by Tad Williams
The fat Rooftopper offered something else in his shrill voice.
“The Grand and Worthy Nose says we could bind ‘ee, hands and feet,” explained Beetledown To his credit, he sounded a little dubious “ ‘Twould take some time, but then no one would fear wrongdoing.”
“Not likely,” said Chert angrily. “Let someone tie my hands and feet, up here on a high, slippery roof? No, not likely.” He saw that Flint was watching him, the boy was expressionless but Chert couldn’t help feeling rebuked, as though he had pushed himself in where he was not wanted and was now spoiling it for everyone.
Well, perhaps I wasn’t wanted. But should I have simply let the boy climb the roof without a word, without trying to follow him? What sort of guardian would I be? Still, it seemed it was up to him to make things right.
“Very well,” he said at last. “Your archers may perch on me like squirrels on a branch, for all I care. I will move slowly, and so will the boy—do you hear me, Flint? Slowly. But tell your men that if one of them pinks me or the child without reason, then they will meet an angry giant for certain.” Despite his irritation and fear, he was startled to realize that to these folk he was just that—a huge and fearsome gian.t Chert the Giant. Chert the Ogre.
I could scoop them up by the handful and eat them if I wished, just like Bram-binag Stoneboots out of the old stones. He did not, of course, share these thoughts with the Rooftoppers, but sat as still as he could while two of the mice, each bearing a rider, begin to climb his sleeves. The scratchy little claws tickled and he was tempted simply to lift the bowmen and their mounts into place, but he could imagine such a gesture being taken wrongly. The faces of the little men were frightened but determined within their bird-skull helmets, and he had no doubt their tiny arrows and pikes were sharp.
“What is this in aid of, by the way?" he asked when the guards were in place on his shoulders. “Lad, you have not told me why you are here, how you met these folk, anything. What does this all mean?"
The boy shrugged, “They want me to meet the queen.”
“You? Why you?"
Flint shrugged again.
It is like trying to chip granite with apiece of soggy bread, Chert thought. The boy, as usual, was as talkative as a root.
He was distracted by a murmur in the crowd of tiny people, the courtiers all so carefully dressed in their rude homespun, ornamented with what looked like bits of butterfly wing and flecks of crystal and metal and feathers so small they might have come from the breasts of hummingbirds. They were all turning toward the roofcrest in anticipation. Even Chert found himself holding his breath.
Like the Grand and Worthy Nose, she came riding a bird, but this one was either more successfully trained or the restraints were hidden: the snow-white dove had no band around its wings. The tiny shape atop it did not teeter in a boxy covered saddle like the Nose, but rode directly between the dove’s wings with her legs curled beneath her and the reins little more than a sparkling cobweb in her hands. Her gown was brown and gray, rich with ornament, and her hair was dark red.
The dove stopped. All the courtiers and guards had gone down on their knees, including those on the shoulders of Flint and Chert, although Chert could feel the needle-fine point of one of the soldiers’ pikes resting against his neck—perhaps as a precaution. Even the Grand and Worthy Nose had prostrated himself.
Beetledown was the first to raise his head. “Her Exquisite and Unforgotten Majesty, Queen Upsteeplebat,” he announced.
From what Chert could make out, the queen was not so much pretty as handsome, with a fine, strong-boned face and eyes that looked up to him without any discernible fear. Chert found himself bowing his head. “Your Majesty,” he said, and for a moment there was no incongruity. “I am Chert of the Blue Quartz family. This is my . . . my ward, Flint.”
“The child we know of already.” She spoke slowly, but her Marchlands speech, although a bit musty in its sound, was far clearer than Beetledown’s. “We give you both welcome.”
The Nose laboriously lifted himself from his abasement and came forward, chattering something.
“Our adviser says there is a wicked scent about you,” the queen reported. “I smell it not, but he has always been a trusted help to our person. He is the sixth generation of those who are First to the Cheese—his nostrils are of true breeding. But we also can see no wickedness in you or the boy, although we think there are other stories in the child, stories untold. Are we right, Chert of Blue Quartz? Is wickedness absent in truth?”
“As far as I know, Your Majesty. I did not even know your people still existed until an hour ago. I certainly bear you no ill will.” Chert was realizing that the size of a queen meant little. This one impressed him and he wanted to please her. Wouldn’t that make Opal spit if she knew!
“Fairly spoken.” Queen Upsteeplebat waved; two of her soldiers sprang forward to help her down from the dove’s back. She looked up briefly at the windowless stone walls all around. “This is a place well-chosen for a meeting—although it is long since we or our predecessors have used it for a gathering of this sort. You will forgive us, Chert of Blue Quartz, but we are unused to the manner of speaking with giants, although we have practiced the old ways to be ready for just such a day, unlikely as we thought its arrival.”
“You speak our tongue very well, Majesty.” Chert snatched a look at Flint. The boy was watching, but he seemed to think this no more interesting than any other conversation between adults. Why had they invited Flint in the first place? What did they hope to get from him?
