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

by Tad Williams

Vren popped out into the open, glaring furiously. “No!” he screamed. “He’s bad! He’ll get away! He’ll hurt you!”

Dafuq vren?

people are waiting for us.”

“If you came searching for the Zida’ya—those who you name Sithi,” Yis-fidri said carefully, “then that is of deep interest to us indeed, since we brought us here to hide from them.” He nodded slowly. “Long ago did we refuse to bend any longer to their will, to their overweening injustice, and so we escaped. We thought they had forgotten us, but they have not. Now that we are weary and few, they seek to capture us once more.” A dim fire was kindled in Yis-fidri’s eyes. “They even call to us through the Shard, the Witness which has been silent for many long years. They mock us with

“The Zida’ya woman—First Grandmother, as she is called—spoke several times of . . .” the dwarrow conferred briefly with

eyes of the puzzled dwarrows to look to Eolair, the count’s face was that of a man struck by lightning in his own house.

“Geloë, you know charms and spells. Could you not have magicked our captors somehow—put them to sleep, or turned yourself into a ravening beast and attacked them?” “Deornoth,” Josua said warningly, but the forest woman needed no defending. “You understand little, Sir Deornoth,

My mother died birthing me, and my father’s greatest friend Camaris died soon after. My brother’s wife died in my care. Her only child has escaped my guardianship to suffer Aedon only knows what fate.

Wtf is this foreshadowing

Or, even better, perhaps Morgenes himself was staying there, which would explain why Tiamak’s latest messages to the old man’s home at the Hayholt in Erkynland had gone unanswered.

Poortiamk

“And that is the problem with shadows, Hakatri. At first consideration they seem to be quite simple—a matter only of something that stands before the light. But that which is shadowed from one side may from another angle show as a brilliant reflection. What is covered by shadow one day may die in harsh sunlight another day, and the world will be lessened by its passing. Not everything that thrives in shadow is bad, my son . . .”

breath, but still Simon could feel its bitterness. “The

eldest are always the loneliest, my quiet one, but no one should be left behind for so long by those whom they, had loved . . .” And then she was gone.

Niskies

“We are Navigator’s Children, yes. Long ago we came back to the sea, and by the sea we stayed. Now, tell Gan Itai what you do on this ship.”

‘There are three kinds of people—the living, the dead, and those at sea.’” His expression of disgust changed to one of contemplation. “But Niskies! I have met

“But it was the First Grandmother of the Zida’ya—the Sithi—who spoke to you through the Shard!” He sounded perversely pleased, as though he had caught Eolair in a pointless fib. “We did not know

“In days long past,” he finally said, “we and others of the Gardenborn did speak through the particular objects that could act as Witnesses: Stones and Scales, Pools and Pyres. Through these things—and through some others, like Nakkiga’s great Harp—the world of the Gardenborn was tied together with strands of thought and speech. But we Tinukeda’ya had forgotten much even before mighty Asu’a fell, and had grown far apart from those who lived there . . . those who we had once served.” “Asu’a?” Eolair said.

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.” The Count of Nad Mullach whistled, a low, surprised trill. “So Bright-Nail was the old Scourge of the North, Fingil’s Minneyar. Strange! What other secrets did Prester John

Maegwin had another thought. “Are there tunnels near the Hayholt?” Yis-hadra nodded. “Yes. Asu’a, as we call it, was delved deep as well as built high. Now its bones lie beneath the castle of mortal kings, but the earth underneath that castle is still alive with our diggings.” “And are those maps here, too?” “Of course,” the dwarrow replied proudly. With a satisfied nod, Maegwin turned on the Count of Nad Mullach. “There,” she said. “That is the final answer I sought. A course lies open before us: we would be traitors to our own folk not to take it.” She lapsed

she felt it now as a deep longing. She wanted him gone, so the pain and confusion would stop. How was it he could cloud her wits this way?

I have little belief in evil beyond redeeming, Sludig.” “Oh?” The Rimmersman laughed harshly. “What about your Storm King? What good thing could you possibly say about such a black-hearted hellspawn as that?” “Once he loved his people more than his own life,” Binabik said quietly.

Foreshafowing

Ironically, it seemed that the madder Elias became, the more he grew to resemble his brother Josua.

Huhhhhh

Spying like the most slatternly, brought-in-just-for-the-holy-days servant girl!

Lolllllll

She had heard the voices as she was examining the woefully dirty stairs at Green Angel Tower’s third floor.

Loll tgt vexavtly wherr simon spiiess accidentally

“Whispers from Nakkiga,” he had said, and “songs of the upper air.” He had spoken of “listening for the cry of the witnesses,” and “the day of the hilltop bargain coming soon,” and of things even less understandable.

Somebody had scratched the name Miriamele into the wood. The letters were cut deeply, as though whoever had done it had been trapped like Rachel, fidgeting away the time. But who would be here in the first place that might do such a thing?

