Shadowheart s-4

by Tad Williams

  As if to underscore this theme of renewal, Merolanna was sitting up in her bed taking soup from one of her maids. The duchess had seemed at death's door only a few days ago, but today was feeling so much better that Sister Utta had been able to leave the nursing to others and go out of the house for a little while.

  "Utta!" Merolanna pushed away her bowl with a trembling hand and shook her head sternly when the maid offered her more. "I have been asking for you, my dear. I feel as though I have been on a long journey. Tell me all the news, quickly-is it true Hendon Tolly and his bullies are gone?"

  "Tolly is dead by all reports," Utta said, sitting on the edge of the bed. "But you should lie back and rest. We will have plenty of time to talk later."

  "Nonsense. At my age?" Merolanna laughed, although her voice was still weak and reedy. "In any case, I have news of my own! I have met my son."

  "What?" Utta's heart, so buoyant only a moment before at seeing her friend so much better, suddenly felt cold. Was it still the lingering fever, or was this madness something separate and deeper, something that would not go away even if the dowager duchess regained her health? "You saw him?"

  "Not just saw him, met him! He came to me!" The old woman laughed again, then frowned as the maid dabbed at a spot of soup on her chin. "Stop that, girl. And Utta, don't frown. I can tell by your face that you think this some feebleness of mine, or else a piece of fever-foolery, but it was neither. He came to my bedside last night after you slept. I saw him and spoke to him. He even remembered his true name, the name only I know… Adis." She looked a little abashed. "I named him for the holy Orphan, yes. But even so, it did not protect him-the fairies stole him anyway."

  Now Utta wondered if Merolanna had been tricked by some enterprising beggar-child who thought he had found himself a patroness that could strew the way before him with gold. Utta wasn't certain what she would do if that were the case. "Is he coming here, then? Did you invite him to stay with you?"

  "Of course I did. But he has too much to do. He was very involved in the war against the fairies, you know." The old woman frowned. "Or was it the war against the southerners? I cannot quite remember. But in either case he has too much to do to stop here with an old woman. But he has scarcely changed since I lost him! Can you imagine!"

  Now Utta felt a real chill. "But, Merolanna, when he was lost… that was fifty years ago."

  "I know. Is it not a strange, miraculous thing?" The dowager duchess sat back among the cushions. "Still, I am happy, and he promised I would see him again. Now tell me everything that has happened while I was ill. I am hungry for more than soup…!"

  Barrick looked down at the girl's face, so familiar and yet so strange. Only a short while earlier, Briony had stood in this same rock chamber, and she too had seemed an inexplicable mixture of the unknowable and the known. Could she really be his twin sister, the one who had sometimes seemed so close that she might have been just another part of himself? And could Qinnitan, lying here before him lit only by the deathly gleam of a few candles, really be a stranger he had never seen in the flesh until that moment down in the Mysteries?

  Qinnitan? Can you hear me? He emptied his thoughts of everything-Saqri, Briony, all that had happened since the last spring moon began to grow-and tried once more. Qinnitan. It's Barrick. I need you. I need to speak with you. But he could feel nothing in that distant corner of his thoughts and his heart where she had once lived. Qinnitan!

  He sat beside her. The Fireflower voices, quiescent and drowsy as sun-warmed bees, murmured to him of the Deathwatch Chamber, of quiet, dignified passage to the beyond, but he did not want to hear it. For once, the knowledge of the kings of the Qar meant little: they knew of no precedent for what was happening. Without the two halves of the Fireflower, there would be no Deep Library, and the voices there would drift into isolated madness. Qinnitan would leave him. Saqri would vanish, too. Soon his head would be empty but for the Fireflower. All of them gone, across the river or waiting on its banks to ford those dark waters. Even Ynnir had all but left him and was running in the far fields, soon to pass onto whatever was next as the earthly bloodline ended.

