Shadowrise s-3

by Tad Williams

  Brone stared at him hard for a long time, his mouth working in his bushy beard, which was now mostly gray. At last, something like a smile appeared in the hairy depths. "You've found a bit of courage after all, Tinwright. That's good, I suppose-no man should remain an unmitigated coward all his life, even a wastrel like you. So what are we to do?" Brone suddenly reached out, far faster than Tinwright would have guessed possible, and grabbed the collar of the poet's cloak so tightly that it threatened to strangle him. "If I can't report you to Tolly, I suppose the only thing I can do is throttle you myself." The smile had become something much more menacing.

  "Nnnh! Dnnn't!" It was really quite painfully tight around Tinwright's throat. The Landsend relative returned with the wine and stopped in the doorway, watching the spectacle with interest.

  "If you are no use to me, poet-even worse, if you have become a threat to me-then I have little choice…"

  "Buh umm nuh uh thrt!"

  "I'd like to believe that, boy. But even if you're not a threat, you're still no help to me, and in such hard times-such dangerous times-there's no need for you. Now, if you were to help me by doing what I ask, well, the crabs and starfish would keep coming-you must enjoy having a little money, eh, especially these days, with everything so dear and food so rare?-and I wouldn't need to rip your head off."

  "Ull hlp! Ull hlp!"

  "Good." Brone turned loose of his cloak and he fell backward. The Landsend youth stepped politely out of the way to allow Tinwright to collapse onto the floor where he lay gasping.

  "But why me? " he asked when he had finally struggled back onto his feet, rubbing his aching neck. "I'm a poet!"

  "And not a particularly good one," Brone said. "But what choice do I have? Limp around the residence myself? Send my idiot nephew?" He gestured at the youth, who was paring his dirty fingernails again, but lifted the knife toward Tinwright in a sort of salute. "No, I need someone who is allowed and even expected to be in the residence-someone too foolish to be feared and too useless to be suspected. That's you."

  Matt Tinwright rubbed his aching throat. "You do me too much honor, Count Avin."

  "There you go-a little spunk. That's good. Now go find out what's afoot and there'll be more in it for you-perhaps even a jar of wine from my own store, eh? How would that be?"

  The idea of being able to drink himself into oblivion for a day or two was the first real inducement he'd heard to keep serving Brone, although not dying was a close second. He made a cautious bow before leaving, half worrying that his head would fall off.

  "Do you know what I think, Mother?" Kayyin spoke as if in continuation of a conversation briefly interrupted, instead of after an hour or more of silence.

  Yasammez did not look at him and did not reply.

  "I think you are beginning to feel something for these Sunlanders."

  "Other than to hasten your death," she said, still not looking up, "why would you say such a preposterous thing?"

  "Because I think it is true."

  "Have you any purpose other than irritating me? Remind me-why haven't I killed you?"

  "Perhaps you have discovered that you love your son after all." He smiled, amused at this conceit. "That you have feelings as base and sentimental as the Sunlanders themselves. Perhaps after all these centuries of neglect and open scorn, you have found that you desire to make things right. Could that be, Mother?"

  "No."

  "Ah. I thought not. But it was entertaining to consider." He had been pacing; now he stopped. "Do you know what is truly strange? Having lived so long in the guise of a mortal-having lived as one-I find that in some ways I have become one. For instance, I am restless in a way none of our people ever has been. If I stay too long in one place it is as though I can feel myself dying the true death. I become impatient, discontented-as though the body itself commands my mind, instead of the other way around."

  "Perhaps that explains your foolish ideas," Yasammez said. "It is not you, but this mortal guise you have taken on, that offers this nonsense. Interesting if so, but I would still rather have silence."

  He looked at her. She still did not look at him. "Why have you withdrawn from the Sunlander castle, my lady? It was all but yours, and you have also nearly conquered the tiny resistance in the caverns beneath it. Why pull back at such a time? Are you certain you have not begun to pity the mortals?"

  For the first time her voice betrayed something, a descent into a deeper chill. "Do not speak foolishness. It offends me that a child of my loins should waste the air that way."

