by Tad Williams
The kulikos beast howled again, this time in true pain and terror, but the air was suddenly full of sparks and flying dust. The wind that had swirled it into being now seemed to be pulling it apart.
Briony tried to get up, but the beast’s grating screech, so loud that it threatened to shake loose the roof timbers, made her stumble and fall again, and so the retaliatory sweep of claws missed her and she lived. The thing that had been Selia threw itself to the floor, moaning as it scrabbled after the lost kulikos stone. The crawling shape was wreathed in flame, but at its core the human and demon essences were in confusion now, flickering and rippling in smoke. It lurched up, hissing triumphantly, but the thing clutched in its taloned hand was only a thimble—perhaps one that had belonged to the maid herself. The shape dropped the silvery thing and took a lurching step backward with a bellow of pain and despair, the Selia-face now a visible mask of agony. Briony’s broken pikestaff shuddered in its chest, the wound a fiery hole. It stumbled back against the bed and the entire canopy finally pulled loose and fell atop it, a blanket of roaring fire. The shadow-shape roared and thrashed as the fire leaped upward, then, with a mewling noise that for the first time had something human in it, fell forward and lay stretched on the floor, twitching in the flames.
In the sudden stillness, Briony felt as though she had been carried away to the moon, to some country from which she could never return to the life she knew. She stared at the thing wrapped in burning curtains, and the fire now smoldering in the carpets. When she was certain it had stopped moving, she picked up a chamber pot and emptied it over the burning shape, dousing the worst of the fire and adding the stench of boding urine to the dreadful odor of fire and blood. As she listlessly began to stamp out the rest of the flames Chaven crawled toward her, his hands blackened, his face stretched in a rictus of pain.
“Don’t,” he said hoarsely. “We shall have no light.”
As absently as if someone else inhabited her body, Briony found a candle and lit it from a bit of flaming bed curtain, then finished the job of putting out the fires. She lit another candle. She was not crying, but she felt as though she should have been.
“Why?”
Chaven shook his head. “I was a fool. Because she was ill before Kendrick died, and ill afterward, I thought the maid truly had the fever that struck Barrick. I see now she was only preparing the ground before time for the weakness that would overcome her after using the kuhkos. I thought the witch must be Anissa and I tried to bluff her I did not guess the stone could work again without much preparation, some kind of intricate charm…”
“No, why did she kill Kendrick? Was she going to kill me as well?”
Chaven stared down at the sodden, scorched mass .He peeled back a corner of the curtain. Briony was startled to see Selia’s ordinary dead face, eyes open, mouth gaping. Whatever spell had gripped the girl had now passed, leaving nothing behind to show what she had been except a smeared residue of grit, dust, and ash on her skin, clotted into a foul mud. “Yes, she would have killed you, perhaps by poison—and Barrick, too, if he’d been with you. Your stepmother did not invite you here, Selia herself did. That is why Anissa seemed so confused. Why did she do it? For whom, I think is the better question, and I have no answer.” He examined his black, blistered hands and said ruefully, “I was so certain it could only be Anissa…”
He looked at Briony and she stared back, both struck with the same thought. “Anissa?” she said. Briony s stepmother was curled on the floor on the far side of the bed in a puddle of water, seemingly oblivious to anything that had happened. The queen was half-delirious with pain, her hands clutching at her belly. “It is coming,” she moaned. “The child. It hurts! Oh, Madi Surazem, save me!”
“Get help,” Chaven told Briony. “I am nearly useless with these burns. Send for the midwife! Quickly!” She hesitated for a moment. Amssa’s wide-eyed look of terror made her feel ill. She remembered her stepmother’s fear as Chaven had all but accused her of murdering her stepson and the feverish feeling grew worse. The Loud Mouse, she and Barrick had called their father’s young wife, teasing, resentful. She would never call this woman names again.
Briony staggered out into the deserted tower with one of the candles, made her way down the stairs and somehow did not fall. At the bottom she forced open the door and found the two guards waiting there They looked her up and down, amazed. She could only guess what she looked like, smeared in ash and blood and worse, but the guards certainly seemed terrified.
There was no time to coddle them or make up stories. “By all the gods, are you both deaf? Did you hear none of that happening inside? People are dead. The queen is about to give birth. One of you go upstairs and help Chaven, the other run to find the midwife Hisolda. I don’t know where she’s gone—Anissa’s maid probably sent her away.” “Sh—she and the other w—w—omen went to the kitchen!” said one of the goggle-eyed guards. “Then go, curse you, go quickly! Fetch her!”
He ran ofe. The other, still looking at her as though Briony was the most frightening sight of his short life, turned and dashed up the stairs into the tower.
I won’t be the worst thing he’s seen for very long. She stood, trembling beneath the naked stars, trying to catch her breath. The sound of people singing floated to her across the empty courtyard.
