To Green Angel Tower Volume 2 Read online

  Meanwhile, Josua and a small band of followers have escaped the destruction of Naglimund and are wandering through the Aldheorte Forest, chased by the Storm King’s Norns. They must defend themselves against not only arrows and spears but dark magic, but at last they are met by Geloë, the forest woman, and Leleth, the mute child Simon had rescued from the terrible hounds of Stormspike. The strange pair lead Josua’s party through the forest to a place that once belonged to the Sithi, where the Norns dare not pursue them for fear of breaking the ancient Pact between the sundered kin. Geloë then tells them they should travel on, to another place even more sacred to the Sithi, the same Stone of Farewell to which she had directed Simon in the vision she sent him.

  Miriamele, daughter of High King Elias and niece of Josua, is traveling south in hope of finding allies for Josua among her relatives in the courts of Nabban; she is accompanied by the dissolute monk Cadrach. They are captured by Count Streáwe of Perdruin, a cunning and mercenary man, who tells Miriamele he is going to deliver her to an unnamed person to whom he owes a debt. To Miriamele’s joy, this mysterious personage turns out to be a friend, the priest Dinivan, who is secretary to Lector Ranessin, leader of Mother Church. Dinivan is secretly a member of the League of the Scroll, and hopes that Miriamele can convince the lector to denounce Elias and his counselor, the renegade priest Pryrates. Mother Church is under siege, not only from Elias, who demands the church not interfere with him, but from the Fire Dancers, religious fanatics who claim the Storm King comes to them in dreams. Ranessin listens to what Miriamele has to say and is very troubled.

  Simon and his companions are attacked by snow-giants on their way down from the high mountains, and the soldier Haestan and many trolls are killed. Later, as he broods on the injustice of life and death, Simon inadvertently awakens the Sitha mirror Jiriki had given him as a summoning charm, and travels on the Dream Road to encounter first the Sitha matriarch Amerasu, then the terrible Norn Queen Utuk‘ku. Amerasu is trying to understand the schemes of Utuk’ku and the Storm King, and is traveling the Dream Road in search of both wisdom and allies.

  Josua and the remainder of his company at last emerge from the forest onto the grasslands of the High Thrithing, where they are almost immediately captured by the nomadic clan led by March-Thane Fikolmij, who is the father of Josua’s lover Vorzheva. Fikolmij begrudges the loss of his daughter, and after beating the prince severely, arranges a duel in which he intends that Josua should be killed; Fikolmij’s plan fails and Josua survives. Fikolmij is then forced to pay off a bet by giving the prince’s company horses. Josua, strongly affected by the shame Vorzheva feels at seeing her people again, marries her in front of Fikolmij and the assembled clan. When Vorzheva’s father gleefully announces that soldiers of King Elias are coming across the grasslands to capture them, the prince and his followers ride away east toward the Stone of Farewell.

  In far off Hernystir, Maegwin is the last of her line. Her father the king and her brother have both been killed fighting Elias’ pawn Skali, and she and her people have taken refuge in caves in the Grianspog Mountains. Maegwin has been troubled by strange dreams, and finds herself drawn down into the old mines and caverns beneath the Grianspog. Count Eolair, her father’s most trusted liege-man, goes in search of her, and together he and Maegwin enter the great underground city of Mezutu‘a. Maegwin is convinced that the Sithi live there, and that they will come to the rescue of the Hernystiri as they did in the old days, but the only inhabitants they discover in the crumbling city are the dwarrows, a strange, timid group of delvers distantly related to the immortals. The dwarrows, who are metalwrights as well as stone crafters, reveal that the sword Minneyar that Josua’s people seek is actually the blade known as Bright-Nail, which was buried with Prester John, father of Josua and Elias. This news means little to Maegwin, who is shattered to find that her dreams have brought her people no real assistance. She is also at least as troubled by what she considers her foolish love for Eolair, so she invents an errand for him—taking news of Minneyar and maps of the dwarrows’ diggings, which include tunnels below Elias’ castle, the Hayholt, to Josua and his band of survivors. Eolair is puzzled and angry at being sent away, but goes.

