by Tad Williams
Briony, who had been looking at Tinwright in a way that did not seem entirely unkind—although it did not appear particularly sympathetic either—suddenly turned to lantern-jawed Gil. “You. They say you are a potboy at an alehouse in the outer keep. How could you know anything other than tavern gossip about what happened to that Settland caravan?”
Gil stirred, but he seemed to have trouble fixing his eyes on her. “I… I do not know. I only know that I had dreams, and that those dreams showed me things.”
“Say, ‘Your Highness,’ scum,” Brone snarled.
Briony waved her hand. “He is I don’t know, simpleminded, I think. Why are we troubling with him at all? With either of these two lackwits?"
Tinwright wished he had the courage to bristle, to protest. It was disappointing that the princess seemed to be unaware of his small but growing reputation, but surely it must be obvious from looking at him that he was not of the same mettle as poor Gil.
“She’s right,” said Prince Barrick. He spoke more slowly and haltingly than reports of his mercurial nature would have suggested. “That merchant fellow probably told everyone in Southmarch what happened to him. And spread it over half the countryside before he even got here, as well.”
“If you look at the letter these two sent us,” Brone told them patiently, “it says, ‘I can tell you of the Prince of Settland’s daughter and why she was taken, with her guards and her blue dower-stone.’ That’s why we’re bothering with these lackwits.”
“I don’t understand,” said the princess.
“Because the merchant Beck didn’t know about the great sapphire the girl was bringing to Earl Rorick as part of her dowry. Nobody in the caravan knew, not even the guards, because her father was afraid of theft I only know myself because I received a letter out of Settland a few days ago, carried to me by a monk. The prince wrote to ask after his daughter and her safety, since he had heard disturbing rumors, and he specifically mentioned the sapphire she was carrying—in fact, it seemed almost as important to him as his child, so it is either a very expensive stone or he is a less than doting father. In any case, how…?”
“How can a mere potboy know about the stone?” Briony finished for him. She turned to Gil. “And you claim this came to you in dreams? What else can you tell us?”
He shook his head slowly. “I have forgotten some of what I meant to say, some of the things I heard and saw when I was sleeping. I was going to have Tinwright put it all down in writings for me, but the guards came and took me away from the Quiller’s Mint.”
“So even if he did somehow know something,” said Barrick, his words ripe with disgust, “he doesn’t know it now.” “I know you saw the ones in black,” Gil told the prince.
“What?”
“The ones in black. The walls aflame. And the man with the beard, running, calling you. I know you saw it…”
He did not finish because Barrick leaped forward and wrapped his hands around the potboy’s neck. Although Gil was a grown man, he offered no resistance. Barrick shoved the scrawny figure down to the floor and climbed onto his chest, shouting, “What does that mean? How could you know about my dreams?”
“Barrick!” Briony rushed forward and grabbed at his arms. The potboy was not struggling, but his face was turning a terrible, hectic red. “Let go— you’ll kill him!”
“How could you know? Who sent you? How could you know?”
As Tinwright watched in astonishment, the lord constable—moving with surprising swiftness for all his bulk—yanked the boy off the gasping, but still unresisting Gil. “I beg your your pardon, Highness, but have you lost your wits?” he demanded.
The prince squirmed free of the big man’s clutch. Barrick was breathing harshly, as though he had been the one strangled instead of the other way around. “Don’t say that! Don’t you dare say that!” he shouted at Brone. “Nobody can speak to me like that!” He seemed about to cry or to scream again, but instead his face suddenly went stony as a statue. He turned and walked out the chapel door, although it was a walk that was only one headlong step away from becoming a run. Two of the guards exchanged a weary look, then peeled off and followed him.
The potboy was sitting up now, wheezing quietly.
“How could you know about my brother’s dreams?” Briony Eddon demanded. Gil took a moment to answer. “I only tell what I saw. What I heard.”
She turned to Brone. “Merciful Zoria preserve me, I think sometimes I’m going mad—I must be, because otherwise I can make no sense of the things that happen in this place. Do you understand any of this?”
