by Tad Williams
Something like "The Wandering Gods," he thought. No, perhaps "The Sleeping Gods"…
The door banged open so suddenly that Tinwright jumped and Elan let out a cry of surprise. Anamesiya Tinwright pushed the door shut again behind her with an even louder thump, then fell to her knees on the board floor and began to pray loudly to the Trigon. The infant upstairs, startled by the loud noises, began to cry again.
"What is it?" Tinwright knew, with a sinking heart, that it must be something bad: his mother usually spent more time preparing a clean place to kneel than she actually did praying. "Mother, talk to me!"
She looked up; he was shocked to see her familiar, bony features so pale. "I had hoped you would find time to repent of all your wickedness before the end," she said in a hoarse voice. "My poor, straying son!"
"What are you talking about?"
"The end, the end. I have seen it coming! Demons sent to destroy us because we've angered the gods." She bowed her head once more in prayer and would not be interrupted no matter how many questions he asked.
"I'll go and see what this is about," he told Elan.
Tinwright made sure the door was locked behind him, then went out into the street. At first he followed the anxious throngs who seemed headed to the edge of the harbor, the nearest part of the city's outer walls, but after a moment he turned against the flow and struck out toward Market Road Bridge, which crossed the canal between the lagoons. If it was something happening across the water in Southmarch Town, he would be able to see it just as well from the outwall behind The Badger's Boots, a tavern near the end of North Lagoon where Tinwright had spent many a night with Hewney and the others. The alleyway that ran behind the place was not well known, which was why he and his drinking companions had found it a good place to take tavern whores.
As he walked east he listened to fragments of conversation from the people who passed him. Most of them had only heard rumors and were on their way to see what was happening for themselves. Some were terrified, babbling prayers and shouting imprecations, but others seemed only slightly more concerned than if they had been on their way to the Zosimia festivities.
"A sign!" many said. "The earth itself is against us!"
"We'll throw them back," others cried. "They'll learn what Southmarch men are like!" Some of the arguments became fistfights, especially if those who disagreed were drunk. The sun behind the high clouds had scarcely passed noon, but far more people than usual seemed to have started their drinking early.
Was this what it was like when the gods fought their great war? Matt Tinwright wondered. Did some mortals go to the battlefield only to watch it happen, caring not that the world might end?
It was another strange, interesting thought-the second in one day that might make a poem. For a moment he almost forgot that whatever he was on his way to look at had reduced his dragon of a mother to raw terror.
But what could it be? All I saw was mist and smoke. And why should that frighten so many?
He slipped past the Boots, which was even louder than normal with the sound of argument and lamentation. For a moment he strongly considered just going inside and drinking up the rest of the money Brone had given him-after all, if the world was ending, might it not be better to sleep through it all? As far as he knew, nothing in the Book of the Trigon actually forbade being drunk on the Day of Fate.
Ah, but what if he had to wait a long time for judgment? At a moment of universal catastrophe there would doubtless be huge crowds wanting to be judged, as when the king gave away grain in times of famine. Not even drunk, then-by that time I'll be sobered up, with a dry mouth and throbbing skull. Gods-it was bad enough to face Brone's bellowing with a clear head: how much worse to stand before Perin himself, lord of the storms, whose very hammer was a thunderclap!
When he reached the alley behind the tavern Tinwright made his way up the hill to the base of the looming wall, then inched his way along the top of the berm toward the abandoned guardpost. To his surprise, he found that at least a dozen other locals had apparently had the same idea. One of them, a grim-faced young man wearing a leather apron, even leaned down to help Tinwright up the broken steps so that he could join them.
They had an unimpeded view of the north end of mainland Southmarch. Most of the activity, though, seemed to be happening at the mainland city's nearest end, on the beach beside the remains of the ruined causeway. The murk Matt Tinwright had seen earlier had spread and he could see glimmers in its depths, flashes of light that looked less like the flicker of flames than the steady glow of smelted metal. But what he had thought were pillars of weirdly frozen black smoke were not smoke at all.
