Into the Narrowdark, page 1
DAW Books Presents
The Finest in Imaginative Fiction by
TAD WILLIAMS
MEMORY, SORROW AND THORN
THE DRAGONBONE CHAIR
STONE OF FAREWELL
TO GREEN ANGEL TOWER
THE LAST KING OF OSTEN ARD
THE WITCHWOOD CROWN
EMPIRE OF GRASS
INTO THE NARROWDARK
THE NAVIGATOR’S CHILDREN*
THE HEART OF WHAT WAS LOST
BROTHERS OF THE WIND
* * *
THE BOBBY DOLLAR NOVELS
THE DIRTY STREETS OF HEAVEN
HAPPY HOUR IN HELL
SLEEPING LATE ON JUDGEMENT DAY
SHADOWMARCH
SHADOWMARCH
SHADOWPLAY
SHADOWRISE
SHADOWHEART
OTHERLAND
CITY OF GOLDEN SHADOW
RIVER OF BLUE FIRE
MOUNTAIN OF BLACK GLASS
SEA OF SILVER LIGHT
TAILCHASER’S SONG
THE WAR OF THE FLOWERS
*Coming soon from DAW
Copyright © 2022 Beale Williams Enterprise.
All Rights Reserved.
Ebook ISBN: 9780698191518
Cover illustration and design by Jim Tierney.
Maps by Isaac Stewart.
Edited by Betsy Wollheim and Sheila E. Gilbert.
DAW Book Collectors No. 1920.
Published by DAW Books, Inc.
1745 Broadway, New York, NY 10019.
All characters and events in this book are fictitious.
Any resemblance to persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.
The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal, and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage the electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.
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Contents
Cover
Also by Tad Williams
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Author’s Note
Synopsis of The Witchwood Crown
Synopsis of Empire of Grass
Map of Osten Ard
Foreword
Part One: Time of Gathering
Map of the Hayholt
1: The Keen Edge
2: Wolves at the Door
Hakatri: First Interlude
3: Mummers’ Parade
4: One Way Out
5: A Hut by the River
6: Arrow Bearers
7: A Meddlesome Priest
8: In the Heights
Map of Nearulagh
9: The Man From Home
10: Blood and Poetry
11: Cloudfoot
12: Crow in the Rafters
13: Fresh Wounds
14: A Face Not Even God Could Love
15: A Taste of Witchwood
16: Blessings of the Aedon
17: A Bit of a Puzzle
18: The Graves of His People
19: The Eye of Gold
20: The Open Door
21: Needle
Part Two: Dance of Sacrifice
Map of the Narrowdark
Hakatri: Second Interlude
22: Quarrel
23: A Lesson and Its Aftermath
24: Breaking the Seal
25: The Cursed Air
26: Black Banners
27: Girl in Darkness
28: The Bowman’s Answer
29: A Little Jar of Pain
30: Into the Narrowdark
31: Pirates, Priests, and Martyrs
32: The Invisible River
33: A Great Madness
34: The High Citadel
35: Honor-Bound
36: A Distant Relative
37: The Boiler
38: The King Below
39: The Queen’s Device
Hakatri: Third Interlude
40: Fire in the Keep
Afterword
Appendix
About the Author
Dedication
It’s still the same story, just divided into volume-sized pieces, so the dedication still remains the same as for Volumes One and Two, to wit:
These books are dedicated to my editors/publishers, Betsy Wollheim and Sheila Gilbert, and to my wife and partner, Deborah Beale. I can’t imagine what my life would be like without them, and I certainly can’t imagine these books happening without them, either.
Acknowledgments
My books, by the time they get to readers, are always the product of far more than just one person. I’d like to thank some very important contributors.
Top of the list: Ron Hyde, Ylva von Löhneysen, Jeremy Erman, and Angela Welchel have been the reader-curators of these new Osten Ard books in so very many ways, from vetting my manuscripts to overseeing map geography and working on the indexes (they did all of those for this volume) and even writing an occasional synopsis. I would have been completely overwhelmed returning to my own fictional world without their help.
We lost our dear friend Cindy Yan in 2020, who was also a big help and inspiration in the early stages of these books, and we miss her terribly. This will be the first volume she wasn’t here to read, and I can’t tell you how sad that makes me.
Lisa Tveit has bravely and skillfully kept the tadwilliams.com website running for many years, giving my community of readers a place to find Tad-news and make (well-deserved) fun of me and my four-book trilogies.
Olaf Keith continues to do kind things for my books online and in Europe, and he’s also a super good guy. Thanks, Olaf!
Isaac Stewart has created beautiful maps for this whole series, and is so nice and easy to work with that it’s a little frightening. What is he hiding?
Marylou Capes-Platt has brought her considerable copyediting skills to this volume, as she did with the previous books. Not only does she save me from some of my worst mistakes, she also cheers me up when she writes supportive notes in the margins. (She has high standards.)
Joshua Starr of DAW Books has, as always, worked efficiently and cheerfully with me and most of the folks cited above to get this book into published form. He’s very chill, and I’m grateful for that.
Matt Bialer is my agent and friend. Along with others listed here, he is a central reason why I still like the publishing industry. Too bad he’s kind of a Yankees fan, but even the saints had flaws.
