by Tad Williams
Something creaked. “Help me!” Shaso whispered, voice ragged with pain.
Briony took a step, stumbled and fell to her knees. She found him by touch, found the heavy wooden thing in his bony hands.
“Lift!”
She did, grunting with the strain. A slowly widening triangle of light spilling across the straw-covered cell floor showed that Hendon Tolly and his guards had decided to risk the door and were cautiously opening it, but Briony and Shaso had managed to get the trapdoor in the bottom of the cell open as well. She was astounded to discover there was such a thing, but this was no time for questions. At Shaso’s mute gesture she slid into the trap and found the ladder, then stopped to hold it open so Shaso could clamber down above her without losing his balance, but she was not much heartened: the pit seemed as hopeless a hiding place as the cell, however deep it might go. Shaso let the door fall down behind them, covering them in blackness. She heard something scrape and realized he was slamming shut a hidden bolt. A moment later Tolly and his men were pounding on the trapdoor in a rage, the sounds echoing like thunder in the narrow pit.
“Crawl,” Shaso said when they reached the bottom of the shaft. “You will be able to stand soon.”
“By the gods—what is this?”
He shoved her hard. “Go! This is the stronghold of the castle, girl. The place of last resort in a siege. Don’t you think there would be some secret way out if the worst came to the worst?”
“It has come,” she said, then decided to save her breath for crawling.
In only a few moments Shaso’s promise was fulfilled: the narrow space widened until Briony couldn’t feel the walls or ceiling. “Where does this go?”
“It lets out by the Spring Tower’s water gate.”
“We must find Avin Brone. We must alert the rest of the guards!”
“No!” He grabbed at her leg. In the darkness, it was as though she had been clutched by some root-fingered monster. Shaso’s words came slowly as he fought for breath. “I do not trust Brone. In any case, we do not know where he is. If Tolly’s men find us, they will kill you immediately. They can always explain later that I had taken you hostage, that your death was an accident.”
“No one will believe that!”
“Perhaps not, in the light of tomorrow’s day, but what good would that do you tonight? Or me, as I am hacked to death in front of an angry crowd? Curse it, Briony Eddon, there is no time for this! We must get out. We must . . .” He paused to gasp for breath. It was terrifying to hear him so weak. What if he died? What would she do then? “You can stand now,” he said at last. “Take my hand. There is a place we can go.”
“What is this tunnel? How did you know about it?”
“I am the master of arms.” He groaned in pain as he stood. “It is my task to know of such things. Avin Brone knows, too. That is why he had me imprisoned in a different cell.”
“Then why weren’t Barrick and I told?”
Shaso sighed, a mixture of regret and clench-jawed pain. “You should have been. Take my hand.”
The journey seemed to last the better part of an hour, through damp stone corridors and treacherous narrows that seemed little more than holes dug through hard dirt, before they reached a small stone room that smelled of tidal mud and bird droppings. It had a high, slit window that bled moonlight, and for the first time since they entered the trapdoor she could see Shaso dan-Heza’s bony, weary face.
“We are in a storage room by the water gate,” he said, panting. She had actually heard him whimpering as he crawled, a sound so bizarrely unexpected that it had frightened her nearly as much as anything else she had experienced on this mad and dreadful night. Shaso showing pain, almost weeping! She could only imagine how dire his circumstances must truly be. “The Summerfield folk will be combing the castle. Others may be looking for you, too, but we can trust no one.”
“Surely . . .”
“Listen to me, girl! It is plain now how long and how carefully the Tollys have been preparing, waiting for a moment like this. Even if we reached Brone, even if he proves loyal, who can know whether his guards are the same? We must get you away from here.”
“Where? If there is so much danger, where can we go?”
“First things first, Briony.” He was shaking, trembling with the cold. “The only safe way to leave the castle is by water.”
“But the Twilight People are in the city just on the other side!”
He shook his head. “Then we will go another way. Across the bay and then southward down the coast. There are places in Helmingsea . . . I have prepared . . .”
“You . . . you thought something like this might happen?”
