by Tad Williams
“You don’t need to tell me that I have failed my family and my king, woman,” Brone growled. “That is the song I sing myself to sleep with every night.” He didn’t seem anywhere near as bleary as he had only a short time ago.
“Then listen now. The Tollys have their hands around the throat of the kingdom. And somehow—somehow, though I don’t pretend to understand it—my child is involved. Our child.”
“I cannot believe you told Barrick and Briony.” She scowled. “I am not a fool. I said the father was dead.”
He looked at her and his face softened. “Merolanna, I did my best. I never turned my back on you.”
“Too little and too late, always.” “I offered to marry you. I begged you...!”
“After your own wife was dead. By then I had grown quite used to widowhood, thank you. Twenty years after I was foolish enough to fall in love with you. Too late, Avin, too late.”
“You were the wife of the king’s brother. What was I to do, demand he give you a bill of divorce?”
“And I was older than you, too. But I recall that neither of those things stopped you when you wanted my favors.” She paused, took a ragged breath. “Enough of this. It is also too late for fighting this way. We are old, Brone, and we have made terrible mistakes. Let us do what we can now to repair some of them, because the stakes are bigger than our own happiness.”
“What do you want me to do, Merolanna? You see me— old, sick, cut off from power. What do you want me to do?”
“Find Chaven. Find this moon-stone. And help me to cross the bay so I can meet these fairy folk and ask them what they did with my son.”
“Do you mean it? You are mad. But mad or not, I can’t help you.”
She dragged herself to her feet. “You coward! Everything you worked for your entire life is being stolen by the Tollys, and you sit there, doing nothing...!” She leaned across the table and raised her hand as though she would strike him. Brone reached up and caught at it, folding his immense paw around hers.
“Calm yourself, Merolanna,” he said. “You do not know as much as you think you do. Do you know what happened to Nynor?”
“Yes, of course! They pushed him out so they could give his honors and duties to your lickspittle factor, Havemore! Nynor’s gone back to his house in the country.”
“No, curse it, he’s dead. Hendon’s men killed him and threw his body in the ocean.”
For a moment the duchess faltered and if Brone had not been holding her hand, she might have fallen. She pulled away and sat down. “Nynor is dead?” she said at last. “Steffens Nynor?”
“Murdered, yes. He was talking against the Tollys and he spoke to someone he shouldn’t have. Word got back to Hendon. Berkan Hood dragged Nynor out of his bed in the middle of the night and murdered him.” Brone clenched his fists until his knuckles went white. “I heard it myself from someone who was there. They cut that good old man into pieces and smuggled his body out of the castle in a grain barrel. They can’t quite get away yet with slaughtering their enemies without even a mock trial. Not quite.”
“Oh, by all the gods, is that true? Killed him?” Merolanna abruptly began to cry. “Poor Steffens! The Tollys are demons—we are surrounded by demons!” She made the sign of the Three, then wiped at her face with her sleeve and tried to compose herself. “But that is all the more reason you must help me, Avin! There are things going on that...”
“No.” He shook his head again. “There are certainly things going on, and you don’t know all of them, Merolanna.” He looked around again. The guards were still not back, but he dropped his voice even lower. “Please, understand me, Your Grace—I have worked hard to convince Hendon and his party that I am no threat so I could put plans of my own into motion. I cannot afford for them to suspect otherwise. I will do what I can to find Chaven, because that would not seem unusual—the physician and I knew each other well. But I can do nothing else. I will not risk the small chance we have of saving Olin’s throne. Everything is balanced on a knife-edge.”
The duchess stared at him for a long time. “So that is your defense, is it?” She smiled a little, but her words had a bitter edge. “That you are already hard at work on other, more important things? Well and good. But I will discover this moon-piece myself if I must, and find out what happened to my child—our child—even if I have to pull this castle down stone by stone to do it.”
“You are no spy, Merolanna,” Brone told her gently.