And of course I must bow to the single most guilty group of usual suspects in getting my books to you, the editorial team led by Betsy Wollheim and Sheila Gilbert, my excellent publishers at DAW Books, with whom I have been working harmoniously since somewhere back in the last century, something I never take for granted.
I also am very lucky to have fine publishers at Klett-Cotta in Germany and Hodder and Stoughton in the UK.
And last but certainly not least—as if!—I want to thank Deborah Beale, my wife and partner, but also a damn fine publisher and businesswoman herself.
Author’s Note
The original (and much scoffed-at) plan was for me to finally capture, subdue, and present to the readers that most elusive beast (at least for me)—an actual three-volume trilogy. I have tried and failed several times before, but I was plucky and optimistic again this time, certain I could constrain my tale to three convenient volumes.
Short version: I failed. Again.
Thus, anything unusual about this volume—a bit less long than either of the first two, for instance—can be ascribed to it originally being the first half of what would have been a very, very, very long third volume. But the publishing industry has changed since the days of the first Osten Ard series and To Green Angel Tower, and it quickly became clear we couldn’t manage that long a third volume this time even in hardcover, á la TGAT.
Fortunately, the monstrous last book split pretty evenly, and the first half still works as a single volume, I think, because it was already paced to have a watershed at the original mid-point. And the final volume is coming soon, I promise.
Thank you for your patience. My books and I are still a work in progress.
Synopsis of
The Witchwood Crown
More than thirty years have passed in Osten Ard since the end of the Storm King’s deadly, magical war—a war that nearly doomed mankind. King Simon and Queen Miriamele, scarcely more than children when the Storm King was defeated, now rule over the human nations from the High Throne, but they have lost touch with their onetime allies, the immortal Sithi folk. Then Tanahaya, the first Sithi envoy since the end of the war, is ambushed on her way to the Hayholt, the ancient castle that is the seat of the High Throne.
While Tiamak, scholar and close friend of the king and queen, works with his wife Thelía to save Tanahaya’s life, Queen Miriamele and Ki ng Simon are away from the castle on a royal progress. Currently they are visiting the neighboring country of Hernystir and its King Hugh as part of a royal progress to the north, where Simon and Miriamele are troubled by the behavior of Hugh and his new love, the mysterious Lady Tylleth. Dowager queen Inahwen warns the royal couple’s advisor Count Eolair that King Hugh and Tylleth have revived worship of the Morriga, an ancient, dark, and bloodstained Hernystiri goddess.
Even while accompanying the royal family on their progress, Prince Morgan, the seventeen-year-old grandson of Simon and Miriamele, spends his days drinking and womanizing with his knightly companions Astrian, Olveris and old Porto. Morgan’s father, Prince John Josua—the only child of Simon and Miriamele—died of a strange illness some years earlier, leaving his wife Idela a widow, Morgan and his younger sister Lillia fatherless, and the king and queen, John Josua’s royal parents, still grieving.
When not nursing the poisoned Sithi envoy, royal counselor Tiamak is collecting books for a library to commemorate the late John Josua, but when his helper Brother Etan investigates some of the dead prince’s possessions, he discovers a banned and dangerous volume, A Treatise on the Aetheric Whispers. Tiamak is filled with foreboding, because the Treatise once belonged to the wizard Pryrates, now dead, who collaborated with the Storm King Ineluki to destroy humanity, though they ultimately failed.
The threats to Simon’s and Miriamele’s peaceful reign are increasing. In the icy north, in the cavern city of Nakkiga beneath the mountain Stormspike, the ageless ruler of the Norns, Queen Utuk’ku, has awakened from a years-long magical slumber. Her chief servant, the magician Akhenabi, summons the High Magister of Builders Viyeki to an audience with the queen, who declares her intention to attack the mortal lands again. The queen leads a strange ceremony that resurrects Ommu, one of the chief servants of the Storm King, though Ommu was thought to have perished forever during the Norns’ failed attempt to destroy the Hayholt and the mortal kingdoms.
In Elvritshalla, the capital of Rimmersgard, King Simon and Queen Miriamele are reunited with their old ally Sludig and his wife Alva, as well as their dear Qanuc friends Binabik and his wife Sisqi. They also meet the trolls’ daughter Qina and her betrothed, Little Snenneq.
The royal progress reaches Elvritshalla just in time to say farewell to Duke Isgrimnur, who dies shortly after their arrival. His last request to Simon and Miriamele is that they renew their search for Prince Josua (Miriamele’s uncle, Simon’s mentor, and John Josua’s namesake) and his twin children, Derra and Deornoth, who mysteriously vanished twenty years earlier. Later Little Snenneq, who is Binabik’s apprentice, meets Prince Morgan and predicts that he will become as important to Morgan as Binabik became to Morgan’s grandfather, King Simon.
In a castle in southern Rimmersgard where the royal party is guesting on their way home, Simon realizes he has not dreamed in many days. He consults Binabik, who creates a talisman to help him. That very night, Simon dreams of his dead son and the voice of the child Leleth, who had once whispered to him in dreams three decades earlier. Leleth tells him “the children are coming back”. After Simon frightens the whole household while sleepwalking, Miriamele destroys the talisman, and Simon again loses the ability to dream.
