(Shadowmarch #1) Shadowmarch

by Tad Williams

  Tin Street—a street in Southmarch

  Torvio—an island nation between Eion and Xand

  Tower of Autumn—one of the four cardinal towers of Southmarch Castle

  Tower of Spring—one of the four cardinal towers of Southmarch Castle; Anissa’s residence

  Tower of Summer—one of the cardinal towers of Southmarch Castle

  Tower of Winter—one of the cardinal towers of Southmarch castle

  Tribute Hall—hall outside Briony’s bedroom passage

  Tuan—native country of Shaso and Dawet

  Wedge Road—Chert and Opal’s street

  Wharfside—a district of mainland Southmarch

  White Desert—vast desert that covers much of the center of Xand

  Whitewood—a forest on the border between Silverside and Marrinswalk

  Wolfstooth Spire—tallest tower of Southmarch Castle

  Xand—the southern continent

  Xis—largest kingdom of Xand; its master is the autarch

  THINGS and ANIMALS

  Astion—a Funderling symbol of authority

  Blueroot—favorite Funderling tea-herb

  Book of Regret—a semi-mythical Qar artifact/text

  Book of the Trigon—a late-era adaptation of original texts about all three gods

  Cloudchip—a type of crystal

  Dado—a dog, raised by Briony

  “Dasmet and the Girl With No Shadow”—a Xandian folktale

  Days of Cooling—legendary time in Funderling history and myth

  Days of the Week—in the Eionic calendar, there are three ten-day periods in each month, called “ten-nights.” Therefore, the twenty-first day of August in our calendar would be more or less the third Firstday of Oktamene. (See the explanation under “Months” for more information.)

  Firstday

  Sunsday

  Moonsday

  Skyday

  Windsday

  Stonesday

  Fireday

  Watersday

  Godsday

  Lastday

  Demia’s Ladder—a constellation

  Earth-ice—a type of crystal

  Eddon Wolf—the symbol of the Eddon family (silver wolf and stars on black field)

  “Ever-Wounded Maid”—a famous story

  Family of Stones and Metals—a Funderling scheme of classification

  Feast of the Rising—Xixian festival at the end of the rainy season

  Firegold—a mineral

  Fireworm—a poisonous snake

  Great Death—plague that killed a large part of Eion’s population

  Great Golden Piece—part of the Rooftopper’s crown jewels

  Harrier—a hunting hound

  Hierosoline—the language of Hierosol, found in many religious services and scientific books, etc.

  History of Eion and Its Nations—book by the historian Clemon

  Horns of Zmeos—a constellation, also called the Old Serpent

  K’hamao—a drink, part of Funderling ritual

  Kettle—Barrick’s horse

  Kloe—a cat

  Kossope—a constellation

  Kulikos or kulikos stone—a reputedly magical object

  Lastday—Funderling day of rest

  Lander’s Hall—a near-mythical setting for stories of knightly adventure

  “Lay of Kernios”—a famous story and song, part of the funeral service

  Leaf, Singers, White Root, Honeycomb, Waterfall—Flint’s names for constellations

  Lymer—a hunting hound

  M’aarenol—a location, possibly a mountain, in Qar lands

  Maker’s-pearl—a stone used by Funderlings for decoration

  Mantis—a priest, usually of the Trigon

  Meadowsweet—a common wildflower M

  onths—each Eion month is thirty days long, divided into three ten-nights, with five intercalary days between the end of the year—Orphan’s Day—and the first day of the new year, also known as Firstday or Year Day. Thusly month/month correspondents are liable to differ by a few days: the first day of Trimene in Southmarch is not the exact same day as March 1 on our calendar.