“No. But I am a mother.” She reached a trembling hand up to touch her face. “Sweet Zoria, I must be a terrible mess. You’ve made me cry, Brone. I’ll have to repair myself before I go talk to Utta.” She gazed around the cluttered room, slowly and wearily now, energy mostly spent. “Look at this. We sit at the center of the capital of all the March Kingdoms but you do not even have a glass for an old woman to fix her face. How can it be so hard to find a simple mirror?”
Part Three
MACHINES
25. The Gray Man
The Firstborn were as large as mountains and as small as gems in the private earth. They came from all parts, choosing to side with either the children of Moisture or the children of Breeze, because the wounds would not close themselves and in the rising storm the only songs that could be heard were of blood and answers. Thus came the War in Heaven.
The children of Moisture first drew a ring around the house of Silvergleam, which had as many rooms as the number of times the People have drawn breath.
—from One Hundred Considerations, out of the Qar’s Book of Regret
He hit me.
Barrick’s anger had shrunk to a cold, hard thing inside his chest but it was not going away. He was glad: it gave him life, of a sort—better angry than empty. He stared at Ferras Vansen, who was chewing a piece of stale bread. The rest of the prisoners, quickly sorted into winners and losers after the goblin guards had thrown the bowl of slops into the middle of the cell, were nursing either their meals or their wounds. Some of the smaller ones were so thin and undernourished that it was clear they had given up competing for food and were just waiting to die. But Barrick did not care about such hapless creatures.
He had no right!
Stop. Gyir pushed Barrick’s hand with the heel of bread in it. Eat. He brought you food.
But he hit me!
I would have hit you myself if I had been closer. You were acting like a nestling—no, not even that. No child of the People would be so foolish. This is a dangerous place— how dangerous we do not even know yet. There is no time to waste on such tricks. A percussive thump jarred the floor of the cell like a giant hammer falling in the depths of the earth below them. Barrick had heard the thunderous noise, like a cannon firing, many times since being captured; the other prisoners did not even look up.
Gyir pulled a chunk from his own loaf, one of the largest pieces any of the prisoners had secured, and slipped the rest into his cloak. What you don’t eat, save. We may need it later.
Why? Barrick asked, making the thought as bitter as he could. You don’t even eat, do you? Besides, this is a god who has captured us. What can we do?
No, I said Jikuyin was a demigod, not a god. Trust me, there is a world of difference. What can we do? Wait and watch—and, especially, think. They have taken our weapons but not our wits. The fairy hesitated for a moment, as if he had something more to say. Then, to Barrick’s astonishment, Gyir’s face peeled away from the bone, rolling up from his chin to just below his eyes.
No, that wasn’t it, the prince realized after a boggled moment. The featureless skin between what would have been the chin and nose on an ordinary man had folded back, flexible as a horse’s upper lip, exposing even paler flesh beneath, shiny with damp, and a small, almost circular mouth. Vansen was staring now, too. Ignoring them both, Gyir pushed a piece of bread into the toothy hole. Bones and muscles worked beneath the second layer of skin—his jaw was clearly hinged in a different way than theirs—as he chewed, then swallowed. The fairy stared back at his
two companions as if daring them to speak.
Yes, your question is answered now, Gyir said at last. He seemed almost angry. This is how one of the Encauled eats. It is not pretty, But how do you breathe? Barrick asked. You keep it... your mouth...covered all the time.
Gyir brushed his lank, dark hair back from the side of his head. There are slits here behind my ears, like a fish’s gills. When necessary, I can close them. The next thought was a curious, wordless burst of something Barrick could not at first grasp. That way, I do not drown when it rains hard, he finished. The wordless sensation had been a laugh, Barrick realized, although not a happy one.
Gyir ate the rest of his piece of bread, then the flap of skin folded back down again, curling just beneath his chin like the skin of a drum, leaving him smooth as ivory once more beneath the red eyes. So, he said. Your curiosity has been satisfied. That is what it means to be born with the Caul. Now perhaps we can go back to thinking about what is truly important. Gyir rose and stretched. Several of the other prisoners scuttled away, but he ignored them. I feel stronger than I did—I think the power of our enemy’s voice has affected me, somehow—but I could not directly challenge a force like Jikuyin on my best day. Still, if he is as careless as he has been in the past, we have a chance.
