Shadowmarch s-1

by Tad Williams

  “Flint!” he shouted, and his voice echoed out across the quicksilver sea, but the small shadow did not stop or even look back.

  30. Awakening

  RED LEAVES:

  The child in its bed A bear on a hilltop

  Two pearls taken from the hand of an old one

  —from The Bonefall Oracles

  The ceiling of the main trigonate temple was so high that even with the great doors closed it had its own subtle winds— the thousands of candles on altars and in alcoves were all fluttering. At this hour of the morning it was also very cold. Barrick’s arm ached.

  The prince regent was surrounded by the men who would accompany him into the west, his unloved cousin Rorick Longarren and more proven warriors like Tyne of Blueshore and Tyne’s old friend, the extravagantly mustached Droy Nikomede of Eastlake, along with many others Barrick knew mostly by reputation. In fact, much of the flower of the March Kingdoms’ nobility had gathered for this blessing—doughty Mayne Calough from far Kertewall, Sivney Fiddicks who some called the Piecemeal Knight because his armor and battle array were all prizes he had won in various tilts, Earl Gowan M’Ardall of Helmingsea, and several dozen other high lords dressed in white robes, plus five or six times that number of humbler stature who yet possessed their own horses and armor and at least a cottage or field somewhere so they could call themselves “landed.”

  Like all the others, Barrick Eddon was down on one knee, facing the altar where Sisel told the blessing, the ancient Hierosolme phrases rolling from the hierarch’s tongue like the meaningless babble of a fast-running stream. Barrick knew he would soon be riding to war, perhaps even to death Not only that, the enemy they all faced were the wild creatures from the shadowlands, the old terror, the stuff of nightmares—yet he felt oddly flat, empty and unconcerned.

  He raised his eyes to the vast tripartite statue behind the altar, the three gods of theTngon standing atop an artfully carved stone plinth that became clouds around the sky god’s feet, stones and waves respectively for the gods of earth and sea. The three towering deities stared outward, with Perin in the center in his rightful place as the highest of the high, fish-scaled Erivor on his right, glowering Kernios on his left They were half brothers, all children of old Sveros, the night sky, from different mothers. Barrick wondered if any one of the Trigon would be willing to die for his brothers as he would give his life for Briony—as he almost certainly was going to give his life for her. But since they were gods and thus immortal and invulnerable, how would such a thing happen? How could gods be brave?

  Hierarch Sisel was still droning. The old man had insisted on leading the ceremony himself because of the importance of the occasion—and because, Barrick suspected, like so many others he wished to do something to help, to feel himself a contributor Word had passed swiftly through castle and city there was not one person in a hundred now who did not know that war was coming, and that it was apparently going to be a strange and frightening sort of war as well.

  How Barrick himself felt about it all was even stranger, he had to admit—like reaching for something on a high shelf that was just out of reach no matter how one jumped or strained. He simply couldn’t make himself feel much of anything.

  When the hierarch’s part of the ceremony was over, Sisel took Barrick aside as the other nobles were having their robes perfumed with sacred smoke by the blue-clad temple mantises. The hierarch had a half-humble, half-irritated expression that Barrick knew very well it was a look his elders often wore when they wanted to scold him but couldn’t help remembering that one or two of Barrick’s ancestors had imprisoned people—or even killed them, if certain popular rumors were true—for giving unwelcome advice.

  “It is a brave thing you are doing, my prince,” Sisel said.

  He means to say “stupid,” Barrick decided, but of course that was a word even a hierarch of the Tngonate would not use to an enthroned prince. “I have my reasons, Eminence. Some of them are good ones.”

  Sisel raised his hand. It was meant to signify no more needs to be said, but to Barrick it was irritatingly close to Shaso’s raised hand, which throughout his childhood usually meant: Shut up, boy. “Of course, Highness. Of course. And the Three Powerful Ones grant that you and the others come home safely. Tyne is to lead, of course?" His forehead wrinkled as he realized what he had said. “In support of you, of course, Prince Barrick.”