For the first time the old man laughed. It was a hard sound to hear, and quickly became a racking cough that was no more pleasant. “It is my task, Briony,” he said when he could speak again. “My sworn task. To think of anything that might happen—anything—and then prepare for it.”
Even with his body crippled and his life hanging by a thread, she thought she could hear a proud stubbornness in his words. It made her angry despite everything. “Shaso, why didn’t you tell me the truth about Kendrick?”
He shook his head. “Later. If we survive.” He got slowly and awkwardly to his feet and held out a hand. She shook it off and levered herself upright, conscious for the first time of how weary she was too, how badly all of her ached.
“Silent, now,” he said. “Stay in the shadows.”
The alleyway outside the storage room was empty, although they could hear sentries talking on top of the wall and a fire burned in the guardhouse beside the water gate. There had never been a night like this! Winter festival being celebrated in the castle while terrible enemies were encamped just across the water, her stepmother’s maid changing into a demon—it seemed that anything, absolutely any horrible, ghastly, impossible thing could happen tonight, and she wondered if she could entirely trust Shaso’s judgment. He was always so stiff-backed, so certain of his own rightness, but who could judge properly on such a night? What if he was wrong? Should she give up her throne without a fight, run away just for fear of Hendon Tolly? If she called to the guards, wouldn’t they come to her in a heartbeat, their princess regent—wouldn’t they hunt down Tolly like the murdering dog that he was?
But what if, as Shaso feared, they did not? What if they were secretly Tolly’s men, already suborned with lies or gold?
Briony tried to imagine what her father would do, how he would think. Stay alive, he would have told her, she knew that. If you are alive, you make all that Tolly says a lie. But if someone puts an arrow in you, then the people have no choice but to believe him, because Summerfield Court is the most powerful part of the kingdom outside Southmarch, and they have blood ties to the throne.
Shaso was leading her along the back rows near Skimmer’s Lagoon, she suddenly realized. She had hardly ever been to this part of the castle, its narrow streets full of ramshackle Skimmer houses, the quays jostling with the strangely shaped boats that seemed to house at least as many of the water folk as did the more conventional dwellings that loomed beside the docks. It seemed oddly quiet for Winter’s Eve, although she realized then that the hour must now be approaching midnight; the streets were almost deserted, some lights in high windows and a few snatches of faint music the only signs that people even lived here. She could hear the tied-up boats bumping against the piers and the occasional sleepily questioning call of a water bird.
“Where are we going?” she whispered as they waited in the shadows to cross one of the larger streets. The dwellings were crammed so close together and leaned so alarmingly overhead that it seemed more like a hornet’s nest than any human place. Shaso looked up and down, then waved for her to follow.
“Here,” he said. “This is the house of Turley, the headman.”
“Turley?” she whispered. It took her a moment to remember why the name was familiar. “I met him!”
Shaso did not reply, but knocked on the oval do
or; it was a strange pattern of sounds he made, too studied to be accidental. A few moments later the door opened just a slice and two wide eyes peered out. “I need to speak to your father,” Shaso said. “Now. Let us in.”
The girl stared as though she recognized him but hadn’t expected ever to see him at her door. “Cannot be done, Lord,” she said at last. “It is shoal-moot tonight.”
“I don’t care if it’s the end of the world, child,” the old man growled. “In fact, it is the end of the bloody world. Tell your father that Shaso dan-Heza is here on deadly urgent business.”
The door opened and the girl stepped out of the way. Briony realized she had seen this one before—the girl who, with her lover, saw the mysterious boat come into the lagoon the night before Kendricks’ death. Now she thought she knew what that boat had been carrying, and to whom.
Selia’s cursed witch-stone. If I had only paid more attention to what the Skimmers said . . . !
The Skimmer girl recognized Briony and made a movement that was a sort of unschooled curtsy. “Highness,” she said, but although interested, she did not look overawed. Briony couldn’t remember the girl’s name, so she only nodded back.
