Tad Williams - Stone of farewell

Table of Contents

DAW Books Presents

The Finest in Imaginative Fiction by

TAILCHASERS SONG

THE WAR OF THE FLOWERS

SHADOWMARCH
Volume 1

THE DRAGONBONE CHAIR

STONE OF FAREWELL
TO GREEN ANGEL TOWER

OTHERLAND
CITY OF GOLDEN SHADOW
RIVER OF BLUE FIRE
MOUNTAIN OF BLACK GLASS
SEA OF SILVER LIGHT

This series is dedicated to my mother, Barbara Jean Evans, who taught to me a deep affection for Toad Hall, the Hundred Aker Woods, the Shire, and many other hidden places and countries beyond the fields we know. She also induced in me a lifelong desire to make my own discoveries, and to share them with others. I wish to share these books with her.

... Of all the many changing things
In dreary dancing past us whirled,
To the cracked tune that Chronos sings,
Words alone are certain good.
Where are now the warring kings,
Word be-mockers?-By the Rood,
Where are now the warring kings?
An idle word is now their glory,
By the stammering schoolboy said,
Reading some entangled story:
The kings of the old time are dead;
The wandering earth herself may be
Only a sudden flaming word,
In clanging space a moment heard,
Troubling the endless reverie.

WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS (from The Song of the Happy Shepherd)

I am indebted to Eva Cumming, Nancy Deming-Williams, Paul Hudspeth, Peter Stampfel, and Doug Werner, who all had a hand in the cultivation of this book. Their insightful comments and suggestions have taken rootin some instances, putting forth rather surprising blossoms. Also, and as usual, special thanks go to my brave editors, Betsy Wollheim and Sheila Gilbert, who have labored mightily through both storm and drought.

(By the way, all the above mentioned are just the kind of folk I want at my side if Im ever ambushed by Norns. This might be construed as a somewhat dubious honor, but tis mine own to bestow.)

NOTE: There is a cast of characters, a glossary of terms, and a guide to pronunciation at the back of this volume.

For eons the Hayholt belonged to the immortal Sithi, but they had fled the great castle before the onslaught of Mankind. Men have long ruled this greatest of strongholds, and the rest of Osten Ard as well. Prester John, High King of all the nations of men, is its most recent master; after an early life of triumph and glory, he has presided over decades of peace from his skeletal throne, the Dragonbone Chair.

Simon, an awkward fourteen year old, is one of the Hayholts scullions. His parents are dead, his only real family the chamber maids and their stern mistress, Rachel the Dragon. When Simon can escape his kitchen-work he steals away to the cluttered chambers of Doctor Morgenes, the castles eccentric scholar. When the old man invites Simon to be his apprentice, the youth is overjoyeduntil he discovers that Morgenes prefers teaching reading and writing to magic.

Soon ancient King John will die, so Elias, the older of his two sons, prepares to take the throne. Josua, Elias somber brother, nicknamed Lackhand because of a disfiguring wound, argues harshly with the king-to-be about Pryrates, the ill-reputed priest who is one of Elias closest advisers. The brothers feud is a cloud of foreboding over castle and country.

Elias reign as king starts well, but a drought comes and plague strikes several of the nations of Osten Ard. Soon outlaws roam the roads and people begin to vanish from isolated villages. The order of things is breaking down, and the kings subjects are losing confidence in his rule, but nothing seems to bother the monarch or his friends. As rumblings of discontent begin to be heard throughout the kingdom, Elias brother Josua disappearsto plot rebellion, some say.

Elias misrule upsets many, including Duke Isgrimnur of Rimmersgard and Count Eolair, an emissary from the western country of Hernystir. Even King Elias own daughter Miriamele is uneasy, especially about the scarlet-robed Pryrates, her fathers trusted adviser.

Meanwhile Simon is muddling along as Morgenes helper. The two become fast friends despite Simons mooncalf nature and the doctors refusal to teach him anything resembling magic. During one of his meanderings through the secret byways of the labyrinthine Hayholt, Simon discovers a secret passage and is almost captured there by Pryrates. Eluding the priest, he enters a hidden underground chamber and finds Josua, who is being held captive for use in some terrible ritual planned by Pryrates. Simon fetches Doctor Morgenes and the two of them free Josua and take him to the doctors chambers, where Josua is sent to freedom down a tunnel that leads beneath the ancient castle. Then, as Morgenes is sending off messenger birds bearing news of what has happened to mysterious friends, Pryrates and the kings guard come to arrest the doctor and Simon. Morgenes is killed fighting Pryrates, but his sacrifice allows Simon to escape into the tunnel.

Half-maddened, Simon makes his way through the midnight corridors beneath the castle, which contain the ruins of the old Sithi palace. He surfaces in the graveyard beyond the town wall, then is lured by the light of a bonfire. He witnesses a weird scene: Pryrates and King Elias engaged in a ritual with black-robed, white-faced creatures. The pale things give Elias a strange gray sword of disturbing power, named Sorrow. Simon flees.

Life in the wilderness on the edge of the great forest Aldheorte is miserable, and weeks later Simon is nearly dead from hunger and exhaustion, but still far away from his destination, Josuas northern keep at Naglimund. Going to a forest cot to beg, he finds a strange being caught in a trapone of the Sithi, a race thought to be mythical, or at least long-vanished. The cotsman returns, but before he can kill the helpless Sitha, Simon strikes him down. The Sitha, once freed, stops only long enough to fire a white arrow at Simon, then disappears. A new voice tells Simon to take the white arrow, that it is a Sithi gift.

The dwarfish newcomer is a troll named Binabik, who rides a great gray wolf. He tells Simon he was only passing by, but now he will accompany the boy to Naglimund. Simon and Binabik endure many adventures and strange events on the way to Naglimund: they come to realize that they have fallen afoul of a threat greater than merely a king and his counselor deprived of their prisoner. At last, when they find themselves pursued by unearthly white hounds who wear the brand of Stormspike, a mountain of evil reputation in the far north, they are forced to head for the shelter of Gelos forest house, taking with them a pair of travelers they have rescued from the hounds. Gelo, a blunt-spoken forest woman with a reputation as a witch, confers with them and agrees that somehow the ancient Norns, embittered relatives of the Sithi, have become embroiled in the fate of Prester Johns kingdom.