The Stone of Farewell (Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, #2)

by Tad Williams

“stop all this shouting. And don’t you try any tricks!” “Shut your mouth!” Miriamele told him. Cadrach thought he saw his chance. “That’s right, sirrah, don’t you get to insulting the lady. By Saint Muirfath, I can’t believe . . .” The monk never got to finish his sentence. With an inarticulate shout of rage, Miriamele leaned into him and pushed hard. Cadrach huffed out a surprised breath, waved his arms briefly trying to keep his balance, then toppled into the Bay of Emettin’s green waves.

Love it

“Help!” he screeched breathlessly, flinging his arms about in a paroxysm of horror. “Something’s . . . ! Something’s in here . . . !”

I think you should seek a greater challenge than merely being wiser than men.”

Even though he didn’t quite believe in his people’s gods anymore, it never hurt to pray—but one really ought to say the right prayer.

Doctor Morgenes wrote of his fears that “. . . the time of the Conqueror Star” was surely upon them—whatever that might mean—and that Tiamak’s help would be needed “. . . if certain dreadful things which—it is said—are hinted at in the infamous lost book of the priest Nisses . . .” were to be avoided. But what things? “The infamous lost book . . .”—that was Nisses’ Du Svardenvyrd, as any scholar knew.

“. . . Bringe from Nuanni’s Rocke Garden The Man who tho’ Blinded canne See Discover the Blayde that delivers The Rose At the foote of the Rimmer’s greate Tree Find the Call whose lowde Claime Speakes the Call-bearer’s name In a Shippe on the Shallowest Sea— —When Blayde, Call, and Man Come to Prince’s right Hande Then the Prisoned shall once more go Free . . .”

uttering a prayer for Ink-daub’s spirit to She Who Waits to Take All Back,

As the smoke coiled upward, Tiamak reflected that there was something to be said for the old ways after all. If nothing else, they provided something to do at a time when the mind was weary and hurting.

What does he have to be bitter about?” Miriamele demanded. The priest shook his head. “God knows.” Coming from a priest, she decided, it was hard to tell exactly what that phrase might signify.

the sun felt too nice for self-vilification.

Simon and Binabik talked to her—not to her title, not to her father’s power or their own hopes for reward or advancement.

defeated, he had come at last to The Hat and Plover, an inn of the lowest sort, which was just what his aching spirit craved.

God the Highest gifted me with a heretical nature, my lady, so if He regrets his gift, he will soon gather me back to His bosom again and make all right.

Lector Ranessin, when he offered me the position of his secretary, told my teachers: ‘Better the devil’s tongue to argue and question than a silent tongue and an empty head.’

But I take no responsibility . . .” “We all take responsibility in this life, every one of us,” the priest responded seriously, then softened his expression. “But our Lord Usires understands about difficult burdens.”

“What is Usires Aedon,” she screamed, “but a little wooden man on a little wooden tree? What are any of the kings and queens of men but apes raised far above their station? The master will throw down all that stands before him and his majesty shall rise above all the oceans and lands of Osten Ard! The Storm King comes! He brings with him ice to freeze the heart, deafening thunder—and cleansing fire!”

“He speaks in dreams! Doom is coming!”

he looked to Binabik and Sisqi, saw the way they touched even when they did not touch, the long conversations that passed between the two of them in the shortest of glances.

Simon realized that he felt and saw things differently than he had before Urmsheim. People and events seemed more clearly connected, each part of a much larger puzzle—just as Binabik and Sisqi were. They cared deeply for each other, but at the same time their world of two interlocked with many other worlds: with Simon’s own, with their people’s, with Prince Josua’s, and Geloë’s . . . It was really quite startling, Simon thought, how everything was part of something else! But though the world was vast beyond comprehension, still every mote of life in it fought for its own continued existence. And each mote mattered. That was what the dragon’s blood had taught him, in some way. He was not great; he was, in fact, very small. At the same moment, though, he was important, just as any point of light in a dark sky might be the star that led a mariner to safety, or the star watched by a lonely child during a sleepless night. . . .

*slow clap for Tad*

His ideas were getting away from him, cavorting like mice in an unlocked pantry.

the tethered rams huddled, bumping together like an ambulatory snowdrift.

Even the Storm King is small, in a way.” Binabik inspected Simon’s face. The troll’s brown eyes were serious. “Yes, he is perhaps small beneath the stars, Simon—as a mountain is small in comparing to the whole world. But a mountain is bigger than we, and if it falls on us, we will still be very dead in a very big hole.”

Ha

“Sesuad’ra—Leavetaking Stone. Or, as Geloë spoke it, the Stone of Farewell. A Sithi thing it is, as I guessed.” “But what is it?” Simon stared at the runes, but could not imagine getting meaning from it as he could from Westerling script. Binabik squinted at the scroll. “It is the place, this is saying, where covenant was broken when the Zida’ya and Hikeda’ya—the Sithi and the Norns—split asunder to be going their separate ways. It is a place of power and of great sorrow.”

