by Tad Williams
The one who waited was patient indeed: nearly an hour passed before the blind king at last stirred and turned his head. “Harsar? You should have spoken, old friend.”
“It is peaceful to look out the window.”
“It is.”Ynnir made a gesture, a complex movement of fingers that signified gratitude for small things. “All morning I listened to the anger of the Gathering, all that arguing about the Pact of the Glass, and thought about the time when I would come here, away from it all, and feel the breeze from M’aarenol on my face.” He lifted his fingers and touched them to his eyes once, twice, then a third time, all with the precision of ritual. “I still see what was outside it on the day I lost my sight.”
“It has not changed, Lord.”
“Everything has changed. But, come, you have waited for me patiently, Harsar-so. I do not believe the view alone has brought you here.”
Harsar inclined his hairless head ever so slightly. He was of the Stone Circle People, a small, nimble folk, but was tall for his kind: whenYnnir rose and Harsar stepped forward to help him, his head reached almost to the king’s shoulder. “I have good news, Lord.”
“Tell me.”
“Yasammez and her host have crossed the frontier.” “So quickly?”
“She is very strong, that one. She has been waiting long years for this, preparing.” “Yes, she has.”The king nodded slowly. “And the mantle?”
“She carries it with her, at least for now, but the scholars in the Deep Library think it will not sustain itself if stretched too far. But everywhere she has raided the mantle has spread, reclaiming that which is ours, and even when it will spread no farther, she will go on with fire and talon and blade.” Even patient Harsar could not keep his voice altogether even; a hint of exultation writhed in his words. “And everywhere she goes, the sunlanders will wail behind her, searching for their dead.”
“Yes.”Ynnir stood silent for a long time. “Yes. I thank you for these tidings, Harsar-so.”
“You do not seem as pleased as I would have thought, Lord.” The councillor was startled by his own words and lowered his head. “Ah, ah. Please forgive my discourtesy, Son of the First Stone. I am a fool.”
The king lifted a long-fingered hand, made a gesture that signaled “acceptable confusion.”
“You have nothing to apologize for, friend. I simply have much to consider. Yasammez is a mighty weapon. Now that she has been loosed, all the world will change.” He turned his head toward the window once more. “Do me the favor of excusing me, Harsar-so. It was good of you to come so far to give me this news.” His long face was grave and still; a hovering mote of light like a pale lavender firefly had begun to flicker above his head. “I must think I must… sleep.”
“Forgive me for imposing myself, great Ynnir. Will you permit one more unforgivable imposition? May I offer my company on your journey down to your chambers? The stairs are still damp.”
A tiny smile came to the blind king’s face. “You are kind, but I will sleep here.”
“Here?” There was only one couch in the Cloud-Spirit Tower and it was a place of power, of shaped and directed dreams. A moment later, the man of the Stone Circle People brought his hand to his mouth. “Forgive me, Lord! I do not mean to question you again. I am a fool today, a fool.”
This time Ynnir’s response was a degree or two closer to frost. “Do not distress yourself, Councillor. I will be well.” Harsar bowed and bowed again, backing out of the room so quickly that an observer might have feared the councillor himself was in greater clanger of tumbling down the long, steep stairwell than the blind king, but he spun neatly on his heel at the edge of the steps before starting his descent. Many of the towers of Qul-na-Qar had stairs that yielded quiet music, and of course the infamous steps of the High Place moaned softly, like children in troubled sleep, but the stairway of Cloud-Spirit Tower surrendered no noise except that of a visitor’s tread. Ynnir listened to his councillor’s velvet-soft footfalls grow fainter and fainter until he could no longer hear them above the skirling wind.
Ynnir din’at sen-Qin moved through a door in the wall that separated this highest place in the tower into two rooms. That other chamber, that twinned space, had its own window, facing not across the expanse of the castle and its countless rooftops glinting wet as beach stones but away into the misty south—toward the Shadowline and the great host of Lady Yasammez and the lands of mortals. Like the other room, it was sparsely furnished. That room had a chair: this one had a low bed. The king lay down on it, lavender light glittering above his brow, then folded his arms across his breast and began to dream.