  Simon and Binabik and Sludig leave Sisqi and the other trolls at the base of the mountain and continue across the icy vastness of the White Waste. Just at the northern edge of the great forest, they find an old abbey inhabited by children and their caretaker, an older girl named Skodi. They stay the night, glad to be out of the cold, but Skodi proves to be more than she seems: in the darkness, she traps the three of them by witchcraft, then begins a ceremony in which she intends to invoke the Storm King and show him that she has captured the sword Thorn. One of the undead Red Hand appears because of Skodi’s spell, but a child disrupts the ritual and brings up a monstrous swarm of diggers. Skodi and the children are killed, but Simon and the others escape, thanks largely to Binabik’s fierce wolf Qantaqa. But Simon is almost mad from the mind-touch of the Red Hand, and rides away from his companions, crashing into a tree at last and striking himself senseless. He falls down a gulley, and Binabik and Sludig are unable to find him. At last, full of remorse, they take the sword Thorn and continue on toward the Stone of Farewell without him.

  Several people besides Miriamele and Cadrach have arrived at the lector’s palace in Nabban. One of them is Josua’s ally Duke Isgrimnur, who is searching for Miriamele. Another is Pryrates, who has come to bring Lector Ranessin an ultimatum from the king. The lector angrily denounces both Pryrates and Elias; the king’s emissary walks out of the banquet, threatening revenge.

  That night, Pryrates metamorphoses himself with a spell he has been given by the Storm King’s servitors, and becomes a shadowy thing. He kills Dinivan and then brutally murders the lector. Afterward, he sets the halls aflame to cast suspicion on the Fire Dancers. Cadrach, who greatly fears Pryrates and has spent the night urging Miriamele to flee the lector’s palace with him, finally knocks her senseless and drags her away. Isgrimnur finds the dying Dinivan, and is given a Scroll League token for the Wrannaman Tiamak and instructions to go to the inn named Pelippa’s Bowl in Kwanitupul, a city on the edge of the marshes south of Nabban.

  Tiamak, meanwhile, has received an earlier message from Dinivan and is on his way to Kwanitupul, although his journey almost ends when he is attacked by a crocodile. Wounded and feverish, he arrives at Pelippa’s Bowl at last and gets an unsympathetic welcome from the new landlady.

  Miriamele awakens to find that Cadrach has smuggled her into the hold of a ship. While the monk has lain in drunken sleep, the ship has set sail. They are quickly found by Gan Itai, a Niskie, whose job is to keep the ship safe from the menacing aquatic creatures called kilpa. Although Gan Itai takes a liking to the stowaways, she nevertheless turns them over to the ship’s master, Aspitis Preves, a young Nabbanai nobleman.

  Far to the north, Simon has awakened from a dream in which he again heard the Sitha-woman Amerasu, and in which he has discovered that Ineluki the Storm King is her son. Simon is now lost and alone in the trackless, snow-covered Aldheorte Forest. He tries to use Jiriki’s mirror to summon help, but no one answers his plea. At last he sets out in what he hopes is the right direction, although he knows he has little chance of crossing the scores of leagues of winterbound woods alive. He ekes out a meager living on bugs and grass, but it seems only a question of whether he will first go completely mad or starve to death. He is finally saved by the appearance of Jiriki’s sister Aditu, who has come in response to the mirror-summoning. She works a kind of traveling-magic that appears to turn winter into summer, and when it is finished, she and Simon enter the hidden Sithi stronghold of Jao é-Tinukai‘i. It is a place of magical beauty and timelessness. When Jiriki welcomes him, Simon’s joy is great; moments later, when he is taken to see Likimeya and Shima’onari, parents of Jiriki and Aditu, that joy turns to horror. The leaders of the Sithi say that since no mortal has ever been permitted in secret Jao é-Tinukai‘i, Simon must stay ther
e forever.

  Josua and his company are pursued into the northern grasslands, but when they turn at last in desperate resistance, it is to find that these latest pursuers are not Elias’ soldiers, but Thrithings-folk who have deserted Fikolmij’s clan to throw in their lot with the prince. Together, and with Geloë leading the way, they at last reach Sesuad‘ra, the Stone of Farewell, a great stone hill in the middle of a wide valley. Sesuad’ra was the place in which the Pact between the Sithi and Norns was made, and where the parting of the two kin took place. Josua’s long-suffering company rejoices at finally possessing what will be, for a little while, a safe haven. They also hope they can now discover what property of the three Great Swords will allow them to defeat Elias and the Storm King, as promised in the ancient rhyme of Nisses.

