Shadowmarch

by Tad Williams

  “This was in the South Lagoon?” Barrick asked. “Where?”

  “Near the shore at Hangskin Row,” the girl replied. “Someone was waiting for it on the Old Tannery Dock. That’s how we name it. The one closest to the tower what has all the banners on it. They had a light—him on the dock, I mean—but it was hooded. Up the boat went to it, still cut-paddled, and then they gave them something.”

  “They?” Briony leaned forward. The princess looked unusually calm, but Ferras Vansen thought he could see something else behind her pale features, a fear she was struggling to hide, and for a moment all the helpless affection he had for her came surging up inside him. He would do anything for Briony Eddon, he realized, anything to protect her, no matter what she thought of him.

  A jest, Vansen? He needed no enemies to do it—he could mock himself. Do anything? You already had the protecting of her elder brother and now he’s dead.

  “The one in the boat,” the Skimmer girl said, “gave something to the one on the dock. We couldn’t see what it was or who they were. Then the boat went away again, out toward the front seawall.”

  “And even after the prince was murdered the next night, you did not come forward?” Briony asked, her face gone hard. “Even after the ruling lord of Southmarch was killed? Are you so used to seeing things like this on the lagoon?”

  “Dark boats paddling silent, yes, sometimes,” the girl told her, gaining courage as she went. “Our folk and the fishermen have feuds and people get into trouble, and . . . and other things happen. But I still thought it meant no good, that shuttered light. I feared saying anything, though, because . . . because of my Rafe.”

  “Your Rafe!” snorted her father. “He’ll be no one’s Rafe if I see him near our dockhouse again. Hands soft as skateskin, and he’s a Hullscraper!”

  “He’s kind,” said the girl quietly.

  “I think that’s enough.” Avin Brone came forward. “Unless Your Highnesses have other questions . . . ?”

  “They can go,” Briony said. Both she and Barrick looked troubled. Meanwhile Ferras Vansen was working it through in his head and realizing that the tower the girl mentioned must be the Tower of Spring—and that the prince and princess must know that, too.

  Queen Anissa’s residence, he thought. But there are other things on that side of the castle as well—the observatory, more than a few taverns, and at least one of our own guardhouses, not to mention the homes of hundreds of Skimmers and ordinary folk. It tells us nothing truly useful. Still, there was something about the idea that tugged at him, so that for a moment he nearly forgot his own pressing errand here.

  As Lord Brone’s man-at-arms showed out the two Skimmer folk, the court physician Chaven slipped in past them to stand just inside the council chamber doorway, an unsettled look on his round face.

  “Now we have one last piece of business,” said Brone. “A minor thing only, so I think that after such a long piece of talking and listening we might send the extra guards and servants away and let them get on with preparing for the midday meal. Will you indulge me in this, Prince Barrick, Princess Briony?”

  The twins gave their assent and within a few moments the chamber was empty of everyone except the councillors themselves, Vansen and his guards, and Chaven, who still lingered beside the far door like a schoolboy waiting for punishment.

  “So?” Barrick sounded tired and childishly irritated; it was hard to believe he and Briony were the same age. “Obviously you want to thwart rumors, Lord Brone, so why wait until after the news of this mystery boat has been delivered? Right now half the people you sent out are hurrying to find someone to tell about this.”

  “Because that is what we want people talking about, Highness,” said Brone. “It is true about the boat, but at this point it’s also meaningless. It will not frighten people, just intrigue them. Best of all, it will mean that no one will be in a hurry to find out what we are saying here, now.”

  “They already know what we’re going to be saying, though, don’t they?” asked Briony. “We are going to discuss what that Skimmer girl saw and whether it means anything.”

  “Perhaps,” said Brone. “But perhaps not. Forgive me for playing a deep game, my lord and lady, but I have another bit of news for you, one that would make for much more fearful rumors. Captain Vansen?”

  The moment came upon him so suddenly, and with his head still so full of questions about the Skimmers and of thoughts about the princess herself that for a painfully extended moment. Ferras Vansen just stood, not quite hearing. Then he suddenly realized the lord constable was staring at him, waiting, as was everyone else in the council. He leaped toward the door, certain he could hear the prince and princess snickering behind him, and stepped out into the passage to call for the other guards to bring in the young man.

  “So you stand before us again, Vansen,” Briony said when he returned to the chamber. “I hope you are not looking for an advancement of your position?”

  He waited a few moments to make sure he had control of his voice, would not misspeak. If she hated him, he could not but believe he had earned it. “Your Highnesses, Lords, this man beside me is named Raemon Beck. He has only reached Southmarch this morning. He has a tale you should hear.”

  When it was finished and the first rush of amazed questions had gusted itself out, silence fell over the chill, windowless room.

  “What does it mean?” the princess asked at last. “Monsters? Elves? Ghosts? It seems an unbelievable tale.” She stared at Raemon Beck, who was shivering as though he had just come in out of a snowstorm instead of a day bright with autumn sunshine. “What are we to do with such news?”