* * *
Chert had barely slept at all. The long watches of the night had passed like guests who sensed they were unwelcome and were all the slower to leave because of it.
We’re caught up in bad things. It was in his every thought. For the first time he understood what the big folk must mean when they asked him how he could stand to live in a cave under the ground. But it was not the stone of Funderling Town that oppressed him any more than a fish was oppressed by water; it was the feeling that he and his small family were surrounded and enwebbed by a faceless, invisible something, and it was precisely because he did not know what it was that he felt so miserable, so helpless. We’re caught up in bad things and they’re getting worse.
“What in the name of the Mysteries are you up to?” Opal’s voice was muzzy with sleep. “You’ve been twitching all night.”
He was tempted to tell her it was nothing, but despite their occasional squabbling, Chert was not one of those fellows who felt more comfortable in the company of other men than with his own wife. They had come far together and he knew he needed not only her comfort, but her good wits, too. “I can’t sleep, Opal. I’m worried.”
“What about?” She sat up and pushed at the strands of hair escaping from her nightcap. “And don’t talk so loud—you’ll wake the boy.”
“The boy is part of what worries me.” He got up, padded to the table, and picked up the jar of wine. Funderlings seldom used lamps in their own homes, making do with the dim, dim glow spilling in from the street lanterns, and found it amusing that the big folk couldn’t seem to blunder around aboveground without a blaze of light. He took a cup from the mantel shelf. “Do you want some wine?” he asked his wife.
“Why would I want wine at this hour?” But her voice was definitely as worried as his, now. “Chert, what’s wrong?”
“I’m not sure. Everything, really. The boy, those Rooftoppers, what Chaven said about the Shadowline.” He brought his cup of wine back to bed and slid his feet under the heavy quilt. “It wasn’t simply an accident that child appeared, Opal. That he was brought out of that place and dumped here on the very same day I find that the Shadowline has moved for the first time in years.”
“It’s not the boy’s fault!” she said, her voice rising despite her own injunction to quiet. “He’s done nothing wrong. Next you’re going to say he’s some kind of… spy, or demon, or… or a wizard in disguise!”
“I don’t know what he is. But I know that I’m not going to go another night wondering what’s in that bag around his neck.”
“Chert, you can’t. We have no right… !”
“That’s nonsense, woman, and you know it. This is our house. What if he brought home a poisonous snake—a fireworm or somesuch? Would we have to let him keep it?”
“That’s just silly…”
“Well, it’s at least as silly when there are dangers all around, when the Twilight People may walk right out of the old stories and come knocking at our very doors, to pretend as though this was an ordinary time and ordinary circumstances. We found him, Opal, we didn’t birth him. We don’t know anything about who he is—or even what he is—except that he came from behind the Shadowline.You didn’t see the way those Rooftoppers treated him—like he was an old friend, an honored ally…”
“He helped one of them. You said so!”
“And he’s carrying som
ething we haven’t looked at that might tell us about his past.” “You don’t know that.”
“No, and you don’t know that it doesn’t. Why are you fighting me, Opal? Are you so afraid we might lose him?”
There were tears in her eyes—he needed no light to know that: he could hear it in her voice. “Yes! Yes, I’m afraid we might lose him. And mostly because you wouldn’t care if we did!”
“What?”
“You heard me You treat him well enough because you’re a kind man, but you don’t… you don’t. . you don’t love him “ She was fighting to be able to speak now. “Not like I do.”
For a moment anger and astonishment ran together in him. She turned onto her side. Her sobs shook the mattress and something in the brokenhearted sound of it pushed everything else away. This was his Opal, weeping, terrified. He curled his arms around her.
“I’m sorry, my old darling. I’m sorry.” He heard himself saying it, regretted it even as the words left his mouth. “Don’t worry, I… I won’t let anyone take him from you.”
