Shadowmarch

by Tad Williams

  So grim were her thoughts that when the black-clad figure stepped out of a side corridor her first unsurprised assumption was that one of her dead ancestors, perhaps Sanasu herself, restless and discontented, had come to point a finger of shame at her. It was unsurprising, though, that in such times her guards’ first thoughts were more practical they clattered to a stop around her and leveled their pikes at the veiled woman.

  “Is that you, Princess?” the figure whispered as she pulled back her veil.

  The superstitious prickle on Briony s skin subsided, but only a little, as she recognized the face. “Elan? Elan M’Cory?”

  The Tolly sister-in-law nodded. Her young face wore the mark of a terrible grief-—a grief that Briony recognized, as powerful as that which had seized her after her brother’s death. “Gailon is dead,” the girl said.

  Briony waved the guards back. For a moment she thought about saying the politic thing it was early yet to be certain, after all. Nobody had seen the body who had known Gailon well. But the look of misery in the girl’s gray eyes—eyes that were nevertheless bone-dry—touched her in that place of understanding, of shared sorrows. “Yes. Or at least it seems so.”

  Elan smiled, a strange, grim little tug at the corners of her mouth, as though she had been confirmed in something larger and longer-lived than just a fear for Gailon Tolly’s life—reassured in some bleak view of all existence, perhaps. “I knew it. I have known it for days.” The eyes fixed Briony again. “I loved him, of course. But he had no interest in me.”

  “I’m sorry . .”

  “Perhaps it is better this way. Now I can mourn him for the right reasons I have one more question. You must tell me the truth.”

  Briony blinked. Who was this girl? “I must answer only to my father, the king, Lady Elan. And to the gods, of course. But go to—ask your question.”

  “Did you kill him, Briony Eddon? Did you have it done?"

  It was shocking to be asked so directly. She realized, in the split-instant between hearing and answering, that she had become used to deference— more used to it than she had known. “No, of course I didn’t. The gods know that Gailon and I did not agree on everything, but I would never. She stopped to catch her breath, to consider what she was saying and doing. Standing a couple of yards away against the wall, the guards were trying to hide their fascination. After a moment she decided it was too late for anything m this particular case except the truth. “In fact, and you may hold this against me as you wish, Elan M’Cory, Gailon wanted to marry me—but I didn’t want to marry him.”

  “I know that.” But she sounded coldly satisfied. “For his ambition.”

  “I do not doubt you are right. But that was not enough to endear him to me.The gods may bear witness that I’ll have no husband who thinks he can tell me where to go, what to say, how to . . .” She stopped herself again. What was it about this girl that had made her say so much more than she intended? “Enough. I did not kill him, if he is truly dead. We do not know who did.”

  Elan nodded. She pulled her veil back over her face. “Neither you nor any other woman will have him now.” For the first time there was a muffled noise that might be a sob. “I wish you heaven’s mercy,” she said quietly, then turned and walked away without a courtesy or farewell.

  It was indeed a very long afternoon, and as the news of the murdered men found in Marnnswalk began to circulate, along with speculation about their identities, the day threatened to stretch without end. The news impinged directly on Briony only slightly in her royal duties—questions and quiet asides from Brone, a perfunctory meeting with the hedge-baron in command of the Marnnswalk muster who was enjoying his moment of fame and attention, and an expanded set of concerns from Nynor, who had to decide whether to house these particular Marnnswalk troops with all the others brought in to garrison the castle or try to keep them separate—but she also saw speculation in the faces of almost everyone who passed through the throne room. As if things had not been bad enough after her outburst at Hendon Tolly! It was so grueling that the appearance of Queen Anissa’s maid was almost a relief.

  “Selia, isn’t it?” With Barrick gone it was hard to hold onto her resentment toward the young woman. “Tell me, how is my stepmother?”

  “Well enough, Highness, with the baby so close, but she has concern not to see you.”

  Briony’s head hurt and she had trouble making sense out of the girl’s foreign diction. “She wants me to stay away?”

  Selia colored very prettily. Like all else she did, it seemed an affront to any woman who wanted to do something other than make men sigh—or at least so it felt to Briony, whose dislike of the maid was already returning. “No, no,” the young woman said. “I do not speak so well. She wishes very much to have talk with you before the baby comes.”

  “I am quite busy, as my stepmother knows . . .”

  The young woman leaned forward and spoke quietly; Brone and Nynor worked harder to pretend they were not listening. “She fears you are angry with her. This is bad for the baby, for the birth, she thinks. She was too ill for talking with you before, and now your brother has gone, the poor Barrick.” Selia looked genuinely sad, which only made Briony less sympathetic.

  That’s my brother you’ve set your cap on, girl. Aloud, she said,”I will do my best.”

  “She asks that you come and take a cup of wine with her on Winter’s Eve.”