Monstrous black trees had sprouted from of the murk, their branches like gnarled fingers, as though a dozen giant hands reached out of the mist toward the city walls on the far side of the narrow stretch of bay. The clawlike limbs were bent almost sideways, clearly growing out over the water and toward the castle where Tinwright and the others watched in stunned, frightened silence.
"What are those gods-cursed things?" someone asked at last. A young man who should have been too old to cry began to do it anyway, deep, wracking noises like a consumptive cough.
"No," was all Matt Tinwright could say as he stared across the water. The things, the trees or whatever they were, had doubled or even tripled in size since he'd seen them from the residence window. But nothing in the world grew that fast! "It can't be true." But it was true, of course.
No one spoke after that, except to pray.
The fog was unsettling enough-it came from everywhere and nowhere, making the world outside their prison as daunting as the dim, lifeless fields surrounding the great castle of Kernios in the tales Utta had been told as a girl-but it was the noises that made her most uncomfortable: deep groans and creaks shivered her bones, as though some vast ship a thousand times bigger than any human vessel was sailing past their window, mere inches away but invisible behind the thick, cold mist.
"What is that dreadful sound?" Utta began to pace again. "Have they built some kind of-what are those things called… siege engines? One of those monstrous towers to bring against castle walls? But why would the fairies be pushing it back and forth along the beach all night? The noise gave me such terrible dreams!" In one, her family, years lost to her, had stood at the rail of a long, gray boat begging her to come aboard and join them, but even in the dream Utta had known from the dullness of their eyes that they were all dead, that they were inviting her to join them in a voyage to the underworld. She had woken up with her heart beating so swiftly that for a moment she had feared she was truly dying.
"Sister, you are sending me mad with your walking back and forth!" Merolanna complained. When they had first been prisoned in this abandoned merchant's house facing Brenn's Bay the older woman had spent days cleaning, as though each fleck of dust she wiped away lifted them a little farther beyond the power of the fairies and their dark mistress. But the opposite was true, of course: the more the duchess cleaned, the harder it was to ignore the fact that when the tidying was done they would still be prisoners. And now that the place was as neat as Merolanna could make it the older woman seemed to have fallen into a torpor of misery. She scarcely got out of the chair most days, although she seemed to have strength enough to complain about Utta pacing or making what Merolanna considered to be an undue amount of noise.
Blessed Zoria give us both strength, Utta prayed. It is our predicament that makes us pick at each other this way.
Not only had they so far avoided execution, but they had been housed in a spacious building with three floors and had been given the materials to make quite acceptable meals. Still, there was no doubt they were prisoners: two silent guards, strange and threatening as demons out of a temple carving, stood always outside the door. Another waited on the roof, as Utta had discovered one day to her horror when she had decided to take advantage of a little sun to lay out some clothes to dry. The unnatural creature had jumped down onto the balcony as she emerged w
ith a bundle of damp things clutched to her breast, frightening her so badly she had thought she would fall down dead.
This fairy had been different than the other guards-less like a man and more like some kind of shaved ape or smooth lizard, with claws protruding through the ends of his gloved fingers, a misshapen nose and mouth like a dog's muzzle, and amber eyes that had no pupil. The fairy guard had grunted so angrily and waved his leaf-shaped knife at her so vigorously that Utta had not even bothered to show him the harmless chore she had planned, but instead had simply scuttled back inside.
What do these creatures think we are going to do? she had wondered that day as she staggered back down the stairs to the main living chamber. Leap from the balcony and fly away? And would he have killed me to stop me doing so?
She felt uncomfortably certain he would have.
"Why do they hold us?" Utta demanded as the unsettling noises continued. "If that woman in black hates our kind so much-their queen or whatever she is-why doesn't she simply kill us and have done with it?"