  Back at the Hayholt, Elias’ madness seems to grow ever deeper, and Earl Guthwulf, once the king’s favorite, begins to doubt the king’s fitness to rule. When Elias forces him to touch the gray sword Sorrow, Guthwulf is almost consumed by the sword’s strange inner power, and is never after the same. Rachel the Dragon, the Mistress of Chambermaids, is another Hayholt denizen dismayed by what she sees happening around her. She learns that the priest Pryrates was responsible for what she thinks was Simon’s death, and decides something must be done. When Pryrates returns from Nabban; she stabs him. The priest has become so powerful that he is only slightly injured, but when he turns to blast Rachel with withering magics, Guthwulf interferes and is blinded. Rachel escapes in the confusion.

  Miriamele and Cadrach, having told the ship’s master Aspitis that she is the daughter of a minor nobleman, are treated with hospitality; Miriamele in particular comes in for much attention. Cadrach becomes increasingly morose, and when he tries to escape the ship, Aspitis has him put in irons. Miriamele, feeling trapped and helpless and alone, allows Aspitis to seduce her.

  Meanwhile, Isgrimnur has laboriously made his way south to Kwanitupul. He finds Tiamak staying at the inn, but no sign of Miriamele. His disappointment is quickly overwhelmed by astonishment when he discovers that the old simpleton who works as the inn’s doorkeeper is Sir Camaris, the greatest knight of Prester John’s era, the man who once wielded Thorn. Camaris was thought to have died forty years earlier, but what truly happened remains a mystery, because the old knight is as witless as a very young child.

  Still carrying the sword Thorn, Binabik and Sludig escape pursuing snow-giants by building a raft and floating across the great storm-filled lake that was once the valley around the Stone of Farewell.

  In Jao é-Tinukai‘i, Simon’s imprisonment is more boring than frightening, but his fears for his embattled friends are great. The Sitha First Grandmother Amerasu calls for him, and Jiriki brings him to her strange house. She probes Simon’s memories for anything that might help her to discern the Storm King’s plans, then sends him away.

  Several days later Simon is summoned to a gathering of all the Sithi. Amerasu announces she will tell them what she has learned of Ineluki, but first she berates her people for their unwillingness to fight and their unhealthy obsession with memory and, ultimately, with death. She brings out one of the Witnesses, an object which, like Jiriki’s mirror, allows access to the Road of Dreams. Amerasu is about to show Simon and the assembled Sithi what the Storm King and Norn Queen are doing, but instead Utuk‘ku herself appears in the Witness and denounces Amerasu as a lover of mortals and a meddler. One of the Red Hand is then manifested, and while Jiriki and the other Sithi battle the flaming spirit, Ingen Jegger, the Norn Queen’s mortal huntsman, forces his way into Jao é-Tinukai’i and murders Amerasu, silencing her before she can share her discoveries.

  Ingen is killed and the Red Hand is driven away, but the damage has been done. With all the Sithi plunged into mourning, Jiriki’s parents rescind their sentence and send Simon, with Aditu for a guide, out of Jao é-Tinukai‘i. As he departs, he notices that the perpetual summer of the Sithi haven has become a little colder.

  At the forest’s edge Aditu puts him in a boat and gives him a parcel from Amerasu that is to be taken to Josua. Simon then makes his way across the rainwater lake to the Stone of Farewell, where he is met by his friends. For a little while, Simon and the rest will be safe from the growing storm.

  Synopsis of To Green Angel Tower (Part One)

  Simon and most of his companions have taken refuge with Prince Josua on Sesuad‘ra—the great hill famous in Sithi history as the Stone of Farewell. There they wait and hope for some break in the storm clouds of war and fear that Josua’s brother, King Elias, and his undead ally, Ineluki the Storm King, have set into swirling motion.

  Simon is knighted for his services to Josua and his aid in the recovery of the sword Thorn. As he spends his vigil night in the old Sithi ruins, he sees a vision of The Parting, the day in the dim past when the Sithi and the Norns sundered the links between their two families. Soon after Simon is knighted, the Hernystirman Eolair arrives at Sesuad‘ra with news he has gained from the subterranean dwarrows: King John’s sword, Bright-Nail, was actually the older sword Minneyar, one of three blades that an ancient rhyme suggests might be the only help against Ineluki and his dark sorceries. But Bright-Nail is buried in John’s barrow, only a short distance from the Hayholt, Elias’ castle fortress; there seems little chance of capturing it.

  Far to the south, King Elias’ daughter Miriamele has become the lover and increasingly unwilling guest of a Nabbanai lord, Aspitis Preves. When Aspitis reveals his plans to marry her she rebels, but he reveals that he knows her true identity and that one way or another, he will have her as his bride, to use as a political tool. Miriamele’s companion, the monk Cadrach, has already been imprisoned; her only ally is the Niskie, Gan Itai.