The lord constable did not answer immediately. “I… for the most part, I am as puzzled as you, my lady. I have a few ideas, but I think it unwise to share them in front of these two.” He jabbed his bearded chin toward Tinwright and the potboy.
“Well, we must do something about them, that’s sure.” Briony frowned. Tinwright still did not find her particularly fetching, but something about the princess definitely drew his attention, and it was not just her fame and power. She was very… forceful. Like one of the warrior goddesses, he thought.
“Clearly we must at least keep the potboy until we find the secret of his knowledge,” Brone said, giving the poet a spark of hope. Perhaps they would let him go! “Not to mention discovering how he got his hands on that gold dolphin he gave to this so-called poet. I suppose I can find a place for the potboy in the guard room—he’ll be under many eyes there. But I am not sure we want this other one gossiping in the taverns about what he’s seen.” Brone frowned. “I imagine you won’t simply let me kill him.” Suddenly breathless, Tinwright could only hope it was meant as a joke. He was relieved when the princess shook her head. “Too bad,” Brone told her, “because there is little need for his shiftless sort, and Southmarch already has armies of them.”
“I don’t care what you do with the one who wrote the letter.” Briony was staring fixedly at Gil; Tinwright had an inexplicable twinge of jealousy. “I doubt he has anything to do with this matter—the potboy cannot write and needed someone to do it. Send the poet back home and tell him we’ll cut his head off if he whispers a word. I need to think.”
Tinwright had suffered a series of glum realizations. If he went back to the Quiller’s Mint, he would soon be getting that promised visit from the guard whose woman he apparently stole; not only would he be brutally beaten, but it would be for something he couldn’t even remember—drinking with Hewney nearly always ended in oblivion. He could only hope the wench had been pretty although, looking at the guard, he rather doubted it. But since the lord constable had confiscated his gold dolphin, he couldn’t afford to move elsewhere. There was no well-heeled lady in his life at the moment to take him in, only Brigid who lived at the Mint. And the cold weather had come. It would be a bad time to live in the streets.
Tinwright was now feeling extremely sorry for himself. For a moment he considered concocting a story of his own to make himself more useful and important, pretending that he shared some of the potboy’s strange knowledge, but one look at the massive Brone convinced him of the folly of that. For some reason, Gil actually did know things he shouldn’t, but Tinwright could summon no such weaponry, even in bluff. He contemplated the distracted princess and an idea struck him so abruptly that he couldn’t help wondering if Zosim was trying to make up for the fickle cruelty of his other gift. He dropped to his knees on the floor.
“My lady,” he said in his most sincere voice, the one that had kept him in food and drink since he first ran away from home, “Highness, may I beg a favor? It is far too much and I am far too lowly, but I beg you at least to hear me. She looked at him. That was a first step, at least. “What?”
“I am a poet, Princess—a humble one, one whose gifts have not always been rewarded, but those who know me will tell you of my quality.” She was losing interest so he hurried ahead. “I came here in fear and trepidation. My attempt to do a kindness for my simple friend the potboy has caused you and your brother pain
. I am devastated.” She smiled sourly. “If you tell anyone about this, you certainly will be devastated.”
“Please, only hear me, Highness. Only hear your humble servant. Your attention to the cares of the land have doubtless prevented you from knowing of the panegyric I am writing about you.” That, and the fact that he had been writing no such thing before this moment.
“Panegyric?"
“A tribute to your astonishing beauty.” He saw her expression and quickly added, “And most importantly, to your wisdom and kindness. Your mercy.” She smiled again, although it still had a nasty little curl to it. “In fact, as I sit here, fortunate enough finally to be within the radiant glow of your presence instead of worshiping you like the distant moon, I see that my central conceit was even more accurate than I had hoped—that you are indeed… indeed.
She got tired of waiting. “I am indeed what?”
