by Tad Williams
The guards heaved him up from the floor, one on each leg and arm. It was not easy—Shaso was a large man. “To the stronghold with him,” Brone commanded them. “Chain him well. When he wakes we will question him closely, but I cannot doubt we have found our murderer.”
As he was carried past Briony, Shaso’s eyes flicked open. He saw her and tried to say something but could only groan, then his eyes slid shut again. His breath smelled of drink.
“It can’t be,” she said. “I don’t believe it.”
Ferras Vansen, the captain of the guard, had found something on the floor beside Shaso’s spare bed. He picked it up with a polishing cloth and brought it to the twins and the lord constable, bearing it gingerly, like a servant carrying a royal crown.
It was a curved Tuani dagger nearly as as long as a man’s forearm—a dagger that all of them had seen before, scabbarded on Shaso’s belt.The hilt was wrapped in figured leather. The sharp blade, always kept glittermgly polished, was smeared up and down with blood.
9
A Gleam of Pale Wings
MOUNTAIN SPIRITS BELT:
He is cloaked in mistletoe and the musk of bees
Lightning makes the trees grow
And makes the earth cry out
—from The Bonefall Oracles
“Toby!” the physician bellowed as he staggered through the door. He did not know whether to weep or scream or beat his head against the wall—he had been restraining his feelings too long. “Curse you, where are you hiding?”
The other two servants, his old manservant and his housekeeper (who had just barely managed to beat Chaven home, hurrying back from a gathering of worried citizens in the torchlit square between the West Green and the Raven’s Gate) scuttled away down the corridors of Observatory House, grateful that their masters unhappmess had settled on someone other than themselves.
The young man appeared, wiping his hands on his smock. “Yes, Master?”
Chaven made a face at the black smears on Toby’s clothing, but was surprised to find the young fellow at his tasks so early in the morning; it was usually hard to get him to work even when the sun was high in the sky. “Bring me something to drink. Wine—thatTorvian muck is already open on my bedside table. By the gods, the world is falling apart.”
The young man hesitated. Chaven could see fear behind the usual sul-lenness. “Is . . . will there . . will there be war?”
Chaven shook his head. “War? What do you mean?"
“Mistress Jennikin and Harry, they say the older prince is dead, sir Murdered My da’ told me once that when Olin’s brother died there was almost a war.”
The physician fought down the urge to berate this poor blunt tool. Everyone in the castle was terrified—he himself had not felt so desperate in all the years since fleeing Ulos Why should the boy feel any differently? “Yes, Toby, the older prince is dead. But when Olin’s brother Lorick died, the country was rich and unthreatened, and it was worth the time of any number of ambitious nobles to try to put themselves or some useful puppet on the Southmarch throne instead of a child heir. Now I suppose it will be young Barrick earns the regency, and no one will want the blame for what is about to happen here, so they will gratefully let him have the honor of keeping his father’s chair warm.”
“So there won’t be a war?" Toby ignored Chaven’s bleak sarcasm as though it were a foreign language. He could not meet his master’s eye directly, and had his head down like a stubborn goat that would not be forced through a gate. “You are telling the truth, Master? You are certain?"
“I’m certain of nothing,” Chaven said. “Nothing. Now go fetch me the wine and perhaps a bit of cheese and bread and dried fish, too, then let me think.”
He let the hanging fall back across the window. It was still dark outside, although he could smell dawn on the breeze, which should have been reassuring but was not. The wine had done nothing to relieve the pressure in his skull, the fear that he was watching the first moments of a collapse that might soon begin to spread so quickly there would be no stopping it. He had been in the middle of such a frenzy before, although not in Southmarch he never wanted to experience it again. And of all the people who had been in the castle tonight dealing with the horror of the prince regent’s death, Chaven alone knew of the movement of the Shadowlme.
He had questions he wanted to ask before he slept—needed to ask Unusual questions.
The idea had been preying on him since the first dreadful moment looking down on Kendrick’s murdered body and had kept tugging at him since, far more powerful than the urge for wine he had just satisfied. He had tried to fight it down because there was more than a little shame in his hunger and he had promised himself not to indulge again so soon, but he reassured himself that it was clearly an exceptional night, a night for suspending his own rules. And (he also told himself) the things he might learn could save his life, perhaps even save the kingdom.
“Kloe?” he called quietly. He snapped his fingers and looked around. “Where are you, my mistress?”
She did not appear immediately, upset perhaps that after a rude and hurried excursion from their shared bed earlier he had been back in his house for an hour, but this was the first time he seemed to have thought of her.
“Kloe, I apologize. I have been discourteous.”
Mollified, she appeared from behind a curtain and stretched. She was spotted like a pard, but all in shadow-tones of black and gray, with only a little white around her eyes. Chaven could not have said exactly why he found her beautiful but he did. He snapped his fingers again and she came to him, exactly slow enough to demonstrate whose need was greater. But when he scratched under her chin she forgot herself enough to purr.
