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Synopsis

The High Throne of Erkynland is tottering, its royal family divided and diminished. Queen Miriamele has been caught up in a brutal rebellion in the south and thought to have died in a fiery attack. Her grandson Morgan, heir to the throne, has been captured by one of Utuk'ku's soldiers in the ruins of an abandoned city. Miriamele's husband, King Simon, is overwhelmed by grief and hopelessness, unaware that many of these terrible things have been caused by Pasevalles, a murderous traitor inside Simon's own court at the Hayholt.

Meanwhile, a deadly army of Norns led by the ageless, vengeful Queen Utuk'ku, has swept into Erkynland and thrown down the fortress of Naglimund, slaughtering the inhabitants and digging up the ancient grave of Ruyan the Navigator. Utuk'ku plans to use the Navigator's fabled armor to call up the spirit of Hakatri, the evil Storm King's brother.

Even the Sithi, fairy-kin to the Norns, are helpless to stop Utuk'ku's triumph as her armies simultaneously march on the Hayholt and force their way into the forbidden, ogre-guarded valley of Tanakirú - the Narrowdark - where a secret waits that might bring Simon's people and their Sithi allies salvation - or doom.

Excerpt

1

The Keen Edge

They crouched together in deep darkness, his captor's chill, firm hand pressing the knife against Morgan's throat. Each time quiet footsteps passed their hiding place, his heart raced. Whether they were found by Sithi or Norn, Morgan did not think the discoverers would care that he belonged to neither army.

The sounds of pursuit faded at last. After a long silence, he whispered, "There's no one else coming. You can let me go now. I promise I won't tell anyone."

His only reply was a quiet hiss. It might have been laughter but could have been something less pleasant. The keen edge of the knife was cold against his skin. It seemed like such a small thing, that edge, thinner than a broom straw, barely more perceptible than a smear of water or a waft of cool air, yet he did not doubt it could end his life.

The one who holds me is a Norn-one of the White Foxes. They have no souls. They hate us and they want our kind dead. But for some unknown reason he was still alive.

The Norn put her feet into the small of his back and shoved him hard enough to send him sprawling forward onto his hands and knees. "Get up," she said quietly. "Slow. We go now."

He considered trying to crawl away and then make a run for it but remembered that both the Norns and Sithi could see much better in the dark than he could. He started to get to his feet and knocked his head painfully against the stone above him.

"Go," she said. "Move. I am just behind."

"Go where?" he asked, rubbing his aching head. "Deeper into the tunnels?"

Again the hiss. "Fool. I never have been in this place but still I know more than you. Below this city much farther-below the river-the water comes in everywhere. Can you live without breath?"

He felt the point of a heavier blade than the knife push against his run-in spine. "We move now," she said. "But quiet. Do only what I say."

Do all immortals speak Westerling? he wondered. Is it some magic?

She made him lie face down on the stone as she climbed over him to get out of the crevice. She felt surprisingly light but moved with such swift purpose that he did not even consider trying to fight for his freedom. He followed her out into the passage and nearly walked into the point of a long, sharp sword.

"Do I need to say no tricks?" she asked.

Morgan shook his head. Now that they had left the crevice, the light from the glowing stones shone on them again, dim but steady. He could see that the woman-no, the immortal creature, he reminded himself, perhaps many centuries old-was a little shorter than he was and much more slender. Still, the sword in her death-pale hand did not waver, as though it were lighter than a birch wand. But it was the narrow oval of her face that caught his attention: her eyes were large and tilted upward, like the those of the Sithi-folk he had met, but this creature's eyes were not molten gold like theirs but dark as a starless sky, a difference made even more prominent by her almost invisible, cobweb eyebrows. He had never seen a Norn, and he was startled by how much she looked like a very pale-skinned mortal: her face was narrow, but her features would not have been outlandish on one of his own kind.

"You stare," she said, sounding almost amused, though Morgan would not have wanted to risk his life on that. "You find me horrifying? Or you think me comely?"

He did find her comely, even with her sword only inches from his throat, but he quickly looked down. "No. I just didn't know who it was that . . . that caught me in the dark." He lifted his eyes until he met hers-bottomless wells, inky depths. "Now I see."

