Shadowmarch s-1

by Tad Williams

  “I do not know how it could be a troop and go unnoticed, my lord. The corridors were not empty.” Ferras stared at Gwatkin’s wide-eyed face, the jaw hanging open as though death had been more a surprise than anything else. “But the servants did hear something earlier in the evening—arguing, some shouting, but muffled. They could make out no words and did not recognize the voices, but all agreed it did not sound like men fighting for their lives.”

  “Where are the prince’s bodyservants? Where are his pages?”

  “Sent away.” Ferras could not help but smart a little under Brone s questioning. Did the lord constable think that because Guard Captain Vansen’s father was a farmer, the son had no wit? That he hadn’t thought to see to these things himself? “The prince himself sent them away. They thought it was because he wanted to be alone, either to think or perhaps to discuss his sister’s fate privately with someone.”

  “Someone?"

  “They do not know, Lord. He was alone when he sent them away. They ended by sleeping in the kitchen with the potboys. It was one of the pages, returning for a religious trinket of some sort, who found the dying prince and raised the alarm.”

  “I will speak to that one, then.” Brone carefully lowered his heavy frame into a squat beside the murdered guardsmen. He pulled at the nearest man’s jerkin. “He is wearing armor.”

  “Most of the blood on him comes from a slashed throat. That is what killed him.” “The other, too?”

  “His throat was slashed and bleeding, but that wasn’t what did for him, my lord. Look at his face.” Brone squinted at the second body. “What happened to his eye?”

  “Something sharp went through it, my lord. And deep into his skull, too, from what I can see.” Avin Brone whistled in surprise and levered himself upright like a bear stumbling out of its cave in spring. “If we cannot find a troop of assassins, then have we but one killer? Our murderer must be a fine fighter, to kill two armored men. And Kendrick is not clumsy with a sword either.” Startled by his own words, Brone made a pass-evil. “Was not. Did he have a chance to arm himself?”

  “We have seen no sign of any weapon yet except the guards.’ ” He thought for a moment. “Perhaps somehow the prince was attacked first. Perhaps he sent these guards out on some errand as he did his other servants, and they returned to find the murderer had already struck.”

  Brone turned to Chaven, who had removed the golden cloth and was probing at the body. The prince regent already looked like a tomb-statue, Ferras thought, cold and white as marble. “Can you guess what killed him?” the lord constable asked.

  The royal physician looked up, his round face troubled. “Oh, yes. No, better to say, I can show you why he died. Come look.”

  Ferras and the lord constable moved to the bedside. Now it was Ferras who helplessly made the pass-evil—a fist around his thumb to keep Kernios the death god from noticing him. He had seen many score of violent deaths since his childhood, but he had not made the gesture for as long as he could remember.

  The prince’s bloodless pallor and yellow hair made him appear disquietingly like his younger sister—Ferras suddenly felt troubled to be looking on his helpless nakedness, although he had often seen Kendrick bathing in the river after a long, dusty hunt. The corpse’s arms were covered with shallow slashes now cleaned of blood—wounds of defense. The blood had been wiped from his chest and stomach as well, but there was no way to prettify these larger wounds, half a dozen straight gashes livid along their edges and deeply, upsettingly red in their depths.

  “Not a sword,” said the lord constable after a moment. He was breathing a little harshly, as if the sight disturbed him more than he let show. “A knife?”

  “Perhaps.” Chaven frowned. “Perhaps a curved one—see how the cuts are wider on one end… ?”

  “A curved knife?” Brone’s bushy eyebrows slid up. He looked to Ferras, who felt his heart speed with surprise and fear.

  “I know who has a knife like that,” he said. “We all do,” said the lord constable.

  * * *

  Barrick’s head felt hollow. The rustle of the blanket Briony wore wrapped around her nightdress, the slap of his own feet, the murmur of the people in the corridor, all rolled around his skull like the roar of the ocean in a seashell. He was finding it difficult to believe that what had just happened was real.

