Shadowheart s-4

by Tad Williams

  Vansen smiled, but there was a touch of puzzlement to it. "Magic indeed. It's as if he aged ten years in a few months. And his arm is healed! He's changed so much that I hardly recognized him. When the stone-swallowing demons came at us, every last one of us would have died if Barrick and the Qar had not shown up…"

  "The stone what?" She had a strange, troubled look on her face now. "Stone-swallowing…? I have not heard this tale before. Tell me."

  He pulled her closer. "Your maids and ladies…?"

  "Leave them be a little longer."

  He described the final battle in the Maze in detail now, of how he and the Funderlings gave ground until there was no more ground to give.

  "So brave!" she said. "And not just you, dearest Captain Vansen. Chert's people have astonished me."

  "All of us," he said. "We did them a disservice for many years, it seems. But even they could do nothing when the Stone Swallowers came. I don't know what they were truly called-there were three of them. But each one placed a stone in his mouth and… and then began to change…" He hesitated, feeling her body grow rigid beside him. "Briony?"

  "Are you certain they were men?"

  He considered. "To be honest, I never saw them before they had already become those… things…"

  "Tell me again. Tell me what the stones looked like."

  "I don't know," he said, laughing a little. "Perin's Hammer, girl, we were in almost complete darkness…!"

  "Tell me all you remember!" There was nothing of the sweet young woman in her voice now.

  And Vansen did, marveling to find that all this time he had been kissing not just his beloved, but also a queen.

  Steffens Nynor was wrapped in a heavy wool cloak, but his ankles were bare of hose and he was clearly feeling the cold. "Is it truly necessary to do this now, Highness?" he asked.

  "I have learned a lesson." Briony motioned for one of the guards to knock on the tower's heavy front door. The booming sound echoed and died. She was just about to order him to do it again when a quavering, childish voice from behind the door said, "Who goes there?"

  "It is the Princess Regent, to see Queen Anissa," the guard said.

  The door opened enough for the boy to peer out at the visitors, then the door swung wide. "But the queen is sleeping!" he said, as if the people knocking might not have realized that the time was well after midnight. "She is in mourning," he offered next, but the guards had already pushed past him and he was left talking to Briony, Vansen, and Lord Nynor.

  "Of course she is," Briony told him, not unkindly. "And so am I. Do you see my black dress?"

  He scuttled off up the stairs to the queen's bedchamber as if Briony had frightened him. The guards on duty in the reception hall had dropped to their knees; she waved them to their feet. Several of them looked to their longtime captain as though he might explain why this ordinarily sleepy duty had been interrupted, but Ferras Vansen took his lead from Briony and kept his thoughts to himself.

  Anissa and her retinue were long enough coming down that Briony had begun to consider sending the soldiers up to get them when she heard the queen's voice preceding her down the stairs. "But why? Why should she want to come here in the night this way? It frightens me!" Now she appeared, accompanied by half a dozen women, one of whom held her little son, Alessandros.

  Olin Alessandros, Briony reminded herself. My brother. My father's child, too.

  The sight of Anissa in her nightdress brought back dreadful memories-memories of fire and living shadows, memories of last Winter's Eve when her entire world had been turned upside down-but Briony did her best to keep her voice even. "I am sorry to bother you at such a time, Anissa, but my sleep was troubled by a thought that you alone can answer."

  Anissa turned to Nynor with a show of confusion, but the aged counselor had no duty here but that of observer. He nodded respectfully to her but made no other sign. "What is it?" she said. "What do you want of me, Briony, that you frighten me so?"

  "I want to know how it was that your maid Selia came to you. Do not turn so pale, stepmother. I have recently learned something about the Autarch of Xis and now I need to know this from you. How did your maid come to you?"

  "I… I do not know. I do not remember!" Anissa looked around as if one of her maids might help her remember, but none of them would meet her eye. Many of them were themselves from the queen's home in Devonis and knew themselves to be foreigners in the court, protected only by Anissa's position, but they seemed curiously unwilling to speak in her defense. "She… was sent to me," Anissa said at last. "I asked my mother's chamberlain to send me a good girl, someone to be my bodyservant. That is all. I scarcely knew her! I had no idea she was a witch! But I have told you this already, Briony-why do you tax me with this now, when your father is dead and I am so upset?"

