01 The Dragonbone Chair by Tad Williams

Author:Tad Williams
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Fantasy
Published: 2010-04-10T22:36:45+00:00

Simon slowly wagged his head from side to side- There was noth-

ing, nothing but shadows, and he was tired of talking. He could still

taste the fear from the bumed thing in the doorway; he only wanted

to surrender to the sucking pull of oblivion, to sleep, to sleep. . - .

But it did not come so easily. Although he held his eyes tightly

closed, still the images of fire and catastrophe rose before him. Toss-

ing in place, unable to find a position that would encourage his tight

muscles to loosen, he heard the quiet talk of the troll and the witch

woman scratch away like rats in the walls.

Finally even that noise ceased, and the solemn breathing of the

wind rose again in his ears; he opened his eyes. Geloe was sitting

alone before the fire, shoulders up like a bird huddling from the rain,

396 Tad Williams

eyes half-open; he could not tell if she was sleeping or watching the

fire smolder out.

His last waking thought, which rose slowly up from deep inside

him, flickering as it came like a fire beneath the sea, was of a tall hill,

a hill crowned with stones. That had been in a dream, hadn't it? He

should have remembered . . . should have told Binabik.

A fire sprang up in the darkness of the hilltop, and he heard the

creaking of wooden wheels, the wheels of dream.

^

When morning came, it did not bring the sun with it. From the

window of the cottage Simon could see the dark treetops at the far

edge of the bowl, but the lake itself wore a thick cloak of fog. Even

directly below the window the water was hard to see, slowly swirling

mist making all things hazy and insubstantial. Above the top of the

murky treeline the sky was a depthless gray.

Geloe had marched the boy Malachias out with her to gather a

certain healing moss, leaving Binabik behind to tend to Leieth. The

troll seemed faintly encouraged about the child's condition, but

when Simon looked at her pale face and the faint movements of her

small chest he wondered what difference the little man could see

that he could not.

Simon rebuilt the fire from a pile of dead branches that Geloe had

stacked neatly in the corner, then went to help change the girl's

dressings.

As Binabik peeled the sheet back from Leieth's body and lifted

away the bandages Simon winced, but would not let himself turn

away. Her whole torso was blackened by bruises and ugly tooth-

marks. The skin had been torn from under her left arm to her hip, a

ragged slash a foot long. As Binabik finished cleaning the wound

and bound her up again with broad strips of linen, little roses of

blood bloomed through the cloth.

"Does she really have a chance to live?" Simon asked. Binabik

shrugged, his hands engaged in the making of careful knots.

"Geloe thinks she may," he said. "She is a woman of a stem and

direct mind, who places people not above animals in her esteem, but

THE DRAGONBONE CHAIR397

that is still esteem most high. She would not struggle against the

impossible, I am thinking."

"Is she really a witch woman

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