by Tad Williams
"What are you babbling about?" The guard pulled his arm away.
"I am telling you of the Oracle Finneth," said Hewney patiently. "And of how in the morning the women of the village came to the well to draw water, but Finneth rose up from the waters, shining like one of the gods themselves, and spoke to them of the truth of the Three Brothers, of the Sixfold Way and the Doctrine of Civility to Domesticated Animals…"
"Enough, man!" groaned the guard, but just as it seemed he was about to send them on their way Briony felt the wagon bounce and heard the wagon's door rattle. She threw herself back on the ground and pulled the blanket up to her neck.
"And who is this? " It was one of the other gatehouse guards. He climbed into the wagon and stood over her. Briony moaned but did not open her eyes. "Why is this girl here?" he demanded. "Let me see you."
Briony felt his rough hand close on the blanket and pull it away. She brought her hands up to shield her belly and the bundle of rags stuffed under her threadbare dress.
"Please, sir, please!" said Finn. "That is my wife. We are taking her to the oracle's well to ask for a safe birth. None of our other children survived…"
"Yes," said Hewney from behind him. "My brother-in-law has suffered terribly. There is something wrong with his wife, the poor, corrupted woman-we think she is diseased. The last birth, a noxious black discharge came out of her with a stink like rotting fish…"
Despite her fear, Briony almost laughed as the guard backed hurriedly out of the wagon.
When the gates of the city were at last out of sight behind them, Briony emerged to sit on the steps of the wagon as it bumped down the Royal Highway, the broad river Ester shimmering beside it in the early morning sun.
"Civility to Domestic Animals?" she asked. "And rotting fish…? "
Hewney gave her a superior look. "I knew a woman in Greater Stell who smelled like rotting fish all the time. She had her share of suitors, too, believe me."
"Not to mention a clutter of cats that followed her everywhere she went," laughed Finn. "Well done, Princess. I see you have not forgotten what we taught you." He clasped his ample stomach. " 'Oh, my poor baby! Oh, poor me!' Most convincing."
Briony could not help laughing. It was the first time she had done so in a while. "Rogues, all of you."
"Which still makes players more honest than most noblemen," said Hewney.
Briony lost her smile. "Except for Feival."
Hewney's face turned grim as well. "Yes, except for him."
They made it all the way to Doros Eco that night, a walled town nestled in the foothills above the river. It was a cool, windy evening. As Briony huddled in her cloak and watched Estir Makewell tending the cook pot, she realized that for the first time in months she felt… free. No, not precisely free, but the heaviness that had seemed to press down on her every day in Broadhall Palace, the weight of other people's suspicions or expectations, was now gone. She was still worried, even terrified, by what had happened to her life and the people she loved, but here beneath the open sky, surrounded by people who didn't want anything of her she wasn't happy to give, she certainly felt a little more hopeful about things.
"Can I help, Estir?" she asked.
The woman looked at her with more than a little suspicion. "Why would you, Princess?"
"Because I want to. Because I don't want to sit and watch someone else do it. I've had that all my life."
Pedder Makewell's sister snorted. "And that's such a bad thing?" She pointed at a couple of carrots and a whiskery onion. "Make yourself happy, then. The other knife's over there. Chop those for me."
Briony spread a kerchief in her lap and began to cut up the vegetables. "Why are you here, Estir?"
The woman did not look at her. "What sort of question is that? Where else would I be?"
"I mean why do you travel with the players? You are a comely woman. Surely there have been men who have… who have favored you. Did none of them ever ask you to marry?"
The look of distrust returned. "As it happens, yes, though it's no business of yours…" She suddenly went a little pale. "Forgive me, Highness, I forgot…"
"Please, Estir, forget all you want. We were… we were almost friends, once. Can't we be that way again?"
Estir Makewell sniffed. "Easy to say. You could have me killed, my lady. One word from you to the proper folks and I'd be bunged up in a tower, waiting for the headsman. Or whipped in the town square." She shook her head, worried again. "Not that I think you'd do that, of course. You're a kind girl… a proper princess, that's what I mean…"
It was impossible to have an ordinary conversation with the woman. Briony gave up and concentrated on chopping carrots.
As the days went by Briony began to fall back into the rhythms of life on the road. The players had the last of her money so they did not have to give performances, but they prepared sets and props and costumes for the plays Finn, Hewney, and Makewell intended to perform when they were back in the March Kingdoms again. To everyone's astonishment young Pilney, Briony's onetime stage husband, had fallen in love with the daughter of an innkeeper-not the treacherous Bedoyas, but the master of the Whale Horse-and had stayed behind in Tessis to marry and help his new father-in-law. Between this loss and the less charming defection of Feival Ulian, Briony found herself called on to stand in for most of the girls and youth parts. It was amusing and even enjoyable, but this time she could never quite rid herself of the knowledge that it was a temporary thing, that the world was much closer to her now than it had been on their trip into Tessis.