  "Why indeed?" Briony shook her head. "You ask a fair question. Nynor, did you find the letter?"

  The old man was looking at Anissa with an expression Briony hadn't seen before. It took him a moment to realize she was speaking to him. "Oh. Oh, yes. Yes, it's here." He drew it out of the pocket of his cloak with a shaking hand. "I never throw anything away, and I am lucky that the fool who took my place did not change that." He held it out to Briony, but she shook her head.

  "Read it to us, please."

  "Let me…" he squinted, scissoring his spectacles until he could fit them properly over both eyes. "Let me f ind… ah. Here. From a letter Queen Anissa wrote to me in Heptamene of last year, a few months after the king had been imprisoned by Hesper of Jellon and then ransomed to Drakava in Hierosol."

  "… And at King Olin's express wish, I have been bringing Lady Selia ei'Dicte, my dear friend of childhood, to be my companion in his absence. She is very close to me and of high birth, so please see she does not wait at the dock and is not put through some rude treatment like a common servant."

  Briony stared at her. "So which was she-a dear companion from childhood, or a servant you scarcely knew?"

  Anissa took a few steps back toward the stairs. Some of the guards tensed-Briony could feel it; the air in the tower's reception hall, large and drafty as it was, seemed to have grown tight. "How can I remember? I knew her, perhaps! That does not mean I had anything to do with what she did. I would never…"

  "I know now that the stone your maid used must have come from the autarch-it was one of the same magical Kulikos stones he gave to others during the last hours of the fighting under the castle, changing them into dreadful, demonic things. Captain Vansen saw one of them putting the Kulikos in his mouth." She frowned. "No, not 'his mouth,' but 'hers.' The demons must have been women to begin with. Chaven said the stones only worked on women."

  Briony moved closer to Anissa. "So I can only suppose that the autarch, who had several of these Kulikos stones, and also had several spies in the Tollys' Summerfield Court, gave one of these deadly talismans to your maid instead. But why? On the very unlikely chance she would use it to murder my brother Kendrick?" Just saying the words made Briony violently angry, but she forced herself to speak even more calmly. "Why? How would he know that Selia could be trusted, or would even do such a thing at all? Unless she was brought here with no other purpose in mind. Unless she was, perhaps, someone that had already been picked out for the task…"

  The maids and ladies drew back a little, some of them whispering anxiously. Anissa's eyes were round. "What are you saying? That I knew? That is foolish! Why would I hurt Prince Kendrick?"

  "I'm not certain," Briony said through her teeth, "but let me guess. You can answer one question for me, though, Anissa-did the autarch's servant first come to you before you left Devonis, or was it here, in Southmarch? My wager is that although you may have spoken to him before, when he finally approached you it was here, after you found out you were carrying my father's child."

  "What do you say? I don't understand."

  "This, Stepmother-although it galls me even to call you that. I think you do understand, all too well. I think that one of the au
tarch's spies came to you and told you that the child in your womb was doomed if Kendrick or either of the two younger children-Barrick or myself-took the throne. He told you that if Olin died in captivity, Kendrick and the rest of us would not stand any rivals for the throne, that Kendrick would have the baby done away with, and probably you, too. Am I right? Is that what he told you?"

  "No! No!" But she had the sound of a woman in despair, not one protesting her innocence.

  Briony, with a cold, sinking feeling in her belly, knew she had guessed correctly. "Tell the truth, Anissa. I am not the Autarch of Xis, but I'll not spare harsher means if I don't hear the truth from you now."

  "Stop frightening me!" Anissa began to cry. For a moment, Briony almost felt sorry for the small, pretty woman who had brought her father such happiness, but she also remembered what had happened to her in Anissa's chamber the night her exile began-the night when the maid Selia had put the stone in her mouth and turned into something otherwordly and deadly. Briony couldn't bear to imagine what Kendrick's last hour must have been like at the hands of that monstrosity.