She made a noise of derision. "Move, then. I do not stay here-no, cannot stay here. Soon the Sacrifices will have all the city, then they make a careful search of even these deep places."

Morgan was exhausted, every muscle trembling, and yet there was that unarguable sword pointed directly at him, the gray blade so slim it was almost invisible. "What do you want me to do?"

"Walk before me. Do nothing foolish."

He lifted his hands in a gesture of resignation. "And my own sword?"

To his surprise, she laughed. "Wear it if you like. But draw it against me and you learn fast what a Sacrifice knows."

"Sacrifice? Is that what you call yourself?"

The laugh again, swift and harsh. "Hah. Once I did, with much pride. Now I do not. Walk, mortal boy."

"Not a boy," he muttered, but his captor gave no sign of having heard him.

The Norn moved so silently that Morgan kept looking back to see if she was following. Each time, he found her only an armÕs length or so behind him, and each time she gestured fiercely for him to keep moving.

Despite her earlier words, she forced him down into Da'ai Chikiza's ancient depths. Tunnels that had been shaped to a smooth finish in the upper levels and freely carved with figures and symbols barely touched by time now grew more crude. The few carvings they encountered were simple constructions of straight lines, and Morgan suspected they were nothing more ambitious than direction markers. It would certainly have been easy to lose oneself in the maze of tunnels, which seemed just as shapeless and haphazard to him as the arrangement of the city above ground. Here, though, there were no distractions except the occasional net of roots splayed across the tunnel ceiling or clusters of mushrooms clinging to the damp walls. In some places the palely radiant stones still shone in the walls and roof, but as they descended, these pools of light became less frequent, and the tunnel floors were often clogged by debris fallen from the ceiling. Several times they had to get down on all fours and crawl through a particularly narrow spot, the Norn's sword poking at the soles of his boots.

They had been walking for what seemed at least an hour, and Morgan was finding it hard going. Overwhelmed by weariness and the ache in his bruised chest each time he took a deep breath, he finally broke the silence. ÒWhere are we going? Do you know?Ó

Something jabbed him in the back of his neck, nasty and shocking as the sting of a bee. Morgan reached up to feel it; when he brought his hand down it was smeared with blood. He turned to say something angry, but the look in his captor's night-dark eyes silenced him immediately. She lifted a finger to her mouth but the poke in the neck and her hard stare had already made the message clear: he was not to talk.

He still couldn't understand his captor's plan. He had seen with his own eyes that the ruined city of Da'ai Chikiza stood beside a wide, often swift river, and after such a long time walking downward, Morgan thought the two of them must now be below it. In some places water seeped out of cracks in the wall and ran beside their path for a short while before disappearing down into other crevices, but otherwise the river seemed no closer than it had been when they started.

At last his captor began to guide him upward once more through a series of sloping passages. The change from carefully excavated and finished corridors to crudely hacked tunnels now reversed itself: intricate carvings began to appear on the walls again. They passed several caverns enlarged into storehouses, and he could even see the remains of earthenware jars in some. Most of the vessels had long since broken into pieces.

Just as the fear in his belly and the painful throb of sore muscles had driven him to a serious contemplation of throwing himself down on the ground and letting the Norn end his suffering, she poked him again, but more gently this time. They had reached a place where three tunnels came together. She slipped past him to examine the faint scratches in the wall, then pointed down one of the passages. Morgan groaned quietly but began to walk again.

At first he sensed the difference more than saw it, because the great space into which they entered was much darker than the corridor. He stopped, befuddled by the different feeling of the air and the dying echoes. A dim light kindled above him, then another, and another, until half a dozen slabs of crystal glowed faintly in the ceiling of the wide chamber.

And it was a wide chamber, though as in other parts of the tunnels, the floor was cluttered with fallen stone and broken pottery and even what looked like the rotting remains of wooden furniture. The ceiling stretched upward three times his own height and the nearest walls on the far side looked to be a long stone's throw away.

"One of the city's great vaults." She spoke in a whisper. "Here you may rest for a while."

Morgan's weariness overwhelmed any curiosity he might have felt. He staggered forward until he found a place where the stone floor was empty of jagged potsherds, then stretched out in the ancient dust. Within moments he had tumbled into sleep.