  The idea came to him like a piece of distant music-only another sound at first, but one whose melody at last won out over more random, ordinary noises. Ynnir. The fields. The river…

  Barrick sank down into himself, thinking. The candles glowed. After a time some of them had burned so low that they began to flicker and go out, but still he sat beside the motionless form of the dark-haired girl, considering.

  47

  Death of the Eddons "… So she took him by the hand but Kernios sent the spirits of the fearsome dead to follow them and harry them… Zoria went so swiftly that she dared not even look at the Orphan, and he did not cry out or make a sound…"

  -from "A Child's Book of the Orphan, and His Life and Death and Reward in Heaven"

  Briony knew she should dress properly for the meeting, but it was easier when the time came to go to the duchess' chambers in her morning robes, with a soft cap on her hair and only one of her ladies to accompany her.

  It's like being a child again, she thought-but, of course, it was nothing like that at all.

  Utta met her at the door. For a moment the Zorian sister didn't seem to know what to do, whether to bow to her or embrace her. Briony relieved her of the decision by opening her arms. "Oh, please, Utta, don't be a stranger! Not after all that's happened!"

  The old woman smiled and embraced her. Utta was thinner than she had been, as were most of the castle's residents: the siege had bitten hard in the last months.

  "I am so pleased to see you, Princess," Utta said. "But like all of us, I grieve for your father."

  "Of course." Briony wiped at her eyes and laughed. "It seems every hour I am either doing my best not to cry or trying to look stern and awful, like a true monarch. Ah, but it's good to see you."

  "And you, Highness." Utta looked at her with obvious fondness. Briony was comforted to know that at least a few things hadn't changed.

  Utta led Briony to her great-aunt's bedside. Briony had been prepared for the change, but seeing Merolanna still shocked her: only months before, the dowager duchess had been the very picture of a vigorous elderly woman. Now she seemed quite diminished, both eyes and cheeks sunken, as if she had begun to shrink inward on herself like fruit spoiling in a bowl. Still, the old woman's eyes were bright, and when she saw Briony, she was able to lift herself up onto her elbows.

  "The Three be praised!" she said. "Utta, push these cushions behind me so I can look at my dear Briony properly." Merolanna shook her head. She wore only a coif instead of her usual wig and elaborate headdress-even her head seemed to have become smaller. "Come and tell me everything. Your poor father! Oh, what dreadful days we have seen here, dreadful days. But things will be better now."

  Briony was still confounded. It was as if some other player had been brought in to play the part-her great-aunt might have aged ten years since last Winter's Eve.

  "Of course," she said out loud. "Of course, Auntie 'Lanna. Things will all be better now."

  "You look beautiful and strong, my lady," Rose Trelling told her. Briony's other companion Moina had been gone from the castle for months, returned to her family's great house in the east, but Rose had stayed in Southmarch with her uncle Avin Brone and now had taken back her duties as lady-in-waiting with alacrity. She fastened the clasp on the heavy necklace, which lay too brightly against her mistress' pale skin, like a string of stars.

  "I do not feel much of either," Briony said, turning to examine herself in the mirror. "Especially today, when I must bury my father." She thought the huge, stiff dress made her look like a ship under sail, and not a fast brig, either. "A merchant's carrack," she said. "Wallowing under a full cargo."

  "My lady?"

  "Never mind." Much as she would have liked things to return to what they had once been, Briony could not make it so by wishing: just looking at Rose's sweet, open face reminded her of Brone, t
he girl's uncle. The time was coming fast when she must confront him with what the play-wright Teodoros had seen. It was clear from the way Brone looked at her that King Olin's closest supporter knew something was wrong, but she could not bear to face him until after her father's funeral. Still, it could not wait longer than that. If the man was an enemy, as she had become more and more certain, wasn't it dangerous letting him walk free when he must know that she suspected him? No, she must deal with him tonight, after the funeral.

  "Send for Tallow, the master of the royal guard," she told a waiting page. "I have an hour until the service begins, so I would see him now."

  "Stop squirming!" Rose scolded as the boy hurried out. "If you don't let me tame this last unruly curl, you will have hair like a beggar woman's!"

