Shadowheart

by Tad Williams

  Shaso would have loved this, he thought. Hopeless odds. No choice but fight or die. And no time to argue . . .

  He let himself step back into the dance again. After all, there was nothing else he could do. Several of the Xixian torches had fallen, and the shadows in the passage were widening, deepening.

  Soon enough, Barrick thought, we’ll be fighting in utter darkness, like dead men struggling in their graves . . .

  It was all Utta could do to hold the frail older woman down. Still in the grip of the dream, Merolanna struggled so determinedly that she almost threw the Zorian Sister across the room. “No no no no . . . !” the duchess moaned, slurring her words so that it was more like an animal sound than the voice of a dignified noblewoman. “Let go they let go . . . !”

  “Merolanna!” Utta leaned close to the duchess’ face so the woman could hear her even in the depths of whatever dream had seized her. “Merolanna! You’re having a nightmare! Wake up!”

  “Don’t go! You can’t trust . . . he won’t ...” Her voice trailed off. For a moment she sat hunched in the bed, eyes closed as though she listened to some distant but important sound. Utta took the opportunity to pull the coverlet back up over Merolanna’s pale legs. “You can’t . . . !” the old woman said again, but this time with the confused sound of someone beginning to wake.

  “All is well.” Utta let go of her and sat up, taking Merolanna’s cold hand in her own. “You have had a bad dream, Duchess. Wake up now and see that everything is well.”

  “But it’s not.” Merolanna’s eyes fluttered open. She fixed Utta with a stare that was frightened but not the least bit groggy. “It’s not well. Nothing is well. He is coming for them.”

  “He? Coming for . . . ?” Utta shook her head. “It was just a bad dream, dear. I told you. You were kicking like an angry horse.” She raised her hand to the side of her face, which was beginning to ache now. “Throwing your elbows around freely, too.”

  “I am sorry.” But Merolanna looked as though Utta’s sore cheek was the last thing on her mind. “It was . . . it was not just a dream. It was too real. The gods sent it to me!”

  Utta took a deep breath. “Do you want to tell me?”

  “I . . . I’m not sure I can. It was so frightening, that’s what I remember most.”

  Utta couldn’t help thinking the duchess actually looked better than she had in weeks; perhaps the excitement of the renewed fighting had actually revived her spirits a bit. Utta had seen it in older women who had seemed ready to die, but responded to conflict—not war, but a struggle of some other kind, family or money troubles. Some people turned their backs at such times and death quickly took them, but others—and perhaps Merolanna was one of them—seemed to come back like a flower saved by unseasonal rain.

  “Just try.” Utta was awake now herself. After midnight, she thought. Outside, the cannons had finally stopped firing and the shouting had ended, at least until dawn when it would no doubt start again. Midsummer itself would clearly be another holy feast day spoiled by this endless war.

  “It was Kerneia,” Merolanna said suddenly, as if she had been thinking about holy days, too. “That was it. It must have been, because the people were in the street, all dressed in black and waving bones. But it was the cart, the great holy cart that frightened me so. It was closed, as it always was, but there was something inside it. Something alive, hidden inside that great black wooden box that sits atop the cart. All up and down the street the ropes were being pulled tight to get the cart moving, but I was the only one that knew something was wrong—that it wasn’t just the god inside, but something worse, something . . . worse.” For a moment, it truly seemed to come back to her and Merolanna’s face twisted in a grimace of fear, but her gaze was distant: she was not seeing Utta or her own bedroom at all. “And all the children . . . there were children in the street! Little ones, I don’t think they even knew what was happening, you know how they are when they’re young. Just . . . excited. And the ropes creaked and the wheels creaked and that big black cart began to roll . . . The Kernios priests were all over the cart, sitting on top of it, hanging off the sides, but none of them saw the children! I was the only one who saw them!” Suddenly her eyes reddened and filled with tears. “I tried to tell them . . . ! I tried to say, ‘No, don’t, there are children in the way,’ but nobody could hear me!”

  Now Utta took Merolanna’s other hand, too, and warmed them between hers while the woman snuffled quietly. “There. It’s all well. It was only a dream.”

