by Tad Williams
It took Barrick a moment to understand what she was saying, then he was astonished and disgusted. It was one thing to understand that older people at one time must have felt the lusts of the body, another to be told about it and then be forced to imagine it. But before he could say anything, Briony’s hand tightened hard on his arm.
“You were alone in a strange place, Auntie,” his sister said gently. “And it was a long time ago.” But Briony looked shocked, too, Barrick thought.
“No, that is just the thing,” Merolanna said. “It would seem that way to you—that to someone my age it must be so far back that it can scarcely be remembered. But one day you will see, dear, you will see. It seems like it was yesterday.” She looked at Barrick, then Briony, and there was something in her face that overcame Barrick’s dislike of what she was saying, something lost and sad and defiant. “More than that. It seems like today.”
“I don’t understand,” Briony said. “What was the man’s name, Auntie? Your . . . lover.”
“It doesn’t matter. He is even longer dead than Daman. All gone, all of them.” Merolanna shook her head. “And in any case, by the time Daman came back from the fighting in the west, it was all over. Except my shame. And the child.”
“The child . . . ?”
“Yes. You do not think I would be so lucky, do you? To have my one transgression end so easily, so . . . harmlessly?” Merolanna laughed a little, dabbed at her eyes. “No, there was a child, and although when I found out I thought I might pass it off as my husband’s since he was expected home soon, he was delayed by storms and squabbling among the victorious captains and did not return for almost a year. The Sisters of Zoria helped me, bless them. They saved me—took me into their temple at Helmingsea for the final months while all in the castle thought I had returned to my family in Fael to wait for my husband’s return. Yes, well you may look, dear. Deception upon deception. Did you ever think your great-aunt was such a wicked woman?” She laughed again. Barrick thought it sounded like something broken and rasping. “And then . . . then my baby came.”
Merolanna took a moment to regain her breath and her composure. “I could not keep him, of course. The Zorian sisters found a woman who would have him to raise, and in return I brought the woman back to Southmarch with me, to live on a farm in the hills outside the city. She is dead now, too, but for years I quietly sold some of my husband’s gifts every year to pay for her living there. Even after the child was taken.”
“Taken?” Barrick became interested again. “Taken by who?”
“I’ve never known.” The old lady dabbed at her eyes. “I used to visit him, sometimes, the little boy. Oh, he was bonny, fair as fair could be! But I could not go there often—too many would notice, and some would have become curious. My husband was the king’s brother, after all. So when the woman told me he had been stolen, I didn’t really believe her at first—I thought her somewhat simpleminded greed had at last turned into something worse, that she had hidden the child and was going to threaten to tell my husband if I did not pay her more, but I saw quickly that she was truly heartbroken. She was a poor woman, and of course she blamed it on the Twilight People—‘The fairies took him!’ that’s what she said. Just a little less than two years old, he was.” The duchess stopped to blow her nose. “Gods, look at me! Fifty years ago and it could have been yesterday!”
“But after all those years, why does it pain you so much now, Auntie?” asked Briony. “It is terrible and sad, but why have you taken to your bed like this?”
“Such pain never really goes away, dear. But there is a reason my heart is so sore. Merciful Zoria, it is because I saw him. At Kendrick’s funeral. I saw my child.”
For a moment Barrick could only look at Briony. He felt queasy and strange. Nothing made sense anymore, and the duchess’ confession was just another crumbling of what was ordinary and safe. “A shadow,” he said, and wondered again what Merolanna’s dreams were like. “The castle is full of them these days.”
“Do you mean you saw your child grown? Maybe you did, Auntie. No one ever told you he was dead . . .”
“No, Briony, I saw him as a child. But not even the child he was when I saw him last. He had grown. But only a little. Only . . . a few years . . .” And she was weeping again.
Barrick grunted and looked to his sister again for help making sense of this, but she had clambered across the bed to put her arms around the old woman.
“But, Auntie,” Briony began.