One obvious proof of that was the news they got in towns and from other travelers. On the trip south people had been talking about the events in the March Kingdoms, rumors about the fairy-war and the change of regime in Southmarch and about the autarch's siege of Hierosol. Now they still talked about the autarch, but the rumors were both more fearful and more confused. Some said he'd razed Hierosol to the ground and was marching north toward Syan. Others suggested that for some reason he'd gone to Jellon and attacked that nation. Still others had him sailing toward Southmarch, a tale that made no sense at all to Briony, but still filled her with dread. What would a monster like that want with her tiny little country? Could it be true? Was she hurrying toward an even worse situation than she already feared? Of course, the other rumors were just as troubling, if not more so: if Hierosol had truly fallen, where was her father? Was Olin even alive?
It was not surprising that Briony couldn't find as much joy in playing a part as she once had.
Hewney and Pedder Makewell came back from the town looking very discouraged.
"The king's soldiers have already been here as well," Makewell said, washing the dust of the road from his mouth with a gulp of sour ale. "We dare not go into town except in ones and twos."
Briony felt her heart sink. It was not that she had particularly wanted to walk into the small town-what would there be for her, anyway, an inn's common room where she would have to keep her face mostly hidden? A few market stalls where she might shop for some trinkets if she had any money to spare, which she did not?-but the knowledge that King Enander was hunting her so seriously, so soon, was disturbing. Worse still was the knowledge that if she were captured, Finn and the players would suffer badly for her sake.
A long shadow fell over her. "You look sad, Princess." It was Dowan Birch, the company's tallest member, doomed to play every ogre and cannibal giant in defiance of his true, sweet nature. Briony did not want to trouble him or the others with her fears-they all knew well enough what was going on.
"It is nothing. Why didn't you go into town with Pedder and the others? "
He raised his thin shoulders in a shrug. "If somebody is looking for Makewell's Men, they are more apt to remember me than any of the others."
She lifted her hand to her mouth in surprise. "Oh, Dowan, I am so sorry! I didn't even think of that. I have trapped you here, skulking in camp, just like I have trapped myself."
He smiled sadly. "It's just as wel
l, truly. People always stare at me wherever I go and I am weary of it. I'm happy to sit here," he gestured around their camp with his impossibly long arm, "where nobody notices me."
"That's a very small dream, Dowan."
"Oh, I have bigger ones than that. I dream of a day when I can have a farm of my own… settle down with a good woman…" He blushed suddenly and looked away. "And children, of course…"
"Birch!" called Pedder Makewell. "Why are you idling when there is mending to do?"
He rolled his eyes and Briony laughed. "Coming, Pedder."
"I meant to ask you," she said, "how is it that you learned to sew so well?"
"Before I became a player I studied to be a priest, and lived with other acolytes in the temple of Onir Iaris. There were no women, of course, and we all had tasks. Some discovered themselves to be cooks. Some didn't, but thought they were," he said, laughing a little. "Me, I found myself to be reasonably skilled with a needle and thread."
"I wish I could say the same. My father used to say that I stitched like a woman killing spiders with a broom-poke, poke, poke…" Now Briony laughed, too, although it hurt to think of Olin. "Gods, how I miss him!"
"He still lives, you said. You shall see each other again." Birch slowly nodded. "Trust me. I often have such feelings and they are usually right…"
"You are going to have the feeling of losing your place in the world and having to beg for your meals," called Pedder Makewell loudly. "Get on with your work, you great stilting stork!"
"We had one like him in the temple, too," Birch whispered to Briony as he stood. "We poured a bucket of water over him one night when he slept, then swore that he pissed his own bed."
As she laughed the tall man started to walk away, then turned. A strange, distracted look had come over his face.
"Do not forget, Princess," he told her. "You will see him again. Be ready to say what you need to say."
Qinnitan finally learned her captor's first name, but largely by chance. She also learned something else that she hoped she could put to better use than any name.
Half a tennight or more had passed since she had dreamed of Barrick turning his back to her on the hilltop, and although she had dreamed of the red-haired boy again he never responded and each time he seemed farther away. The helplessness of her situation had begun to wear away at her resolve. She sat for hours each day watching the distant coastline slide past, struggling to think of some plan for escape. Sometimes other boats passed nearby, but she knew that even if she called to them no one would try to help her, and that even if someone did they couldn't outfight the demon Vo, so she kept her mouth shut. She had already cost poor Pigeon his fingers-why cause the death of an innocent fisherman?
On the night she learned Vo's first name she had lain brooding for a long time before falling asleep. Padding footfalls woke her in the thin, cold hours after midnight; she could tell by the step that it was Vo who paced the deck. She lay listening to him as he walked back and forth in a tight pattern of which her own position might have been the midway point. She wondered at the muttering that every now and then rose above the continuous slap and slosh of the waves against the boat until she realized it was her captor talking to himself in Xixian.
The thought of such an iron-willed man talking to himself was frightening enough: it betokened madness and loss of control, and although Vo terrified her, Qinnitan knew that if he remained in his right mind she would at least live until he handed her to the autarch. But Sulepis had put something inside him, and if that were hurting him badly, or if the drops of poison he took each day were somehow sickening his mind, anything could happen. So Qinnitan lay trembling in the dark, listening as he paced around the deck.
