by Tad Williams
“Keep moving…?”
“Yes, I fear that now it has started the Shadowline will keep moving until it has swept across Southmarch—perhaps all of Eion. Until the land is plunged back into shadow and Old Night.” The physician frowned at his hands, then turned back to Flint. His voice was matter-of-fact but his eyes belied it. “Now I suppose I had better have a look at the boy.”
* * *
Moina and Rose and her other ladies, despite all their kind words and questions, could not stop Briony’s furious weeping. She was angry with herself for acting so wildly, so childishly, but she felt lost beyond help or even hope. It was as though she had fallen down a deep hole and was now beyond the reach of anyone.
Barrick pounded at the chamber door, demanding that she speak to him.
He sounded angry and frightened, but although it felt as if she were casting offa part of her own body, she let Rose send him away. He was a man— what did he know of how she felt? No one would dream of selling him to the highest bidder like a market pig.
Eighty thousand dolphins discounted for my sake, she thought bitterly. A great deal of gold—most of a king’s ransom, in fact. I should be proud to command such a high price. She threw a pillow against the wall and knocked over an oil lamp. The ladies squealed as they rushed to stamp out the flames, but Briony did not care if the entire castle burned to the ground.
“What goes on here?”
Treacherous Rose had opened the door, but it was not Barrick who had come in, only Briony s great-aunt, the Dowager Duchess Merolanna, sniffing. Her eyes widened as she saw Moina smothering the last of the flames and she turned on Briony. “What are you doing, child, trying to kill us all?"
Briony wanted to say yes, she was, but another fit of weeping overcame her. As the other ladies tried to fan the smoke out the open door, Merolanna came to the bed and sat her substantial but carefully groomed self down on it, then put her arms around the princess.
“I have heard,” she said, patting Briony’s back. “Do not be so afraid— your brother may refuse. And even if he doesn’t, it isn’t the worst thing in the world. When I first came here to wed your father’s uncle, years and years and years ago, I was as frightened as you are.”
“But Ludis is a m—monster!” Briony struggled to stop sobbing. “A murderer! The bandit who kidnapped our father! I would rather marry… marry anyone—even old Puzzle—before allowing someone like that…” It was no use. She was weeping again.
“Now, child,” Merolanna said, but clearly could think of nothing else to say.
Her great-aunt had gone, and Briony’s ladies-in-waiting kept their distance, as though their mistress had some illness which might spread—and indeed she did, Briony thought, because unhappiness was ambitious.
A messenger had just arrived at the door, the third in an hour. She had returned no message to her older brother, and hadn’t been able to think of anything sufficiently cutting to send back to Gailon, Duke of Summerfield.
“This one comes from Sister Utta, my lady,” Moina said. “She sends to ask why you have not visited her today, and if you are well.”
“She must be the only one in the castle who doesn’t know,” said Rose, almost laughing that anyone could be so remote from the day’s events. A look at Briony’s tearstamed face and the lord constable’s niece quickly sobered. “We’ll tell her you can’t come…”
Briony sat up. She had forgotten her tutor entirely, but suddenly wanted nothing more than to see the Vuttish woman’s calm face, hear her measured voice. “No. I will go to her.”
“But, Princess…”
“I will go!” As she struggled into a wrap, the ladies-in-waiting hurried to pull on their own shoes and cloaks. “Stay here. I am going by myself.” The feared darkness having enfolded her now, she felt no need to waste her strength on niceties. “I have guards. Don’t you think that’s enough to keep me from running away?”
Rose and Moina stared at her in hurt surprise, but Briony was already striding out the door.
Utta was one of the Sisters of Zoria, priestesses of the virgin goddess of learning. Zona once had been the most powerful of goddesses, some said, mistress of a thousand temples and an equal of even her divine father Perin, but now her followers had been reduced to advising the Trigon on petty domestic policy and teaching highborn girl-children how to read, write, and—although it was not deemed strictly necessary in most noble families—to think.