  He almost smiled. “Of course. But let us be honest. I’m to be a sort of… what do they have on the front of a ship? A masthead?”

  “Figurehead?”

  “Yes. I don’t expect the soldiers to listen to me, Hierarch—I have no experience of war yet In fact, I hope to learn something from Tyne and the others If the Three grant I come back safely, that is.”

  Sisel gave him a strange look—he had perhaps detected something a little false in Barrick’s pious manner—but he was also relieved and clearly didn’t want to think about it much. “You show great wisdom, my prince. You are unquestionably your father’s son.”

  “Yes, I think that’s true.”

  Sisel was still puzzled by whatever lurked beneath Barrick’s words. “These are not natural creatures we face, my prince. We should not be troubled at what we do.”

  We? “What do you mean?”

  “These… things. The Twilight People, as they are superstitiously named, the Old Ones. They are unnatural—the enemies of men. They would take what is ours. They must be destroyed like rats or locusts, without compunction.”

  Barrick could only nod Rats. Locusts. He let himself be censed. The perfumes in the smoke reminded him of the spice stalls of Market Square, made him wish badly to be there again with Briony, as when they were children and had escaped for a delicious, giggling moment or two with half the household in ragged pursuit.

  After he had removed the ceremonial robe, Barrick followed the knights and nobles out of the temple. Tyne Aldritch and the others looked rested and refreshed, as though they had just come from a bath and a nap, and Barrick couldn’t help being jealous that the trip to the temple had given them this comfort—a comfort he himself did not feel.

  Earl Tyne saw Barrick’s troubled face and slowed until they were walking side by side. “The gods will protect us, never fear, Prince Barrick. The creatures are uncanny things, but they are real—they are made of flesh. When we cut them, their blood will flow.”

  How can you be sure of that? he wanted to ask. After all, the only person in all of Southmarch with any experience of their enemy was that soldier Vansen, who had actually been present for the killing of one of the Shadowline creatures, although admittedly a small and not very dangerous one, and who had also been attacked by a much larger thing that half a dozen soldiers had not managed to harm at all, even as it took one of their company like a child snatching a sweetmeat from an unguarded plate.

  Barrick did not share any of these thoughts either.

  “The monsters will be frightening, no doubt,” said Tyne quietly. They paused as the temple acolytes pushed open the heavy bronze doors and let the bay air spill in, ruffling hair and clothing and making the candle flames sputter. “Remember, Highness, it is important that we show the men a courageous face.”

  “The gods will give us what courage we need, no doubt.”

  “Yes,” said Tyne, nodding vigorously. “They did for me when I was a youth.”

  Barrick suddenly realized that although Tyne Aldritch was more than twice Barrick’s own age, he was still a great deal younger than the twins’ father, King Olin. He was a man still young enough to have ambitions— perhaps he hoped that Barrick would remember him as a loyal friend and mentor if they all survived, that his fortune would rise even higher if Barrick Eddon became king someday. Tyne’s daughter was nearly of marriageable age, after all. Perhaps he dreamed of a royal connection.

  Up until this moment it had been hard for Barrick to think of most of his elders as anything other than an undifferentiated mass, at least those who were not yet dodderingly old. N
ow for the first time he examined the battle-scarred Earl of Blueshore and wondered what Tyne himself saw when he gazed out at the world, what he thought and hoped and feared. Barrick looked around at Sivney Fiddicks and Ivar of Silverside and the other lords, faces held up, jaws set in expressions meant to be brave and inspiring as the pale sunshine spilled in through the open doors, and realized that every one of these men lived inside his own head just as Barrick lived in his, and that all of the hundreds of people waiting anxiously on the stairs outside the temple for a glimpse of the nobility of Southmarch lived within their own thoughts as well, as completely and separately as Barrick himself did.

  It’s as if we live on a thousand, thousand different islands in the middle of an ocean, he thought, but with no boats We can see each other We can shout to each other. But we can none of us leave our own island and travel to another.