"First you said you did not want to travel so close to the river, Snenneq." Qina was trying to keep frustration out of her voice but not entirely succeeding. "Now you say that we are too far from the river. You are like a mountain wind, first blowing this way, then that." She pointed. "Should I ignore these tracks, all these signs of Prince Morgan's passage? I thought we were sworn to look for him."

"You said yourself that they did not all seem like his tracks."

She thought Snenneq was dangerously close to pouting. "We do not know how he is traveling, nor with whom," she said. "The Norns leave almost no sign of their passage. The same is true for their kin, the Sithi. But here are tracks that speak of several travelers. Perhaps they have captured Morgan and carry him. Should I ignore the tracks because they no longer follow the river?"

"The river is what will lead us to the old Sithi city," Little Snenneq replied. "I did not wish to travel too close to its bank only because we saw those kilpa things, those water monsters. Perhaps you are following the trail of those horrible creatures and will bring us right to them."

"Now you are just making up objections," she said in exasperation. "What I am following is neither kilpa nor . . . what was that tree-beast we killed, with a shell like a beetle? A ghant? These tracks are not from either of those-unless they wear shoes. Look." She pointed at the soft ground. "Those are the marks of stitching. Stitching."

"Daughter of the Mountains, you are stubborn!" Snenneq straightened up, shaking his head. "But you are right. No, I do not think that kilpa, even so far from their home in southern waters, have taken to wearing shoes. But I fear we are following these tracks so far that I will not be able to find the river again."

"Listen. I can hear its noise clearly." Would their marriage be like this too-every disagreement a stalemate, neither with the power to overrule the other? Qina was not certain she could bear a lifetime of argument, though she feared Snenneq would see nothing wrong with the prospect. "What can we agree? I suggest we keep following the tracks until the river is barely in our ears, then we will head back, as you wish, to follow the water toward the old city."

Snenneq thought this over. "This is a good idea, my beloved. I am glad you have a nukapik like me, so reasonable, so willing to let you have your way. Not all men of the Qanuc are so accommodating."

She clenched her teeth. "If you say so."

The long afternoon wound down. The sun still shed light, but it had dropped behind the veil of forest. Little Snenneq kept talking about finding something to eat, and Qina could not much blame him. Their progress had been slow. In many places the strange tracks had all but disappeared, and each time it had taken all her skill to find them again, sometimes by a sign as faint as a single bent blade of grass.

"The sad thing," Snenneq said, "is we are so far from the river now that we will probably eat only dried fish as old as our journey, when fresh fish swim just a short distance away to catch."

"For me to catch, you mean," Qina said. "You do not like to come so close to the water, remember." She rose, weary and unhappy. "Snenneq, my heart," she began, "I know it is difficult sometimes-" She fell silent. Her husband-to-be was not even looking at her but staring instead at a strange figure in a hooded cloak that had risen from the bracken before them. Qina gasped and fell back a step, fumbling at her belt for her knife. "Be careful, Snenneq!"

The stranger was almost twice their height, as tall as a flatland mortal but somehow different. For a moment she thought he might be one of the Norns or even a Sitha. The tilt and size of the stranger's eyes seemed like theirs, although the color of his eyes and skin did not look quite like either one.

"Kikkasut's Nest," Snenneq said quietly. He stood very still. "What sort of person are you?"

The stranger raised one arm and his wide sleeve fell back, revealing a hand with such long, slender fingers that it became even clearer this person was neither Hikeda'ya nor Zida'ya. "Peace," he said in recognizable if strangely inflected Qanuc speech. "Come with me." He beckoned with long fingers. "No harm will come to you. That is a promise." Then he turned and walked back into the trees.

For long moments Qina and Little Snenneq could only look at each other, stunned and uncertain.

"Is that what we have been following?" Snenneq whispered.

"I think so. Should we trust him?"

"No. But we should follow, though carefully. He spoke our tongue. He said, 'no harm.'" Snenneq quickly pulled apart his walking stick and slid a wool-wrapped dart into the hollow tube made by half of it. "Only a middling poison," he explained as she watched. "Enough to put something that size to sleep. Or so I hope."

"I am frightened, dear one," she said. "First those horrible beasts, now this strange person-neither a mortal nor an immortal as far as I can tell. What madness is happening here? Creatures that should not be, creatures I have never heard about."

Copyright © 2022 by Tad Williams

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