He seemed to be having a conversation with someone, or at least was speaking as though someone was listening. Much of his talk seemed a list of grievances, many of which meant nothing to Qinnitan-some woman who had looked at him mockingly, a man who had thought himself superior, another man who had fancied himself clever. All had been proved wrong, it seemed, at least in her captor's fevered mind, and now he was explaining this to some imagined auditor.
"Skinless, now, every one of them." His hissing, triumphant voice was so chilling that it was all she could do not to cry out. "Skinless and eyeless and weeping blood in the dust of the afterlife. Because Daikonas Vo will not be mocked…"
A few moments later he stopped a little distance away. She risked opening her eyes a little, but could not quite make out what he was doing: Vo's head was thrown back, as if he downed a cup of wine, but the movement lasted a moment only.
The poison, she realized. Whatever was in the black bottle, he was taking it at night and not just in the morning as she'd thought. Did he always do that? Or was this something new?
When Daikonas Vo had finished he staggered a little and almost fell, which was the strangest thing yet: she had never seen him anything less than dangerously graceful. He sat down on the deck with his back against the mast and let his chin sag to his chest, then fell silent, as though he had dropped into a deep slumber.
Learning his first name brought Qinnitan nothing. Hearing him talking angrily to himself merely left her even more frightened than she had been-he truly did seem to be going mad. But what stuck in her thoughts was the way his body so quickly grew slack and heavy after he put the poison to his lips.
That was indeed something worth thinking about.
34
Son of the First Stone "Eenur, the king of the fairies, is said to be blind. Some say he took this wound when he fought on the side of Zmeos Whitefire during the Theomachy and was struck by a fiery bolt from Perin's hammer. Others say that he gave his eyes in return for being allowed to read the Book of Regret."
-from "A Treatise on the Fairy Peoples of Eion and Xand"
A figure in a pale robe stepped forward out of the confusing shadows. The three beast-things retreated to swarm around it like a huntsman's hounds, but these crouching, apish creatures were nothing like hounds.
Barrick drew himself up so that he could defend himself but the stranger only stood looking down at him with an expression that might have been bemusement. At first glance Barrick had thought the newcomer a man, but now he was not so certain: the stranger's ears were an odd shape and set too low on his hairless skull, and the shape of his face was also unusual, with very high cheekbones, a long jaw, and a nose that was little more than a low bump above two slits.
"What are…?" Barrick hesitated. "Who are you? Where am I?"
"I am Harsar, a servant. You are in the House of the People, of course." The stranger was speaking-his lips even moved-but Barrick heard the voice in the bones of his head. "Was that not your destination?"
"I… I suppose it was. The king. The king told me to come here…"
"Just so." The stranger reached out a hand as cold and dry as a lizard's claw and helped Barrick to his feet. The three creatures capered around him for a moment and then went scampering out the door into the blue-lit hallway beyond where they stood, crouched and waiting. Barrick looked at his surroundings for the first time and saw that he was in a room decorated with intense but somber intricacy, surrounded by a forest of striped columns, far too many for any mere structural purpose. Set into the otherwise featureless black stone floor beneath him, a great disk of some glowing pearlescent material provided the only light in the large chamber.
"Am I still…?" Barrick shook his head. "I must be. Behind the Shadowline?"
The hairless one cocked his head as if he had to consider the question. "You are still in the People's lands, yes, of course-and this is the People's greatest house."
"The king. Is the king here? I have to give him…" He hesitated. Who knew what intrigues existed among the Twilight People? "I need to speak with him."
"Just so," Harsar said again. He might have smiled-it passed like the flicking of a snake's tongue. "But the king is resting. Come with me."
The strange little creatures gamboled around their feet as they
left the room with the glowing floor and stepped out into a high hallway, dark but for shimmers of weak turquoise light. Barrick was exhausted, breathless. He had reached his destination at last, he realized-Qul-na-Qar, as Gyir the Storm Lantern had named it. Even the compulsion that the dark woman had put upon him, which had subsided over time into a sort of dull, constant ache, was now satisfied. He had done it!
But what exactly have I done? With the need at last satisfied, uncertainty began to blossom. What will happen to me here?
Everything about the place was strange to Barrick's eyes. Its architecture seemed shapeless, every right angle subverted by another less explicable shape; even the dimensions of the passages shifted between one end and the other for no reason he could see.
The light was odd as well. At times they stepped into utter darkness, but then flagstones down the center of the floor gleamed beneath their feet. Most other places were lit by candles, but the flames were not all the ordinary yellow-white: some burned pale blue or even green, which gave the long halls the watery appearance of submarine caverns.
Barrick was also beginning to notice that everywhere he went he seemed to be surrounded by quiet noises-not just the breathy sounds of the little creatures scampering around Harsar's legs, but sighs, whispers, voices quietly singing, even the gentle fluting or sounding of invisible instruments, as though a host of ghostly courtiers hung in the air above their heads and followed wherever they went. Barrick could not help remembering an old Orphan's Day tale from his childhood, Sir Caylor with the bag of winds that had swallowed all the voices in the world, and how some of them leaked out as he rode and almost drove him mad.
