Shadowheart s-4

by Tad Williams

  A fitting symbol, Vansen thought with a twinge of satisfaction. They thought they had the strength to take what they wanted here, but they underestimated the will of the Marchmen… especially the courage of the Funderlings. And now they come to us as humble as you please.

  When the boat had been drawn up to the makeshift dock, built from the last stones that remained of the causeway, a group of Xixian soldiers in leopard-spotted cloaks filed off it and lined up on either side of the causeway, followed by a slow-moving figure in an elaborate ceremonial robe. As this lean old fellow made his way forward, propped on the arm of a youthful servant, the soldiers still on the boat began to lift out a large, covered litter.

  The old man reached the front of the pavilion where Briony sat with Eneas standing protectively beside her. The prince of Syan looked so much the handsome royal husband already that Vansen could have happily seen him shot with an arrow. The Xixian made an elaborate bow that did not quite cross over into actual humility. Then the youthful servant made a shrill announcement that his stumbling words suggested he had been forced to memorize, "I parsent His Revered Seff… Revered Self, the Wise Elder, Paramount Mis… Minister Pinimmon Vash."

  "You are safe in our company, Minister Vash," Briony told the old man. "And so are all who travel with you."

  The paramount minister pressed his hands together and bowed to her again. "Your Highness is too kind. Before we begin our formal discussion, may I take this moment to extend my deepest sorrows on the death of your father? I came to know him well in the last months-almost we were friends, I would say…"

  "Friends?" Briony's voice had lost its smooth strength. "Your master killed my father, Minister Vash. Is this not hypocritical, to feign sorrow?"

  "It is not feigned, Highness," he said with the ease of a veteran courtier. "And it is about my late… master that we wish to speak."

  "We?"

  "My present monarch… and myself. But I must beg your indulgence. Autarch Prusus has certain frailties that make it difficult for him to speak clearly. We hope you will indulge us and let me assist him."

  "How do we know you will not simply say what you wish-that you are not the true ruler of Xis now?" demanded Eneas.

  "Oh, my master can speak your tongue," the old man assured him. "He is a scholar. But it is difficult for him." At this, Vash turned and clapped his hands. The litter was carried forward and set down in front of the pavilion. When the curtains were drawn back even Briony had a difficult time hiding her surprise.

  The new autarch was a simpleton, or so it appeared, his head lolling, a sheen of drool on his chin. Even his legs and arms seemed unwilling to be led by such a creature and seemed to be struggling clumsily to remove themselves from his trunk.

  "Forgive me, but what is this?" demanded Prince Eneas. "Is this a jest or a trick, Xixian?"

  "Please, Highness," Briony said. "Do not be hasty. Autarch Prusus, do you understand me?"

  The man in the litter nodded, a complicated affair of wags and hitches.

  "And do you truly speak our tongue?"

  The autarch made a long series of stammering noises. Vansen actually heard a word he understood. "… Dignity."

  "He says he does, and he apologizes," Vash said. "The Golden One says the gods gave him more wit than dignity."

  Briony smiled a hard smile. "Then he would be an ill fit in most courts, where it is generally the other way around-but come into our tent and we will speak. There is no forgiveness in my heart for Xis, but I want no more fighting if it can be avoided."

  "Please, Princess Briony," said ancient Vash, "it was your father's own scheme that brought Prusus and I together-he alone saw through the scotarch's outer seeming and made me aware as well. That is why at the last I found a few sympathetic men to help me carry the scotarch and we escaped. That is why we did not die in the caverns beneath your castle. It was your father's cleverness that saved us."

  "Do not think to flatter me with what my father did while he struggled for his life-a life your master eventually took from him." Vansen could see that Briony was fighting to stay calm. He longed more than anything to be able to put his hand upon her, to let her know she was not alone-but of course he couldn't. "From what I have been told about your people, it is scarcely worth our while to negotiate. As soon as you return to Xis, this man…" she gestured to the new autarch, who was being helped to drink watered wine by a servant, "will be replaced by another member of your mad royal family. So why should I not simply leave you all to make your way across Eion by land and let things fall out as they will?" Her smile this time was even harder. "I do not think you would have a happy time leading your survivors through Syan and Hierosol."