“No.” Merolanna was fighting to keep the tears from overwhelming her. “No, I may be old—I may even be mad—but I am not foolish. What I saw, ghost or figment or waking nightmare, it was my own child. It was my boy—my child. The child I gave away!”
“Oh, Auntie.” Suddenly, to Barrick’s immense discomfort, Briony was crying too. He could think of nothing to do except to get up and pour Merolanna another cup of wine and then stand beside the bed holding it, waiting for the storm of tears to pass.
17
Black Flowers
THE SKULL:
Whistling, this one is whistling
A song of wind and growing things
A poem of warm stones in the ashes
—from The Bonefall Oracles
THE GRAND AND WORTHY NOSE, larger and fatter than his fellow Rooftoppers but still no taller than Chert’s finger, had spoken: these strangers smelled of wickedness. There was to be no meeting with the queen. Chert didn’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed—in fact, he didn’t know much of anything. When he had risen this morning, the idea that he might end up on the roof of the castle with a crowd of people smaller than field mice had not even occurred to him.
Most of the Rooftoppers had backed away in fear from their two large visitors after the Nose’s pronouncement. The boy Flint looked on, his thoughts and feelings well hidden as always. Only the tiny man named Beetledown seemed to be actively thinking, his little forehead pinched into wrinkles.
“A moment, masters, I beg ’ee,” Beetledown said suddenly, then skittered across the sloping roof with surprising quickness to the Grand and Worthy Nose and said something to that plump dignitary in their own tongue, a thin, rapid piping. The Nose replied. Beetledown spoke again. The assembly of courtiers all listened raptly, making little noises of wonder like the cheeping of baby sparrows.
Beetledown and the Nose trilled back and forth at each other until Chert began to wonder again if he had lost his mind, if this entire spectacle might be happening only in his own head. He reached out to the roof tiles and stroked the fired clay between his fingers, poked at the damp moss between them. All real enough. He wondered what Opal would make of these creatures. Would she put them all in a basket, bring them tenderly home to hand-feed them with crumbs of bread? Or would she chase them off with a broom?
Ah, my good old woman—what madness have we gotten ourselves into with this stray boy?
At last, Beetledown turned and trotted down the roof toward them. “I beg grace of ’ee once more, masters. The Grand and Worthy Nose says tha can meet our queen, but only if we can put bowmen on shoulders of each of tha twain. ’Twas my idea, and I be sorrowed for its ungracious-ness.” He did indeed look ashamed, crushing his little cap in his hands as he spoke.
“What?” Chert looked to Flint, then back to Beetledown. “Are you actually saying you want to put little men with bows and arrows on our shoulders? What, so they can shoot us in the eyes if we do something they do not like?”
“ ’Tis all that the Grand and Worthy Nose will agree,” said Beetledown. “My word did be bond enough for the young one, but you, sir, be a stranger to even me.”
“But you heard him. You heard him say that he lives with me—that I am his . . . stepfather, I suppose.” Despite his anger, Chert couldn’t help being a bit amused to find himself arguing with this absurd manikin as though with any ordinary man. Then he had a sudden, grim thought: was this how the big folk felt about him—that even treating him like a real person was an act of k
indness on their part? He was ashamed. A Funderling, of all folk, ought to know better than to judge another person by his size. “Is that all they wish to do? Ride our shoulders and prevent us from doing wrong?” He realized he was as much worried for Flint as himself. Fissure and fracture, I am truly becoming a father, will it or not. “What if one of us coughs? Stumbles? I am not anxious to get an arrow in my eye, even a small one, over a misstep or a sudden chill on my chest.”
The fat Rooftopper offered something else in his shrill voice.
“The Grand and Worthy Nose says we could bind ’ee, hands and feet,” explained Beetledown. To his credit, he sounded a little dubious. “ ’Twould take some time, but then no one would fear wrongdoing.”