  “But it w-wasn’t . . . !” said Merolanna. “That’s the problem! It was too real, too . . . it wasn’t just a dream.”

  “What do you mean, dear?” Utta wanted to go back to bed. In another few hours the fighting would start again, and she would spend another day waiting for a cannonball to collapse their small corner of the residence. She wasn’t even certain who was fighting whom anymore, and it was nearly impossible these days to find anyone who knew any more than she did. “You really should go back to sleep ...”

  “It wasn’t a dream, Utta. It was a vision—the sort the oracles have. I know it. The children are in danger. All the children. The gods want me to save them!”

  It was all Utta could do at this point to keep her temper. It was one thing to humor a sick old woman, or even to be her unpaid companion, another thing entirely to have to sit exhausted at her bedside in the middle of the night and listen to her comparing herself to the Blessed Zoria. “It sounds terrible, dear Merolanna. We’ll certainly talk about it in the morning. The gods know you need some sleep. ...”

  And only the gods would be able to say whether the dowager duchess got any. In the early morning, when the return of daylight brought the first crash of gunfire and shouting, Sister Utta awoke to discover that sometime after she herself had fallen asleep again, Merolanna had got up, dressed herself, and vanished from the residence.

  It seemed to Barrick he was fighting a hundred battles at once, battles of memory and battles of very present danger all pressed together into one head-splitting mass. He and the Qar survived surge after surge of Xixian troops, which kept pouring inward from either end of the main passage as though a river of soldiers had flooded its banks.

  He found the queen resting for a moment, which showed how long they had been fighting. He had never seen the Qar anything but tireless, although he knew from the Fireflower voices that they could indeed grow weary. She was protected by Hammerfoot’s huge son, who had reddish, bumpy skin like crumbled bricks. The Ettin turned at Barrick’s approach and nearly took his head off with a swipe of his rocky hand.

  “Peace, Singscrape,” Saqri told him. “It is the manchild.”

  “What makes you think I didn’t know that?” asked the giant.

  “Why doesn’t Yasammez fight?” Barrick demanded. “And where are the Elementals? They could paint this whole cavern with fire and we’d drive these southern animals out in a moment.”

  “The Elementals . . . are not under my control at the moment.”

  Shocked as he was, Barrick could also feel a history of discontent and wounded fellowship, but Saqri was hiding her darkest thoughts from him. The Fireflower had fallen almost entirely silent. “And Yasammez . . . ?”

  “She is too important to waste here, long before our greatest need. No, I need her strong.”

  “But if we can’t get across this passage . . . !”

  “We will. I have been waiting for the moment when our foes are most precariously balanced. Even as we speak, a confusion has fallen among the southerners coming down from behind. The Tricksters have distracted them. The Xixian archers in this room have also nearly run out of shafts. We have a short time to do what we must.”

  And before Barrick could ask any more questions, Saqri sang out a single high-pitched note. Simultaneously, he could feel her in his thoughts, as did every other Qar creature in that part of the deeps. “Now strike for the far side!”

  From that moment on, Barrick Eddon had no more time to think.
The Qar surged forward in what looked at first like a ragged and uncoordinated mass, but by the time the Xandian troops realized that it was very well coordinated indeed, the fairies had stabbed into the southerners on the far side of the cavern like a well-honed spear, with the monstrous Ettins and corpse-white Unforgiven at the forefront, spreading terror. The Xixians did their best to hold, their sergeants shrieking at them to dig in and not give up a step, but no pair or even trio of ordinary men could stand up against one of the Deep Ettins hand to hand, and now the giants were crashing through the Xixian lines together, their massive clubs and axes flailing. With each blow, one or two southerners were smashed to the cavern floor or tossed into the air, helpless as rabbits caught by a mastiff; those who fell were cut down by the Unforgiven or swarmed by the glowing Children of the Emerald Fire, who slit throats as easily as if they murdered oblivious, sleeping men.

  Still, it was a near thing. Once the southerners had absorbed the shock of the new attack, they rushed back in from the sides even faster in an attempt to block the opposite passage with their own bodies and thus keep the Qar bottled in the main tunnel.