  "So you do not pity them at all. They mean less to you than the dirt beneath your feet." He nodded. "Why, then, should you ask me to tell them the story of Janniya and his sister? What purpose could there have been for that, unless you wanted them to feel something of our pain… of your pain, to be more precise?"

  "You tread on dangerous ground, Kayyin."

  "If I were a farmer pledged to destroy the rats that ate my crops, would I take the rats aside before passing sentence and explain to them what they had done?"

  "Rats do not understand their crimes." She turned her dark eyes on him then, at last. "If you say another word about the Sunlanders I will pull your living heart from your chest."

  He bowed. "As you wish, my lady. I will walk on the seashore instead and think about the enlightening conversation we have had today." He rose, then moved toward the door. Yasammez could not help noticing that whatever was mortal in him now, or whatever feigned it, had not entirely diminished his grace. He still walked with the insolent silkiness of his younger days. She closed her eyes again.

  Only moments after he had gone out she felt another presence-Aesi'uah, her chief eremite. Aesi'uah would stand silently for hours waiting for acknowledgment, Yasammez knew, but it was pointless to make her do so: the elusive point that Lady Porcupine had been chasing through the labyrinth of her own long memory was gone.

  "Has the time come?" Yasammez asked.

  Her adviser's complexion, usually the soft, warm gray of a pigeon's breast, was noticeably pale. "I fear it is so, my lady. Even with all the eremites mingling their thought and their song, he has withdrawn beyond our reach." She hesitated. "We thought… I thought… perhaps if you…"

  "Of course I will come." She rose from her chair, her thoughts heavier than her thick black armor. For the first time that she could remember she felt something of the vast weight of her age, the burden of her long-stretching life. "I must say farewell."

  The eremites had taken a cave for themselves high in the hills above an empty stretch of windswept beach a short distance east of the city. Quiet and solitude were the walls of their temple, and they had picked a good place for both things: as Yasammez followed Aesi'uah up the rocky trail she could hear only wind and the distant creaking of seabirds. For a moment she was almost at peace.

  Aesi'uah's sisters and brothers-it was not always easy to tell which was which-were all gathered in the dark cavern. Even Yasammez, who could stand on a hilltop on a moonless, starless night and see what a hunting owl could see, could make out no more than the dull glitter of eyes in their dark hoods. Some of Aesi'uah's youngest comrades, born in the years of twilight, had never seen the full light of the sun and could not have survived its bright heat.

  Yasammez joined the circle. Aesi'uah sat beside her. Nobody spoke. There was no need.

  In the dreamlands, in the far places where only gods and adepts could travel, Yasammez felt herself take on a familiar shape. She wore it when she traveled outside herself, both in the waking world and here. In the waking world it was as insubstantial as air, but here it was something more-a fierce thing of claws and teeth, of bright eyes and silken fur. The eremites, given courage by her presence, streamed behind her in an immaterial host like a swarm of fireflies. The Firef lower did not burn inside them as it did in her; without protection, they could only travel so far.

  Aesi'uah had spoken the truth, though-the god's presence was weaker than it had ever been, faint as the sound of a
mouse walking in new grass. Worse than that, she could feel the presence of others, not the other lost gods but the lesser things that had been driven out with their masters when her father had banished them all. These hungry things smelled change on the breeze of the dreamlands and sensed that the time might come when they could return to a world that had forgotten how to resist them.

  Even now, one such thing sat in the middle of the path, waiting for them. The eremites flew up in distress, circling, but Yasammez paced forward until she stood before it. It was old, she could tell that by the way it shifted and changed, its form too alien to her understanding for her eyes and thoughts to order it properly.

  "You are far from your home, child," it said to one of the oldest creatures that still walked upon the earth. "What do you seek?"

  "You know what I seek, old spider," she told it. "And you know my time is short. Let me pass."

  "You are rude to a neighbor!" it said, chuckling.

  "You are no neighbor of mine."