“Not likely,” said Chert angrily. “Let someone tie my hands and feet, up here on a high, slippery roof? No, not likely.” He saw that Flint was watching him; the boy was expressionless but Chert couldn’t help feeling rebuked, as though he had pushed himself in where he was not wanted and was now spoiling it for everyone.
Well, perhaps I wasn’t wanted. But should I have simply let the boy climb the roof without a word, without trying to follow him? What sort of guardian would I be? Still, it seemed it was up to him to make things right.
“Very well,” he said at last. “Your archers may perch on me like squirrels on a branch, for all I care. I will move slowly, and so will the boy—do you hear me, Flint? Slowly. But tell your men that if one of them pinks me or the child without reason, then they will meet an angry giant for certain.” Despite his irritation and fear, he was startled to realize that to these folk he was just that—a huge and fearsome giant. Chert the Giant. Chert the Ogre.
I could scoop them up by the handful and eat them if I wished, just like Brambinag Stoneboots out of the old stories. He did not, of course, share these thoughts with the Rooftoppers, but sat as still as he could while two of the mice, each bearing a rider, begin to climb his sleeves. The scratchy little claws tickled and he was tempted simply to lift the bowmen and their mounts into place, but he could imagine such a gesture being taken wrongly. The faces of the little men were frightened but determined within their bird-skull helmets, and he had no doubt their tiny arrows and pikes were sharp.
“What is this in aid of, by the way?” he asked when the guards were in place on his shoulders. “Lad, you have not told me why you are here, how you met these folk, anything. What does this all mean?”
The boy shrugged. “They want me to meet the queen.”
“You? Why you?”
Flint shrugged again.
It is like trying to chip granite with a piece of soggy bread, Chert thought. The boy, as usual, was as talkative as a root.
He was distracted by a murmur in the crowd of tiny people, the courtiers all so carefully dressed in their rude homespun, ornamented with what looked like bits of butterfly wing and flecks of crystal and metal and feathers so small they might have come from the breasts of hummingbirds. They were all turning toward the roofcrest in anticipation. Even Chert found himself holding his breath.
Like the Grand and Worthy Nose, she came riding a bird, but this one was either more successfully trained or the restraints were hidden: the snow-white dove had no band around its wings. The tiny shape atop it did not teeter in a boxy covered saddle like the Nose, but rode directly between the dove’s wings with her legs curled beneath her and the reins little more than a sparkling cobweb in her hands. Her gown was brown and gray, rich with ornament, and her hair was dark red.
The dove stopped. All the courtiers and guards had gone down on their knees, including those on the shoulders of Flint and Chert, although Chert could feel the needle-fine point of one of the soldiers’ pikes resting against his neck—perhaps as a precaution. Even the Grand and Worthy Nose had prostrated himself.
Beetledown was the first to raise his head. “Her Exquisite and Unforgotten Majesty, Queen Upsteeplebat,” he announced.
From what Chert could make out, the queen was not so much pretty as handsome, with a fine, strong-boned face and eyes that looked up to him without any discernible fear. Chert found himself bowing his head. “Your Majesty,” he said, and for a moment there was no incongruity. “I am Chert of the Blue Quartz family. This is my . . . my ward, Flint.”
“The child we know of already.” She spoke slowly, but her Marchlands speech, although a bit musty in its sound, was far clearer than Beetledown’s. “We give you both welcome.”
The Nose laboriously lifted himself from his abasement and came forward, chattering something.
“Our adviser says there is a wicked scent about you,” the queen reported. “I smell it not, but he has always been a trusted help to our person. He is the sixth generation of those who are First to the Cheese—his nostrils are of true breeding. But we also can see no wickedness in you or the boy, although we think there are other stories in the child, stories untold. Are we right, Chert of Blue Quartz? Is wickedness absent in truth?”
“As far as I know, Your Majesty. I did not even know your people still existed until an hour ago. I certainly bear you no ill will.” Chert was realizing that the size of a queen meant little. This one impressed him and he wanted to please her. Wouldn’t that make Opal spit if she knew!