  “It is foolishness,” growled Tyne of Blueshore. Several of the other council members nodded vigorous agreement. “Bandits, yes—the roads to the west are not safe even in these days. But this man has been struck on the head and dreamed the rest. That or he seeks to make a name for himself.”

  “No!” cried Beck. Tears welled in his eyes. He hid his head in his hands, muffling his voice. “It happened—it is all true!”

  “And bandits or boggarts, why did you alone survive?” demanded one of the barons.

  Chaven stepped forward. “Your pardon, my lords, but I suspect that this man was merely the one chosen to bear the message.”

  “What message?” Small spots blazed on Prince Barrick’s cheeks as though his fever had returned. He seemed almost as frightened as Raemon Beck. “That the world has gone mad?”

  “I do not know what the message is,” said Chaven. “But I think I know who is sending it. I have been told by one I know, one I trust . . . that the Shadowline has begun moving.”

  “Moving?” Avin Brone, who had already heard the young merchant’s story, now for the first time looked truly startled. “How so?”

  Chaven explained how a Funderling man searching for rare stones in the hills had found the line moved some yards closer to the castle—the first such movement in anyone’s memory. “I had planned to tell you of this, Your Highnesses, but the tragic events that you know of kept me busy, and then I did not wish to burden you when you still had your brother to bury.”

  “That was days and days ago,” Briony said angrily. “Why have you kept silent since then?"

  Gailon Tolly saved the physician from having to answer immediately. “What is all this about?” the Duke of Summerfield demanded loudly. “Scholar, you and this Helmingsea lackwit spout nurse’s tales as though you spoke of true places like Fael or Hierosol. The Shadowline? There is nothing beyond it but mist and wet lands too cold to farm and . . . and old stories.”

  “You are young, my lord,” said Chaven gently. “But your father knew. And his father. And your grandfather several times over was one of the men who regained Southmarch and this castle from the hands of the Twilight People.” The small man shrugged, but there was something terrible in the gesture, an entire language of resignation that did not hide the fear. “It could be that after all these years the Quiet Folk seek to have
it back.”

  The councillors all seemed to begin shouting at once, no one listening to any other. Briony stood up and extended a trembling hand. “Silence! Chaven, you will attend my brother and me at once in the chapel, or somewhere else we can have privacy. You will tell us everything you know. But that is not enough. Dozens of our countrymen have been robbed and perhaps murdered on the Settland Road. We must find out everything we can, immediately, before all trace of the attackers is gone.” She looked at her twin, who nodded, but his face showed his unhappiness. “We must go to the place where this occurred, with force. We must find the track of these creatures and follow it. If they can take men away from the road, they will have left some mark of their passage.” She turned on Raemon Beck, who had sunk to a crouch as though his legs could no longer support him. “Do you swear you have told us the truth, man? Because if I find . . . if we find that you have made up this story, you will spend the rest of a short and unhappy life in chains.”

  The merchant could only shake his head. “It is all true!”

  “Then we will send a troop of soldiers at once,” she said. “To follow the trail wherever it leads. That at least we can do while we consider what this may mean, what . . . message we have been sent.”

  “Across the Shadowline?” Avin Brone appeared surprised by the idea. “You would send men across the Shadowline?”

  “Not you,” she said scornfully. “Have no fear.”

  The lord constable stood. “There is no need to insult me, Princess.”

  They were the only two standing. Their eyes met over the heads of the others.

  “Again, you have showed me hasty, Lord Brone,” Briony said after a moment’s silence, each word crisp as the sound of a small bell being struck. “Despite the trickery you have used today to put on this little show, you do not deserve as much anger as I have shown. I apologize.”

  He made a stiff little bow. “Accepted, of course, Highness. With thanks, although you do me too much honor.”

  “I will go,” said Gailon suddenly. He rose, too, his face flushed as though with drink. “I will lead a troop to the spot. I will find these bandits—and I wager my good name that they will prove to be no more than that. But whatever they are, I will bring back them or their corpses to answer for the crime.”

  Vansen saw Briony exchange a look with her brother that the captain of the royal guard could not interpret.

  “No,” said Barrick.

  “What?” The duke turned on the prince in anger. Gailon Tolly seemed to have lost his usual composure. Vansen’s muscles tensed as he watched. “You cannot go yourself, Barrick! You are sick, crippled! And your sister may think she is a man, but the gods know she is not! I demand the honor of leading this troop!”

  “But that is just the issue, Cousin,” said Briony, speaking with cold care. “It is not an honor. And whoever goes must go with an open heart, not with an intent to prove himself right.”

  “But . . . !”