  "Guards. She will go to the stronghold now, I think."

  "No!" Anissa suddenly fell to her knees and scrambled forward, trying to throw her arms around Briony's legs. Ferras Vansen stepped out and blocked her, then lifted her to her feet with surprising gentleness. "Do not do that to me, please, Briony!" her stepmother wailed. "I was terrified, so! He said that my baby would be taken and murdered! He told me I would never see my home again-that I would be poisoned here in Southmarch… buried in cold ground…!" She was weeping so hard now it was difficult to understand her. Briony looked at Vansen, whose face showed a complicated mixture of pity and disgust as he held Anissa upright.

  "Who said that? Who approached you?"

  "It was a man from my own country. A merchant. He told me he had news from home, so I let him come to me." She could barely stand. "Please, please do not kill me! Do not hurt my baby! I did not want to do it, but they said that Kendrick would murder me and the child. I was so frightened!"

  "So you helped the autarch kill my brother instead." Briony felt as if she were a vessel full to the brim with caustic liquid, that if she spilled even a drop it would burn wherever it touched. "Lock her away," she told Vansen.

  "In the stronghold?"

  "No. That is no place for the mother of my father's child. She can stay here-under guard." She turned to Anissa. "But you will not keep the boy." She reached out her hands to the maid and took little Olin Alessandros while Vansen held the struggling Anissa. "He is something of my father, not of you."

  "Do not murder me!"

  "She must have a trial, no matter what, Highness," said Nynor. "Her father has been a close ally for years."

  "A close ally who harbored agents of the autarch. Who allowed those same agents to send a witch here to murder my brother!" She wanted nothing more at that moment than to have done with Anissa once and for all, but she could not bring herself to do it. "Yes, you will have a trial, lady. Then you will be locked away so long that your name will be forgotten. You will die unremembered."

  The child was crying now, too, moved by his mother's loud distress. As Vansen detailed new men to relieve those who had been guarding the Tower of Summer until he better understood their loyalties, Briony held the small body close to her breast.

  As she reached the door and stepped out into the cold night air, Briony stumbled. The weight of what she had undertaken suddenly seemed too much-she felt she would never have the strength even to reach her chambers. But Ferras Vansen reached out and caught her arm to steady her, then they walked back to the residence side by side.

  51

  A Shared Admiration "Zoria the Dove, of all gods and goddesses the kindest, agreed to marry her uncle if he would let the Orphan go, though all the earth and Heaven mourned to lose her."

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

  In honor of the royal visit, Gem Street was ablaze with lanterns, so Funderling Town's famous ceiling and the faces of its public buildings could be seen in all their intricate, ornamented glory.

  "It is quite astonishing," Briony said, staring up as Vansen led her horse along the narrow main road. "All this beauty. I knew it was here, but I scarcely noticed-my father brought me here several times, you know."

  "Try to look down as well, Highness," said Nynor. "Your subjects desire your attention, too."

  "Don't scold me, Count Steffens. I know they're waiting. That's why I'm here." But she made certain to wave and smile as they passed the junction of Gem and Ore where the crowds were gathered close together and had been waiting for some time. "There, I see the guildhall," Briony said. "Most impressive, isn't it, Captain Vansen?"

  He grunted, being too engaged at the moment in trying to clear a path for Briony to approach the building's wide front steps. The castle was at peace in the largest sense, but a few of Hendon Tolly's most desperate supporters still lurked in the unfrequented outer reaches of Funderling Town, and there were rumors that some Xixian soldiers and even a giant askorab or two might be hiding in the outer tunnels as well. After a time so strange it was hard to guess when anything would be completely ordinary again.

  Several Funderlings called out Vansen's name, which surprised him. When he turned, he recognized men who had fought with him in the Maze and saluted them in return, but he felt awkward doing it. He was moved that they should consider him one of their own, but he didn't like being at the center of things and he never would.