  Eimene—January

  Dimene—February

  Trimene—March

  Tetramene—April

  Pentamene—May

  Hexamene—June

  Heptamene—July

  Oktamene—August

  Ennamene—September

  Dekamene—October

  Endekamene—November

  Dodekamene—December

  Mordiya—Tuani for “uncle,” can be honorary or actual

  Morning Star of Kirous—Jeddin’s ship

  Mossbrew—a strong Funderling drink

  Neverfade—a small white wildflower

  Pass-evil—hand sign made to avert bad luck

  Pentecount—a troop, numbering fifty

  “Perin’s great planet”—Perinos Eio, largest planet in the skies

  Perinsday—a spring holiday

  Podensis—a Hierosoline ship

  Procession of Penance—a holy festival

  Puffkin—a cat

  Quiller’s Mint—a tavern

  Rack—a dog, raised by Briony

  S’a-Qar—language of the Qar

  Sandy—a river on the Blueshore border

  Seal of War—a Qar gem, object of great importance Screaming Years—an era of Qar history

  Shining Man—center of the Funderling Mysteries

  Shivering Plain—a famous Qar battleground

  Silver Thing—part of the Rooftopper’s crown jewels

  Skyglass—Funderling name for a type of crystal

  Snow—Briony’s horse

  Sun’s Blood—an elixir prepared by the priest of Nushash

  Vuttish longboat—a raiding boat used by Vuttish islanders in the northern ocean

  Whitefire—the sword of Yasammez

  Wildsong Night—a holiday evening, in the days after Winter’s Eve

  Wolf’s Chair—throne of Southmarch Castle

  Tad Williams

  Shadowplay

  The Sequel to SHADOWMARCH

  January 2007

  In hardcover from DAW Books.

  Read on for a sneak preview.

  AT TIMES like this, when Pinimmon Vash had to look directly into his master’s pale, awful eyes, it was hard to remember that Autarch Sulepis had to be at least partly human.

  “It will be done, Golden One,” Vash assured him, praying silently to be dismissed and released. Sometimes just being near his young ruler made him feel queasy. “Just as you say.”

  “Swiftly, old man. She has tried to escape me.” The autarch’s gaze slid upward, until he seemed to be staring intently at something invisible to anyone else. “Besides, the gods . . . the gods are restless to be born.”

  Confused by this strange remark, Vash hesitated. Was it something that needed to be understood and answered, or was he at last free to scurry away on his errand? Although he might be the paramount minister to Xis, the old man reflected with some bitterness, and thus in theory more powerful than most kings, he had no more real authority than a child. Still, being a minister who must jump to serve the autarch’s every whim was much better than being a former minister: the vulture shrines on the Orchard Palace’s roofs were piled high with the bones of former ministers. “Yes, the gods, of course,” Vash said at last, with no idea of what he was agreeing to. “The gods must be born, it goes without . . .”

  “Then let it be done now. Or heaven itself will weep.” Despite his harsh words, Sulepis began to laugh in a most inappropriate way.

  Even as Vash hurried so swiftly from the bath chamber that he almost tripped over his own intricately decorated silk robes, he found himself hoping that one of the eunuchs shaving the autarch’s long, oiled limbs had accidentally tickled him. It would be disturbing to think the man with life-and-death power over oneself and virtually every other human being on the continent had just giggled like a madman for no reason.

/>   Partly human. Vash reminded himself. He must be at least partly human. Even if the autarch’s father Parnad had also been a living god, the autarch’s mother must surely have been a mortal woman, since she had come to the Seclusion as the gift of a foreign king. But whatever the godlike (although now fairly inarguably dead) Parnad’s heritage, few mortal traits had made their way down to the son. The new autarch was as bright-eyed, remorseless, and inscrutable as his family’s heraldic falcon. Sulepis was also full of inexplicable, seemingly mad ideas, as proved by this latest strange whim—the errand on which Vash was now bustling toward the guard barracks.

  As he left the guarded fastness of the Quince Court and hurried through the cavernous ministerial audience chamber at the heart of the Pomegranate Court lesser folk scattered from his path like pigeons, as frightened of his anger as he was terrified of the autarch’s. Pinimmon Vash reminded himself he should conduct a full sacrifice to Nushash and the other gods soon. After all, he was a very fortunate man—not just to have risen so high in the world, but also to have survived so many years of the father’s autarchy and this first year of the son’s: at least nine of Parnad’s other high ministers had been put to death just in the short twelve months or so of Sulepis’ reign. In fact, should he need an example of how lucky he was compared to some, Vash only had to think about the man he was going to see, Hijam Marukh, the new captain of the Leopard guards—or more to the point, think about Marukh’s predecessor, Jeddin.