  At Sesuad‘ra, Prince Josua decides to send Duke Isgrimnur’s son Isorn to accompany Eolair back to Hernystir, hoping that along the way he can recruit some of the Rimmersmen scattered by war, aid Eolair’s people, and then return to help Josua and the others. But soon after the mission departs, Josua, Simon and the others discover that King Elias has sent an army led by Duke Fengbald to bring his brother to heel. Simon, the witch-woman Geloë, and others use the power of the old Sithi ruins to walk the Dream-Road in an effort to summon to Sesuad’ra anyone who might help them.

  In Hernystir, Maegwin, the king’s daughter, is searching frantically for a way to save her defeated people, now living in caves in the mountains. She climbs a high peak and falls into a prophetic dream where she unwittingly encounters Simon, who is searching the Dream-Road for Miriamele. Maegwin experiences the dream-meeting betweeen Simon and his Sitha friend Jiriki as a colloquy between the gods and heroes of her people, and interprets it as a sign from Heaven.

  In the marsh-city of Kwanitupul, Tiamak the Wrannaman, Duke Isgrimnur, and the apparently senile great hero, Camaris, all wait at an inn for Miriamele. Tiamak is attacked by Fire Dancers, members of a human cult who worship the Storm King, but is saved by Camaris.

  Deep beneath the Hayholt, Elias’ mighty castle, Guthwulf, the king’s onetime friend and general, wanders in darkness. He has been blinded by a spell from the alchemist Pryrates, and except for the companionship of a cat, is alone and nearly mad with grief and regret. Elsewhere in the castle’s depths, Rachel the Dragon, former Mistress of Chambermaids, hides from the king and Pryrates, determined to survive until better days return.

  Sesuad‘ra prepares for war. Newly-knighted Simon leads a sortie to spy on Fengbald’s camp. On the way back, he and his company see mysterious lights on the banks of the freezing lake that surrounds the Stone of Farewell: Later, Simon’s friend Binabik takes him to the source of the lights—a camp of the little man’s troll kin, brought by Binabik’s beloved Sisqi to fight for Josua. The reunion brings a moment of joy in a dark time.

  On Aspitis’ ship, Miriamele is helped by Gan Itai, first to talk to imprisoned Cadrach, then to plan an escape. Gan Itai is angered by Miriamele’s discovery that Aspitis is aiding the Fire Dancers, who have persecuted the Niskies, and so instea
d of using her magical song to keep the demonic kilpa at bay, she brings the sea-creatures up to attack the ship. During the bloodletting and confusion, Miriamele gravely wounds Aspitis and she and Cadrach escape in a small boat. As they float on the empty ocean the next day, Cadrach tells her of his life, how he had been recruited by Doctor Morgenes into the League of the Scroll, but how his own dissolute ways and the discovery of a terrible old book, Du Svardenvyrd, had caused him to despair and fall away from the other Scrollbearers. Later, he had been captured by Pryrates—once a Scrollbearer himself, before the others found out his true nature—and tortured into revealing where he had disposed of the forbidden volume.

  In the depths of Aldheorte forest the Sithi are mus tering, for the first time in centuries, but whether they will come to the aid of Prince Josua and Simon, even Jiriki cannot say.

  Duke Fengbald brings his army to the base of Sesuad‘ra, camping on the shore of the frozen lake around the great hill. Josua’s ragtag army prepares its resistance, and in a day of fierce fighting manages to hold its own against a superior force. Still, Simon and his friends are outnumbered, and they have little hope that they will be victorious in the end. But Fengbald, in an attempt to take Sesuad’ra by treachery, is himself caught in a trap, and drowns in the black water and crumbling ice floes of the lake.

  In the west, Maegwin and the other Hernystiri, driven by the mistaken vision she has had during her vigil, emerge from the mountain caves to confront those who have driven them out of their homes, the army of Skali of Rimmersgard, King Elias’ ally. At first it seems that they have merely hastened their doom, but the sudden appearance of the Sithi, come to repay their old debt to Hernystir, puts Skali and his men to flight. Maegwin, convinced that she has seen the gods themselves come down to earth to save her people, tips over into madness. When Eolair returns to Hernystir, it is to find the strange Sithi in full occupation and Maegwin convinced that she herself was killed in the battle—and that therefore Eolair too must be dead, her companion in the afterlife.