Utta herself was almost as old as Duchess Merolanna, but where Briony s great-aunt was a royal barge, elaborately painted and decorated, the Vuttish woman was spare as a fast sailing ship, tall and thin, with gray hair cropped almost to her scalp. She was sewing when Briony arrived, and her pale blue eyes opened wide when the girl immediately burst into tears, but although her questions were sympathetic and she listened carefully to the answers, the priestess of Zona was not the type to put her arms around even her most important pupil.
When Briony had finished the story, Utta nodded her head slowly. “As you say, our lot is hard. In this life we women are handed from one man to another, and can only hope that the one we come to at last will be a kind steward of our liberties.”
“But no man owns you.” Briony had recovered herself a little. Something strong about Utta, the unassuming strength of an old tree on a windy mountainside, always calmed her. “You do what you want, without a husband or a master.”
Sister Utta smiled sadly. “I do not think you would wish to give up all I have given up to become so, Princess. And how can you say I have no master? Should your father—or now your brother—decide to send me away or even kill me, I would be trudging down Market Road within an hour or hanging from one of the mileposts.”
“It’s not fair! And I won’t do it.”
Utta nodded again, as if she was truly considering what Briony said. “When it comes to it, no woman can be turned against her own soul unless she wills it. But perhaps it is too early for you to be worrying. You do not know yet what your brother will say.”
“Oh, but I do.” The words tasted bitter in her mouth. “The council—in fact, almost all the nobles—have been complaining for months about the price of Father’s ransom, and they have also been telling Kendrick that I should be married off to some rich southern princeling to help pay for it. Then when he resists them, they whisper behind their hands that he is not old enough yet to rule the March Kingdoms. Here is a chance for him to stop their moaning in an instant. I’d do it, if I were him.”
“But you are not Kendrick, and you have not yet heard his decision.” Now Utta did an unusual thing, leaned over and for a moment took Briony’s hand. “However, I will not say your worries are baseless. What I hear of Ludis Drakava is not encouraging.”
“I won’t do it! I won’t. It is all so unfair—the clothes they always want me to wear, the things they want me to say and do . . and now this! I hate being a woman. It’s a curse.” Briony looked up suddenly. “I could become a priestess, like you! If I became a Sister of Zoria, my maidenhood would be sacred, wouldn’t it?”
“And permanent.” Utta could not quite muster a smile this time. “I am not certain you could join the sisterhood against your brother’s wishes, anyway. But is it not too early to be thinking of such things?”
Briony had a sudden recollection of the envoy Dawet dan-Faar, of eyes proud and leopard-fierce. He did not seem the type to stand around for weeks waiting for a defeated enemy to agree to the terms of surrender. “I don’t think I have much time—until tomorrow, perhaps. Oh, Sister, what will I do?"
“Talk to your brother, the prince regent. Tell him how you feel. I believe he is a good man, like your father. If there seems no other way… well, perhaps there is advice I might give you then, even assistance.” For a moment, Utta’s long, strong face looked troubled. “But not yet.” She sat up straight.
“We have an hour left before the evening meal, Princess. Shall we spend it usefully? Learning may perhaps keep your mind off your sorrows, at least for
a little while.”
“I suppose.” Briony had cried so much she felt boneless. The room was quite dark, with only one candle lit. Most of the light in the spare apartment came from the window, a descending beam that ended in a bright oblong climbing steadily higher on the wall as the sun dropped toward its evening harbor. Earlier she had felt sure the worst had happened, but now she thought she could feel the shadowy wings still beating above her, as if there was some threat as yet undiscovered.
“Teach me something, then,” she said heavily. “What else do I have left?”
“You have learning, yes,” Utta told her. “But you also have prayers. You must not forget your prayers, child. And you have Zoria’s protection, if you deserve it. There are worse things to cling to.”