  Vash nodded, but it was plain he too was nettled. "Yes, and more innocents would be killed. I do not speak of our soldiers here, Highness. We invaded you… or rather, the previous autarch forced us to invade. And ordinarily you would be correct-Prusus would have only a short time to rule before a successor was chosen. But he and I think we have a better plan. There is an old law among our people that the scotarch will rule until a successor has been chosen. However, if the autarch is not dead but simply gone, the successor cannot be chosen until five years have passed." Vash smiled. For all his age he had the confident smile of a younger man. "We will be able to do much in five years, I think, to change that which we like least about our country. For one, if you let us take passage from here, we will withdraw our army from Hierosol as well."

  "Truly?" said Eneas. His skepticism was plain. "Why should you do that?"

  Prusus abruptly spoke up. Vansen could make out an occasional word now, but much of it still sounded like animal noises.

  "He says, 'Because conquest is expensive, and maintaining it is more so,'" the old man explained. "Xis has overstretched its boundaries and resources. We have enough to do taking care of our empire in Xand. All of the adventuring here in the north was the obsession of Sulepis, all bent toward what he thought to do here, in Southmarch." Vash bowed. "But Prusus says that he, who is scarcely a man, has no illusions that he is fit to be a god. He thinks he can be a goodly autarch, however, for as long as the gods give him to rule."

  "You promise this?" Briony said, looking not at Vash now but at Prusus. "If we let you and your men take ship-and you Xixians will pay for those ships and pay for everything that goes upon them-then you promise you will withdraw your armies from the rest of Eion?"

  Prusus' head wagged several times before he could get out the words. They were hard to understand, but not impossible.

  "Yiy… I… do. I… puh… rah… misss."

  "You and Minister Vash may return to your camp in the hills. My counselors, Prince Eneas, and I must talk together."

  "I am disposed to trust them, not because I believe everything they say-Vash, it is clear to me, is a man who has long acquaintance with the manipulation of truth-but because I see no choice." In the privacy of the tent she had taken off her headpiece. A sheen of sweat flecked her brow. Vansen realized he was staring.

  "I do not like it, Briony," said Prince Eneas. "Don't do it. I think it is a mistake."

  She gave him enough of a nettled look to make Ferras Vansen happier than he had been in hours. "I'm grateful for your advice, Eneas, but please remember, this is Southmarch soil, and although I will never be able to repay all you have done for me and my people, I am still the mistress here, even if I have not yet been crowned."

  She truly has changed, Vansen realized. Most of the petty angers have gone. What remains is just and necessary… even queenly.

  Briony frowned. "In any case, what can we do? Imprison them all? Execute them…?"

  As she spoke a guard came in, clearly in haste. He bent and whispered his message to Vansen, who immediately stepped forward.

  "Princess," he said, "my men say that a boat is coming, not from the Southmarch mainland but across the bay from Oscastle…"

  "Surely that is not so unusual, Captain Vansen? Or is it a warship?"

  "No, but…
" He did not know what to say. "Perhaps you should come and see."

  It took only a short time to throw back the curtains again and open the pavilion to the blue sky and the green bay all around. The Marrinswalk ship was impossible to mistake, a single-masted cog of the type usually meant for fast travel and vital news, but what caught Vansen's attention were the three flags she flew. One was the owl of the Marrinswalk's ducal family, but she also showed the black and silver of the Eddons and another pennant with a strange sigil that Vansen did not recognize.

  "By the gods," said Steffens Nynor, his wispy hair a little disarranged with drink and the heat of the day, "they're flying the battle standard of the Southmarch master of arms. But we have no master of arms. Not since…"

  "Do not say it," Briony told him. "Do not tempt the gods to cruelty or tricks."

  The ship anchored a short distance out in the bay and a boat rowed across to the causeway and tied up on the opposite side from the Xixian falcon boat, which was just raising anchor. As if in studied imitation of the southern delegation, this boat too disgorged a man in dark traveling clothes and a broad hat; the man at the front of the landing boat was even darker of skin than Pinimmon Vash.