  Even Pinimmon Vash, no stranger to torture and execution, had been disturbed by the agonies visited upon the former Leopard captain. The autarch had ordered the entertainment conducted in the famous Lepthian library, so he could read while keeping an eye on the proceedings. Vash had watched with well-hidden terror as the living god danced his gold fingerstalls in the air in rhythm with the shrieks, as though enjoying a charming performance. Many nights Vash still saw the terrible sights in his dreams, and the memory of the captain’s agonized screaming haunted his waking mind as well. Near the end of Jeddin’s suffering, Sulepis had even called for real musicians to play a careful, improvised accompaniment to the man’s horrendous cries. At points, Sulepis had even sung along.

  Vash had seen almost everything in his more than twenty years of service, but he had never seen anything like the young autarch.

  How could an ordinary man know whether or not a god was mad?

  “This makes no sense,” said Hijam.

  “You are foolish to say so,” Vash hissed at him.

  The officer known as “Stoneheart” allowed only a lifted eyebrow to animate his otherwise inexpressive face, but Vash could see that Hijam had realized his error—the kind that could prove fatal. Recently promoted to kiliarch, or captain, the squat, heavily muscled new master of the Leopards had survived countless major battles and deadly skirmishes, but he was not used to the dangers of the Xixian court, where it was to be assumed that every word would be overheard by someone and that one of those listeners either wanted or needed you dead. Hijam might have been cut, stabbed, and scorched so many times that his dark skin was covered in white stripes like a camp mongrel’s, might have earned his famous nickname by passing unmoved through the worst carnage of war, but this was not the battlefield. This was the Orchard Palace, where no man’s death came at in him from the front, or in plain sight.

  “Of course,” Hijam Stoneheart said now, slowly and clearly as if for the benefit of other ears, “the Golden One must have his contest if he wills it so. But I am just a soldier and I don’t understand such things. Explain to me, Vash. What good is there in having my men fight with each other? Already several are wounded and will need weeks of healing.”

  Vash took a breath. Nobody was obviously eavesdropping, but that meant nothing. “First of all, the Golden One is wiser than we are, so perhaps we are not clever enough to understand his reasons. All we can know is that they must be good. Secondly, though, I must point out to you that it isn’t your men, the Leopards, who are fighting for the honor of the autarch’s special mission, Hijam. It is the White Hounds, and although they are valuable fighters, they are only barbarians.”

  Vash had no more idea than the captain of why Sulepis had demanded a contest of strength among his famous troop of White Hounds, foreign mercenaries whose fathers and grandfathers had come to Xand from the northern continent, but as Vash knew better than almost anyone, sometimes gods-on-earth just did things like that. When the autarch had woken from a prophetic dream one morning in the first weeks of his rule and ordered the destruction of all the wild cranes in the land of Xis, it had been Paramount Minister Vash who had called the lower ministers to the Pomegranate Court to pass on the order, and hundreds of thousands of the birds had been killed. When the autarch declared that every axhead shark in the city’s saltwater canals should be caught and dispatched, the streets of the capital stank with rotting sharkflesh for months afterward.

  Vash forced his attention back to the combat. The abruptness of the autarch’s demand had forced them to improvise this arena here in an unused audience chamber in the Tamarind Court, since the autarch’s miners and cannoneers were all over the parade field and could not move their equipment on such sudden notice, even at threat of their lives—some of the artillery pieces weighed tons. Two sweaty men were struggling in the makeshift ring. One was big by any ordinary standard, and muscled like a bullock, but his yellow-bearded opponent was a true giant of a man, a head taller, shoulders wide as the bed of an ox-cart. This fair-haired monster clearly had the upper hand and even seemed to be toying with his adversary.

  “Why is it taking so long?” Vash complained. “You said that this Yaridoras was by far the strongest of the White Hounds. Why does he not defeat his opponent The autarch is waiting.”

