last in the guttural tongue of the troll folk.
“Binabik, do you hear me?”
If one of the shadows at the bottom moved, it made no sound in doing so. At last the
figure at the top of the stone well spoke again.
“Nine times nine days, Binabik, your spear stood before my cave, and I waited for
you.”
The words were spoken in a ritual chant, but the voice wavered un-steadily, pausing
for a moment before continuing. “I waited and I called out your name in the Place of
Echoes. Nothing came back to me but my own voice-Why did you not return and take up
your spear again?”
Still there was no reply.
“Binabik? Why do you not answer? Surely you owe me that, do you not?”
The larger of the two shapes at the bottom of the pit stirred. Pale blue eyes caught a
thin stripe of moongleam.
“What is that trollish yammering? It’s bad enough you throw a man down a hole
who’s never done you harm, but must you come shouting your nonsense-talk at him when
he’s trying to sleep?”
The crouching shape froze for a moment like a startled deer splashed by lantern-glare,
then disappeared into the night.
“Good.” The Rimmersman Sludig curled himself up once more in his damp cloak. “I
do not know what that troll was saying to you, Binabik, but I do not think much of your
people, that they come to mock at you – and me, too. although I am not surprised that they
hate my kind.”
The troll beside him said nothing, only stared at the Rimmersman with dark, troubled
eyes. After a while, Sludig rolled over again, shivering, and tried to sleep.
“But Jiriki, you can’t go!” Simon was perched at the edge of his pallet, wrapped in his
blanket against the insinuating chill. He gritted his teeth against a wave of light-
headedness; he had not been off his back often in the five days since he had awakened.
“I must,” the Sitha said, eyes downcast as though he could not meet Simon’s
imploring stare. “I have already sent Sijandi and Ki’ushapo ahead, but it is my own
presence that is demanded. I shall not leave for a day or two, Seoman, but that is the
utmost length I can put off my duty.”
“You have to help me free Binabik!” Simon lifted his feet off the cold stone floor back
onto the bed. “You said the trolls trust you. Make them set Binabik free. Then we’ll all go
together.”
摘要:

StoneofFarewellbyTadWilliamsBookTwoofMemory,SorrowandThornForeword..................................................................................................................7PARTONE:STORMYEYE.........................................................................................9TheMusicofHi...

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