“What do you mean?” Vansen said aloud.
Do not use your voices, Gyir ordered. I will interpret between the two of you when necessary.
Barrick scowled. Only a day before it had been him alone to whom Gyir would speak, but now the soldier was included in everything. What good was suffering as Barrick had suffered if it did not make him special?
The immortals, for all their power, always had one weakness, Gyir said. They do not change and they do not learn. Jikuyin is fearsome but he was always a fool—one who thought himself greater than he was. Gyir spread his fingers in an unfamiliar gesture, something that smacked of ritual. He took the side of the Onyenai—our side, I can call it, because my folk also fought with the Onyenai—in one of the last great battles of gods, monsters, and men. But Jikuyin did not attack when he should have, thinking perhaps to let both sides damage themselves to his own betterment. Even then, he was ambitious.
When he did come to the field with his legion of Widowmakers, it was too late. The Onyenai had been defeated, but the Surazemai—Perin and his brothers and their allies—were still strong. Jikuyin was trapped and could not retreat. In his foolish pride, he attacked great Kernios himself, killing one of the Earthfather’s sons, the demigod Annon. But Kernios in his rage was far beyond Jikuyin. One cast of his great spear Earthstar shattered Jikuyin’s shield, broke his helmet, and destroyed his face. He would have died then but his Widowmakers, seeing that there would be no spoils for them, managed to drag their wounded lord from the field. Many thought him dead afterward, but the People have always said that no one knew Jikuyin’s true fate. We were right to be cautious.
So what does he want? Barrick could make little sense of the story itself, which seemed like a confused shadowversion of what Father Timoid had taught them about the gods. Why take us prisoner? What does he mean to do with us?
Gyir lifted his hand, his eyes suddenly grown tensely alert in his featureless face. Say no more. Someone is coming.
Creatures of various sorts had been passing in and out of the huge prison cavern for hours—guards leading individual captives and groups away or bringing them back, the limping, overburdened goblins with their buckets of food. A few times the Longskulls had even showed up with ragged bands of new prisoners, but this was the first time Gyir had appeared to take any notice. Barrick felt his heart speed.
The heavy bronze door of the cell swung open and a squadron of the bristling, apelike guards came in, their menacing appearance and heavy clubs quickly clearing a space as prisoners hurried to get out of their way—even those still bickering over food went still and shrank back against the walls. Silence fell over the chamber. Was the giant demigod himself coming? Barrick suddenly found it hard to breathe. Would the monster even fit through the massive cell doors without getting down on his hands and knees?
Instead, the individual who entered the prison chamber was of ordinary man-size, wearing a hooded robe so black that the light of the torches seemed to fall into it and die, as if someone had taken a knife to the fabric of what was visible and simply cut out a piece. Hands so fleshless they seemed nothing but bone, sinew, and skin pulled back his hood, revealing a shaved head and a face as gaunt as a Xandian mummy, nearly every line of his skull visible beneath pearly gray skin that was thin as a lady’s fine silk stocking. He might have been a corpse just beginning to putrefy but for his eyes, which glistened silvery blue-green like twin moons in the depths of his dark sockets.
“My master told me to make sure you were comfortable.” The terrifying stranger’s voice was as expressionless as his face. He did not blink. As far as Barrick could tell, he did not even have eyelids, his gaze as fixed and unchanging as that of a fish. “Comfortable...and secure. But I think with such a one as the Storm Lantern in your company, you should have more private accommodations.” He raised his bony hand and beckoned them. “Follow.”
The brutish guards stepped forward, tiny eyes almost invisible beneath their thick brows, stone clubs lifted menacingly. Barrick tried to rise, but he was trembling uncontrollably and managed it only with Vansen’s help. He shook the soldier off and fell in behind Gyir, who was following the black-robed figure toward the back of the long, high-ceilinged chamber. The stranger moved in a disturbingly graceful glide, as though his feet did not quite touch the floor.