  “Prince Barrick,” someone called—one of the pages, “Is he really dead, Is our lord Kendrick really dead?" Barrick did not dare speak. Only holding his teeth clenched together kept him from bursting into tears or worse. Briony waved the onlookers back and they turned to beseech Hierarch Sisel for news instead, slowing his progress. At the end of the corridor the twins turned toward the Erivor Chapel, but then at the next turmng Briony walked swiftly in the wrong direction.

  “No, this way,” Barrick said dully. His poor sister, lost in her own house. She shook her head and continued down the corridor, then turned again. “Where are we going?”

  “Not to the chapel.” Her voice sounded strangely light, as though nothing unusual had happened, but when she turned toward him a blasted emptiness was in her eyes, a look so unfamiliar that it terrified him. “They’ll only find us there.”

  “What? What do you mean?”

  His sister took his arm and pulled him down another corridor. Only when they reached the old pantry door did he understand. “We haven’t been here for … for years.”

  She pulled a stub of candle from the shelf just inside, then turned back to light it from one of the wall sconces. When they pulled the door closed behind them the light on the shelves cast all the familiar shadows that Barrick had once known as well as the shape of his own knuckles.

  “Why didn’t we go to the temple?” he asked. He was half afraid to hear the answer. He had never seen his sister quite like this.

  “Because they’ll find us. Gailon, the hierarch, all that lot. And then they’ll make us do things.” Her face was pale but intent. “Don’t you understand?”

  “Understand what? Kendrick Briony, they killed Kendrick! Someone killed Kendrick.” He wagged his head, trying to make sense. “But who?”

  His sister’s eyes were bright with tears. “It doesn’t matter! I mean, it does, but don’t you see? Don’t you see what’s going to happen? They’re going to make you prince regent, and they’re going to send me to Hierosol to marry. Ludis Drakava. They’ll be even more certain to do it now. They’ll be terrified—they’ll do anything to get Father back.”

  “They’re not the only ones.” Barrick could not keep up with Briony, who was thinking so quickly it seemed she had dived into a rushing river and left him on the bank, stuck in mud. Barrick couldn’t think at all. It seemed the nightmares that plagued his sleep had stormed and conquered his waking life as well. Someone had to make things right again. He was astonished to hear himself say it, but at this moment it was true: “I want Father back, too. I want him back.”

  Briony started to say something, but her lip was quivering. She sat down on the dusty floor of the pantry and wrapped her arms around her knees. “Poor… K-Kendrick!” She fought back the tears. “He was so cold, Barrick. Even before he… before the end. He was shivering.” She made a snuffling noise, pressed her face against her arms.

  Barrick looked up at the pantry ceiling, which undulated like water in the flickering candlelight. He wished he and Briony were on a river together, floating away. “We used to hide from him here when we were little, remember? He used to get so angry when he couldn’t find us. And it worked so many times!”

  “Even after Aunt Merolanna told him, he’d always forget.” She looked up with a crooked smile. “Up and down the halls. ‘Barrick! Briony! I’ll tell Father!’ He would get so angry!”

  For a long moment they fell silent, listening for a phantom echo.

  “What are we going to do, then? I don’t want to be the cursed prince regent.” Barrick considered. “We can run away If we’re gone, they can’t make me the prince regent and they can�
��t give you to Ludis.”

  “But who will rule Southmarch?” Briony asked.

  “Let Avin Brone do it. Or that prig Gailon. The gods know he wants to.”

  “All the more reason he shouldn’t. Sister Utta says that people who want power are the first who should be mistrusted with it.”

  “But they’re the only ones who want it.” He crouched beside her. “I don’t want to be prince regent. Besides, why shouldn’t it be you, anyway? You’re older.”

  Even in the very pit of misery, his sister could not help smiling. “You are such a wretched monster, Barrick. That’s the first time you have ever admitted that. And it was only a matter of moments, anyway.”

  Barrick slumped down. He had no smile to give back. A poisonous weariness poured through his limbs, heart, and head like a gray smoke, fogging his thoughts. “I want to die, that’s what I want. Go with Kendrick. Much easier than running away.”

  “Don’t you dare say that!” Briony grabbed his arm and leaned forward until her face was only a handspan from his. “Don’t you dare think about leaving me alone.”