Winter’s Eve, she remembered, but now it seemed unutterably strange. Everything before the Tower of Spring seemed to have happened in another century. I just want to sleep, she thought. Sleep and forget. Forget that moment when that dark thing had grown out of dust and air and vile magicks, when her old life of certainty, frail as it was, had vanished forever. Forget her stepmother, twitching in pain and fear. We’ve betrayed them all by our foolishness, she thought. Father, Kendrick, Anissa, all of them.
Shaso.
She felt a dreadful stab of shame. Shaso, chained and suffering. She hesitated for a moment—she was so tired, so very tired—but pushed herself away from the wall on which she had been leaning, away from the stones that to her exhausted muscles felt soft and inviting as a bed, and set out hmping toward the stronghold. One wrong would be put right before the dawn of Orphan’s Day, in any case Zoria, merciful Zoria, she begged, if you ever loved me, give me a little more strength!
As Briony left the courtyard and entered the colonnade, she thought she heard footsteps behind her, but when she turned there was no one there, the stone path empty in the moonlight. She hobbled on toward the stronghold and the shackled ghost of her own failure.
40. Zoria’s Flight
HEART OF A QUEEN:
Nothing grows from quiet
A pile of cut turves, a wooden box
Carved with the shapes of birds
—from The Bonefall Oracles
The maze garden behind the main hall was full of voices. The guests had left the table and bundled up against the cold to go outdoors—at least those seeking privacy they couldn’t find inside the brightly-lit halls. But how much privacy could there be, especially in full moonlight? It sounded like at least a dozen people were wandering through the maze, laughing and talking, women shushing the men, at least one fellow singing a bawdy old song about Dawtrey Elf-Spelled— something that didn’t seem quite appropriate with the Twilight folk almost standing outside the gates.
Winter was indeed crouching close this Winter’s Eve, the air sharp and the wind picking up. Briony wasn’t cold, but she knew she should be, in fact, she could hardly feel her body at all. She went past the outskirts of the garden as quietly as she could, staying close to the hedge of ancient yew trees, drifting toward the stronghold like a floating spirit in a cloud of her own exhaled breath. She wanted nothing to do with any of the courtiers. It had been all she could do simply to look at them across the dining hall tonight. Now, with the memory of the inhuman thing that had killed Kendrick lodged in her mind like a jagged shard of ice, like the never-healing wound of the maiden in the song, she felt as though she would not be able to look at any of their empty faces a
gain without screaming.
She found her way in through a back door of the hall, but instead of making her way by the usual passages, crossed through one of the small chambers behind the throne room, avoiding the clutch of servants trying to finish up their chores in time for a Winter’s Eve celebration of their own. No guards waited at the top of the stairs down into the stronghold, and when she pushed open the unbarred door at the bottom, she found only one man and his pike sitting through a lonely watch. The guard was at least half asleep he looked up slowly at the noise of the door, rubbing his eyes. She couldn’t even imagine what she must look like in her tattered gown, her face no doubt as streaked with ash and blood as her hands.
“P-Pnncess!” He scrambled up onto his feet, fumbling for the handle of his weapon, which he managed to lift with the wrong end up. It would have been comic were it not all so miserable, the night so ghastly and full of blood and fire and if his stupidly earnest face hadn’t looked so much like Heryn Millward s, the young guard now lying dead in a puddle of his own blood in Anissa’s chamber.
“Where are the keys?"
“Highness?"
“The keys? The keys to Shaso’s cell! Give them to me.” “But…” His eyes were wide.
I truly must look like a demoness. “Don’t make me shout at you, fellow Just give me the keys, then go and find your captain. Who is in charge with Vansen gone?”
The man fumbled the heavy key on its ring down from a peg on the wall. “Tallow,” he said after a moment’s panicky thought. “It’s Jem Tallow, Highness.”
“Then go get him. If he’s asleep, wake him up, although I can’t imagine why he would be asleep on Winter’s Eve.” But could it truly still be the same night? It had to be, but the thought was unmanageably strange. “Tell him to bring soldiers and meet me here. Tell him the princess regent needs him now.” Until she knew why the witch-maid Selia had done what she did, until she found whether the southern girl had allies in the murder of Kendrick, no one must sleep. “But…”
“By all the gods, now!”
The man dropped the keys in his alarm. Briony cursed in a very unladylike way and bent and snatched them from the floor. The guard hesitated for only a moment, then threw open the door and scuttled up the stairs.
The lock on the cell was stiff and hard to turn, but with both hands she managed to twist the key and at last the door groaned open. The shape huddled on the floor at the back of the cell did not move, did not even look up.
He’s dead! Her heart, already so weary, sped again and for a moment the darkness of the damp, cold room threatened to swallow her up. “Shaso! Shaso, it’s me, Briony! The gods forgive us for what we’ve done!”
She ran to his side and tugged at him, relieved to hear the rasp of breath but horrified by how thin the old man had become. He began to stir. “Briony . . ?”