“Come,” he said, and gave the cat the last bit of dried fish before lifting her. “We have work to do.”
It was a room that no living person in Southmarch Castle except Chaven had ever seen, a small dark compartment deep beneath the observatory, with a door that opened off the corridor where he had let in the Funderling Chert and his strange ward. On one wall a row of shelves began near the flagstone floor and stretched to the low ceiling, and every shelf contained a row of objects covered with dark cloths. With the door safely closed and bolted behind him, Chaven put down his candleholder and picked up a covered object too large to rest beside the others, which had been leaning propped against the wall Kloe, after a brief sniff around the room, leaped up onto one of the upper shelves and curled into a ball, her eyes bright and watchful.
He took off the velvet cover very carefully, then unfolded the wooden wings so that the mirror could stand by itself. It was one of his largest: with the base on the floor, the top reached almost to the physician’s waist.
Chaven lowered himself into a sitting position on the flags in front of the mirror and for a long time said nothing, staring deep into the glass.The candlelight made strange angles of things and cast long, swaying shadows: if something had actually been moving in the nnrror s depths, it would have taken an observer a little while to be sure.
Chaven remained silent for a long, long time. At last, without turning from the glass, he said, “Kloe? Come here, now, Mistress. Come.”
The cat stretched, then jumped down from the shelf and stepped delicately across the floor toward him When she stopped, he reached out and tapped on the mirror.
“Do you see that? Look there, Kloe! A mouse!”
She brought her blunt gray-and-black face close to the glass, staring. Her ears twitched. Indeed, there was something moving in the dark corner of the room, but only in the room as it was reflected. Kloe hunched lower, tail kinking and unkinking as she watched the scurrying shadow in the depths of the mirror Chaven stared at it, too, fixedly, as though he dared not close his eyes or even breathe Oddly, the mirror seemed not to reflect either the cat or physician, but only the empty room behind them.
Without warning, Kloe lunged forward. For a moment it actually seemed that her paw passed through the reflecting surface, but she his
sed in frustration as though she had struck only cold glass Chaven abruptly picked her up, stroked her, and then unbolted the door and put her outside in the corridor.
“Wait for me.”
Balked, but by what it was hard to say, Kloe let out a warble of irritation.
“You would not be happy in here,” he told the cat as he closed the door. “And you would never have tasted that mouse anyway, I fear.”
Now he sat before the mirror again.The candle was apparently burning low because the room swiftly grew darker. All that showed in the mirror were the reflected walls, except that the mirror-chamber contained a tiny bundle of darkness lying on the mirror-floor near the front of the glass.
Chaven sang a little in a very old language, was quiet for some time, then sang a little more. He sat and stared at the small dark shape. He waited.
When it came, it was like a sudden flame, an explosion of pale light. Despite his strong, schooled nerves, Chaven let out a quiet grunt of surprise. Feathers rippled and gleamed in the depths of the mirror as it clutched the dead mouse with a taloned foot, then bent to take the offering in its sharp beak. For a moment the tail hung like a thread, then the shadow-mouse was swallowed down and a huge white owl stared out of the glass with eyes like molten copper.
*
“I don’t understand,” said the boy Flint, scowling. “I like the tunnels. Why do we have to walk up here?”
Chert looked back to make sure the Funderling work crew were in an orderly line behind him. Dawn was just beginning to lighten the sky and turn the shadows silvery: if they had been big folk and unused to darkness, they would have been carrying torches. Chert’s guildsmen were straggling a little, a few whispering avidly among themselves, but that was within the bounds of suitable respect. He turned back to the boy. “Because when we go to work in the keep, we always come in at the gate. Remember, there are no tunnels that lead into the inner keep from below.” He gave the boy a significant look, praying silently to the Earth Elders that the child would not start prattling about the underground doorway into Chaven’s observatory within the hearing of the other Funderlings.
Flint shook his head. “We could have gone a lot of the way underground. I like the tunnels!”
“I’m glad to hear it, because if you stay with us, you’ll be spending a lot of your days in them. Now, hush—we’re coming to the gate.”
A young Trigon priest awaited them at the guard tower of the Raven’s Gate. He was thick in the waist and looked as though he didn’t deny himself much, but he did not treat Chert as though he were half-witted as well as half-heighted, which made everything much more pleasant.
“I am Andros, Lord Castellan Nynor’s proxy,” announced the priest. “And you are . . .” he consulted a leatherbound book,”. . . Hornblende?”
“No, he took ill. I’m Chert and I’ll be chief of this job.” He produced the Stonecutter’s Guild’s astion, a circle of crystal polished very thin (but starthngly durable) that he wore around his neck on a cord. “Here is my token.”
“That is well, sir.” The priest frowned in distraction. “I am here not to contest your authority, but to tell you that your orders have changed. Are you aware of what happened here only one night ago?”