  For a moment he almost told her—gave up the secret he had hidden so long, all those nights of fear and misery… But the habit of years could not be so easily broken, even now. “You’re the one who will be leaving me,” he said instead.

  In the middle of the long, dark silence that followed, someone rapped lightly on the pantry door. The twins, startled, looked at each other, eyes wide in the candlelight. The door scraped open.

  Their great-aunt, Duchess Merolanna, stepped in.”I knew you’d be here. You two. Of course you would be.” “They sent you after us,” Briony said accusingly.

  “They did—oh, they did. The whole castle is in terror, looking for you. How could you be such wicked children?” But Merolanna was not as angry as she sounded. In fact, she seemed like another sleepwalker. Her pale, wide face, devoid of paint, looked like something dragged out of its burrow and into the sunlight. “Don’t you know the worst thing you could do is to vanish like this, after . after…”

  A great choking gasp came out of Briony, who crawled to Merolanna and buried her face in the old woman’s voluminous nightdress. “Oh, Auntie ‘Lanna, they k-k-killed him! He’s… he’s gone!”

  Merolanna reached down and stroked her back, although she was struggling to keep her balance against the girl’s weight on her legs. “I know, dear…Yes, our poor, sweet little Kendrick…”

  And then the horrible fact of it climbed up Barrick’s backbone and into his head again, a ghastly, overwhelming thing that choked out all light and sense, and he clambered over to Merolanna and wrapped his arms around her waist, forcing her off balance again. She had no choice but to claw at the shelves and let herself fold to the floor of the pantry in a great slipping and bunching of cloth. She held them both with their heads together in her lap, their hair mingling like the waters of two rivers, red and gold, both of them weeping like small children.

  Merolanna was crying again, too. “Oh, my poor ducks,” she said, looking at nothing as tears ran down her wrinkled cheek. “Oh, my poor little chickens, yes. My poor, dear ones…”

  * * *

  Briony had dried her eyes before they reached. Avin Brone and the others, and had even let Merolanna fuss her hair back into some kind of order, but she still felt like a prisoner dragged from a cell to face a high justice.

  But although Hierarch Sisel (who Merolanna had told them had walked halfway around the castle looking for them) looked annoyed beneath his appropriately serious and mournful expression, Lord Brone did not tax Barrick and Briony for their waywardness.

  “We have been waiting for you,” he said as the twins approached, staying close to Merolanna for whatever protection she might afford them. “We have grim business still to do tonight, and you are the head of the Eddon family now.” “Which of us?” asked Barrick a little nastily. “You can’t have two heads.”

  “Either of you,” said Brone, surprised for a moment, as though he had not thought of this particular conundrum. “Both of you. But you must see what we do, that justice is done.”

  “What are you talking about?” demanded Briony. The man Vansen, the captain of the guards, was standing behind the lord constable. He had bloody scratches on his face, and for a moment she felt a twinge of shame, thinking of how she had attacked him. But he is the one who is ahve, and my brother is murdered, she thought, and the feeling evaporated. He did not meet her eye, which made it easier to ignore him.

  “I am talking about the knife that made the wounds on your brother and his guards, Princess.” Brone turned at a clattering noise. A troop of guards entered the corridor and stopped at the end, waiting. “Tell them about it, Captain Vansen.”

  The man still could not look her in the face. “It was curved,” he said quietly. “The physician Chaven saw that when he looked at… at the wounds. A curved dagger.”

  Brone waited for him to say more, then grunted with impatience and turned to the twins. “A Tuani dagger, Highnesses.”

  It took a moment for Briony to make out what he was saying, then the mocking, handsome face of the envoy came rushing into her mind. “That man Dawat… !” She would see him skinned. Burned alive.

  “No,” said Brone. “He did not leave his chambers all night. Nor did any of his entourage We had guards watching them.”

  “Then… then what?” said Briony, but a moment later she began to understand.

  “Shaso?” Barrick’s voice was strange, tight, full of both fear and a kind of weird exhilaration. “Are you saying that Shaso killed our brother?”