The queen smiled and nodded. “Though our folk live in your shadows, and make our lives often beneath your tables and in your cupboards, generations have passed since we have spoken, one to the other. But times now demand it, we believe.”
“I’m a bit confused, Majesty. Times demand what?”
“That your folk and ours should speak again. Because we of the high places are frightened, and not just for ourselves. That which we had thought asleep—we had in our royal keeping too much knowledge to think it dead—is now awakening. That which we so happily fled long ago now reaches out again . . but it is not only the Sm ‘sni ‘snik-soonah who must fear it.” The rapid click seemed a sound that only a squirrel or a mockingbird should be able to make.
“Not only who?”
“My people. Rooftoppers, in your tongue.” The queen nodded her head. “So you must help us decide what is to be done. The boy finding Beetledown—we think we sense the Hand of the Sky in it. Certainly it has been a stretchingly long time since any of the giants has seen us against our will. We cannot help thinking that perhaps it truly is time for us to make common cause with your kind. Perhaps you will not listen to us and we must flee again, although fleeing will do us little good, I fear, but perhaps you will listen. That alone will not save us, but it would be a start.”
Chert shook his head. “I don’t understand any of this, I’m afraid. But I’m trying. Because the boy caught one of your people, you Rooftoppers want to make common cause with the big folk? Why?”
“Because although we have lived hidden in your shadows for long years, Old Night is a shadow that will cover all, and none of us will find our way out again.” The royal mask seemed to slip a little; for the first time, Chert could see the fear she had hidden. “It is coming, Chert of Blue Quartz. We would have guessed in any case, but the truth has been directly spoken to us by the Lord of the Peak…” Watching her speak so gravely, so carefully, Chert did not doubt that she was an able ruler Despite her size, he could not help finding her very admirable. “The storm that we have feared since before my grandmother’s grandmother’s day is coming,” said Queen Upsteeplebat. “It will be here soon.”
*
“May the gods protect us,” murmured Raemon Beck, but the young man didn’t sound as though he believed that they would Ferras Vansen stared in silence at the valley spread before them. It disturbed him, too, but it took a moment for him to understand why it seemed so particularly
frightening. Then he remembered the old woman’s house and what he had found there. He had been only eight or nine years old that day, already nearing a man’s height but thin as a bowstave. He had thought himself very brave, of course.
Ferras’ mother was concerned about the widow who lived on the next farm, perhaps because with her own husband so short of breath these days and barely able to get out of bed she had been anticipating her own upcoming widowhood. She at least had children, though, the old neighbor had none. Now they had not seen her for several days and her goats were wandering across the green but summer-dry hills. Fearing the old woman might have become too ill to take care of herself his mother sent Ferras, her eldest, across the dale to look in on her with a jug of milk and a small loaf.
He recognized something in the silence of the place while he was still yards away, but without quite understanding what he sensed. The little wooden house was a familiar place—Ferras had been there several times with his sisters, bringing the old woman a baked festival sweet or some flowers from his mother. The old woman had never had much to say, but she always seemed happy to see the children and would always press some gift on them in return, although what she had to spare was seldom anything more than a shiny wooden bead from a necklace that had lost its string or a bit of dried fruit from one of the stubby trees in her dooryard. But now some new element was present and young Ferras felt the hairs on his arms and neck rise and tingle.
The wind was in the other direction or he would have smelled the body a long time before he reached the threshold. It was high summer, and as he pushed open the ill-fitting door the stench leaped out and clawed at his nose and eyes, sending him stumbling back, gagging and wiping away tears. Still holding the jug, generations of crofter thrift preventing him from spilling a drop of milk no matter the circumstances, Ferras paused a few steps from the house, uncertain what to do. He had smelled death before he knew well enough now why they had not seen the old woman lately. Still, with the first shock lessened, he felt a powerful tug, a wondering, a needing to know.
He pinched his nose and stepped into the doorway. A little daylight spilled past him through the door, but the hut had only one window and it was shuttered, so it took him a moment to see anything but darkness.
She was dead, but she was alive.
No, not alive, not truly, but the thing that lay in the center of the rush-strewn dirt floor—facedown, he realized after staring for long moments, as though she had tried to crawl toward the doorway—was rippling with movement. Flies, beetles, and countless other crawling things he could not identify covered her entirely, a person-shaped mass of glinting, wriggling life, other than a few wisps of white hair, there was scarcely anything to see of the old woman’s body. It was horrifying, and yet in a way weirdly exciting as well, although he was ever after ashamed of the feeling, the memory would stay with him forever. All that life feeding off one death.
In the dim light, the old woman seemed to be dressed in glittering black armor, something like the “caparison of light” he had heard the priest speak of on festival day, the raiment in which dead heroes would be dressed when they went to meet the gods.
