Two more heads appeared at the edge of the hole. “Damnation, troll,” Sludig growled, “why do you wait? Are you hurt?” The Rimmersman dropped to his knees as though to scramble back down the rope.
“No!” Binabik cried in the Westerling tongue. “Do not be waiting for me. Sisqinanamook can take you to a place of safeness where you can begin your trip down-mountain. You can be beyond the Yiqanuc boundaries by sunrise.”
“What is keeping you here?” Sludig asked, amazed.
“I am condemned by my people,” Binabik said. “I broke my oath. I will not break it for a second time.”
Sludig muttered in confusion and anger.
The dark figure beside him leaned out. “Binabik,” he said. “It’s me, Simon. We have to go. We have to find the Stone of Farewell. Geloë said so. We have to take Thorn there.”
The troll laughed again, but hollowly. “And without me, no going, no Stone of Farewell?”
“Yes!” Simon’s desperation was clear. Time was running short. “We don’t know where it is! Geloë said you must take us there! Naglimund has fallen. We may be Josua’s only hope—and your people’s only hope!”
Binabik sat in silence at the bottom of the pit, thinking. At last he reached out to grasp the dangling rope and began to make his way up the sheer wall. When he reached the top, he stumbled over into Simon’s fierce embrace. Sludig thumped the little man on the shoulder, a comradely blow that nearly toppled Binabik back into the pit. Haestan stood by, breath steaming in his beard, thick hands now hurriedly coiling the rope up from below.
Binabik pulled away from Simon. “You are not looking very well, friend. Your wounds are troubling you.” He sighed. “Ah, this is cruel. I cannot be leaving you to the mercies of my folk, but I have no wishes to break another oath. I do not know what I should do.” He turned toward the fourth figure. “So,” he said in troll speech, “you have rescued me—or at least my companions. Why have you changed your mind?”
Sisqinanamook eyed him, her arms wrapped tightly around herself. “I am not certain I have,” she replied. “I heard what this strange one with the white streak said,” she indicated Simon, watching in bewildered silence. “It had the ring of truth—that is, I believed there truly was something you thought more important even than our pledge.” She glowered. “I am not a lovesick fool who will forgive you anything, but neither am I a vengeful demon. You are free. Now go.”
Binabik moved uneasily. “This thing that kept me from you,” he said, “it is not only important to me, but to everybody. A terrible danger is coming. There is only slim hope of resistance, but even that hope must be nurtured.” He lowered his eyes for a moment, then raised them and boldly met her gaze. “My love for you is as strong as the mountain’s rocky bones. It has been so since I first saw you on your Walk of Womanhood, lovely and graceful as a snow otter beneath the stars of Chugik Mountain. But even for that love I could not stand by and see the whole world blighted by unending black winter.” He took her jacketed arm. “Now tell me this: what will you do, Sisqi? You sent the guards away, then the prisoners escaped. You might just as well mark your name-rune in the snow.”
“That will be between me and my father and mother,” she said angrily, pulling free of his grasp. “I have done what you wanted. You are free. Why do you waste that freedom trying to convince me of your innocence? Why do you throw Chugik up to me? Go!”
Sludig did not speak the language, but he understood Sisqi’s gestures. “If she wants us to leave, Binabik, then she speaks rightly! Aedon! We must be swift.”
Binabik waved a hand. “Go, I soon will catch you.” His friends did not move as he turned again to face his once-intended. “I will stay,” he said. “Sludig is innocent, and it is a great kindness that you have helped him, but I will stay and honor my people’s will. I have done a good share already in the struggle against the Storm King…” he glanced toward the west, where the moon had entered a murk of inky clouds, “…and others can now carry my load. Come, let you and I go lead the guards a chase so my friends can make their escape.”
A look of fear animated Sisqi’s round face. “Curse you, Binbiniqegabenik, will you go now?! I do not wish to see you killed!” Angry tears stood in her eyes. “There, are you pleased!? I still feel for you, although you have torn my heart into pieces!”