  To Briony's surprise it was not Jem Tallow who responded to her summons.

  "Princess," said Ferras Vansen, kneeling just inside the doorway, "I heard your summons and took it upon myself to answer in Tallow's place. If I have done wrong, I apologize."

  She sighed, but not so loud that he could hear it. "Apologies certainly seem to be your stock in trade, Captain Vansen. Do you truly think you have so much to be sorry for?"

  He colored a little. "More than I would like, Highness. I spoke out of turn when I claimed I brought your brother back to you. The truth is, I left him in the shadowlands, although it was not by choice. He brought himself back to Southmarch."

  It was strange how much he reminded her of Barrick-not in how he looked, or spoke, or acted, all of which could not have been more different, but in how he made her feel, frustrated and yet affectionate at the same time. But there was something more in what she felt for him than she had ever felt for her brother-something she did not know what to do with. And of course, there was Eneas, still waiting for an answer…

  She did her best not to show the confusion of her thoughts. "I have need of the guard tonight, after the funeral. Will you make certain that a troop of them come to me in the new throne room?"

  "The tent?" He colored again. "I do not mean to make light of it…"

  She laughed. "It is a tent. You only tell the truth."

  "Of course, Highness. A half-pentecount of your best men will be there-I will see to it." He rose and would have backed out the door, but she held up her hand.

  "We have scarcely spoken in this last tennight, Captain Vansen. I will have one of the pages bring you a chair, and you can tell me more about what you have gone through." She waved to one of the boys. "There is so much about what happened here that I still can't understand."

  "Nor can any of us, Highness," he said somberly. "I suspect we would know more if we could hear from everyone who fought here, from Funderlings and upgrounders, even the Qar and the Xixians…"

  "Upgrounders? What does that mean?"

  "Your pardon, Princess. That is what the Funderlings call us-that and 'Big Folk.' It is strange how living among them I began to forget that I was not one of them, although I had twice their size!"

  "Then tell me about them, Captain. Tell me about my brother, too, and what happened to you both in the shadowlands. Tell me everything you can. I bury my father this afternoon, and I dread it."

  "I will never forgive myself that we could not save him," Vansen said, eyes downcast.

  "Enough. You brought his body back to me. And I was able to speak to him once myself, before the final days."

  "Truly?" He had not heard about this, it was clear.

  "Yes. So let us talk, Captain Vansen." She looked around at the maids and the ladies-in-waiting, the half dozen young pages, the life that had recaptured her. "I fear we may never have such a chance again."

  Vansen was ordinarily not much of a speechmaker, but the spirit of the tale caught him up: by the time he had finished telling of the last hours in the Funderling Mysteries, everyone in Briony's chamber had gathered around, servants and nobility together, all with open mouths and fearful faces. As he warmed to his task, he showed flashes of the dry wit he often hid, and although he downplayed his own role, Briony could see the many places where he shifted the credit to others. It reminded her a little of the way her father had told stories of his year fighting in Hierosol, and this in turn reminded her of the far less pleasant task that awaited her.

  "Thank you, Captain Vansen," she said when he stopped to drink from a cup of wine one of the ladies had brought him. "It is a gift of Heaven that our beloved Southmarch survived, but we lost so many." She shook her head. "My father, dear Chaven, all your brave Funderlings, and so many more." She did her best to smile, but it was difficult. "Now it is time to go to the funeral. You will not forget your promise to me, will you?"

  He looked startled. "I beg your pardon, Highness? My promise…?"

  "To see that the royal guard attends me tonight after the funeral?"

  "Ah." He seemed both relieved and disappointed. What else had he been expecting? Some embarrassing display of gratitude? Had she been wrong about his feelings for her after all? Not that it mattered. With Olin dead and her brother determined to leave Southmarch behind, Briony knew she no longer had the right to her own affections-to anything except what was good for the land and its people. "Of course, Highness," he told her. "I will see that your guard remains with you after the funeral."

