Tad Williams - The Dragonbone Chair

All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.

Author's Warning

Wanderers in the land of Osten Ard are cautioned not to put blind trust in old rules and forms, and to observe all rituals with a careful eye, for they often mask being with seeming.

The Qanuc-folk of the snow-mantled Trollfells have a proverb. "He who is certain he knows the ending of things when he is only beginning them is either extremely wise or extremely foolish; no matter which is true, he is certainly an unhappy man, for he has put a knife in the heart of wonder."

More bluntly, new visitors to this land should take heed:

Avoid Assumptions.

The Qanuc have another saying: "Welcome stranger. The paths are treacherous today."

Foreword

"... The book of the mad priest Nisses is large, say those who have held it, and as heavy as a small child. It was discovered at Nisses' side as he lay, dead and smiling, beside the tower window from which his master King Hjeldin had leaped to his own death moments before.

"The rusty brown ink, concocted of lambsfoil, hellebore, and rueas well as some redder, thicker liquidis dry, and flakes easily from the thin pages. The unadorned skin of a hairless animal, the species unprovable, forms the binding.

"Those holy men of Nabban who read it after Nisses' passing pronounced it heretical and dangerous, but for some reason did not burn it, as is usually done with such texts. Instead, it lay for many years in Mother Church's near-endless archives, in the deepest, most secret vaults of the Sancellan Aedonitis. It has now apparently disappeared from the onyx casket which housed it; the never-gregarious Order of the Archives is vague as to its present whereabouts.

"Some who have read Nisses' heretical work claim that it contains all the secrets of Osten Ard, from this land's murky past to the shadows of things unborn. The Aedonite priest-examiners will say only that its subject matter was 'unholy.'

"It may indeed be true that Nisses' writings predict the what-will-be as clearlyand, we may presume, eccentricallyas they chronicle the what-has-been. It is not known, however, whether the great deeds of our ageespecially, for our concern, the rise and triumph of Prester Johnare included in the priest's foretellings, although there are suggestions that this may be true. Much of Nisses' writing is mysterious, its meaning hidden in strange rhymes and obscure references. I have never read the full work, and most of those who have are now long dead.

"The book is titled, in the cold, harsh runes of Nisses' northern birthplace, Du Svardenvyrd, which means The Weird of the Swords..."

from

The Life and Reign of King John Presbyter, by Morgenes Ercestres PART ONE

Simon Mooncalf

ON THIS day of days there was an unfamiliar stirring deep inside the dozing heart of the Hayholt, in the castle's bewildering warren of quiet passages and overgrown, ivy-choked courtyards, in the monk's holes and damp, shadowed chambers. Courtiers and servants alike goggled and whispered. Scullions exchanged significant glances across the washing tubs in the steamy kitchen. Hushed conversations seemed to be taking place in every hallway and dooryard of the great keep. It might have been the first day of spring, to judge from the air of breathless anticipation, but the great calendar in Doctor Morgenes'

cluttered chamber showed differently: the month was only Novander. Autumn was holding the door, and Winter was trudging in.

What made this a day different from all others was not a season but a placethe Hayholt's throne room. For three long years its doors had been shut by the king's order, and heavy draperies had cloaked the multicolored windows. Even the cleaning servants had not been permitted to cross the threshold, causing the Mistress of Chambermaids no end of personal anguish. Three summers and three winters it had stood undisturbed.

Today it was no longer empty, and all the castle hummed with rumor.

In truth, there was one person in the busy Hayholt whose attention was not fixed on that long-untenanted room, one bee in the murmuring hive whose solitary song was not in key with the greater droning. That one sat in the heart of the Hedge Garden, in an alcove between the dull red stone of the chapel and the leafless side of a skeletal hedge-lion, and thought he was not missed. It had been an irritating day so farthe women all busy, with scant time to answer questions; breakfast late, and cold into the bargain. Confusing orders had been given to him, as usual, and no one had any time to waste with any of his problems....

And that was also, he thought grumpily, quite predictable. If it hadn't been for his discovery of this huge, magnificent beetlewhich had come strolling across the garden, as self-satisfied as any prosperous villagerthen the entire afternoon would have been a waste of time.

With a twig he widened the tiny road he had scraped in the dark, cold earth beside the wall, but still the captive would not walk forward. He tickled gently at its glossy carapace, but the stubborn beetle would not budge. Frowning, he sucked at his upper lip.

"Simon! Where in the name of holy Creation have you been!"

The twig dropped from his nerveless fingers, as though an arrow had pierced his heart.

Slowly, he turned to look at the looming shape.

"Nowhere..." Simon began to say, but even as the words passed his lips a pair of bony fingers caught his ear and brought him sharply to his feet, yelping in pain.

"Don't you dare 'nowhere' me, young layabout," Rachel the Dragon, Mistress of Chambermaids, barked full into his facea juxtaposition made possible only by Rachel's tiptoed stance and the boy's natural inclination to slouch, for the head chambermaid lacked nearly a foot of Simon's height.

"Sorry, then, mistress, I'm sorry," Simon muttered, noting with sadness the beetle nosing toward a crack in the chapel wall and freedom.

" 'Sorry' is not going to get you by forever," Rachel growled. "Every single body in the house is at work a-getting things ready but you! And, bad enough that is, but then I have to waste my valuable time trying to find you! How can you be such a wicked boy, Simon, when you should be acting like a man? How can you?"

The boy, fourteen gangly years old and furiously embarrassed, said nothing. Rachel stared at him.

Sad enough, she thought, that red hair and those spots, but when he squints his eyes all up that way and scowlswhy, the child looks half-witted!

Simon, staring in turn at his captor, saw Rachel breathing heavily, pluming the Novander air with puffs of vapor. She was shivering, too, although whether from the cold or anger, Simon couldn't tell. It didn't really matter. It just made him feel worse.

She's still waiting for an answerhow tired and cross she looks! He curled himself into an even more pronounced slump and glared at his own feet.

"Well, you'll just come with me, then. The good Lord knows I've got things to keep an idle boy busy with. Don't you know the king is up out of his sickbed? That he's gone to his throne room today? Are you deaf and blind?" She grabbed his elbow and frog-marched him across the garden.

"The King? King John?" Simon asked, surprised.

"No, you ignorant boy. King Stone-in-the-Road! Of course King John!" Rachel halted in her tracks to push a wisp of limp steel-gray hair back under her bonnet. Her hand trembled. "There, I hope you're happy," she said. "You've gotten me so flummoxed and upset that I've gone and been disrespectful to the name of our good old King John. And him so sick and all." She snuffled loudly and then leaned over to deal Simon a stinging slap on the-fat part of his arm. "Just you come."