Free The Stone of Farewell by Tad Williams Page A

anyway, he told himself. I won’t be able to fall asleep for a long while.
    He snaked his breeches out from under the sleeping-cloak where they stayed warm in the bitter Yiqanuc night, wrestling them on as silently as he could, then pulled his boots onto his cold feet. He briefly debated putting on his mail shirt, but the thought of its chilly rings, rather than any surety of safety, decided him against it. He furled the cloak around him, stilting quietly past sleeping Haestan and out under the door-skin into the cold.
    The stars over high Mintahoq were mercilessly clear. As Simon stared up, amazed, he felt their distance, the impossible vastness of the night sky. The moon, not quite full, hovered low over distant peaks. Bathed in its diffident light, the snow on the heights gleamed, but all else lay sunken in shadow.
    Even as he turned his eyes down and took a few steps to the right, away from the cave-mouth, he was stopped short by a low growl. A strange silhouette loomed on the pathway before him, moonbrushed at the edges, black at the core. The deep rumble came again. Eyes flared green as they caught the moonlight.
    Simon’s breath snagged in his throat for a moment, until he remembered.
    “Qantaqa?” he said quietly.
    The growl changed into a curious whine. The wolf tipped its head.
    “Qantaqa? Is it you?” He tried to think of some of Binabik’s troll speech, but could summon nothing. “Are you hurt?” He silently cursed himself. He had not once thought of the wolf since he had been brought down from the dragon’s mountain, although she had been a companion—and, in a way, a friend.
    Selfish! he chided himself.
    With Binabik imprisoned, who knew what Qantaqa had done? Her friend and master had been taken from her, just as Doctor Morgenes had been taken from Simon. The night seemed suddenly colder and emptier, full of the world’s heedless cruelty.
    “Qantaqa? Are you hungry?” He took a step toward her and the wolf shied back. She growled again, but it sounded more like excitement than anger. She took a few prancing steps, the shimmer of her gray coat almost invisible, then growled again before bounding away. Simon followed her.
    It occurred to him as he went, stepping carefully on the wet stone pathways, that he was doing a foolish thing. The twisting roadways of high Mintahoq were no place for a midnight walk, especially without a torch. Even the native trolls knew better: the cave-mouths were lightless and silent, the paths empty. It was as if he had wakened from one dream to enter another, this shadowy pilgrimage beneath the distant and uncaring moon.
    Qantaqa seemed to know where she was going. When Simon lagged too far behind she trotted back, stopping just out of reach until he caught up, her hot breath pluming the air. As soon as he drew within an arm’s length she was off again. Thus, like a spirit of the afterworld, she led him away from the fires of his own kind.
    It was only when they had walked for some time, traveling well around the curve of the mountain from the sleeping-cave, that Qantaqa bounded all the way back to Simon. She did not pull up short this time. Her great frame struck him so suddenly that even though she had merely bumped against him, he fell back onto his seat. She stood over him for a moment, her face buried in his neck, cold nose rooting ticklingly near his ear. Simon reached up to scratch her ears and felt her tremble even through her thick fur. A moment later, as if her need for comfort had been satisfied, she leaped away again and stood whining quietly until he rose, rubbing his tailbone, and followed.
     
    It seemed that Qantaqa had led him halfway around Mintahoq. She stood now at the edge of a great blackness, yipping in excitement. Simon walked forward cautiously, feeling the raw stone face of the mountain with his right hand as he went. Qantaqa paced in seeming impatience.
    The wolf was standing at the rim of a great pit, which burrowed away from the side of the