In the still more distant north, the half-blood Sacrifice Nezeru, daughter of Norn noble Viyeki and human woman Tzoja, is sent as part of a “Talon” of Norn warriors to retrieve the bones of Hakatri, brother of Ineluki, the defeated Storm King. Nezeru and her fellows, commanded by their chieftain Makho, find the bones being venerated by mortals, but Makho and the Norns take them and escape from the angry islanders. During the escape, Nezeru fails to kill one of their enemies (a child) and is severely punished for it by Makho.
However, before the Talon can return to Nakkiga with Hakatri’s remains, they are met by the Norn Queen’s arch-magician Akhenabi, who takes the bones and sends the Talon on a new quest to Mount Urmsheim to collect the blood of a living dragon. To aid in this dangerous feat, he sends with them an enslaved giant named Goh Gam Gar.
While traveling eastward towards Mount Urmsheim, the Norn Talon encounters a mortal man named Jarnulf, a former slave in Nakkiga who has vowed to destroy the Norns and their undying queen, Utuk’ku. Because the Talon has lost its Echo—their trained communicator—Jarnulf, hoping to further his own private aims, convinces the Norns to take him on as a guide. They all travel eastward towards the mountain, last known home of dragons, and on the way Jarnulf overhears the Norns discussing their queen’s great plan to defeat the mortals by recovering something called “The Witchwood Crown”.
In central Rimmersgard, the Talon encounters the royal party, and Jarnulf is able to get a secret message to Queen Miriamele and King Simon that the Norn Queen is looking for something called the Witchwood Crown. Simon, Miriamele, and their advisors are alarmed, and they have seen enough signs of renewed hostility from the Norns that they take Jarnulf’s message seriously, though this is the first they have heard of him.
In the City of Nabban, a Wrannawoman named Jesa cares for Serasina, the infant daughter of Duke Saluceris and Duchess Canthia, Simon’s and Miriamele’s allies. Tensions in Nabban are rising: Count Dallo Ingadaris has allied with Saluceris’s brother Earl Drusis to fan fears of the nomadic Thrithings-men whose lands border on Nabban. Drusis accuses Saluceris of being too cowardly to properly punish the barbarians and drive them back into the grasslands.
Meanwhile, on the plains of the Thrithings, gray-eyed Unver, an adopted member of the Crane Clan, and his companion Fremur, participate in a raid on a Nabbanai settlement. As they escape, Unver saves Fremur’s life, perhaps in part because Unver hopes to marry Fremur’s sister, Kulva.
Sir Aelin catches up with the royal party, bringing messages for his great-uncle, Count Eolair. Lord Pasevalles, Eolair’s temporary replacement at the Hayholt, sends his worries about Nabban, and Queen Inahwen of Hernystir sends news that King Hugh and Lady Tylleth are growing ever more open in their worship of terrible old gods. Eolair sends Aelin with this bad news to a trustworthy ally, Earl Murdo. But while seeking shelter from a passing storm, Aelin and his men spend the night in a border castle with Baron Curudan, leader of King Hugh’s private, elite troops. During a storm that night, Aelin sees the dim shapes of a vast Norn army outside the fort, and then watches Curudan meet with humankind’s deadliest enemies. But before Aelin and his men can escape with the news of this treachery, they are captured and imprisoned by Curudan’s Silver Stags.
In the Norn city of Nakkiga, Viyeki is sent by Lord Akhenabi on a secret mission to the mortal lands with his Builders, but he is accompanied by a small army of Norn soldiers as well. Tzoja discovers that with Viyeki gone, her life is threatened by her lover’s wife, Lady Khimabu, who hates Tzoja for giving Viyeki a child, Nezeru, when Khimabu could not. Tzoja knows she must escape if she wishes to live.
As Tzoja thinks of her past with the Astaline sisters in Rimmersgard and her childhood in Kwanitupul, it becomes clear Tzoja is actually Derra, one of the lost twins of Prince Josua and his Thrithings wife Vorzheva. Tzoja flees to Viyeki’s empty lake-house in a cavern deep beneath the city.
Their royal progress finally returned to the Hayholt, Simon and Miriamele ask Tiamak to honor Isgrimnur’s dying request with a new search for Prince Josua. Tiamak sends his assistant Brother Etan south to try to discover what happened to Josua when he disappeared twenty years earlier.
Meanwhile, challenged by Little Snenneq, Morgan climbs Hjeldin’s Tower, the Hayholt’s most infamous spot, and is almost killed. He believes he saw long-dead Pryrates while he was atop the tower, and swears Little Snenneq to secrecy.
With evidence of the Norn resurgence everywhere, Simon and Miriamele realize these ancient and magical foes are too powerful to face alone. They decide to try to contact the Sithi, especially their old allies Jiriki and Aditu. At Simon’s urging, Miriamele reluctantly agrees to send their grandson Prince Morgan with Eolair and a host of soldiers to Aldheorte Forest to find the Sithi and return their poisoned messenger Tanahaya for more healing.