  This idea hit him with a far stronger force than any of the ritual he had just experienced inside the temple, and so he did not realize for a moment that the crowd of people on the steps was pushing the ring of guards back toward the temple doors, that in their fear over the rumors of war and even more terrifying things, the throng of common folk was only moments away from trampling the very people they expected to defend them Some of the priests began to shut the great doors again. The guards were shoving back with the long handles of their pikes and a few of the crowd were knocked down and bruised. A woman screamed Some men began trying to pull the pikes away from the guards. A few clods of dirt thudded down on the steps, one hit a Marrinswalk baron on the leg and he stared dumbfounded at the stain on his clean hose as though it were blood Rorick shouted in alarm, perhaps as much at the threat to his own cleanliness as the danger to his person Then, as if it happened in a dream—he was still caught up in the idea of people as islands—Barrick watched Tyne draw his sword, heard the rattle and hiss of a dozen blades leaving their scabbards as other nobles followed Blueshore’s lead. The smell of the crowd so close around them was an animal reek, alien and frightening.

  Tyne and the others —they’re going to kill people, he realized. It scarcely seemed possible it was happening so swiftly Or the people may kill us. But why? He looked at the faces around him, saw a growing realization reflected between the nobles and commons that things were falling to pieces and that none of them knew how to stop it.

  But I can, he realized. It was a heady feeling, although oddly cheerless. He raised his good hand and walked down a few steps Tyne snatched at him but Barrick ducked away.

  “Stop!” he cried, but no one could hear his words above the shouting of frightened people most of the faces staring up at the temple portico couldn’t even see him. He turned and bounded back up the steps to where the massive bronze doors still stood halfway open—one of the cleverer priests, perhaps Sisel himself, had realized it would not be a good idea to lock out the prince regent and the other nobles while they were surrounded by a furious mob—then he yanked a pike away from one of the nearest guardsmen, who surrendered it with a look of complete confusion and misery, as though he suspected that for some inscrutable princely reason Barrick was about to strike him with his own weapon. Instead, Barrick used the heavy pike head to pound against the bronze door until the raw echoes flew across the yard. Heads turned and the shouting slowly began to diminish.

  Barrick was breathing very hard: it was difficult to wield the pike with only one hand, bracing it under his arm to hammer at the door, but it had worked. Most of the crowd stared openmouthed at their young prince in front of the temple doorway.

  “What do you want?” he cried. “Do you want to crush us? We are going out to fight for the city—for our land. In the holy name of the Three, what do you think you’re doing, pressing in on us like this?”

  Some of those caught up with the guards stepped back, shamefaced, but others were more entangled; the process of undoing the near-riot was as complicated as unpicking delicate stitchery. A guardsman still grappling with a sullen onlooker overbalanced and fell with a clang of armor and several of his fellow guards moved forward angrily. Barrick raised his voice again. “Stop. Let the people tell me. What do you want?”

  “If you and the other lords go, Prince Barrick, who will protect the city?” a man shouted. “The fairy folk will come and take our children!” cried someone else, a woman.

  Barrick made a show of his confident smile. It was strange how easily this kind of thing came to him, this useful duplicity. “Who will protect the city? The city is protected by Brenn’s Bay, which is worth more than any knights, even these fine nobles. Look around you! If you -were a warlord, even the warlord of a fairy army, would you want to come up that causeway and against these high walls? And don’t forget, my sister Briony will still be here, an Eddon on the throne—believe me, even the Twilight People don’t want to get her angry.”

  A few of the people laughed, but others were still calling out anxious questions. Tyne made a show of sheathing his sword.

  “Please!” Barrick said to the crowd. “Let us get on with this day’s work—we are to ride soon. Avin Brone the lord constable will come back here and speak at midday, to tell you of how we will defend the castle and the city, what each of you can do to help.”

  “The Three bless you, Prince Barrick!” a woman called, and the pained hope in her voice was real enough to touch him even to frighten him. “Come home safe to us!”