The narrow passageway creaked like ships’ timbers as they walked down it. It smelled strongly, almost overpoweringly, of fish and salt and other less identifiable scents. The girl went ahead of them to open the door at the end of the hall. The room beyond was small and cold and the fire was tiny, as though meant more for light than heat. A few candles burned in the room as well, but it still wasn’t bright enough for Briony to be sure how many people sat crammed into the little space. She counted a dozen gleaming bald heads before giving up, but more shapes were crouched in the shadows against the walls. They all seemed to be men and they all turned to look at her with roundly shining, blinking eyes, like frogs on a lily pond.
“Headman Turley,” said Shaso. “I need your help. I need a boatman. The life of the princess is in danger.”
A room’s worth of wide, wet stares grew even wider.
The one called Turley muttered to his fellows for a moment before standing. “Honored, Shaso-na,” he said at last in his slow, strangely-accented way, “we are honored, but we are all here sworn to a shoal-moot. We may none of us leave until the night ends or else it be blasphemy. Even were one of us to die, his body would here remain until the sun’s rise.”
“Is blasphemy worse than the death of the Princess of Southmarch, Olin’s daughter? Do you forget what you owe him?”
Turley winced a little, but his smooth face quickly became impassive again. “Still, even so, great Shaso-na.”
Briony realized that the master of arms had encountered someone as stubborn as Shaso himself and wished the situation allowed her to enjoy the spectacle. “Can’t we wait until dawn?” she asked.
“We dare not try to leave by boat in daylight. And Hendon Tolly will not wait, but will find out soon where the passage we used gives out, and from there it will be short work to think of searching along Skimmer’s Lagoon. Brone, too, if he thinks he is acting to save you, will not hesitate to send men house-to-house.”
“But we want Brone to find us!”
“Perhaps. But again, if only one man be disloyal, an accident could happen—an arrow let fly at me that hits you by mistake, let us say . . .” The old Tuani warrior shook his head. Briony thought he looked as though he was having trouble standing so long. “Headman, can you not send us to someone else—someone you trust? We need a boatman.”
“I will be their boatman,” announced the Skimmer girl. Briony had not noticed her waiting and listening in the doorway behind them; the voice made her jump. The gathered men seemed to have missed her as well and they muttered in distress and surprise.
“You, Ena?” said her father.
“Me. I am as able with the boat as most men. This is Olin’s daughter, after all—we dare not send her away. Who would give her shelter, who would take her where she needs to go? Calkin? Sawney Wander-Eye? There is a reason they are not here at the shoal-moot. No, I will take her.”
Her father hesitated, listening to the discontented murmurs of his fellows as he considered. His skin mottled and his throat-apple bulged as though he would puff out some monstrous sack and give a froggy belch of anger, but instead he swallowed again and shook his head in disgust. Briony knew that gesture, had seen her own father make it many times.
“Yes, Daughter. I see no other choice. You take them. But be you careful, ever so careful!”
“I will. She is Olin’s daughter and Shaso-na is a shoal-friend.”
“Yes, but also careful for your own sake, you nasty little pickerel.” He opened his arms to her and she stepped to him and gave him a quick, practical hug. “Will you accept this, Shaso-na?” Turley asked.
“Of course,” said the old man hoarsely.
Ena looked at Shaso carefully for the first time, up and down. “You need some healing, those cuts and burns seen to. But first a tub of good seawater, to take the stink off you.” She turned her heavy-lidded gaze on Briony. The nakedness of her eyebrows made the girl’s eyes seem mysterious and distant, like those of someone who had lived a long time in illness. “You, too, Mistress. Highness, I mean. You will never get that great ragged skirt in the boat, so we must find you something of mine to wear, begging your pardon. But we must be quick about it all. The moon is swimming, but soon she will dive.”
Ferras Vansen caught up to his quarry in the lower reaches of the hills, or at least that was where he thought he was, but he could not be sure. Only a few months ago this had been the border of the Shadowline, an eerie but otherwise ordinary place, but now the hills were shrouded in mist and nearly invisible and all the land down to the bay had become alien.