  “We do not know for certain,” the lord constable said. “We must go and confront him. But he is a promoted peer of Southmarch, an honored friend of your father’s We need you two to be there.”

  As Brone led them down the hall toward the armory, the troop of guards fell in behind them, faces hard, eyes shadowed beneath their helmets. The hierarch and Merolanna did not accompany them, heading for the family chapel to pray instead.

  What is going on? Briony wondered Has everything in the world turned upside down at once? Shaso? It could not be true—someone must have stolen the old man’s dagger In fact, why must it have even been Shaso’s dagger? She found it hard to disbelieve Chaven, but surely there were other explanations—there must be dozens of Tuam weapons available in the waterside markets. But when she whispered this to Barrick, he only shook his head. As if he had cried out all his brotherly feeling with his tears, he barely looked at her.

  Merciful Zorta, will he turn into another Kendrick now? Will he send me to Ludis because it’s best for the whole kingdom? Her skin was needled by a sudden chill.

  Three guards waited in the armory outside the door of Shaso’s chamber. “He has not left,” said one of them, looking at empty air as he talked, clearly confused as to whether to speak directly to the lord constable or his captain, Vansen. “But we have heard strange noises. And the door is bolted.”

  “Break it down,” said Brone, then turned to the twins. “Stand back, if you please, Highnesses.” A half dozen kicks from booted feet and the bolt splintered away from the inside. The door swung in. The guards stepped through with halberds extended, then quickly stepped back again. A dark shape appeared in the opening like a monstrous spirit summoned from the netherworld.

  “Kill me then,” it growled, but the voice was strangely liquid. For a moment Briony thought that Shaso had indeed been invested by some kind of demon, one which had not learned to use its usurped body properly, for the master of arms was swaying in the doorway, unable to stand upright. “I suppose I am… a traito.r So kill me. If you can.” “He’s drunk,” Barrick said slowly, as though this was the biggest surprise the night had produced. “Take him,” Avin Brone called. “But ‘ware—he is dangerous.”

  Briony could not make herself believe it. “Don’t hurt him! Alive! He must be taken alive!”

  The guards moved forward, jabbing with the pike ends of their halberds, forcing th
e dark-skinned man out of the doorway and back into his chamber. Briony could see that the room was in disarray behind him, the bedclothes torn to pieces and scattered across the floor, the shrine in the corner knocked to flinders. He is mad, then, or sick. “Don’t hurt him!” she shouted again.

  “Will you condemn some of these guardsmen to death?” Avin Brone growled. “That old man is still one of the fiercest fighters alive!”

  Briony shook her head. She could only watch with Barrick as the guards tried to subdue Shaso. Barrick was right, the man was reeling, clearly drunk or damaged in some way, but even without a weapon he was a formidable quarry.

  Shaso did not remain weaponless for long. He snatched a halberd away from one of the guards and stunned the man with the butt, then crashed it against the helm of another who tried to take advantage of the opening. Already two of the guards were down. The room was too small for proper pike work. Shaso put his back against the far wall and stood there, chest heaving. Blood was smeared all over his arms and some on his face as well—old blood, dried until it was scarcely visible against his skin.

  “Captain,” Brone said, “bring me archers.”

  “No!” Briony tried to rush forward, but the lord constable seized her arm and held her despite all her struggles.

  “Forgive me, my lady,” he said through clenched teeth. “But I will not lose another Eddon tonight.”

  Suddenly someone else slipped past him—Barrick. Even as Avin Brone cursed, Briony’s brother stopped just inside the doorway.

  “Shaso!” he shouted. “Put that down!”

  The old man lifted his head and shook it. “Is that you, boy?”

  “What have you done?” The prince’s voice trembled. “Gods curse you, what have you done?”

  Shaso tipped his head quizzically for a moment, then smiled a bitter, horrible smile. “What I had to—what was right. Will you kill me for it? For the honor of the family? Now there is irony for you.”

  “Give yourself up,” Barrick said.

  “Let the guards take me, if they can.” Even slurred with drink, his laugh was dreadful. “I do not care much if I live or not.”