“The very embodiment of Zoria, warrior goddess and mistress of wisdom.” There. He could only hope that he had guessed correctly, that her odd way of dressing and her solicitation of the goddess’ mercy were not chance occurrences. “When I was young, I often dreamed of Perin’s courageous daughter, but in my dreams I was blinded by her glow—I could never truly imagine the heavenly countenance. Now I know the true face of the goddess. Now I see her born again in Southmarch’s virgin princess.” He suddenly worried he had gone a bit too far: she didn’t look as flattered as he had hoped she would, although she didn’t look angry either. He held his breath. “Shall I have him beaten before I take him back to that brothel?” Brone asked her.
“To tell the truth,” Briony said, “he… amuses me. I have not laughed in days, and just now I almost did. That is a rare gift in these times.” She looked Tinwright up and down. “You wish to be my poet, do you? To tell the world of my virtues?”
He was not sure what was happening, but this was not a moment to be wasted on truth of any sort. “Yes, my lady, my princess, it has always been my greatest dream. Indeed, Highness, your patronage would make me the happiest man on earth, the luckiest poet upon Eion.”
“Patronage?” She raised an eyebrow. “Meaning what? Money?"
“Oh, never, my lady!” In due time, he thought. “No, it would be a boon beyond price if you simply allowed me to observe you—at a distance, of course!—so that I could better construct my poem. It has already been years in the making, Highness, the chief labor of my life, but it has been difficult, composed around a few brief glimpses of you at public festivals. If you favor me with the chance to witness you even from across a crowded room as you bring your wise rule to the fortunate people of Southmarch, that would be a kindness that proves you are truly Zoria reborn.”
“In other words, you want a place to stay.” For the first time there was something like genuine amusement in her smile. “Brone, see if Puzzle can find a place for him. They can share a room—keep each other company.”
“Princess Briony… !” Brone was annoyed.
“Now I must talk to my brother. You and I will meet again before sunset, Lord Constable.” She started toward the door, then stopped, looked Tinwnght up and down. “Farewell, poet. I’ll be expecting to hear that ode very soon. I’m looking forward to it.”
As he watched her go, Matty Tinwnght was not quite sure whether this had been the best day of his life or the worst. He thought it must be the best, but there was a small, sick feeling m his stomach that surely should not be part of the day he had become an appointed poet to the royal court.
* * *
At first, it seemed that Collum Dyer would be able to follow the fairy host like a blind man tracking the sun despite the confusion of the fogbound forest and the serpentine inconstancy of the road, the guard set off in a way that Vansen would have called confident, except that the rest of the man’s demeanor spoke of nothing so humble and human as confidence. In fact, Dyer might have been a sleepwalker, stumbling and murmuring to himself like one of the crazed penitents that had followed the effigies of the god Kermos from town to town during the days of the Great Death.
Quickly, though, it became clear that if Dyer was a blind man following the sun, that sun was setting. Within what seemed no more than an hour they were staggering in circles. So maddening was the forest-maze that Vansen would not even have known that for certain except that Dyer stepped on his own sword belt, which he had lost far back in the day’s march.
Exhausted, devastated,Vansen sank to the ground and crouched with his face in his hands, half expecting that Dyer would go on without him and mostly not caring Instead, to his surprise, he felt a hand on his shoulder.
“Where are they, Ferras? They were so beautiful.” Despite the dark beard, Collum Dyer looked like nothing so much as a child, his eyes wide, his mouth quivering.
“Gone on,” Vansen said. “Gone on to kill our friends and families.”
“No.” But what he had said troubled Dyer. “No, they bring something, but not death. Didn’t you hear them? They only take back what was already theirs. That is all they want.”
“But there are people living on what was already theirs. People like us.” Vansen only wanted to lie down, to sleep. He felt as though he had been endlessly, endlessly swimming in this ocean of trees with no glimpse of shore. “Do you think the farmers and smallholders will simply get up and move so your Twilight People can have their old lands back? Perhaps we can pull down Southmarch Castle as well, build it again in Jellon or Perikal where it won’t interfere with them.”