  Sweet Zona, that’s only a few days away, Briony realized. Where has the year gone? “I will do my best to come to her soon Tell her I wish her only well.”

  “I will, Princess.” The young woman dropped a graceful courtesy and withdrew. Briony caught Brone and Nynor watching the maid as she walked away and was disgusted that even old men should still be such lechers. She tried to keep it off her face as they all returned to work, but not as hard as she might have.

  The day’s business dragged on, as what seemed like almost every living soul in the castle came before her with a complaint or a worry or a request, with problems ranging from the crucial to the ridiculous. What she didn’t see was Hendon Tolly, nor—after her meeting in the Portrait Hall with his sister-in-law—any sign whatsoever of the Tollys or their faction.

  “They are doubtless trying to decide what this discovery means,” Brone told her in a quiet aside. “I am told they were out and about as usual this morning, but when they heard the news, they beat a retreat back into their rooms.”

  “I suppose it makes sense. But why did we put the Tollys and Durstin Crowel and the other troublemakers all so close together?”

  “Because Crowel requested it some time back, Highness,” said Nynor. “At the end of the summer he told me he would be hosting an entertainment with the Tollys during the Orphan’s Day celebrations. I thought at the time he simply meant Duke Gailon and his entourage.”

  Briony frowned. “Does that mean they were planning something even then?”

  Avin Brone grunted. “I don’t trust the Tollys, but let us not pretend they’re the worst of our problems.”

  Old Nynor shook his head. “It is possible they had some scheme, Highness, but it is also possible that all they were planning was a banquet. And, speaking of which, Princess, we must make some arrangements about the feasting.”

  For a moment she didn’t understand what he was talking about. “Feasting? Do you mean for Orphan’s Day? Are you mad? We are at war!”

  “All the more reason “ Steffans Nynor could be stubborn, and had not been castellan so many years without developing ideas of his own. Briony was irritated and tempted simply to say no and dismiss him, but thought of what her father would say—something like, If you are going to give men tasks to do, then once they have proved themselves, you should let them get on without you standing over them There is no point giving responsibility without trust.

  “Why, then, do you think we should do this?"

  “Because these are holy days in which we praise the gods and demigods, and we need their help now more than ever. That is
one reason.”

  “Yes, but we can perform the sacrifices and the rituals without the feasting and merrymaking.”

  “Why else do people need merrymaking, Highness, if not to take some of the thorns out of life?" The old man rapidly blinked his watery eyes, but his gaze was sharp and demanding. “Forgive me if I speak out of turn, Princess Briony, but it seems that what a city under siege most needs is courage. Also to be reminded what it is fighting to protect. A little happiness, a little ordinary life, is a powerful aid to both those things.”

  She saw the wisdom in what he said, but a part of her couldn’t help feeling it would be a sham, that falsity was worse than misery.

  Avin Brone seemed able to hear those thoughts as if they had been spoken. “People will not forget the true dangers, Highness. I think Nynor is right. A muted festivity perhaps—we do not want to seem to be celebrating too grandly in the shadow of war, and most especially in the shadow of Gailon’s murder—and your brother’s death, too, of course—but neither do we want to make this winter any more dreary than necessity dictates.”

  “Very well, a quiet celebration it will be.”

  Nynor nodded, then bowed and withdrew. He looked pleased, almost grateful, and for an unpleasant moment Briony wondered if the castellan had some other agenda, if he had manipulated her for some secret, selfish purpose.

  And so it goes, she thought. I cannot do even the simplest thing without doubt anymore, without fear, without suspicion. How could Father live this way all those years? It must have been a little better in more peaceful days, but still . . .

  Curse these times.

  *

  Before they reached the populous areas, Beetledown announced that he was taking his leave. He dismissed Chert’s worried questions. “I’ll find my way, sure. Naught else, these caves seem full of slow, stupid rat-folk. I’ll go home mounted proud, tha will see.”

  He was too tired to do more than thank the Rooftopper again. After all they had shared, it was a hasty and strangely muted parting, but Chert didn’t have long to consider it.

  In the midst of such strange times their little procession was not the oddest thing the people of Funderling Town had heard of, but it was certainly one of the odder things they had actually seen: by the time Chert reached his house with Flint and the acolyte he was surrounded by a ragtag parade of children and more than a few adults. He did his best to ignore their questions and fondly mocking comments. He had no idea what time it was, or even what day. The young temple brother Antimony at the front end of the litter told him it was Skyday, fourth chime. Chert was astonished to realize that he had been almost three days in the lower depths.

  Poor Opal! She must be cracked with worry.

  The news had run ahead on child feet; a crowd of neighbors waited at the mouth of Wedge Road to join the throng. The tale had reached his own house as well: Opal ran out before he had even reached the dooryard, her face a confusion of joy and terror.