  "Ah, but soon I might be. He is dying, you know. When he is gone, who will hold me and my kind back?"

  "Silence. I want no more of your poisonous words. Let me pass or I will destroy you."

  The thing shifted, bubbled, settled again. "You have not the strength. Only one of the old powers can do that."

  "Perhaps. But even if I cannot end you, it may be that I will hurt you so badly that you will be in no condition to cross over when the time comes."

  The thing stared at her, or seemed to, because in truth it had no eyes that Yasammez could see. At last it slithered aside. "I do not choose to contest with you today, child. But the day is coming. The Artificer will be gone. Who will protect you then?"

  "I could ask you the same." But she had wasted enough time already. She passed and the eremites followed her like a cloud of tiny flames.

  Yasammez moved as swiftly as she could through places where the wind howled with the voices of lost children and through others where the sky itself did not seem to fit correctly, until she came at last to the hillside where the doorway stood, a solitary rectangle crowning the grassy peak like a book standing on its end. She climbed the slope and crouched before it, curling the tail of her dream-form around her, ears laid flat against her head. The eremites hovered, uncertain.

  "He can no longer be heard on this side of the door, Lady," they told her.

  "I know. But he is not gone. I would know if he were." She sent out a call but he did not answer. In the silence that followed she could feel the winds that blew through the icy, airless places beyond the door. "Help me," she said to those who had followed her. "Lend me your voices."

  They were a long time then, singing into the endlessness. At last, when even the inhuman patience of Yasammez had nearly gone, she felt something stir on the edges of her understanding, a faint, small murmur like the dying breath of the Flower Maiden in the stream.

  "… Yessss…"

  "Is that you, Artificer? Is that you… still?"

  "I am… but I am… becoming nothing…"

  She wanted to say something soothing, or even to deny it altogether, but it was not the way of her blood to try to bend what was real into what was not. "Yes. You are dying."

  "It is… long awaited. But those who have waited almost… as long as I have… are readying themselves. They will… come through…"

  "We, your children, will not let them."

  "You have… you have not the power." He grew fainter then, small and quiet as a drop of rain on a distant hilltop. "They have waited too long, the sleeping… and the unsleeping…"

  "Tell me who we must fear. Tell me and I can fight them!"

  "That is not the way, Daughter… you cannot defeat strength… that way…"

  "Who is it? Tell me?"

  "I cannot. I am… bound. Everything I am… is all that keeps the doorway closed…" And now she could hear the immense weariness, the longing for the end of struggle that death would finally bring. "So I am bound… to keep the secret…"

  His voice fell silent-for a time she thought it was gone forever. Then something came to her, wafting like a feather in a night wind. "The oracle speaks of berries… white and red. So it shall be. So it must be."

  Surely there was nothing left of him now. "Father?" She tried to be strong. "Father?"

  "Remember the oracle and what it says," he said, his quiet voice now slipping away into nothingness. "Remember that each light… between sunrise… and sunset…"

  "Is worth dying for at least once," she finished, but he was gone.

  When she was herself again, the Yasammez that breathed, and felt, the Yasammez that had lived each painful moment of her people's millennial defeat, she rose and walked out of the cave. None of the eremites followed her, not even Aesi'uah, her trusted counselor. Death was in her eyes and in her heart. No living thing could have walked with her then and every one of them knew it.

  This was not how Matt Tinwright would have chosen to spend his evening.

  He broke apart the last small piece of bread he had brought with him and soaked up the wine in his cup. Sops, when he could have had eel stew! Still, he was lucky he'd found the wine, and he did not feel the least bit sorry for whoever had set it down. He'd been hiding on the chapel balcony from the evening bell to what must now be almost midnight, keeping an eye on the door that led to Hendon Tolly's chambers, which was where the physician's apprentice said Okros Dioketian had gone. What could the man be doing in Tolly's rooms so long? More important, when he finally came back out, would he return to his own chambers so Tinwright could go and sleep? Surely Avin Brone didn't expect him to follow Okros into his bedchamber…!