“Oh, no,” said Dyer very seriously. “They want the castle back. That’s theirs, too. Didn’t you hear them?”
Vansen closed his eyes but it only made him dizzy. He was lost behind the Shadowline with a madman. “I heard nothing.”
“They were singing! Their voices were so fair… ?" Now it was Dyer who squeezed his eyes shut. “They sang… they sang…” The child-face sagged again as though he might burst into tears. “I can’t remember! I can’t remember what they sang.”
That was the first good thing Vansen had heard in hours. Perhaps Dyer’s wits were returning. But why am I not mad, too? he wondered.
Then again, how do I know I’m not?
“Come,” said the guardsman, pulling at his arm. “They are going away from us.”
“We can’t catch them. We’re lost again.” Vansen pushed down his anger. Whatever the reason that Collum Dyer’s wits were clouded and his own were not, or at least not as badly, it was not Dyer’s fault. “We do have to get out of here, but not to follow the Twilight People off to war.” A few tattered scraps of duty seemed to be all that held him together. He clutched them tight. “We have to tell the princess about this… and the prince. We have to tell Avin Brone.”
“Yes.” Collum nodded. “They will be happy.”
Vansen groaned quietly and set about looking for enough damp sticks to try to make a fire. “Somehow I don’t think so.”
After a succession of terrible dreams in which he was pursued by faceless men through endless mist-cloaked gardens and unlit halls, FerrasVansen gave up on sleep. He warmed his hands beside the fire and fretted over their dismal circumstances, but he was exhausted and without useful ideas: all he could do was stare out at the endless trees and try to keep from screaming in despair. A child of the countryside, he had never imagined he could grow to hate something as familiar as a forest, as common as mere trees, but of course nothing here was mere anything. Outwardly familiar—he had seen oak and beech, rowan and birch and alder, and in the high places many kinds of evergreen—the dripping trees of this damp shadow-forest seemed to have a brooding life to them, a silence both purposeful and powerful. If he half-closed his eyes, he could almost imagine he was surrounded by ancient priests and priestesses robed in gray and green, tall and stately and not very kindly disposed toward his intrusion into their sacred precincts.
When Collum Dyer finally woke, he also seemed to have awakened from the evil fancy that had gripped his mind. He looked around him, blinking slowly, and then moa
ned. “By Perin’s Hammer, when will day come in this cursed place?”
“This is as much day as you’ll see until we are in our own lands again,” Vansen told him. “You should know that by now.”
“How long have we been here?” Dyer looked down at his hands as though they should belong to someone else. “I feel ill. Where are the others?”
“Don’t you remember?” He told the guardsman all that had happened, what they had seen. Dyer looked at him mistrustfully.
“I remember none of that. Why would I say such things?”
“I don’t know. Because this place sends people mad. Come—if you’re feeling like yourself again, let’s get moving.”
They walked, but even the small idea that Vansen had of which direction might lead them back across the Shadowline toward mortal lands quickly failed. As the day wore away, with Dyer cursing fate and Vansen biting back his own anger at his companion—he hadn’t had the luxury of being mad for two days, and had suffered this endless, defeating landscape the whole time Collum Dyer had been babbling about the glories of the Twilight folk—it began to seem that not only would they have to sleep in the forest again, they might never find their way out. They were hopelessly lost and almost out of food and drink. Vansen did not trust the water in this land’s quiet streams, but it seemed they soon must drink it or die.
Somewhere in the timeless and arbitrary middle of their day, Vansen spotted a group of figures traveling away from them, struggling along a ridgetop at what looked like half a mile’s distance. He and Dyer were down in a small canyon, hidden by trees, and at first his strong impulse was to hide until these creatures were gone. But something about the stockiest of the climbing shapes snagged his attention; after a moment, attention turned to incredulous delight.
“By all the gods, I swear that must be Mickael Southstead! I would know his walk anywhere, like he had a barrel between his legs.”