“What is it, Captain? Are you ill? What’s happened?” Vansen shook his head, unable to answer Collum Dyer’s question. It had been a strange day already, full of weird discoveries. The patches of bright-blooming meadow flowers they had found along the roadside had been strange enough, months out of season, bending nearly sideways in brisk autumn winds they were never meant to suffer. Then there had been the deserted village a few miles back where Vansen and the others had left the road to water the horses—a very small village, admittedly, the kind that sometimes emptied when a plague struck the livestock or the only well ran dry, but it had clearly been recently occupied. Ferras Vansen had stood in the midst of those empty houses holding a carved wooden toy he had found, a charmingly well-made horse that no child would willingly leave behind, growing increasingly certain that something disturbing was at work all across this quiet land. Now, as he stared out at the scene before them, there was no longer any doubt in his mind that the village and the unseasonal flowers were something more than happenstance.
Unlike the village, the valley before them was very much alive, but in a way more like the dead widow woman than Vansen would have liked. Its colors were . . . wrong. It was hard to say why at first—the trees had brown trunks and green leaves, the grass was yellowed but not beyond what seemed natural for this time of the year, before the heavy rains came—but there was definitely something amiss, some mischief of light that at first glance he had thought a freak of the low clouds. It was a cold, gray day, but he felt sure that alone could not make the valley’s colors seem so bruised, so … oily.
As the company tramped down into the valley itself, Vansen could see that although the trees and meadowed hillsides did indeed seem to have taken on an unnatural hue, much of the strangeness was because of a single kind of plant, a brambly creeper that seemed to be choking out the other vegetation, which had made its way almost everywhere along the valley, even down to the edge of the broad Settland Road. Its leaves were so dark as to be almost black, but the color was nowhere near that simple: on close inspection he saw shades of purple and deep blue and even deeper slate gray, colors that almost seemed to move; the leaves gleamed like grape-skin after a rain and the coiling vines seemed quietly fearsome, like sleeping snakes. A chill breeze ruffled the plants, but he almost fancied they were moving more than the soft wind should warrant, that they had a tremor of independent life like the horrid carpet of insects in the crofter-wo man’s house.
The vines also had thorns, nasty spikes half the length of his finger, but the strangest thing of all were the flowers, big velvety cabbage-shaped blossoms as night-dark as the robe of a priest of Kernios.The valley seemed to be choking in black roses.
“What is all this?” Dyer asked again from a tight throat. “Never seen anything like.”
“Nor have I. Beck, do you recognize this?”
The face of the merchant s nephew was quite pale, but also oddly resigned, as though he were seeing something in the waking world that had long come to him in evil dreams. Still, he shook his head. “No. When we . . . where they came . . . there was nothing out of the ordinary. Only the mist I told you of, the long reach of mist.”
“There’s a house up there in the hill,” Vansen said. “A cottage. Should we go look to see if someone’s there?”
“Those vines are all over it.” Collum Dyer had not made many jokes today; he sounded like it might be a while until he made any more. “There’s no one left inside. That other village had emptied without any cause we could see, so who would stay around and wait for this mucky stuff to crawl over them? No point looking—they’re gone.”
That had been his thought, too. Ferras Vansen was secretly relieved. He had not been anxious to wade toward a deserted house through these vines that sighed and rippled in the wind.
“You’re right,” he told his lieutenant. “We ride on, then, since we will not make camp here, I think.”
Dyer nodded. He, too, was happy to keep traveling. Raemon Beck had his eyes closed and seemed to be praying. They passed through the valley without speaking, looking to all sides as though riding through wild, foreign lands instead of following the familiar road to Settland.The hills leaned close and the huge flowers bounced gently beneath the wind’s unseeable fingers, leaves rubbing, so that it almost seemed like Vansen and his men were surrounded by whispering watchers.
To the relief of Ferras Vansen and the rest of the company, the tangle of black vines did not extend beyond the valley, although the woods beside the hilly road remained unusually quiet.
What could happen to scare even the birds away? Vansen wondered. The same things that took the caravan? Or am I only making worries? Perhaps whatever plague emptied that village has scattered the animals and birds, too. Wild things know much we have forgotten.
The lowering skies and his own mood had made a
n ordinary hill-road look almost otherworldly. He couldn’t help wondering what this land had been like before settlers. The Twilight People—if the stories are true, they were here for long, long centuries before our ancestors arrived. What did they do here? What did they think when they first saw us, the rude tribes that would have come across the water or up from the south? Did they fear us?
Of course, he realized, the shadow folk would have been right to fear the new creatures. Because those creatures would soon take their land from them.
All this place belonged to them once. It was a thought that had first come to him in childhood, on a day when through inattention he found himself a long way from home as the light began to fail in the fastness of the hills. There had been a stillness to the dales both frightening and magical, a change in the light, as though the sky itself had taken a breath and was holding it for a short while before blowing out the candle of the sun, and the dark world of a hundred fireside stories had risen up in his mind like smoke. All this was theirs—the other people. Tlte Old Ones.