  And what will I let myself in for as lord constable, then? I will never be able to look the true nobles in the face… But, he reminded himself, many of the "true" nobles had managed to avoid fighting for Southmarch entirely. Many of those same nobles had also made it clear they would never come down into Funderling Town, even to hear what the princess regent had to say today. Which shows that birth alone does not make or mar any man completely, he thought, catching an upward drift of his heart and clutching it firmly for once. Look at me! The princess says she loves me-do I have cause to complain of anything?

  It did not harm his mood that almost as many Funderlings seemed to be cheering for him as for Briony, though he carefully gave no sign of it. He helped her down from her horse in front of the guildhall and formed up her royal guards to accompany her inside.

  "You are a well-liked man in these neighborhoods, Captain," said Briony, smiling.

  "Any man who did not cut and run from trouble would be treated the same way." But he couldn't help being pleased she had noticed.

  "Your Royal Highness," called out Malachite Copper, dressed in high finery, arms and neck glinting with gems and polished metal, "please forgive me for bearing bad tidings, but I must report that your captain is a terrible liar. There is no man more honored in our city, ordinary or Big."

  "I know that, Master Copper," said Briony. "And it is a pleasure to see you again in less trying circumstances than on the day the ocean rushed in."

  "The sentiment is mutual, Highness." He bowed and extended his arm. "Come, let me take you into the guildhall. You may leave your gloomy escort to join you when he is ready."

  "She may certainly walk with you, Master Copper, but I will be right behind you," Vansen said firmly. "Her Highness goes nowhere without the captain of her guards along to keep her safe. She owes it to her subjects. Am I not right, Princess Briony?"

  She smiled as she took Copper's arm. "Of course, Captain Vansen. You know best."

  It was a baffling gathering, he thought-like something from the depths of the months just passed, when so many different kinds of folk had been thrown together by the desperation of their situation. A good number of the Southmarch royal court was there, and, of course, the Funderlings were present in force-it was their guildhall, after all-with the four Highwardens in their usual positions of power. That was not the end of those who crowded the council chamber, either. The Skimmers were present in large numbers as well, most of the men wearin
g ceremonial hats and mantles of fish skin-thoroughly dried and almost odorless, Vansen was glad to note, since the chamber was not large. The Rooftoppers had also made an appearance, their entire delegation seated on top of a Funderling ore wagon specially prepared for them. Even the Qar were represented, although only by the eremite Aesi'uah and a few silent, robed figures; like the rest of her kin, Aesi'uah looked as though she could wait politely until the sun itself was consumed if necessary. Barrick had not come.

  One of the Highwardens, a Funderling named Sard who looked to Vansen's eyes to be older than the ancient building itself, opened the proceedings with words of greeting and extravagant promises of Funderling fealty which somehow had a less than sincere ring to them. Vansen wondered if he was the only one who noticed.

  "And now, in a gesture which we must take as a show of great respect," the wizened elder finished, "she has come to our humble habitation to speak to us. Give heed to your monarch, the daughter of Olin Eddon and Princess Regent-yes, yes, soon to be crowned as queen, I'm told-Princess Briony. All bow."

  Briony stood up in the general murmur and rustle of the Funderlings showing their respect. Of all those present only the Qar did not bow or salute. Many of Briony's courtiers saw that and did not like it, Vansen could not help noticing. It is those who did not fight who have the least patience with our strange allies, he thought.

  "I accept this honor in the name of the throne, and of my father," Briony said loudly. "But I do not deserve it for myself. I hope one day it will be otherwise."

  Some of the Funderlings murmured, confused.

  "We have survived a terrible danger," she went on. "I believe that we were delivered from our doom by Heaven itself-but for a reason. Everything that we treasure was within a breath of annihilation-our kingdom, our city, our lives, perhaps even our souls. I cannot believe that such things happen without reason. And whether it was the gods my people worship, or the Earth Elders of the Funderlings…" A stir passed through the crowd as she listed the sacred names, "Egye-Var, Protector of the Skimmer-folk, or the Lord of the Peak," she nodded toward the Rooftoppers' wagon, "the matter stands thus-we were saved when it seemed certain all would die.