  Barrick was fighting only a few paces behind Saqri now, doing his best to guard the queen’s back. She moved forward in perfect balance, blocking and then attacking with the precision of a temple priest enacting an ancient ritual, and the Fireflower voices inside him rejoiced and yet also fretted to see this queen, who to them was all queens, matching herself against warriors twice her bulk and still succeeding. Barrick could not watch her for longer than a moment or two without risk to his own life, but Saqri moved like a white flame, slipping in and out of the deepest shadows so swiftly and so brightly that at moments he thought he could see her swan form flickering about her.

  Only a last few defenders still blocked the entrance to the far cross-passage. At a word in their heads from Saqri, the Ettins fell on them and within moments cleared an opening. The last of the Qar force now hurried across the main passage and followed the rest into the cross-tunnel, the physician Chaven and the less warlike Qar near the back. Yasammez and her black-clad guards came last. The god’s daughter did not even look at Barrick when she passed, her cloak pulled up around her neck and head, her face like a thunderstorm.

  When everyone was in, Yasammez’s guards turned to hold the doorway—the Xixians had regrouped outside and were now trying to push their way into the passage. “We cannot have them behind us.” Saqri’s voice echoed in Barrick’s skull. “Hammerfoot, my friend, are you badly wounded?”

  The giant took a few steps forward, forcing others to flatten themselves against the corridor walls. The edge of his great shield was hacked and pitted, as was his helmet, though his eyes still gleamed beneath the visor. His rough skin was shiny with dark blood from a dozen or more deep wounds. “Passing well, my queen.”

  “It is for you and your kin to hold this passage now. We cannot do what we must do if the southerners are behind us. I need time, Hammerfoot, prince of the deeps.”

  “Daughter of the First Flower, my sons and I will give you as much as our last breaths can buy,” he said. “Come, Deeplings!” he bellowed, and several of the great Ettins moved up to join him, Singscrape and a half dozen more; in a moment they had taken the place of Yasammez’s guards, their big bodies filling the tunnel as though they had rolled there in some ancient avalanche. “Go, now,” Hammerfoot rumbled, even his thoughts so deep and strong that they made the bones of Barrick’s head quiver.

  Saqri turned away. Her eyes were dry. “Forward,” was all she said to the rest.

  Barrick looked back at the Ettins. Hammerfoot was sharpening his great ax blade against a stone. He saw Barrick and lifted a massive pointing finger in a sort of salute.

  “Keep the queen alive as long as you can, manchild,” the giant rumbled. “Do not waste our deaths!”

  Barrick turned to follow the rest of the Qar down into the hot depths.

  34

  Coming Home

  “The treacherous servant Moros had run away with the shining white horse ... The Orphan had to walk all the way back to Syan (as it is now called) carrying a piece of the burning sun in an eggshell ...”

  —from “A Child’s Book of the Orphan, and His Life and Death and Reward in Heaven”

  MIDSUMMER’S EVE WAS OVER and the morning sun of fateful Midsummer’s Day was high in the sky, but the castle was still not theirs, and only the gods knew what was happening in the depths beneath their feet.

  Briony and Eneas hurried the rest of the Temple Dogs in from the outer keep through Chert’s secret way and fast-marched them through the empty streets behind Raven’s Gate, deserted since the cannon fire had resumed. Briony half expected an ambush to erupt from the Throne hall but the damaged building remained as silent as the immense graveyard beside it. Was Hendon Tolly really so certain he could defend the royal residence against all comers? Or did he plan to use her subjects as hostages and stall her until he could escape? Briony had no doubt that Hendon Tolly knew an Eddon rode with the Syannese soldiers. It must be clear to him that his reign was over, but he was waiting for some final throw of the dice. She had imagined every way the coming confrontation might play out, from the dramatic foolishness of challenging the usurper to single combat to simply having him filled with arrows the first time he showed himself, even under a flag of parley, but the more she considered, the more she doubted she’d have the restraint to deal with Hendon face-to-face. The thought of his satisfied smirk had haunted her dreams for months.