  "Oh, merciful Zoria, is that truly Dawet?" Briony said. She stood up and waved her hand. "Master Dan-Faar, is it you?"

  The newcomer waved from the end of the causeway, but Vansen thought it a subdued gesture. The dark man climbed out as the boat was still being tied and walked up the road toward the pavilion.

  Briony clapped her hands. "I am so pleased you have come to us!" she called. "I feared something had happened to you-that you would never see the happy result of all our labors together in Syan."

  The man Vansen had last seen as the envoy of Ludis Drakava mounted the wooden steps to the pavilion. He bowed and kissed Briony's hand. "I rejoice to see you back on your throne again, Princess." He turned and made a bow to the prince as well. "Your Royal Highness."

  Eneas and Ferras Vansen looked at each other, unhappy with the arrival of this handsome newcomer and with Briony's obvious affection for him.

  "But why did you come in such a manner, Master Dan-Faar, flying the flag of the master of arms?" Briony asked him. "Do you seek to fill the position?" She laughed, but suddenly looked unsure. "And why are you dressed so, all in black? Has something happened?

  Dawet was still on his knees, as if he were too weary to rise. He took a square of parchment from his cloak and offered it to her. "Here, Princess. This is for you."

  Watching the way Briony flinched at the letter, Vansen wanted to leap forward and snatch it from her hand, but he knew he could not. She took it and broke the seal, then spread it on her lap. For a moment she read it in silence, then held it out to Dan-Faar, blinking away tears. "I cannot… I…" She shook her head. "Please read it to me."

  "To Princess Briony from her friend and servant, Idite ela-dan-Mozan, greetings.

  On the night of the fire, we were able to bring the great man Shaso dan-Heza out of the flames of my husband's house, may the Great Mother guide and protect them both on their journeys. Shaso had taken great injury fighting with the men who set the fire, giving the women, children, and others a chance to escape the destruction, but he lived long enough to ask after your safety. When we told him you could not be found but had not been captured, he seemed satisfied, and died without saying more. Shaso was a man of great honor and wisdom. Tuan and Southmarch are both sadder places for his loss…"

  Dawet lowered the letter and turned to Briony. "I have returned a great man to Southmarch, my lady, so my ship bears his insignia. I am dressed in mourning because I bring back only his ashes." He lowered his head. "Princess, I come to confirm what was heretofore only a sad belief. Shaso dan-Heza is dead."

  "Are you certain we are allowed to be here?" Opal asked again. Even the stolid presence of Brother Antimony did not seem to reassure her. The Tower of Summer, at the very heart of the castle, was not the kind of place where most Funderlings would ever feel comfortable, even though their ancestors had helped build it.

  "The Big Folk owe a debt to the Rooftoppers now," said Brother Antimony. "I do not think they would grudge their use of an abandoned tower."

  "Be grateful," Chert told his wife as they trooped up past another closed room. "When I wanted to visit them, I had to climb onto the roof."

  "You? At your age? What were you thinking?"

  "Fracture and fissure, woman, I'm not that old."

  But he knew she didn't really mean it-like him, she was struggling to make sense of a world that had gone completely downside-up. Funderling Town remained a madhouse, with some neighborhoods still sealed off by the Guild and patrolled by the Big Folk's royal guards until the last of Durstin Crowel's men were rounded up. Almost every home had at least one survivor of the war, many of them wounded, not to mention all the surviving monks who had lost not just the Mysteries themselves but their temple home as well-and that, of course, had been mostly Chert's doing. And even though many of Funderling Town's citizens regarded flooding the depths as a heroic, brilliant act that might well have saved all their lives, Chert and Antimony and the engineers that had accomplished it were now despised by the most traditional and conservative of their kind, including the Metamorphic Brothers, many of whom had made it clear that Chert Blue Quartz would never be forgiven for what he (as they saw it) had taken from them.

  "Here," he said as they reached the final landing. He pushed open the door. "The top floor."

  Opal went through first. "Oh," she said in a faint voice. "Oh, look how many…!"