Merolanna made the sign of the Three on her bosom. "Don't say such things! Perhaps she intends to ransom us. Ordinarily I would say no, never, but I would give much to be back in my own bed, and to see little Eilis and the others. I am frightened, Sister."
Utta was frightened too, but she didn't think they were being saved for ransom. What could the bloodthirsty Qar possibly want in trade for a dowager duchess and a Zorian nun?
Somebody knocked on the doorway of the main chamber, then the door swung open. It was the strange half fairy, half man who called himself Kayyin.
"What do you want?" Merolanna sounded angry, but Utta knew it was a cover for her fear at this unexpected arrival. "Does your mistress want to be sure we're suffering? Tell her the house could be draftier-but only just."
He smiled, one of the few expressions that made him look almost entirely human. "At least she cares enough to imprison you. She thinks so little of me that I am allowed to run free, like a lizard on the wall."
"What is going on out there, Kayyin?" Utta asked him. "There have been the most terrible noises all morning but we can't see anything except this fog."
Kayyin shrugged. "Do you truly want to see? It is a grim thing. This is a grim time."
"What do you mean? Yes, we want to see!"
"Come," he said with the air of one surrendering to folly. "I will show you."
They followed his silky progress up the stairs and out onto the balcony on the highest floor, which Utta had shunned ever since the reptilian guard had driven her away. The fog still billowed here, but from this height they could see how low it hung, like a down comforter thrown haphazardly onto a bed. The creaking noises seemed even louder here, and for a moment Utta was so taken by the view-the great cloud of mist, and beyond it the bay and the distant towers of Southmarch Castle, her unreachable home-that she forgot about the monstrous guard. Then he swung down from the roof above them and dropped onto the balcony.
Merolanna shrieked in surprise and terror and might have fallen to the ground had Utta not supported her. The guard waved his wide short sword and snarled-it was hard to tell if he spoke a strange language or simply made threatening noises. His teeth were as long and sharp as a wolf 's.
Kayyin, though, was unmoved. "Begone, Snout. Tell your mistress I brought these ladies out for some air. If she wants to kill me for that, she may. Otherwise, take your leave."
The thing stared at him with brightly furious eyes, but there was more to its expression than simply that of an angry animal.
What are these creatures, Utta could not help wondering, these… fairies? Did the gods make them? Are they demons or do they have souls as we do?
The creature snorted what sounded like a warning, then it scrambled back up to the roof as swiftly as it had descended and was gone from sight.
"Oh, that gave me a dreadful turn!" Merolanna detached herself from Utta's grasp, fanning her face with her hands. "What was that horror?"
Kayyin seemed amused. "A disciple of the Virtuous Warriors clan-cousins of mine, in fact. But he knows I am not to be touched, and my shadow seems to cover you two as well." He sounded as if he hadn't been completely certain the creature would obey him, which made Utta wonder how close they'd just come to being sent back… or worse.
"How could you call such a monstrosity your cousin?" Merolanna was still fanning determinedly, as though trying to disperse not just air but also the unpleasant memory. "You are nothing like it, Kayyin. You are almost like… like one of us."
"But I was shaped to be so, Duchess." Kayyin bowed his head. "My master knew I would be long among your kind, so he gave me a gift of changing to make me… it is hard to explain… soft like bread dough, so that I could take on the semblance of that which was around me. So I remained for years-a poor copy, but sufficient-until I was awakened again."
"Awakened to do what? " It was the first Utta had ever heard of all this. She had thought Kayyin merely an accident of nature or congress between the tribes of fairy and man.
Kayyin shook his sleek head. Now that Utta's attention had been drawn, she could not help thinking that there was indeed something strange about him, a lack of distinctive characteristics. She could never remember what he looked like when he was not around. "I do not know the answer myself," he said. "My king wished to prevent war between your race and mine if he could, but I do not think I have done much to make that so. It is a puzzle, to be honest." He cocked his head. "Ah, there-do you hear? It is beginning again."