  He heard the creak of the door opening before he saw the movement. Tinwright crouched lower, his eyes just above the balcony rail, even though he was a stone's throw away and hidden by the shadowed overhang of the small chapel.

  As he had prayed, Brother Okros came out of the door, his slight frame and bald head instantly recognizable despite his voluminous robes, but to Tinwright's surprise he was not alone: three burly men in quilted surcoats bearing the Tollys' silver boar and spears walked behind the physician, and another man in a dark, hooded cloak went beside him. Just the cloaked man's graceful movements were enough to tell him who this was. Tinwright's heart was pounding. Okros and Hendon Tolly, going somewhere together-he would have to follow.

  He felt quite ill at the thought.

  He had expected them to head for the physician's chambers, but any hope of remaining indoors was dashed when Okros led the little procession out of one of the residence's side doors. Tinwright did his best to remain well behind, and when he followed them out he tarried a few moments in idle conversation with the door guards, speaking of his own sleeplessness and the need for some cool night air to cure it.

  Cool night air, indeed, he thought as he hurried across the side garden, trying to find his quarry again by the light of the torches they had brought from the residence. In fact, it was bloody freezing. All he had was his woolen cloak over a thin shirt-no hat, no gloves, and not even a torch to keep himself from stumbling. Curse Brone and his wretched, bullying ways!

  He found them again crossing the muddy main road that led to the armory and the guard barracks and began to follow them at a distance. One of the guards was carrying a large bundle wrapped in cloth, and another gingerly held a smaller package-could it be the cockerel? But why would they be carrying the rooster around at this time of the night, unless they planned to use it in some kind of sorcerous ritual? Tinwright felt his blood grow even colder than the night air had already made it.

  A moment later, as the group of men turned away from the main road that led to the Throne hall and instead walked down a winding path beside the royal family's chapel, the poet's blood grew even chillier. Tolly and Okros were headed toward the graveyard.

  It took everything he had to keep following. Tinwright had a horror of cemeteries and the overgrown temple-yard was one of the most fearful, with its strange old statu
es and its mausoleums like prisons for the restless dead. His fear of Avin Brone alone kept him moving-his fear, and a certain curiosity as well. What did Okros plan? Did he mean to invoke the gods here in this lonely place, at this haunted hour? But why?

  The men stopped outside the door of the Eddon family crypt and Tinwright had to suppress a groan of horror. Hendon Tolly had a key around his neck. When the crypt door was open four of the men went down the stairs, leaving a single guard to stand sentry outside. The light of the torches dimmed as they disappeared below, but their sheen still glimmered in the doorway. Tinwright felt very glad that he was not in that house of death with them, watching the shadows jump and crawl along the walls.

  The sentry, who at first stood erect and alert at the entrance to the tomb, after a while began to slump a little, and at last leaned back against the carved face of the tomb and propped his spear against the wall. Tinwright (who would never have imagined himself so bold) decided this would be a good time to creep closer and perhaps hear something of what was being said inside. Surely that would be worth a few extra starfish from Brone-maybe even a silver queen or two!

  He moved in a wide semicircle beyond the torchglow spilling from the door of the crypt until he had almost reached the wall of the chapel. Tinwright could see the sentry's back, and the man's slack posture emboldened him to creep forward until he was only a few paces from the doorway. He crouched behind a monument that had been half-immured in ivy creeping down from the temple wall.

  "… But not that way," someone in the crypt was saying, the words thin but clearly audible-Tinwright thought it was Okros. "It is not the sacrifice here that matters, but the sacrifice there."

  "You are tiring me," said another voice-one that Tinwright knew all too well. Suddenly his moment of foolish optimism was over. What was a poet doing here in the middle of the night, playing at being a spy? If Hendon Tolly caught him he would be flayed alive! Only the fear of making noise and alerting the sentry kept Matt Tinwright from turning and bolting back to the residence. He was shaking so badly now he could barely keep his balance where he crouched. "And boring me," Tolly continued. "It is not my best mood, leech. I suggest you do something to make me interested again."