For a moment she thought of Simon, remembering how the boy would climb like an ape and get into trouble that others could not even find. He had loved Green Angel Tower—wasn’t it just a bit before King John died that Simon had knocked over Barnabas the sexton downstairs? Rachel smiled faintly. The boy had been a very devil. Thinking of Simon, she abruptly remembered what the chandler’s boy Jeremias had said. The smile dissolved from her face. Pryrates. Pryrates had killed her boy. When she thought of the alchemist, Rachel felt a hatred that burned and bubbled like quicklime, a hatred quite unlike anything she had ever felt in her life. Rachel shook

Nothing will ever be the same, you old fool. Face up to it.

Sighing, the troll pocketed the sack, then turned and poked in the ashes of the fire with a stick, digging out their breakfast, a cache of nuts that he had located and dug from the frozen ground. It was a bitterly cold day, and their saddlebags were empty of food: Binabik was not above stealing from squirrels.

And now that he thought of it, would that be so terrible after all—to lie in the damp and dark and just slowly cease to be? Might it not be better than the frantic concerns of the living, the useless struggle against impossible odds, the panicky and pointless flight from death’s ultimate victory?

He didn’t know if it did all mean something, but he suddenly wanted very much to live.

won’t die yet. I want to see Binabik again, and Josua . . . and Miriamele. And I want to see Pryrates and Elias suffer for what they did. I want a home again, a warm bed—oh, merciful Usires, if you really are real, let me have a home again! Don’t let me die in the cold! Let me find a home . . . a home . . . let me find a home . . . ! Sleep was conquering him at last. He seemed to hear his own voice echoing down an old stone well. At last he slid away from cold and painful thoughts into a warmer place. • • •

“To my brother, as he asked me to,” Aditu said. She looked solemn, but a wild light gleamed in her eyes. “To the home of our people—Jao é-Tinukai’i.” Simon finished chewing and swallowed. “I will go anywhere there is a fire.”

The world has a dark underbelly, Deornoth. I wonder if maybe it is better not to seek after knowledge.”

“But surely God put such things on the earth to test our faith, Prince Josua,” Deornoth ventured at last. “If no one ever saw evil, who would fear Hell?” “Who indeed?”

Deornoth’s mind the notion that her husband was dead: what man could live in this Godforsaken hole, yet leave beer so long undrunk? Josua thanked her gravely.

magicks is what that land across the river’s full of—some women here have had children stolen away. One had a

Jao é-Tinukai’i—the Boat on the Ocean of Trees.” • • • It was nothing like a boat, of course, but Simon understood the name in an instant. Stretched between treetop and ground, and from trunk to trunk and bough to bough, the billowing sheets of

“Sometimes you men are like lizards, sunning on the stones of a crumbled house, thinking: ‘what a nice basking spot someone built for me.’” The witch woman had frowned as she spoke. She told us we were in Sithi lands, he recalled. Now we are again entering their fields, that is all. That is why things seem so strange.

laughed, again showing his missing tooth. “Leave

The priest’s surprisingly sweet voice blended well with the harper’s, and if Father Strangyeard did not quite understand what “The Ballad of Round-Heeled Moirah” was about, his enjoyment was the greater for it, and for the laughing praise given to him after.

“Merciful Aedon,” Deornoth breathed to himself. “Sesuad’ra,” Geloë said. “There stands the Stone of Farewell.”

“That’s no stone,” Sangfugol said disbelievingly. “That’s a mountain!” A great hill rose from the valley floor before them. Unlike its low, rounded neighbors, Sesuad’ra thrust up from the meadows like the head of a buried giant, bearded with trees, crowned with angular stones that stood along the ridgeline. Beyond the spiky stones some shimmering whiteness lay along the hill’s very peak. An immense, upward-straining slab of weathered rock and clinging brush, Sesuad’ra loomed some five hundred cubits above the river. The uneven sunlight washed across the hill in wavering bands, so that the

“As with all dwellings,” she said, “of mortals and immortals both, it is the living that makes a house—not the doors, not the walls.”

A sense of being more than himself stole over him, of what it felt like to live in a world that cared little for cities or castles or the worries of the folk who built them. Sometimes he was frightened by the size of this world, by the limitless depths of the evening sky salted with cold stars. But for all these unfamiliar insights, he still remained Simon: most of the time he was merely frustrated. “Surely

“It doesn’t always work,” he said glumly. Her eyes glittered. “No. Sometimes you need a deeper strategy. But it is a beginning.”

“You worm,” the monk said softly. “There is a difference between simple robbery and rape. I think I should just fold you up like a napkin and take the damnable boat—leaving a gold Imperator for your imaginary widow and seven nonexistent brats, which is more than the whole leaky thing is worth.” “Two gold Imperators, Eminence? One for my imag . . . widow, one to purchase a mansa for my poor soul at the church?” “One, and you know that is a gross overpayment. It is only because I am in a hurry. And we will leave now.”

The irony! To think that Tiamak, author of the soon-to-be definitive revision of Sovran Remedys of the Wranna Healers, should be forced into the care of a dryland butcher!

Snow was falling on Kwanitupul, in the heart of summer.

Binabik frowned. “I have too little size to be a satisfying morsel, so I will not waste their time by being caught. That way, no one will be having regrets.” The Rimmersman steered his mount