* * *
Finished examining the boy, Chaven reached into his pockets and produced a disk of glass pent in a brass handle. Flint took it from him and looked through it, first staring up at the flickering lamp, then moving it close to the wall so he could examine the grain of stone in the spaces between the tapestries.
Maybe he’ll make a Funderling yet, thought Chert.
The boy turned to him, smiling, one eye goggling hugely behind the glass Chert laughed despite himself. At the moment, Flint seemed to be no more than he appeared, a child of five or six summers.
Chaven thought so, too. “I find nothing unusual about him,” the physician said quietly as they watched the boy playing with the enlarging-glass “No extra fingers, toes, or mysterious marks. His breath is sweet—for a child who seems to have eaten spiced turnips today, that is—and his eyes are clear. Everything about him seems ordinary. This all proves nothing, but unless some other mysterious trait shows itself, I must for the moment assume he is what your wife guessed him to be, some mortal child who wandered beyond the Shadowline and, instead of wandering back again as some do, met the riders you saw and was carried out instead. “Chaven frowned. “You say he has little memory of who he is. If that is all he has lost, he is a lucky one. As I said before, those who have wandered across and returned before now have had the whole of their wits clouded if not ruined.”
“Lucky. Yes, it seems that way.” Chert should have been relieved, especially since the child would be sharing their house for at least the present, but he could not rid himself of a nagging feeling that there was something more to be discovered. “But why, if the Shadowline is moving, would the the Quiet Folk oh-so-kindly carry a mortal child across the line? It seems more likely they would slit his throat like a rabbit and leave him in the foggy forest somewhere.” Chaven shrugged. “I have no answer, my friend. Even when they were slaughtering mortals long ago at Coldgray Moor, the Twilight People did things that no one could understand. In the last months of the war, one company of soldiers from Fael moving camp by midnight stumbled onto a fairy-feast, but instead of slaughtering them—they were far outnumbered—the Qar only fed them and led them into drunken revels. Some of the soldiers even claimed they mated with fairy women that night.”
“The… Qar?"
“Their old name.” Chaven waved his hand. “I have spent much of my life studying them but I still know little more than when I began. They can be unexpectedly kind to mortals, even generous, but do not doubt that if the Shadowline sweeps across us, it will bring with it a dark, dark evil.”
Chert shuddered. “I have spent too much time on its borders to doubt that for a moment.” He watched the boy for a moment. “Will you tell the prince regent and his family that the line has moved?"
“I expect I will have to. But first I must think on all this, so that I can go to them with some proposal. Otherwise, decisions will be made in fear and ignorance, and those seldom lead to happy result.” Chaven rose from his stool and patted his bunched robe until it hung straight again. “Now I must get back to my work, not least of which will be thinking about the news you’ve brought me.”
As Chert led Flint to the door, the boy turned back. “Where is the owl?" he asked Chaven. The physician stiffened for a moment, then smiled. “What do you mean, lad? There is no owl here, nor ever has been one, as far as I know.”
“There was,” Flint said stubbornly. “A.white one.”
Chaven shook his head kindly as he held the door, but Chert thought he looked a little discomposed.
* * *
After checking to make sure none of his servants were in sight, the physician let Chert and the boy out through the observatory-tower’s front door. For reasons he did not quite know himself, Chert had decided to go back aboveground, out through the Raven’s Gate. The guard would have changed at midday and there should be no reason for those on duty now to doubt that their predecessors questioned Chert closely before letting him and his young charge into the inner keep.
“What did you mean about the owl?” Chert asked as they made their way down the steps. “What owl?”
“You asked that man where the owl was, the owl that had been in his room.”
Flint shrugged. His legs were longer than Chert’s and he did not need to look down at the steps, so he was watching the afternoon sky. “I don’t know.” He frowned, staring at something above him. The morning’s clouds had passed. Chert could see nothing but a faint sliver of moon, -white as a seashell, hanging in the blue sky. “He had stars on his walls.”