  Other blessings and good wishes rained down, a moment before it had been clumps of dirt and even a few stones. The crowd didn’t disperse, but they opened a path so that Barrick and the rest of the knights could head back toward the Raven Gate and the inner keep.

  “You handled that well, Highness.” Tyne sounded a little surprised. “The gods told you the right words to say.”

  “I am an Eddon. They know my family. They know we do not lie to them.” But he couldn’t help wondering. Did I truly do that? Or did the gods indeed work through me? I felt no god, that’s all I know. In truth he was not certain how he felt at all—proud that he had quelled an anxious mob and given them hope, or distressed by how easily they could be swayed from one extreme to another?

  And we are not even truly at war. Not yet, He had a sudden chill of presentiment, What will it be like when things begin to go bad?

  And where will the gods be then?

  * * *

  The noise of hammers was almost deafening, as though a flock of monstrous woodpeckers had descended on Southmarch Castle Men clambered on every wall and tower, it seemed, putting up wooden boardings against the possibility of a siege. After the torpor that had gripped the castle in the past months, it was almost a relief to see so much activity, but Briony knew this was no mere attack from a neighboring kingdom against which they must defend themselves. The March Kingdoms were at war with a completely unknown and perhaps unknowable enemy When the men on the walls and towers looked out toward the still innocent western horizon, and they looked often, the fear on their faces was plain even from the ground Not only the workers found their attention compromised the princess regent was so busy watching the work that she stumbled into a low boxwood hedge Rose and Moina hurried forward to help her, but she shook them off, murmuring angrily.

  “These cursed hedges! How can a person even walk?” Sister Utta appeared in one of the gallery archways. Despite the cool gray skies she wore only a light wrap over her plain gown. A wimple of the same color covered her hair, so that her handsome face seemed almost to hang in the air like a mask on a wall. “It would be hard to make a knot garden without hedges,” the Zorian sister said gently. “I hope you haven’t hurt yourself, Highness.”

  “I’m well, I suppose.” Briony rubbed at her lower leg. She had discovered one of the disadvantages of wearing hose like a man—there was nothing to protect your shins from pokes and bumps.

  Utta seemed to know what the princess regent was thinking; in any case, she smiled. “It was kind of you to visit me.”

  “Not kind. I’m miserable. I have no one to talk to.”
She looked up in time to catch the hurt glance that jumped from Moina to Rose. “No one but these two,” she said hastily, “and I have complained to them so much that they are surely tired of hearing my voice.”

  “Never, Highness!” Rose said it in such a clattering hurry to make her feel better that Briony almost laughed. Now she knew that they were tired of listening to her.

  “We worry for you, Briony, that’s all,” Moina agreed, and by forgetting to use her mistress’ title she proved that she was speaking the truth.

  They are good and kind, these girls, she thought, and for a moment felt herself old enough to be their grown sister, even their mother, although small, yellow-haired Rose was her own age and dark Moina almost a full year her elder.

  “How is your great-aunt?” asked Utta.

  “Merolanna? Feeling better. With these musters of soldiers marching in and all these guests in the castle, she is in her element—like a sea captain in a storm. She’s been looking in on my stepmother, too, since Anissa’s time is close and Chaven has seen fit to disappear.” It was hard for Briony to keep her anger at the physician to a polite growl. Finished brushing the bits of boxwood off her hose and the bottom of her tunic, she straightened up. The smell of hyssop and especially lavender were strong here despite the cold breeze off the bay, but they were not soothing. She wondered if anything would soothe her. “And you, Sister—are you well?”

  “My joints are sore—it always happens when the wind freshens. If you wish to go in out of the garden, I will not complain.”

  “I can barely hear you with all this clattering, anyway, and it won’t be better anywhere else out of doors. Where shall we go?”

  “I was about to go to the shrine and make an offering for the safety of your brother and the rest. It is quiet there. What do you think?”

  “I think that would be lovely,” Briony told her. “Rose, Moina—stop making eyes at those men on the wall and come along.”