  "Thank you, Captain Vansen. I owe you an apology and it… it troubles my sleep. I am truly sorry for the things I said to you in my time of pain after Kendrick's death. You are a good man and you have proved it many times over."

  Something strange moved just beneath his calm features. Anger? Sorrow? "I seek only to serve you, Highness," was all Vansen said. "And the March Kingdoms, of course."

  He rose quickly, bowed again, and hurried out. Briony sat for a moment, mustering the strength to rise and attend to her duties as chief mourner. Surrounded by her ladies and other folk, she still felt quite alone.

  Vansen did not like Briony's choice to hold the king's funeral in the dubious safety of the commons outside the royal residence, although he understood her desire to give the castle's population a chance to mourn together. Still, even though Durstin Crowel had finally surrendered and had been taken to the stronghold with his last supporters, some of Tolly's most dangerous allies like Berkan Hood were still unaccounted for, and although the guards were still vigorously searching for Hood, Ferras Vansen thought it was unforgivably dangerous for Briony to put herself and her father's infant son out in the open where an arrow from some distant rooftop could leave Southmarch without a ruler no matter what the undermanned royal guard tried to do.

  It only made him more confused about the days ahead. The royal guard, like the castle that housed them and the Eddon clan that employed them, had to be rebuilt. Jem Tallow had already tried to relinquish control to his former captain several times, but Vansen was not entirely certain he wanted his old position back. For one thing, it would force him to see Briony Eddon every day, and while that was in some ways his fondest wish, he also knew that being so close to her and unable to have her would be torment. And how long would it be until she gave herself to Eneas of Syan? What of Ferras Vansen, then? He would be little more than a page with a sword.

  Somehow it also seemed pointless to go back to doing what he had done before, however necessary it might be. Once you had fought both a god-king and an actual god, it would not be easy to return to daily duty rosters and the other more mundane parts of his profession. He was looking forward to peacetime-what soldier who had survived this madness wouldn't be?-but not to the problems of keeping five pentecounts of men occupied and battle-ready while protecting the rulers at every moment.

  Everybody had been waiting in the garden since midday as the long shadow of Wolfstooth Spire passed from west to east, but though the mood was somber, the people themselves seemed gathered for a more festive occasion, their places on the sunny grass marked off with blankets and cloaks, the remains of meals still to be seen. The royal family had been through the funeral service already as King Olin lay in state in
the hall of the residence. Now, with his body hidden inside a somber, sparsely decorated coffin draped in the Eddons' wolf and stars, the mourning chorus sang the threnody and Sisel spoke the good words that had to be spoken over the dead. Olin the just ruler, Olin the protector of his people, Olin the diplomat-Vansen thought the hierarch spoke of him as though he were one of the deathless Trigonate gods. He thought he would rather have known the man who had fathered Briony, Barrick, and Kendrick, the man who had inspired so much feeling in all of them, but it was not to be. That man had been mortal and now he was dead. Now he was only a story.

  "Though the terror and gratitude of those who pray fill thine ears always with myriad voice, O brothers who abide on the holy mountain Xand, yet hearken to us also, and grant this day your favor, that good Olin's exile now may have an end, and that he may return to you and to his native land, at rest from labor of long journeys…"

  The salt had been sprinkled and Sisel had just begun to chant the final prayer meant to guide the spirit of the departed king when Ferras Vansen felt a stirring among the mourners, as if the crowd were a field of flowers rippled by the wind. Was something amiss? He looked quickly to Briony, who had felt it, too.

  A procession was coming up the road between the armory and Wolfstooth Spire; the people at the far end of the commons had already turned to watch it. At first Vansen could see little of the newcomers as they passed through the tower's shadow, but as their leader stepped out into the sun Vansen saw hair that dazzled like flame. Barrick Eddon had arrived at his father's funeral. The prince wore clothes of loose-fitting white cloth and a hooded white cloak, much as Queen Saqri had done the few times Vansen had seen her; Vansen realized now that white must be the Qar's mourning color.