He moved toward the balcony railing and Utta moved with him. She could hear it now, too-the deep, creaking sounds that had plagued them all day. Beneath their balcony, hidden deep in the roiling fogs, a dull light flared and abated but never quite died, as though down on the hidden beach below someone had lit a massive bonfire of blue and yellow flames.
"What is it? What are your people doing?"
"I am not certain they are my people anymore," said Kayyin with an odd, sad smile. "But it is the work of my lady's eremites, of course. They are building the Bridge of Thorns."
"Blessed gods!" murmured Merolanna. Utta turned to see a vast black something appear slowly out of the murk, like the tentacle of some awesome sea creature. In the moments before wind swirled the mists back around it again, she could make little sense of it. A plant, she realized at last-some kind of monstrous black vine as big around as a peasant's cot and covered with thorns long as swords. A breeze from the invisible bay tugged at the mist again; this time she could see not just the nearest branch but several more in the foggy depths, all twining upward. The terrible rumbling, screeching noise, so low and loud that it made the very timbers of the balcony they stood on quiver in sympathy, was the sound of the thing growing-growing up from the shore beneath them, stretching out like greedy fingers toward Southmarch Castle on the far side of the water.
"The Bridge of Thorns…" she said slowly.
"But what is it?" Merolanna demanded. "It makes me sick just to see it. What is it?"
"They… they will use it to attack the castle," Utta told her, fully grasping it all only as she said it. "They will climb the branches like siege ladders, across the bay and over the castle walls. They will clamber over it like ants and kill everyone. Isn't that right?"
"Yes," Kayyin said. He might have been a little sad about it. "I expect she will indeed kill everyone she finds. I have never seen her so angry."
"Oh!" said the duchess. For a moment Utta was afraid the older woman would fall again. "Oh, you monster! How can you… just speak of it, as though… as though…" She turned and stumbled back into the room. A moment later Utta heard her make her way slowly down the stairs.
"I should go with her," Utta said, hesitating. "Is there nothing anyone can do to talk your mistress out of this terrible attack?"
"She is not my mistress, which is a small part of the problem-instead, the king is my master, and if there is one thing Yasammez hates it is disloyalty, especially from family."
&nb
sp; "Family?"
"Did I never tell you? Lady Yasammez is my mother. The birth was years and years ago and we have been long estranged." His bland face reflected nothing deeper than the interest of someone with a mildly diverting tale to tell, but Utta could not help feeling there was a great deal more behind his words-there must be. "I am by no means the only child she ever had, but I am almost certainly the last one living."
"But you said once you thought she would execute you one day. How could a mother do such a thing to her child?"
"My people are not like your people-but even among our people, Lady Yasammez is a strange and singular case. The love she bears is not for her own offspring, but for her sister's. And though she carries the Fireflower, unlike all others in our history, she carries it alone."
Utta could only shake her head in confusion. "I do not understand any of this. What is a Fireflower?"
"The Fireflower. There is only one. It is our great lord Crooked's gift to the Firstborn, because of the love he felt for one living woman-Summu, my mother's mother. And it is the legacy of the children he bore with her." He saw her expression and paused. "Ah, of course, your people know Crooked by a different name-Kupilas, the Healer."
In other circumstances Utta would have dismissed his words as the babble of a madman, and certainly there was a quality in Kayyin's dull, unexcited tones that made him seem deranged, but she had met the terrifying Yasammez; that, and watching the thorny results of the great magics the dark woman had put into effect made it hard to dismiss such things out of hand. "You are saying… that your mother Yasammez was fathered by a god? "
"That is your word, not mine-but yes. In those distant days the ones you call gods were the powerful masters, but your people and mine served them and were sometimes bedded by them. And at times true friendship and even love ripened between the great ones and their short-lived minions. Loving or not, though, some of the unions resulted in those you call demigods and demigoddesses, in heroes and monsters."