Binabik stepped toward her and caught at her arms again, pulling her close. “Then come with me!” he said, his voice suddenly full of wild possibility. “I will not be separated from you again. Run away and come with me, and my oath be broken and damned! You can see the world—even in these dark days, there are things beyond our mountains that would fill you with wonder!”
Sisqi pulled away, turning her back. She seemed to be weeping.
After a long moment, Binabik turned to the others. “Whatever will be happening,” he said in Westerling speech, his face lit with a strange, unstable smile, “—stay or go, flee or fight—it is first to my master’s cave we must go.”
“Why?” asked Simon.
“We have not my casting-bones or other things. They have likely been thrown into the cave that I shared with Ookequk my master, since my people would not dare to go destroying things that were the Singing Man’s. But even more of importance, unless I am looking into the scrolls, little chance there will be that I can find your Stone of Farewell.”
“Then move, troll,” Haestan growled. “I dunna know how y’r lady-friend lured guards away, but no doubt they’ll be back.”
“You are correct.” Binabik beckoned to Simon. “Come, Simon-friend, we must be running again. Such, it is seeming, is the nature of our companionship.” He gestured to the troll maiden. She came without a word, leading the way up the path.
They followed the main trail back, but after only a few dozen ells Sisqi suddenly stepped off the track, taking them onto a trail so narrow that it would have been hard to see even in daylight, a slender defile that traversed the broad side of Mintahoq at a sharp upward angle. It was little more than a gouge running between the rocks, and though there were handholds aplenty, progress was cruelly slow in the near-total darkness. Simon’s booted shin struck painfully on many stones.
The track led upward, cutting across the grain of two more spirals of the main track, then angled sharply back, still climbing. Pale Sedda was sliding across the sky toward the dark bulk of one of Mintahoq’s neighbors, making Simon wonder how they would see at all when the moon had vanished for good. He slipped, waving his arms until he regained his balance, and promptly remembered that they were all clambering up a narrow track on the face of a very dark mountain. Clutching at a hand-hold, Simon stood in place and closed his eyes, bringing an instant of true blackness as he listened to Haestan’s laboring breath behind him. He still felt the weakness that had troubled him all through Yiqanuc. It would be sweet to lie down and sleep, but it was a fruitless hope. After a moment he made the sign of the Tree and started forward again.
At last they reached level ground, a flat porch before a small cave that was set back in a deep crevice in the mountainside; Simon thought that there was something familiar to the moonlight and the shapes of the stones. Just as he realized that Qantaqa had once led him through the darkness to this very place, a gray-white shape leaped from the mouth of the cave.
“Sosa, Qantaqa!” Binabik called quietly; a second later he was bowled over by an avalanche of fur. His companions stood by awkwardly for a moment as he was laved by the wolfs steaming tongue. “Muqang, friend,” the troll gasped at last, “—that’s enough! I am sure that you have been bravely guarding Ookequk’s house.” He struggled to his feet as Qantaqa backed away, her entire body aquiver with delight. “I am more in danger from the greetings of friends than the spears of enemies,” Binabik grinned. “We must hurry to the cave. Sedda is hastening west.”
He went in standing up, Sisqi after him. Simon and the others had to stoop through the low doorway. Qantaqa, determined not to be left outside, made a jarring rush past Simon’s and Haestan’
s legs, nearly tripping them.
They stood for a moment in a darkness thick with Qantaqa’s musky scent and a host of other, stranger odors. Binabik struck sparks from a flint until a small flower of yellow fire appeared and was quickly set to growing on the end of an oil-soaked torch.
The Singing Man’s cave was a quite singular place. In contrast to the low door, the curving roof stretched high overhead, up into shadows the torch could not dispel. Like a beehive, the walls were riddled with a thousand alcoves that seemed to have been gouged into the very rock of the cavern. Each niche held something. One contained only the dried remains of a single small flower, others were crammed with sticks and bones and covered pots. But most were filled with rolled skins, more than a few stuffed so full that some of the rolls dangled halfway from the niche, like the imploring hands of beggars.
Qantaqa’s week-long residence had left its mark. In the middle of the floor, close to the wide fire pit, were the remains of what once had been a complex circular picture made entirely from small colored stones. The wolf had apparently used this for scratching her back, since the design bore the distinct marks of having been rolled upon. All that remained was part of the rune-wrapped border and an edge of some white thing beneath a sky filled with twirling red stars.