  Briony, Eneas, and the Temple Dogs, their numbers swelled now by Southmarch soldiers, crossed the edge of the great commons and halted by the small, mostly empty lake to assess the defenses. It was strange to see the royal residence caparisoned for war—almost pathetic, like some ancient nobleman forced into armor at a point when he was long past it. The great lawns and gardens were gone, and only torn, naked earth remained; the lower floor had been covered in boards and piled stone to protect the windows, and the turrets at each corner of the vast, square building had been turned into cannon nests. Briony wondered how long the guns would stay silent. Several hundred of Eneas’ soldiers were still fit for battle, but if they had to take the residence under cannon fire and arrows from the guard posts on the roof this would be a long, difficult siege, the last thing Briony wanted. Still, she could see no other choice.

  “We must give them a chance to surrender,” Eneas said in a low voice.

  “No. Hendon will only parley to buy time. He is a devil. We will have to take the residence. That is the only way.”

  “And I say we will not.” Eneas’ voice rose a little. “My lady, I do not doubt that you know this Tolly fellow well, but I cannot risk my men’s lives without giving the defenders a chance to surrender. You said it yourself. The innocent must be spared. If you fear to see Tolly himself, stay back with Helkis and the others.”

  She felt her cheeks go hot with blood. “I don’t fear to see him, Eneas, but if you parley with the dog who stole our kingdom, I can’t promise I won’t put this blade right through his grinning face.”

  “You will not do that under my flag of truce,” he said, his voice hard. “You will not, Lady.”

  Her teeth were clenched so hard her jaws hurt. “Very well. I will stand back and stay silent. Call for your parley.”

  To her surprise, the man who came out of the front door of the residence under a white banner made from a bedcover was Sisel, the Hierarch of Southmarch. The old man had not aged well since Briony saw him last, his face so thin and his cheeks so shadowed that she wondered if he had been ill.

  “I come under your safe-conduct,” he said as he approached. “Prince Eneas, I believe? I have news for you.” As he came closer, his eyes lit on Briony and widened, but he did not say anything to her.

  “Do you speak for Hendon, Eminence?” the prince asked. “I have terms for his surrender. Surely he knows there is no chance for him. This is Her Royal Highness Princess Briony. She has returned to claim her family’
s throne.”

  “To claim it for my father, who still lives,” she said as loudly and clearly as she could, so that anyone listening from atop the residence walls would hear—especially any Tollys.

  “Blessed Brothers, it is you, Princess!” Sisel seemed not just surprised but frightened, as though simply by surviving this year of war he had done something wrong. “My eyes . . . It will be a great joy to your people to know you live . . . !”

  “Enough,” she said. “There will be time for such things later, Hierarch. Tell us what the traitor Tolly has to say. Will he surrender and spare innocent lives?”

  “But . . . but that is just it,” said Sisel. “He is not here!”

  “The pig!” Briony could scarcely contain her anger and disappointment. “Where has he gone?”

  “I am still a lord of the church, whatever else has happened,” Sisel said stiffly. “To insult my position is to insult the Trigon itself.”

  “My apologies, Eminence,” Briony said, cursing inwardly. “Please forgive me.”

  He gave a little nod of satisfaction. “No one in the residence has seen him since yesterday, Highness. It could be he’s hiding somewhere, or has disguised himself in hopes of escaping unnoticed—many strangers and refugees are living in the great hall these days. He may even have left the castle entirely. ...”

  “Gone?”

  Eneas held up his hand. “Then who rules here, Eminence? What of Tolly’s lieutenants?”

  “Lord Constable Hood fled less than an hour ago. He has likely headed to the southernmost side of the keep, near the Tower of Summer. He took scaling ladders. He and his men may mean to climb out and join Durstin Crowel in Funderling Town.”

  Eneas promptly sent two pentecounts of his men at speed around the residence to try to stop Hood from escaping. He and Briony and a small troop of men then followed the Hierarch back into the residence, wary lest somehow, against all seeming, the Trigonarch’s chosen might lead them into a trap, but the welcoming crowd that spilled out was real enough, courtiers and even a few Southmarch soldiers, all dirty and thin with hunger, all anxious to greet their rescuers, and all doubly pleased when they learned of Briony’s presence. She and Eneas had not gone more than a few paces through the loud and growing throng when a small woman shoved her way through, wailing like a death-spirit, ignoring Briony entirely to cast herself at the feet of the Syannese prince.