Chert recalled the tapestries covered with jeweled constellations. “He did, yes.”
“The Leaf, the Singers, the White Root—I know a song about them.” He pondered, his frown deepening. “No, I can’t remember it.”
“The Leaf… ?” Chert was puzzled. “The White Root? What are you talking about?”
“The stars—don’t you know their names?” Flint had reached the cobblestones at the base of the steps and was walking faster, so that Chert, still moving carefully down the tall steps, could barely make out what he said. “There’s the Honeycomb and the Waterfall… but I can’t remember the rest.” He stopped and turned. His face beneath the shock of almost white hair was full of sad confusion, so that he looked like a little old man. “I can’t remember.”
Chert caught up to him, out of breath and troubled. “I’ve never heard those names before. The Honeycomb? Where did you learn that, boy?”
Flint was walking again. “I used to know a song about the stars. I know one about the moon, too.” He hummed a snatch of melody that Chert could barely make out, but whose mournful sweetness made the hairs lift on the back of his neck. “I can’t remember the words,” Flint said. “But they tell about how the moon came down to find the arrows he had shot at the stars…”
“But the moon’s a woman—isn’t that what all you big folk believe?” A moment of sour amusement at his own words—the boy was but Chert’s own height, even a little shorter—did not puncture his confusion. “Mesiya, the moon-goddess?”
Flint laughed with a child’s pure enjoyment at the foolishness of adults. “No, he’s the sun’s little brother. Everyone knows that.”
He skipped ahead, enjoying the excitement of a street full of people and interesting sights, so that Chert had to hurry to catch up with him again, certain that something had just happened—something important—but he could not for the life of him imagine what it might have been.
6. Blood Ties
A HIDDEN PLACE:
Walls of straw, walls of hair
Each room can hold three breaths
Each breath an hour
—from The Bonefall Oracles
She did not make her dwelling in the ancient, labyrinthine city of Qul-na-Qar, although she had long claim to a place of honor there, by her blood and by her deeds—and by deeds of blood as well. Instead, she made her home on a high ridgetop in the mountains called Reheq-s’Lai, which meant Wanderwind, or something close to it. Her house, although large enough to cover most of the ridge, was a plain thing from most angles, as was the lady herself Only when the sunlight was in the right quarter, and a watcher’s face turned just so, could crystal and sky-stone be seen gleaming among the
dark wall stones. In one way at least her house was like great Qul-na-Qar: it extended deep into the rocky ridge, with many rooms below the light of day and a profusion of tunnels extending beyond them like the roots of an old, old tree. Above the ground the windows were always shuttered, or seemed that way. Her servants were silent and she seldom had visitors.
Some of the younger Qar, who had heard of her madness for privacy, but of course had never seen her, called her Lady Porcupine. Others who knew her better could not help shuddering at the accidental truth of the name—they had seen how in moments of fury a nimbus of prickly shadow bloomed about her, a shroud of phantom thorns.
Her granted name was Yasammez, but few knew it. Her true name was known to only two or three living beings. The lady’s high house was called Shehen, which meant “Weeping.” Because it was a s’a-Qar word, it meant other things, too—it carried the intimation of an unexpected ending, and a suggestion of the scent of the plant that in the sunlight lands was called myrtle—but more than anything else, it meant “Weeping.”
It was said that Yasammez had only laughed twice in all her long life, the first time when, as a child, she first saw a battlefield and smelled the blood and the smoke from the fires. The second time had been when she had first been exiled, sent away from Qul-na-Qar for crimes or deeds of arrogance long since forgotten by most of the living. “You cannot hide me, or hide from me,” she is said to have told her accusers, “because you cannot find me. I was lost when I first drew breath “ Yasammez was made for war and death, all agreed, as a sword is made, a thing whose true beauty can only be seen when it brings destruction.
It was also said that she would laugh for the third time only when the last mortal died, or when she herself took her final breath.