Numerous other objects showed traces of Qantaqa’s attention as well. She had pulled a great pile of robes into the cave’s far corner and poked the garments into a suitable wolf-nest. Beside this bed lay several much-chewed articles, including the remains of a few of the rolled skins—the fragments crawling with writing unfamiliar to Simon—and Binabik’s walking stick.
“I could have wished you were finding something else for chewing, Qantaqa,” the troll said, frowning as he picked it up. The wolf tipped her head to one side and whined uneasily, then padded over to Sisqi, who was looking into some of the alcoves, and who distractedly pushed the wolfs large head away. Qantaqa flopped down on the floor and began disconsolately scratching herself. Binabik held his stick up to the torch’s light. The tooth marks were not deep.
“Chewing more for comfort of Binabik-smell than any other thing,” the troll smiled. “Fortunately.”
“What is it you seek?” Sludig said urgently. “We must be going while darkness holds.”
“Yes, you speak correctly,” Binabik said, sliding his stick in beneath his belt. “Come, Simon, help me as we make a quick searching.”
With Haestan and Sludig joining in, Simon pulled down scrolls from the niches that Binabik himself could not reach. They were made of thin-pounded hide, so thoroughly greased that they were slimy to the couch; the runes that covered them were burned directly into the hide, as though with a hot poker. Simon handed one after another to Binabik, who perused each quickly before tossing it onto one of several growing piles.
Looking around at the great rocky honeycomb and all the scrolls, Simon marveled at what an arduous job it must have been to create such a library—and it was just that, he realized, as much as Father Strangyeard’s archive at Naglimund or Morgenes’ workshop full of heavy volumes, even though these books were furls of hide, scribed with fire instead of ink.
At last Binabik had a pile of a dozen or so that seemed to interest him. These he spread flat and rolled together into one heavy bundle, then dropped the whole mass into his sack, which he had found near the cave’s entrance.
“Now we can go?” Sludig asked. Haestan was rubbing his hands together, trying to keep them warm. He had taken off his clumsy gloves to help with the scrolls.
“As soon as we are putting these back into the holes.” The troll indicated the large pile of discarded skins.
“Are ye mad?” Haestan said heatedly. “Why waste precious time doin’ such?”
“Because these are rare, precious things,” Binabik said calmly, “and if we are leaving them here on cold ground, they will be soon ruined. ‘He who is not bringing in his flock at night gives away free mutton’—that is what we Qanuc say. It will be taking a moment, only.”
“S’Bloody Tree,” Haestan swore. “Lenti me help, Simon-lad,” he grunted, stooping to the pile, “else we’ll be here ’til dawn-time.”
Binabik directed Simon in the filling of some of the empty upper niches. Sludig watched impatiently for a moment before joining the effort. Sisqi had been quietly rummaging through the alcoves until she had amassed her own pile of rolled skins, which she had then rolled up and slipped under her hide jacket, but now she suddenly turned and called in rapid Qanuc. Binabik pushed past a wad of tangled furs to stand at her side.
She held out a scroll tied shut with a black leather thong. The cord was wrapped not only around the middle of the roll of skin, but around both ends as well. Binabik. took it from her, touching two fingers to his forehead in a gesture of seeming reverence.
“This is Ookequk’s knot,” he said quietly to Simon. “There is no doubting of that.”
“This is Ookequk’s cave, too, isn’t it?” Simon said, puzzled. “Why is a knot surprising?”
“Because this knot tells it is something of importance.” Binabik explained. “It is also something I have not seen before—something that was hidden from me, or that my master was making just before we left on the journey where he died. And this knot, I am thinking, was only used for things of great power, messages and spells that were for certain eyes only.” He again ran his fingers over the knot, his brow wrinkled in thought. Sisqi stared at the scroll, her eyes bright.
“Well, that’s last of th’ damnable things,” Haestan said. “If that be some-thin’ y’want, little man, bring it with. We’ve no more time for wastin’.”