* * *
“Isn’t there any other way?” she asked. They had lit one of the smallest lamps; her face was red and her eyes swollen. “It seems a terrible thing to do—it seems wrong.”
“We are parents now,” Chert said. “I suspect we must get used to feeling terrible about some things we must do. I suspect it is the tunnel-toll for having a child.”
“That’s just like you,” she whispered, half angry, half not. “Anything you take up, you decide you know all about it. Just like with those racing moles.”
The sleeping boy, who as usual had kicked his blanket off, was lying belly-down, face turned to the side like a swimmer taking a breath, pale hair white as frost. Chert stared with a mixture of fondness and fear. He knew he had just signed a treaty of sorts, that in return for getting a look at the contents of the sack he had as good as promised that whatever they might be, he would abide by Opal’s judgment. And he knew in his heart that unless they found evidence that the child had actually committed murder—and not just any old murder, but something important and recent— she would not consider it grounds to send the boy away.
How did that happen so quickly? Chert wondered. Are all women like that — ready to love a child, any child, just as a hand is ready to grasp or an eye ready to see? Why don’t I feel the same way? Because although he knew he truly did care for the child, there was nothing in him like the fierce possessiveness that his wife felt, the almost helpless need. Does she burn too hot? Or is my heart too cold?
Still, watching as the boy moaned a little and shifted, looking at the helpless, smoothly vulnerable neck, the open mouth, he found himself hoping that they discovered nothing damning.
Someone is using this child. Chert suddenly felt certain of this, but did not know why he thought so or what it meant. For good or for ill, there is another will behind him. But what is he? A weapon? A messenger? An observer?
Confused by these thoughts, Chert got down on his knees and carefully slid one hand under the shirt the boy used as a cushion. His fingers touched something solid, but Flint’s head rested firmly on top of it; he would rouse the boy if he tried to pull it free. He put a hand under the child’s shoulder and gently pushed.
“You’ll wake him up… !” Opal whispered.
Would that be so bad? Chert wondered. There was no reason they needed to hide what they were doing, surely. In fact, he would have gladly waited until morning, except that he knew he would not sleep if he did Still, as the boy yawned and rolled onto his side, allowing Chert to pull the sack and its cord out from under the rolled shirt, he did feel more than a little like a thief.
At least he hasn’t hidden it, Chert thought. Tliat’s a good sign, isn’t it? If he knew it was something bad, he would hide it, wouldn’t he… ?
Chert carried it out of their bedchamber to the table, Opal as close behind him as if it were not simply a possession of Flint’s but an actual piece of the boy. Chert had been distracted last time by the discovery of the strange stone, the one that he had passed to Chaven. Now he examined the bag all over again. It was the size of a hen’s egg but almost flat, only as thick as a finger. The needlework was exquisite and complex, in many colors of thread, but the design was a pattern, not a picture, and told him very little. “Have you ever seen work like that?”
Opal shook her head. “Some eyestitch from Connord I saw in the market once, but that was much simpler.”
Chert took it gently in his hands, prodded at it with his finger. It gave beneath his touch with a faint, springy crunch, but there was something hard at the middle of it, hard like bone. “Where’s my knife?”
“That clumsy thing?” Opal was already walking across the room toward her sewing box. “If you’re going to steal the boy’s possessions and cut them open, you don’t have to do it like some butcher’s prentice.” She returned and lifted out a tiny blade with a handle of polished maker’s-pearl. “Use this. No, I’ve changed my mind. Give it back. I’ll be the one who has to sew the thing up again after you’ve finished poking around in it.”
Assuming it’s something that can be put back in a sack as though nothing has happened, Chert thought but didn’t say. The boy himself certainly hadn’t been like that, so why should this be different?
Opal carefully sliced away a few of the threads down one side, where the ornamental stitchery was minimal. Chert had to admit that he wouldn’t have thought of that, that he would have opened the top and spoiled much more of the embroidery.