“We were wrong. Forgive us—forgive me Kendrick…” She helped him sit upright. He smelled dreadful and she couldn’t help taking a step back. “I know who killed Kendrick.”
He shook his head. It was dark in the cell, the single brazier outside not enough to illuminate even such a small space. She couldn’t see his eyes. “Killed…”
“Shaso, I know you didn’t do it! It was Selia, Anissa’s maid. She’s . . she’s some kind of witch, a shape-changer. She turned into… oh, merciful Zoria, some… some thing! I saw it!”
“Help me up.” His voice was rough with disuse. “For the love of all the gods, girl, help me up.” She did her best, tugging on his arm as he struggled to get to his feet. She babbled out the night’s story to him, not certain if he could even understand her in his sick and weary state. The chains clanked and he slumped back down, defeated by their weight. “Where are the keys for these?" she asked.
Shaso pointed. “On that board on the wall.” It was taking him a long time to say each word. “I do not know which key fits these shackles. They have scarcely ever been taken off.”
Briony s eyes filled with tears as she hurried to the board. She could see no difference between any of the dozen rings so she brought them all, weight that pulled her arms down straight at her sides as she hurried back to the cell. “Why didn’t you tell me?” She began to fumble through the keys. She had to lean close as she tried each in the lock of his shackles. The old man’s stench reminded her of the thing in Anissa’s chamber, but at least it was a more natural odor. “You didn’t do it, so why didn’t you tell me? What happened between you and Kendrick?”
He was silent. First one, then the second of the shackles opened with a click of sprung iron. She could not help feeling the wet wounds they had made on his wrists as she helped him to stand. He was smeared up and down with blood—but then, so was she.
Shaso wavered, then managed to stand erect. He held out his hands, struggling for balance. “I did tell you that I did not kill your brother. I cannot speak of any more than that,” he said at last.
Briony loosed a small shriek of frustration. “What do you mean? I told you, I know who murdered Kendrick. Don’t you understand? Now you must tell me why you let us imprison you when it wasn’t your fault!”
He shook his head wearily. “My oath prevented me. It still prevents me.” “No,” she said, “I will not allow your stubbornness to…”
The door of the stronghold creaked open and the guard she had dispatched appeared in the doorway. He wore a distracted expression and his hands were pressed against his stomach as though he cradled something small and precious. He took a step into the chamber then stumbled and fell onto his face. In her anger and confusion it took Briony a moment to realize that he was not getting up, another instant to notice the dark pool spreading beneath him.
“Your master of arms is still the perfect knight, isn’t he?" Hendon Tolly stepped out of the stairwell and into the room. He was dressed as though for a funeral, but smiling like a child who had just been given a sweet. “A Xandian savage who would actually die to preserve his honor.” Three more men filed into the room behind him, all wearing the Tollys’ livery, all with drawn swords. “That is what makes my life easy, you know—all these fools willing to die for honor.”
“I have found out who killed my brother,” Briony said, startled and frightened. “I did not believe you had anything to do with it. Why have you killed this guard? And why do you come before me in this threatening way?” She drew herself up to her full height. “Did you have something to do with it?” She didn’t believe she could make Hendon Tolly hesitate about harming the reigning princess, but she might at least cause his minions to have second thoughts.
“Yes, you really might have made a queen in time,” Tolly said. “But you are green, girl-child, green. You have come here without guards. You have left a trail of confusion and bloody deeds behind you all across the castle tonight. The story I will tell will explain it all—but not to your credit.”
“Traitor,” rumbled Shaso. He slumped back against the wall, his strength apparently at an end. “It was… you and your brother who caused all this.”
“Some of it, yes.” Hendon Tolly laughed. “And you, old man, like a drunkard wandering in front of a heavy coach, did not get out of my way. And now you will become the official murderer of the princess as well as of Prince Kendrick.”
“What are you babbling about?” Briony demanded, hoping that Tolly would speak long enough for her to think of something, or for someone to come and save her. “Have you lost your mind?” But no one would come, she knew that. It was why he had stabbed the guard and let him die in front of her, as an illustration of her helplessness. The youngest Tolly was a cat who liked to sport with cornered prey, and this was a quality of sport he had been waiting for his entire life.
“Briony, little Briony.” He shook his head like a doting uncle. “So angry with my brother Gailon because he wanted to marry you and turn you into a respectable woman instead of the headstrong little trollop your father allowed you to be. Such a monster, you thought him. But in truth, he was the only thing that stood be
tween my brother Caradon and I and our plans for Southmarch. Which is why he had to die.”
“You… you killed Gailon?”
“Of course. He opposed our contacts with the Autarch from the first— he even came to argue with Kendrick about it on the night your brother died. Caiadon and I had contacted Kendrick separately, you see, because Gailon would not do it, and we had promised him that the Autarch would help him free your father in return for a few small concessions about the sovereignty of certain southern nations. Kendrick had decided to take up our ally in Xis on his generous offer, you see.”