Binabik hesitated for a moment, caressing the knot gently while he looked once more around the cavern, then slipped the knotted scroll into his sleeve. “Time it is,” he agreed. He gestured the others to the cavern doorway ahead of him, extinguishing the torch in a depression in the stone floor as he followed them out.
The rest of the troll’s companions had stopped, huddled before the cave like a herd of wind-rattled sheep. Sedda, the moon, had at last vanished in the west behind Sikkihoq, but the night was suddenly full of light.
A large troop of trolls was moving toward them. Faces grim in their hoods, spears and firebrands in their hands, they had fanned out around Ookequk’s cave and now held the path on both sides. Even in force, the trolls were so quiet that Simon could hear the burning hiss of their torches before the sound of a single footfall reached him.
“Chukku’s Stones,” Binabik said bleakly. Sisqi dropped back to take his arm, her eyes wide in the torchlight, her mouth set in a grim line.
Uammannaq the Herder and Nunuuika the Huntress guided their rams forward. They both wore belted robes and boots. Their black hair flowed loose, as though they had dressed hurriedly. As Binabik stepped forward to meet them, armed trolls moved in behind him, hemming his companions in a thicket of spears. Sisqinanamook stepped out of the encirclement to join him, standing at his side with her chin lifted defiantly. Uammannaq avoided his daughter’s eyes, staring down instead at Binabik.
“So, Binbiniqegabenik,” he said. “you will not stand and face the justice of your people? I had thought mare of you than that, however low your birth.”
“My friends are innocent.” Binabik replied. “I held your daughter as hostage until the Rimmersman Sludig had made it to safety with the others.”
Nunuuika rode forward until her mount stood shoulder to shoulder with her husband’s. “Please credit us with some wisdom, Binabik, even though we are not either of us as clever as your master was. Who sent the guards away?” She peered down at Sisqi. The Huntress’ face was cold, but showed a trace of harsh pride. “Daughter, I thought you were a fool when you determined to marry this wizardling. Now—well, I will say at least that you are a loyal fool,” She turned to Binabik. “Because you have recharmed my daughter, do not think you will escape your sentence. The Ice House is unmelted. Winter has killed the Spring. The Rite of Quickening went unperformed—and instead you r
eturn to us with childish tales. Now you are back hatching devil-tricks in your master’s cave that your pet wolf has guarded for you.” Nunuuika was in the grip of a rising fury. “You have been judged, oath-breaker. You will go to the ice cliffs of Ogohak Chasm and you will he thrown over!”
“Daughter, go back to our home,” Uammannaq growled. “You have done great wrong.”
“No!” Sisqi’s cry caused a stir among the watching trolls. “I have listened to my heart, yes, but listened to what wisdom I have gained as well. The wolf has kept us from Ookequk’s house—but that has not been to Binbiniqegabenik’s benefit.” She pulled the thong-tied scroll from Binabik’s sleeves and thrust it forward. “This I found there. None of us thought to see what Ookequk had left behind.”
“Only a fool hurries to rummage in the effects of a Singing Man,” Uammannaq said, but his expression had subtly changed.
“But Sisqi,” Binabik said, nonplussed, “we do not know what the scroll contains! It could be a spell of great peril, or…”
“I have a good idea,” Sisqi said grimly. “Do you see whose knot this is?” she asked, handing the scroll to her mother.
The Huntress looked at it briefly and made a dismissive gesture as she handed it to her husband. “It is Ookequk’s knot, yes…”
“And you know what kind of knot as well, Mother,” Sisqi turned to her father. “Has it been opened?”
Uammannaq frowned. “No…”
“Good. Father, open it and read it, please.”
“Now?”
“If not now, when? After the one to whom I am pledged has been executed?” Sisqi’s breath hung in the air after her angry rejoinder. Uammannaq carefully picked the knot and removed the black thong, then slowly unrolled the sheet of hide, beckoning for one of the torch-bearers to move nearer.
“Binabik,” Simon shouted from behind a circle of spear-heads, “what is happening?”
“Stay, all of you, and do nothing for a moment,” Binabik called to him in Westerling. “I will tell you all when I can.”