  “Yaridoras will win.” Hijam Stoneheart laughed sharply. “Trust me, he is a fearsome brute. Ah, look.” Yellow-bearded Yaridoras had just raised the other man over his head. The huge man held his opponent there just long enough for everyone to appreciate the glory of the moment, then flung him down onto the stony floor. The loser lay, senseless and bloody, as Yaridoras raised his arms above his head in triumph. The other White Hounds hooted in appreciation.

  “Is that it?” Vash ached from standing, and wanted only to lower himself into a hot bath, to be tended by his young boy and girl servants. He wished he had not been too proud to accept the kiliarch’s offer of a chair. “Is it over? Can we finish with this?”

  “There is one more man,” Hijam said, “a fellow named Daikonas Vo. I am told he is the best swordsman in the White Hounds.”

  “But the autarch ordered them to prove themselves in barehanded combat!” Vash shook his head in irritation, surveying the dozens of assembled Perikalese soldiers, perhaps four or five dozen in all. None of them looked big enough to give Yaridoras a contest. “Which one is he?”

  For answer, Hijam stood and shouted, “Now the last challenger—step forth, Vo.”

  The man who rose was so unprepossessing that, discounting his Perikalese heritage, the telltale fair hair and skin that marked him as a foreigner, any man of Xis might have passed him on the street without a second look. He was wiry but slightly built, and his head barely reached the chest of brawny Yaridoras.

  “That one?” Vash snorted. “The big yellow-haired one will snap his back like a twig.”

  “Likely.”

  Hijam turned and bellowed, “You two may bring no weapons into the sacred space. So has our master Sulepis, the god-on-earth, the Great Tent, the Golden One, declared. You will fight until one of you can get up no longer. Are you ready?”

  “Yes—and thirsty!” bellowed Yaridoras, making his fellow mercenaries laugh. “Let’s get this over with so I can have my beer.” The thin soldier, Daikonas Vo, only nodded.

  “Very well,” said the captain. “Begin.”

  At first, the smaller man put up a surprisingly good defense, moving with serpentine fluidity to stay out of Yaridoras’ powerful grasp, once even hooking his foot behind the bi
g man’s heel and throwing him backward to the tile floor, which earned a percussive shout of surprised laughter from the other White Hounds, but the giant was up quickly, smiling in a way that suggested he himself was not very amused. After that, Yaridoras was more careful, and Vo began to find it increasingly difficult to stay out of his hands. Vo did not give in easily, and several times he landed swift blows whose power was clearly greater than his size would have suggested, one of them opening a cut above Yaridoras’ eye so that blood ran down one side of his face and into his beard. However inevitable the outcome seemed, the bigger man was clearly not enjoying the delay, and in the course of trying to get a finishing hold on his opponent, left several long, bleeding weals across the little man’s face and arms. The shouts and rowdy suggestions that had filled the room at the beginning of the bout began to die down, replaced by a murmuring unease as the match slowly took on the characteristics of something more desperate.

  The big man lunged. Vo ducked under the groping arms and put a knee into his opponent’s belly, so that Yaridoras’ surprised gasp sent red froth flying, but the big man’s knob-knuckled hand lashed out and caught Vo retreating, smashing him to the floor with an impact like a slaughterer’s hammer. Yaridoras threw himself on top of Vo before the little man had recovered his wits, and for a moment it was as though the smaller soldier had been swallowed whole.

  It’s over now, thought Vash. But he fought a surprisingly good fight. The paramount minister was more than a little surprised. He had always thought of the Perikalese foreigners as benefiting mostly from their size and barbaric savagery. It was strange, even disturbing, to see one who could think and plan.

  For a moment as they grappled on the floor, Yaridoras caught the smaller man’s head between his legs. He began to squeeze, and Daikonas Vo’s face darkened to a bruised red before he managed to elbow his opponent in the crotch and wriggle free. He was injured and tired, though, and he did not get far: Yaridoras caught him again, this time with a massive arm around his throat. The giant rolled his body over on top of his opponent’s, then began trying to sweep away the bracing arms and legs that were all that were keeping Vo from being pressed belly-first onto the floor. The big man grinned ferociously through the sweat and blood, while Vo showed his own teeth in a grimace as he struggled to get air.