  He tried not to be upset that the first thing she did was throw her arms around the senseless boy, even though it nearly upset the litter. He was even wearier than he had realized, and could only struggle to hold his end up and shake his head in silent dismissal of his neighbors’ questions. Burly Antimony helped clear a path to the door.

  “He isn’t dead,” Opal said, kneeling beside the boy. “Tell me that he isn’t dead.”

  “He’s alive, just . . . sleeping.”

  “Praise the Elders—but he’s so cold!”

  “He needs your nursing, dear wife.” Chert slumped onto a bench.

  She paused, then suddenly rushed to him and put her arms around his neck, kissed his cheeks. “Oh, I’m so glad you’re not dead either, you old fool. Disappearing for days! I’ve been fretting over you, too, you know.”

  “I’ve been fretting over me as well, my girl. Go on, now. I’ll tell you all this strange story later.”

  Antimony helped Opal move the boy to his bed, then turned down her distracted offer of food or drink and went out instead to placate the waiting crowd with some unspecific answers. Chert suspected the acolyte didn’t find this too dreadful a chore. From what he knew, the temple brothers, especially the younger ones, didn’t get much chance to come up to Funderling Town the market trips and other such opportunities for distraction and temptation were reserved for the older, more trustworthy brothers.

  He could hear Opal in the bedroom, crooning over the boy as she took off his dirty rags, cleaning him and checking for injuries just as the Metamorphic Brothers had done. Chert didn’t think fresh smallclothes would be the thing that woke the boy, but he knew very well his wife needed to do something.

  Chert looked up at a rustling noise, aware for the first time that he was not alone in the room. A very young woman, one of the big folk, sat on their long bench in the shadows against the wall, staring back at him with an air of patient detachment. Her dark hair was gathered untidily and she wore a dress that did not quite fit her thin frame. Chert had never seen her before, could thmk of no reason on or under the earth why someone like her should be in his house, even on a day of such bizarre branchings and cross-tunnels.

  “Who are you?”

  Opal came out of the back room with a look close to embarrassment on her face. “I forgot to tell you, what with the boy and all. She came about the second chime or so and she’s been waiting ever since. Said she must speak to you, only to you. I . . . I thought it might be something to do with Flint . . .”

  The young woman stirred on the bench. She seemed almost half-asleep. “You are Chert of the Blue Quartz?”

  “Yes. Who are you?”

  “My name is Willow, but I am nothing.” She stood up; her head almost touched the ceiling. She extended a hand. “Come. I have been sent to bring you to my master.”

  35

  The Silken Cord

  THE CRABS:

  All are dancing

  The moon is crouching low for fear

  He will see the naked Mother of All

  —from The Bonefall Oracles

  His the great hand closed around her, she felt it ringing like a crystal, a deep, shuddering vibration that had nothing to do with her, but which ran through that monstrous hand like a blood pulse, as if she were bound to a temple bell big as a mountain. The impossibly vast shape lifted her and although she could not see its face—it stood in the center of some kind of fog, light-shot but still deeply shadowed, as if a lightning storm raged inside the earth— she could see the greater darkness that was its mouth as it brought her nearer, nearer. . .

  She shrieked, or tried to, but there was only silence in that damp, empty place, silence and mist and the dark maw that grew ever larger, spreading above her like a rolling thundercloud. The titanic thing was going to swallow her, she knew, and she was frightened almost to death . . . but it was also somehow exciting too, like the shrieking, terrified childhood joy of being whirled in the air by her father or wrestling with her brothers until she was pinned and helpless . . .

  Qinnitan awakened wet with perspiration, heart galloping. Her wits were utterly jangled and her skin twitched as though she lay in the middle of one of the great hives in the temple covered in a slow-buzzing blanket of sacred bees. She felt used by something—by her dream, perhaps—even defiled, and yet as her heart slowed a languid warmth began to spread through her limbs, a feeling almost of pleasure, or at least of release.

  Qinnitan slumped back in her bed, breathing shallowly, overwhelmed Her hand strayed down to her breasts and she discovered the tips had grown achingly hard beneath the fabric of her nightdress. She sat up again, shocked and disturbed. The idea of that dark, all-swallowing mouth still hung over her thoughts as it had hung over her dream. She leaped to her feet and went to the washing tub. The water had been sitting since the previous night and was quite cold, but instead of calling for the servants to bring her hot water, she squatted in it gladly and pulled her nightdress up to her neck, then splashed herself all over until she began to shiver. She san
k down into the shallow bath, still trembling, and put her chin on her knees, letting the water wick up the linen nightdress until it clung to her like a clammy second skin.

  The rest of the day was quieter and more mundane, although the torments of the endlessly droning prayers and the drinking of the Sun’s Blood were as bad as ever If Panhyssir or the autarch were trying to kill her with that potion, they were taking a ridiculously long time about it, she had to admit, but whatever they intended, they were certainly making her miserable.