“Enki-e-Shao’saye was at the southeast edge of the great forest Aldheorte.” Binabik frowned. “So it is not near, obviously. Many weeks of journeying we will have. Where the city was standing is on the far side of the forest from us, above the flat lands of the High Thrithings.”

as in the religious pictures of the Hayholt’s chapel, a great tree stood, arms rising to heaven. This tree was white and smooth as Harcha marble. Prince Josua hung upon it head down, like Usires Aedon Himself in His suffering. A shadowy figure stood before Josua, driving nails into him with a great, gray hammer. Josua did not speak or cry out, but his followers all around were moaning. The prince’s eyes were wide with patient suffering, like the carved face of Usires that had hung on the wall of Simon’s boyhood home in the servant’s quarters. Simon could not bear to see any more. He thrust himself through into the tapestry itself and ran at the shadow-figure. As he ran, he felt a weighty something dangling in his hand. He lifted his arm to swing it, but the murky thing reached up and caught his hand, pulling Simon’s weapon away. He had been holding a black hammer. But for its color, it was the twin of the gray. “Better,” the thing said. It hefted the ebony mallet in its other shadowy hand and began once more to drive nails. This time Josua screamed with each blow, screamed and screamed . . .

Haestan said it tasted like horse piss and I think he’s right.” “Ah. It is seeming that Haestan has changed his mind about kangkang.”

“It is hunt-wine. The men of my folk are not allowed to drink it—except for those, like myself, who are using it sometimes for the purposes of medicine. Our huntresses drink when they must be awake all the night away from our caves.

“What’s it made from?” he asked. “Berries from the high meadows of Blue Mud Lake, where my tribesmen will be going. Berries and teeth.” Simon wasn’t sure he had heard correctly. “Berries and what?”

How do you say thank you in Qanuc?” Binabik told him. “Guyop!” Simon called to Sisqi,

“Did you cry?” “With certainty—but in my own secret place.

“Poor yet honorable forebears. Who could ask for more, as a place from which to make a starting? Who would be born into the tight restricting of royal blood? Who could think to be finding their true selves when all around are bowing and kneeling?”

“The bones you ask for help tell you that you’re looking for help?” Simon grunted. “That’s not much of a trick.” “Silence, foolish lowlander,” Binabik said mock-severely.

“The second throwing, Torch at the Cave-Mouth, means we must look for an advantage in the place we go—Sesuad’ra, I make that, Geloë’s Stone of Farewell. That is not proving we will find luck there, but it is our chance for advantage. The Black Crevice, the last throwing, I have told you of before. The third throw is that which should be feared, or that which we need being aware of. The Black Crevice is a strange, rare pattern that could mean treachery, or could mean something coming from elsewhere .

“Simple answers to life’s questioning. That would be a magic beyond any I have ever been seeing.”

The new troll, a stocky, tuft-bearded herder Binabik introduced as Snenneq, threw a distrustful look up at Simon, as though his very height was an affront to civilized behavior.

“Usires, where are You!?” he railed, letting the blade fall heavily to the ground like a block of tumbled masonry. “Help me! What use is this damnable sword!?” He tried again, praying for God’s help, but Thorn lay flat on the ground, beyond his strength.

mad with fury that this horrible thing should strike at his friends even while its own life leaked out,

But this time the sword didn’t help me . . . Had he lost some kind of worthiness since he had left Urmsheim? Or was Thorn merely as inconstant as the wind and weather?

“Never make your home in a place,” the old man had told him that day. “Make a home for yourself inside your own head. You’ll find what you need to furnish it—memory, friends you can trust, love of learning, and other such things. That way it will go with you wherever you journey . . .” Is that what dying is? Simon wondered. Is it going home? That’s not so bad.

It was the ragged black birds gliding past the cave-mouth that taught him at last that he was still in the world—the birds, and the pain in all his limbs.

“We children of Lingit all Share his gift equally Pass through the lands of stone Just once, then we are gone, Out through the door “We go to walk beyond Search for stars in the sky Hunt the caves past the night Strange lands and different lights But do not return.”

“This is the first day in a thousand years that Qanuc and Utku—troll and lowlander—have been fighting at each other’s side, have been blooded together and have fallen together.

Simon felt himself empty as they started down Sikkihoq’s last reaches, hollowed out, so that if he stood just right the wind might whistle through him. Another friend was gone, and home was only a word.

The Children of the East do not die—at least, not in such a time as you can understand—and neither do they forget old wrongs. If they are old, they are all the more patient for it.”

she knew that life was but a long struggle against disorder, and that disorder was the inevitable winner. Rather than leading her to accept the futility of her role, however, this knowledge instead had whipped Rachel on to greater resistance. Her parents’ fierce northern Aedonite faith had taught her that the more hopeless the struggle, the more crucial it was to struggle valiantly.

To think that at her age, after all her years of service, she should be carrying around sodden bed linens like the lowliest downstairs maid! But it had to be done. Someone had to carry on the fight. Yes, things had been going wrong ever since the day Simon died, and did not look to get better soon. She frowned and hoisted her burden once more.

The apple, she thought, had fallen quite a bit farther from the tree than anyone could have guessed. But that was no surprise, really. It was just men, was what it was. Swaggering, bragging men—exactly like little boys, when you got down to it,

The last one, Minneyar, once King Fingil’s sword—but dear me, you must have known that, of course—well, Minneyar seems never to have left the Hayholt.

“There is something or someone close to Miriamele that prevented my reaching her—a wall of some kind.

“I speak of the usefulness of heroes who are not present to speak for themselves.”