“Fairly spoken.” Queen Upsteeplebat waved; two of her soldiers sprang forward to help her down from the dove’s back. She looked up briefly at the windowless stone walls all around. “This is a place well-chosen for a meeting—although it is long since we or our predecessors have used it for a gathering of this sort. You will forgive us, Chert of Blue Quartz, but we are unused to the manner of speaking with giants, although we have practiced the old ways to be ready for just such a day, unlikely as we thought its arrival.”
“You speak our tongue very well, Majesty.” Chert snatched a look at Flint. The boy was watching, but he seemed to think this no more interesting than any other conversation between adults. Why had they invited Flint in the first place? What did they hope to get from him?
The queen smiled and nodded. “Though our folk live in your shadows, and make our lives often beneath your tables and in your cupboards, generations have passed since we have spoken, one to the other. But times now demand it, we believe.”
“I’m a bit confused, Majesty. Times demand what?”
“That your folk and ours should speak again. Because we of the high places are frightened, and not just for ourselves. That which we had thought asleep—we had in our royal keeping too much knowledge to think it dead—is now awakening. That which we so happily fled long ago now reaches out again . . . but it is not only the Sni’sni’sniksoonah who must fear it.” The rapid click seemed a sound that only a squirrel or a mockingbird should be able to make.
“Not only who?”
“My people. Rooftoppers, in your tongue.” The queen nodded her head. “So you must help us decide what is to be done. The boy finding Beetledown—we think we sense the Hand of the Sky in it. Certainly it has been a stretchingly long time since any of the giants has seen us against our will. We cannot help thinking that perhaps it truly is time for us to make common cause with your kind. Perhaps you will not listen to us and we must flee again, although fleeing will do us little good, I fear, but perhaps you will listen. That alone will not save us, but it would be a start.”
Chert shook his head. “I don’t understand any of this, I’m afraid. But I’m trying. Because the boy caught one of your people, you Rooftoppers want to make common cause with the big folk? Why?”
“Because although we have lived hidden in your shadows for long years, Old Night is a shadow that will cover all, and none of us will find our way out again.” The royal mask seemed to slip a little; for the first time, Chert could see the fear she had hidden. “It is coming, Chert of Blue Quartz. We would have guessed in any case, but the truth has been directly spoken to us by the Lord of the Peak.” Watching her speak so gravely, so carefully, Chert did not doubt that she was an able ruler. Despite her size, he could not help finding
her very admirable. “The storm that we have feared since before my grandmother’s grandmother’s day is coming,” said Queen Upsteeplebat. “It will be here soon.”
“May the gods protect us,” murmured Raemon Beck, but the young man didn’t sound as though he believed that they would. Ferras Vansen stared in silence at the valley spread before them. It disturbed him, too, but it took a moment for him to understand why it seemed so particularly frightening. Then he remembered the old woman’s house and what he had found there. He had been only eight or nine years old that day, already nearing a man’s height but thin as a bowstave. He had thought himself very brave, of course.
Ferras’ mother was concerned about the widow who lived on the next farm, perhaps because with her own husband so short of breath these days and barely able to get out of bed she had been anticipating her own upcoming widowhood. She at least had children, though; the old neighbor had none. Now they had not seen her for several days and her goats were wandering across the green but summer-dry hills. Fearing the old woman might have become too ill to take care of herself, his mother sent Ferras, her eldest, across the dale to look in on her with a jug of milk and a small loaf.
He recognized something in the silence of the place while he was still yards away, but without quite understanding what he sensed. The little wooden house was a familiar place—Ferras had been there several times with his sisters, bringing the old woman a baked festival sweet or some flowers from his mother. The old woman had never had much to say, but she always seemed happy to see the children and would always press some gift on them in return, although what she had to spare was seldom anything more than a shiny wooden bead from a necklace that had lost its string or a bit of dried fruit from one of the stubby trees in her dooryard. But now some new element was present and young Ferras felt the hairs on his arms and neck rise and tingle.