  We'll be attending quite a few more of these, Chert thought. A vast assembly of such unhappy gatherings, funerals and memorials for fallen friends, awaited them in the days ahead. But in truth, he decided, what they watched now was more than a bit like a Funderling memorial ceremony, but one seen from the very back row of the guildhall: the tiny figures came out and performed their parts, but he and Opal could scarcely hear them and had to guess at what was being said and done. There was no coffin, of course, and no image of Beetledown the Bowman that he could see either, but the Rooftoppers' tiny voices were convincingly somber and the attitude of the mourners indisputably sad. Chert's friend had been well-loved by his people, that was clear, and understanding this reminded him that he would never see Beetledown's tiny, friendly face again. It was strange, because he had never known whether the little scout was married or had children, so he could scarcely claim to have been close to him, but they had been through adventures together nobody else could even imagine, let alone claim to have shared.

  Chert found himself suddenly dabbing at his eyes with his sleeve, trying to hide what he was doing from Antimony and Opal. Because of this, he did not see the queen of the Rooftoppers' first steps out into the center of the empty fireplace, but he heard the tiny shell trumpets that announced her and hastily finished wiping away his tears.

  She stood, smaller than a child's doll, in a beautiful dress of stiff, shiny fabric studded with beads so small Chert could scarcely even make them out. Beside him, Opal took a deep breath.

  "My," his wife whispered, "isn't she so pretty!"

  "That's the queen," he whispered back.

  "Don't you think I could tell, you old fool?"

  "Her most Insidious and Unalloyed Majesty, Upsteeplebat the Queen!" announced a crier the size of a darning needle, then blew on his fluted shell trumpet again.

  "Upsteeplebat?" Opal murmured. "What kind of name is that?"

  "Hush."

  The queen looked up into the heights of the room-or so it must have seemed to her-where the faces of her giant guests loomed like three moons hanging in the sky. She nodded in a way that suggested that she was glad to see them, but she directed her words to the crowd of mourners.

  "I do not come here to lament over the death of Beetledown the Bowman, chief of my Gutter-Scouts," she began in a surprisingly loud, high voice, "because we know that he is with the Hand of the Sky in the heights above the heights, and in
that attic of delight there is no sadness, no pain.

  "But I do stand before you to say that we will miss him, because our love for him was fierce-as was his love for his race and his nation, from the tip of the Iron Needle to the depths of the terrifying earth, from the Great Wainscoting to the fields of the South Roofs where our sky-steeds graze. Beetledown gave the greatest gift he had so that these things could survive, and so you and I could see our people prosper in a world that so often taxes us with hardship, but which is nevertheless the only world we the living have…"

  "She speaks wondrous well," whispered Antimony.

  "She is their queen," said Chert. "She is altogether admirable."

  Opal gave him a look that he could feel without seeing. "Admirable, is she?"

  "She is their queen and a goodly one, that is all I am saying!"

  "Bad enough you are a troublesome old dog who likes to roam," she said with quiet intensity, "but when you cast your eye on a woman no bigger than a baby's rattle…!"

  "Oh, stop." He was mortified, and fearful that their voices might carry farther than they guessed among such small, sharp-eared creatures. "That is nonsense, woman, and you know it."

  Opal sniffed, but fell silent again.

  "… And without a moment's hesitation, after all that he had already given to his people and his queen, he said he would do it." Upsteeplebat was still extolling Beetledown's virtues. "Let those who are children this day look to his example-no finer one could have been set for you."

  The thought of children made Chert's heart grow even heavier. Opal was not really angry with him, he knew, nor did she believe for a moment he felt anything for the tiny queen of the Rooftoppers. She was angry at him for letting Flint go, and angry at herself more than at him. This day's ceremony was no doubt reminding her of the day the boy had disappeared, that he had last been seen helping Beetledown escape a deadly attack to reach Antimony with the Astion, and that shortly after that sighting everything beneath that place, including the spot where Flint had been, had vanished in a remorseless crush of water. Corpses were still drifting up to the surface of the Salt Pool from its new tributaries below, bodies of Funderlings and Xixians and Qar alike. Chert knew Opal was terrified that Flint's fate had been the same as theirs, that their house would be one of those to receive a visit from a gang of men carrying a dripping body on a covered bier.