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

by Tad Williams

“Not everyone can stand up and be a hero, Princess,” he said quietly. “Some prefer to surrender to the inevitable and salve their consciences with the gift of survival.”

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. . .

As he fell asleep, he thought he saw his Erkynlandish friend’s broad back vanishing down a corridor into white silence. Haestan, Simon thought, did not seem to walk like a man who bore regrets—but then, it was only a dream.

“Why did they build their city on an icy mountain in the first place?” Simon asked. “That seems stupid.” Binabik looked up peevishly. “You are speaking, Simon, to one raised in the mountains, as you are no doubt able to recall. Part of manhood, I am thinking, is to ponder one’s words before opening one’s mouth.” “I’m sorry.” Simon tried to suppress a mischievous smile. “I didn’t realize that trolls actually liked living where they do.”

Simon smiled. “You sound like Rachel the Dragon.” “I have not met this Dragon-Rachel,” Binabik said as he stood up, brushing snow from his breeches, “but if she was given charge of you, she must have been a person of great patientness and kindness.”

“But we knew something neither of our questioners did,” he said finally; there was a gleam in his round eye unlike anything the surface dwellers had yet seen. “Do you see, our masters think the sword Minneyar never left Asu’a, and that is true. But the one who found the sword there beneath the castle, the one you call King John Prester, had it reforged and made new. Under the name of Bright-Nail, he carried it all across the world and back.”

I knew it!

The count waited a long time before answering. “Very well, Lady,” he said quietly, “I will do as you command. I do not know where this sudden fancy—fancy! It seems a kind of madness!—has come from. If you had asked my counsel in this thing and treated me as your family’s friend instead of a vassal, I would have heeded your wish happily. Instead you will have my obedience, but there will be little love with it. You thought to act the queen, but instead you have proved yourself only a callow child after all.”

Cadrach, already pale, looked ill at the captain’s words, but Miriamele barely heard. She was thinking of Aspitis’ golden hair and bold eyes, and wondering how in the midst of such danger she could suddenly feel so unexpectedly fascinated.

Uh oh. Poor Simon.