“Prince Barrick!” The rider didn’t turn but glided on through the streaming mist. For long moments Vansen thought he might be mistaken, that perhaps he was calling to some phantom thrown up by the Shadowline, but as he drew closer and eventually pulled abreast of the black horse he could see the boy’s pale, distracted face. “Barrick! Prince Barrick, it’s me, Vansen. Stop!”
The young prince didn’t even look. Vansen nudged his horse closer still, until it was rubbing shoulders with Barrick’s mount, then reached across and grabbed at the prince’s arm, remembering only too late that it was the wounded one, the crippled one.
Crippled or whole, it seemed to make little difference. Barrick snatched his arm away but still did not turn to look at Vansen, although he did speak for the first time.
“Go away.”
There was something odd in his voice, a sleepwalker’s distance; the boy’s refusal to turn his head began to seem more like madness than contempt. Vansen grabbed him again, harder now, and the prince jabbed at him with his elbow, trying to wriggle free. The horses bumped against each other and whinnied, uncertain whether this was war or something else. Vansen ducked a lashing fist, then wrapped his arms around the prince and pulled Barrick toward him. Barrick’s feet caught in the stirrups and he fell, taking the guard captain with him. Vansen avoided being kicked by the horses, but the ground seemed to rise up and hit him like a huge fist. For long moments he could only lie on his back, wheezing.
The horses had trotted on a little way and stopped. When Vansen at last sat up, still not able to fill his lungs completely, he saw to his dismay that Barrick was already on his feet and limping toward his large black horse where it cropped at the meadow grass, half-hidden by mist although it stood only a few dozen yards away. The prince was holding his side as though it hurt him badly, but showed no sign of letting it stop him. Vansen struggled upright and ran after him, but he was weary and battered from the day’s fighting and the fall; Prince Barrick had almost reached his horse by the time Vansen caught him.
“Your Highness, I cannot let you go there! Not into that land!”
In reply, Barrick pulled his dagger from his belt and took a clumsy swipe at Vansen without even looking at him. Vansen stumbled back in surprise, tri
pped, fell. The prince showed no urge to follow up on his advantage; he turned and caught his horse again, which had skipped away in nervousness at their struggle. Just as Barrick got his fingers under the belly strap to hold the horse and began to search for the stirrup with his foot, Vansen reached him again.
This time he was expecting the knife and was able to twist it out of the prince’s fingers. The boy let out a small grunt of pain, but still seemed to care little about Ferras Vansen himself; he simply turned again to clamber up onto his saddle. Vansen grabbed him around the waist and pulled him backward so that they both crashed to the ground. This time he shoved his helmeted head against the boy’s cloaked back and held on. Barrick gasped with pain and his struggles became increasingly desperate, his arms and legs thrashing as wildly as those of a drowning swimmer. As it became apparent that Vansen was the stronger, that the boy couldn’t reach the older man’s eyes or vitals with his hooking fingers, Barrick writhed more and more madly. The low moan he had been making as they rolled on the ground rose to a shriek, a horrible raw noise that dug into Vansen’s ears like a sharp stick, and the prince began to fling his arms and legs about, kicking, thrashing. Vansen could only hold tight. He felt a little like a father, but of a child who was very ill. An insane child.
How will I ever get him back to Southmarch? he wondered. Barrick’s shrieking grew increasingly ragged but did not stop or even slacken. Vansen started to crawl, trying to drag the boy along the ground toward his horse. I will have to tie him up. But with what? And how will I sneak him past the shadow folk?
Barrick’s struggles became even wilder, something Vansen would not have thought possible. He could pull the prince no farther, and had to stop a few yards from the horses, holding the boy wrapped in his arms and legs as Barrick went on screeching as monotonously as a broken-hinged gate fanning in the wind.
At last it was too much. Vansen’s own limbs were achingly weary, the boy’s cries so heartrendingly terrible, he began to believe he was somehow crippling the young prince’s mind. He let him go, watched as the boy stopped shrieking, got to his feet, swaying—it was a blessed relief to have the silence come rushing back—and staggered toward his horse, which waited with unnatural calm.