“Of course. All of Funderling Town is in mourning already.” Which was not entirely the truth, but certainly the news had shot from house to house over the last grim day like an echo, and most of the inhabitants of the underground city were shocked and frightened. “We wondered whether it was appropriate to come this morning as had been originally ordered, but since we had not heard otherwise . . .”
“Quite right. But instead of the work that was planned, we have a sadder and more pressing task for you. The family vault where we will lay Prince Kendrick has no more room. We knew of this, of course, but did not think we should need to enlarge it so soon, never expecting . . .” He broke off and dabbed at his nose with a sleeve. This man was genuinely mourning, Chert could see. Well, he knew the prince, no doubt—perhaps spoke to him often. Chert himself was feeling quite unsettled, and he had never seen the prince regent closer than a hundred yards. “We are happy to serve,” he told Andros.
The priest smiled sadly. “Yes. Well, I have your instructions here, directly from Lord Nynor. The work must be swift, but remember this is the burial place for an Eddon prince. We will not have time to paint the new tomb properly, but we can at least make sure it is clean and well-measured.”
“It will be the best work we can do.”
The interior of the tomb cast a shadow on Chert’s heart. He looked at little Flint, wide-eyed but unbothered by the heavy carvings, the stylized masks of wolves snarling out of deep shadows, the images of sleeping warriors and queens on top of the ancient stone caskets. The tomb walls were honeycombed with niches, and every niche held a sarcophagus. “Does this frighten you?”
The boy looked at him as though the question made no sense. He shook his head briskly.
I only wish I could say the same, thought Chert. Behind him the work gang was also quiet as they made their way through the mazy tomb. It was not the idea of mortal spirits that disturbed him, of ghosts—although in this dark, quiet place he was not quick to dismiss the thought—but of the ultimate futility of things. Do what you will, you will come to this. Whether you sit lonely in your house and store up money, or sing loud in the guildhall, buying tankards of mossbrew for all your friends and relations, in the end you will find this—or it will find you.
He paused beside one niche. On the coffin lid was carved a man in full armor, his helmet in the crook of his elbow, his sword hilt clasped upon his chest His beard was wound with ribbons, each wrought in careful, almost loving detail.
“Here lies the king’s father,” he told Flint. “The old king, Ustin, He was a fierce man, but a scourge to the country’s enemies and a fair-dealer to our people.”
“He was a hard-hearted bastard,” said one of the work gang quietly.
“Who said that?” Chert glared. “You, Pumice?”
“What if I did?” The young Funderling, not three years a guild member, returned his stare. “What did Ustin or any of his kind ever do for us? We build their castles and forge their weapons so they can slaughter each other—and us, every few generations—and what do we get in return?”
“We have our own city . . .”
Pumice laughed. He was sharp-eyed, dark, and thin. Chert thought the youth had somehow got himself born into the wrong family. He should have been a Blackglass, that one. “Cows have their own fields. Do they get to keep their milk?”
“That’s enough.” Some of the others on the work gang were stirring, but Chert could not tell whether they were restless with Pumice s prating or in agreement with him. “We have work to do.”
“Ah, yes. The poor, sad, dead prince. Did he ever step into Funderling Town, ever in his life?”
“You are speaking nonsense, Pumice. What has got into you?” He glanced at Flint, who was watching the exchange without expression.
“You ask me that? Just because I have never loved the big folk? If someone needs to explain, I think it’s you, Chert. None of the rest of us have adopted one of them into our own household.”
“Go out,” Chert told the boy. “Go and play—there is a garden up above.” A cemetery, in truth, but garden enough.
“But . . . !”
“Do not argue with me, boy. I need to talk to these men and you will only find it boring. Go out. But stay close to the entrance.”
Flint clearly felt he would find the conversation anything but boring, but masked his feelings in that way he had and walked across the tomb and up the stairs. When he was gone, Chert turned back to Pumice and the rest of the work gang.
“Have any of you a complaint with my leadership? Because I will not lead men who grumble and whine, nor will I chief a job where I do not trust my workers. Pumice, you have had much to say. You do not like my feelings about our masters. That is your privilege, I suppose—you are free a
nd a guildsman. Do you have aught else to say about me?”
The younger man seemed about to start again, but it was an older man, one of the Gypsum cousins, who spoke instead. “He doesn’t talk for the rest of us, Chert. In fact, we’ve spent a bit too much time listening to him lately, truth be told.” A few of the other men grunted agreement.
“Cowards, the lot of you,” Pumice sneered. “Slaving away like you were in the Autarch’s mines, working yourselves almost to death, then down on your knees to thank the big folks for the privilege.”
A sour smile twisted Chert’s mouth. “The day I see you working yourself almost to death, Pumice, will be a day when all the world has finally gone wheels-over-ore-cart.” The rest of the men laughed and the moment of danger passed. A few rocks had tumbled free, but there had been no slide. Still, Chert was not happy that there had been such ill-feeling already on the first day.