  She turned her back on him and her gaze swept down the row of nobles at the table, Tyne and Rorick and many others, before it lit on Ferras Vansen where he stood behind the crumpled, sobbing form of the merchant Raemon Beck. For a moment her gaze met his and Vansen thought he saw a little smile flicker across her lips. It was not a kind smile. “You, Captain. You have failed to prevent my brother’s murder and you have failed to find a reason that explains why Lord Shaso, one of our family’s most loyal retainers, should have performed that murder. Perhaps you will be able to fulfill this new charge more successfully.”

  He couldn’t look at her any longer. Staring at his boots, he said, “Yes, Highness. I will accept the charge.”

  “No!” Gailon was out of his seat again, so angry that for a worrying moment Ferras thought the duke actually meant to attack the prince and princess.Vansen was not the only one—the nobles on either side of Gailon Tolly snatched at his arms but failed to hold him. Brone’s hand dropped to the hilt of his sword, but the lord constable was almost as far away as the guard captain and much slower.

  Gods! Ferras took a stumbling step forward. Too late, still too late, I have failed again! But Summerfield only turned and stalked away from the great table toward the far door of the council chamber. When he turned in the doorway, the young duke’s face was composed again, almost frightemngly so.

  “I see I am not needed here, either in this council or in this castle. With your permission, Prince Barrick, Princess Briony, I will return to my own lands where there may be something of use I can do.” Gailon Tolly had asked their leave, but he did not wait to receive it before departing the chamber. His bootheels banged away down the corridor.

  Briony turned toVansen again, as though Gailon had never been in the room. “You will take as many men as you and the lord constable think fit to assemble, Captain.You will take this man, too . . .” she gestured at Beck, “and go to the place his caravan was attacked. From there, send back messengers to tell us what you find, and if you can pursue the robbers, pursue them.”

  Raemon Beck realized what was being said. “Don’t send me back, Highness!” he shrieked, scrabbling across the floor toward the prince and princess. “The gods’ mercy, not there! Put me in irons, as you promised, rather than send me to that place.”

  Barrick pulled his foot back -when the man would have grabbed it.

  “How else will we know that the spot is the correct one?” Princess Briony asked gently. “If every trace is gone, as you have said? Your fellows may be alive. Would you steal away even the slim chance of rescuing them?” She turned to the table full of slack-mouthed councillors, a row of bewildered masks like the chorus of some antique mummer’s play. “The rest of you may go, but you are sworn to secrecy about this attack. He who speaks a word about it joins Shaso in the stronghold. Chaven, you and Lord Brone come with my brother and myself to the chapel. Rorick andTyne, come to us in an hour, please. Captain Vansen, you will leave tomorrow at dawn.”

  After she was gone and the chamber was all but empty, Vansen and two of his guardsmen helped the weeping Raemon Beck up from the floor.

  “The princess does not take well to begging,” Ferras Vansen told the young merchant as they led him toward the door. The guard captain’s own thoughts were slow and numbed as fish at the bottom of a frozen stream. “Her older brother was killed—did you know that? But we will do our best to take care of you. For now, let us find you some wine and a bed. That’s the best any of us will get tonight . . . or for some time to come, I think.”

  14

  Whitefire

  STORM MUSIC:

  This tale is told on the headlands

  The great one comes up from the deeps

  His eye is a shrouded pearl, his voice the ocean wind

  —from The Bonefall Oracles.

  Barrick’s first thought was that the man looked like a chained beast, both frightening and pitiable, like the bear brought to the castle during the last Pennsday feast and made to dance in the throne room. All the courtiers had laughed—he had even laughed himself to see its clumsy antics and hear its snort of irritation, so like a man’s, when its trainer flicked its bandy legs with a whip. Only Briony had been angry.

  But she always worries more about animals than people. If I had been one of the dogs, she would never have left my side while I was ill.

  His father had not laughed either, he suddenly remembered. For on that Pennsday they had all still been together, Olin here in Southmarch, Kendrick alive, everything as it should be. Now all had changed, and since the fever even his own thoughts had become strange and untrustworthy.

  He forced himself to concentrate, staring at Shaso with what he hoped was the proper expression of a ruling prince to a traitorous vassal. Despite the ankle-chain half hidden by the straw on the floor of the stronghold, its far end socketed into the stone wall, the Tuani man looked less like a bear than a captured lion.

  You could never make a lion dance on its chain.

  “There should be guards,” said Avin
Brone. “It is not safe . . .”

  “You are here with us,” Briony replied sweetly. “You are a famous fighter, Lord Constable.”

  “So is Lord Shaso, with all respect.”

  “But he is chained and you are not. And he is not armed.”

  Shaso stirred. Barrick had always found it hard to think of him as anything but ageless, but now the man’s years showed in his slack skin and gray-whiskered cheeks. He had been given clean clothes, but they were poor and threadbare. Except for the muscles that still rippled in his forearms and the back that had not yet learned to bend, this old man might have been a street beggar in Hierosol or one of the other southern cities. “I will not hurt you,” he growled. “I am not fallen so low.”

  Barrick fought down a gust of anger. “Is that what you told our brother before you killed him?”