Who is this gray man? Barrick asked, fighting down terror. What is he going to do with us?
Gyir did not turn his head. Do not speak—aloud or otherwise—and do not resist. This is Ueni’ssoh of the Dreamless. He is not a god but he is very old and very powerful. Silence!
Barrick stumbled after Gyir, hemmed in by the shaggy giant Followers. Even with his stomach all but empty the sour stink of their fur made him feel ill. The three prisoners were forced into a narrow stone room that had been carved into the naked rock at the back of the vast prison chamber, closed off from the rest of the cavern by another heavy door with a barred window. This smaller cell was empty except for a single stinking hole in the floor for waste, dark except for the torchlight leaking in through the window in the door. Barrick had to breathe deeply simply to keep down the scream that was building in him.
The gray man appeared in the doorway. For long moments he stared at them in silence.
You have come down in the world, Ueni’ssoh, said Gyir. Once you were mighty among your own people. Now it seems you have become court conjurer for a bandit-lord.
If this was meant to goad or distract the gray man somehow, it failed. His voice remained as bloodless as before. “The master said you were a strange little company, and he spoke truly. Your presence here makes no sense to me. That is something I do not like. You—the young one. Come here. Storm Lantern, if you try to interfere these brutes will kill you.”
Tell him nothing! Gyir’s words flew into Barrick’s head like arrows. Think of other things. Tell nothing!
Ueni’ssoh’s unblinking stare was fixed on Barrick; there seemed nothing else in the narrow cell but those eyes shining like two blue flames. Before he knew it, Barrick had stumbled forward and stood helplessly in front of the gray creature, swaying in the icy heat of that mortal glare. He could feel the Dreamless plucking and prying at his deepest thoughts as if those long, cadaverous fingers had opened his skull like a jewel box.
No! He shut his eyes tight. Think of something else, he told himself desperately. Anything! He tried to imagine nothingness, true nothingness, but the featureless white that he summoned gradually took on shape, until it became snow in the garden outside his chamber in the residence at Southmarch—a view he had seen countless times. Barrick Eddon could feel the gray man’s interest like a moving ache. He tried desperately to turn his mind somewhere else, struggling to protect himself fro
m this terrible, fearful prying, but the snow in his mind’s eye was all but real now —deep, new snow, mounded against the chimneys and on the skeletal branches of the trees. His own sitting room, chill on an Ondekamene morning despite the fire burning in the hearth behind him. Leaning on his good arm, staring out his window...alone? No, not alone... “What are you looking at, redling?”
“Ravens. They’re comical. That one’s stolen something from the kitchen, see? And the other’s trying to get it from him.”
“They’re hungry. That’s not comical.” She stepped up beside him, then, her golden hair like a sudden appearance of the sun. “We should feed them.”
“Feed the ravens?” He laughed harshly. “You’re mad, strawhead. What should we do after that, go out into the hills and feed the wolves? Even if we took them the whole of Bronze’s litter, the wolves would be hungry again tomorrow.” He pretended to consider. “But perhaps there might be enough of those whelps to feed the ravens...”
Briony hit him—not hard—and scooped the puppy up off the bed. “Did you hear that, Nelli? Did you hear what he said about you and your brothers and sisters? Isn’t he a cruel monster?”
He turned and looked at her then, really looked at her. The light in her eyes was magical. Sometimes he felt as though she were the only person beside himself in the great castle that was truly alive. “Mad,” he said, and let himself smile. “See? Talking to dogs. Mad as can be.”
“It’s not me who’s mad, Barrick Eddon. It’s you. Now stop this nonsense about snow and ravens. Tell me what I want to know.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Look at me,” she said, but she didn’t sound quite like herself any more. “Tell me why you are here.”
“Why...? I don’t understand you.”
“You understand—you do. Don’t waste my time. Why are you here?”