“What if… what if the stitchery itself is some kind of shadow-magic?” he said suddenly. “What if we’ve spoiled it by cutting it, and whatever’s inside won’t be held in there anymore?” He didn’t know exactly what he was he trying to say but in these deep hours of the night it was hard not to feel they were trespassing on unfamiliar and perhaps hostile ground.
Opal gave him a sour look. “That’s just like you to think of that after I’ve started.” But she paused, and suddenly her face was worried. “Do you think there’s something alive in here? Something that… that bites?”
“Give it to me, then,” Chert said, trying to make a joke of it. “If someone has to lose a finger, it shouldn’t be the one who’s going to sew the thing up again.”
He squeezed it a little to force the snipped seam open, held it up to the light. All he could see was something that looked like bits of dried flowers and leaves. He leaned forward and sniffed it cautiously. The scent was exotic and unrecognizable, a mix of spicy odors. He probed inside with his finger, trying to be gentle, but he was crushing the dried plant material and the smell was getting stronger. At last he touched something hard and flat. He tried to pull it out, but it was almost the same size as the sack.
“You’ll have to cut more threads,” he said, handing it back to Opal.
She sniffed the open side. “Moly and bleeding-heart. But that’s not all. I don’t recognize the rest.” When she had widened the gap all the way down to the bottom and even a little beyond, Chert took it back.
He pulled, gently. Dried petals fell to the table. He pulled again and at last the object slid out. It was an oval of polished white—a quick glance told him it was made not of stone but something more recently and aggressively animated—which had been carved in a decorative manner that, like the embroidery, was not meant to represent anything obvious. For a moment he could only stare at it in surprise—why would anyone spend so much care carving and polishing a simple round of ivory or bone like this?—but Opal took it for a moment, nodded, then put it back on his palm, this time with the other side facing up.
“It’s a mirror, you old fool.” There was relief in her voice. “A hand mirror like a highborn lady might have. I daresay your Princess Briony owns a few of these.”
“My Princess Briony?” He fell into their old rhythms because it was the easiest thing to do; he, too, was relieved, although not as completely as his wife. “She’ll be very entertained to hear that, I’m sure.” He sta
red at the mirror, lifted it up, turned it until it caught the reflection of the lamp. It did seem quite ordinary. “But why does the boy have a mirror?”
“Oh, can’t you see?” Opal shook her head at his obtuseness. “It is as clear as skyglass.This must have belonged to his… his true mother.” She did not like saying the words, but she continued bravely. “She likely gave it to him as… a sort of reminder. Perhaps she was in danger and they had only a few moments before she had to send him away. She wanted whoever found him to know that he came of a good family, that his mother had loved him.”
“It seems strange,” Chert said, unable to hide his disbelief completely, “that a woman would keep her mirror sewed up so tightly in a bag.”
“She wouldn’t! She sewed it up so that he wouldn’t lose it.”
“So you’re saying that a noblewoman with only moments left to spend with her little son—perhaps with her castle under siege and on fire, like in one of those big-folk ballads that you like to listen to when we go to the market upground—took the time to sew this bag shut with these careful little stitches?"
“You’re just trying to make trouble about it.” Opal sounded amused, not irritated. She could afford to be magnanimous, since she had obviously won the day. It was only a mirror, not a ring with a family crest or a letter detailing Flint’s heritage or confessing a dreadful crime Just to make sure, Chert pulled the rest of the dried leaves and flowers out onto the tabletop while Opal made little tutting sounds, but there was nothing else in the sack.
“If you are quite finished making a mess, give all that to me.” The glow of triumph was unmistakable now. “I have a lot of work to do to make that right again before the boy wakes up. You might as well go back to bed, old man.”
And he did. But he still did not sleep, although it was not the quiet sounds Opal made as she plied her needle that kept Chert awake. What was in the sack had not turned out to be something terrible. Nothing would change, at least not for the moment. But that was part of the problem.
