by Tad Williams
“I suspect so,” said Hewney, giving Briony an odd look that made her stomach sink. The playwright struggled back onto his feet. “But, pish, friend Cloudscraper, I speak nothing but truth. The gods themselves, Zosim and Zoria and artificing Kupilas, who were the first players and playmakers, know the wisdom of my words.” He took another long draught of ale, then wiped his mouth with his sleeve. His beard gleamed wetly in the firelight and his sharp eyes glittered. “When the peasant falls down on his knees, quaking in fear that he will be delivered after death to the halls of Kernios, what does he see? Is it the crude paintings on the temple walls, with the god as stiff as a scarecrow? Or is it our bosom companion High-Pockets Birch that he remembers, awesome in robes of billowing black, masked and ghostly, as he came to take Dandelon’s soul in The Life and Death of King Nikolos?”
“Would that be a play by Nevin Hewney?” gibed Feival.
“Of course, and none of the other historicals as good,” Hewney said, “but my point has flown past you, it seems, leaving you as sunken in ignorance as previously.” He turned to Briony. “Do you take my meaning, child? What do people see when they think of the great and frightening things in life—love, murder, the wrath of the gods? They think of the poets’ words, the players’ carefully practiced gestures, the costumes, the roar of thunder we make with our booming drums. When Waterman remembers to beat his in the proper time, that is.”
The company laughed heartily at this, and one of the bearded men shook his head in shamed acknowledgment —obviously a mistake he had not been allowed to forget, nor probably ever would be.
“So,” Hewney went on, draining his cup and refilling it, “when they see gods, they see us. When they think of demons and even fairies, it is our masks and impostures they recall—although that may change, now that those Qarish knaves have come down from the north to interfere with honest players’ livings.” Hewney paused to clear his throat, as though acknowledging the shadow suddenly cast on their amusement. “But, hist, that is not the only way in which we players and poets are the most dangerous guild of all. Think! When we write of things that cannot be, or speak them, do we not put ideas in people’s mind—ideas which sometimes frighten even kings and queens? It is always the powerful who are most fearful (now that I think on it) precisely because they have the most to lose!” He wiped his mouth again, almost roughly, as though he did not feel much from his own lips. “In fact, in all other occurrences, is counterfeiting not a crime punishable by the highest courts? To make a false seeming of gold enough to gain the artisan the stockade at best, or the white-hot rod, or even the hangman’s rope? No wonder they fear us, who can counterfeit not just kings and princes, but the gods themselves! And there is more. We counterfeit feeling... and even being. There is no liar like a player!”
“Or a drunken scrivener,” said Feival, amused but also a little irritated now. “Who loves to see what shiny things come from his mouth like a child making bubbles of spit.”
“Very good, young Ulian, very good,” said Hewney, and took another drink. “You yet might make a poet yourself.”
“Why bother, when I can get poetry from most of ’em any time I want just by showing my bum?”
“Because someday that alabaster fundament will be old and raddled, wrinkled as a turkey’s neck,” said Hewney. “And I, once the prettiest boy in Helmingsea, should know.”
“And now you are a buyer, not a seller, and any fair young tavern maid can have your poetry for a copper’s worth of pretending, Master Hewney.” Feival was amused. “So lying, too, is for sale—that is the whole of what you’re saying. It seems to me that what you describe is the marketplace, and any peasant knows how a market works.”
“But none know so well as players,” Hewney repeated stubbornly. Briony could detect just the smallest slur in his words now.
The others gathered by the fire seemed to recognize this as a familiar game. They urged him on, pouring more ale for him and asking him mocking questions.
“What are players afraid of?” shouted one.
“And what exactly is it that players know?” said the fellow named Waterman.
“Players are afraid of being interrupted,” snapped Hewney. “And what they know is...everything that is of worth. Why do you think that the common people say, ‘Go and ask in the innyard,’ when they deem something a mystery? Because that is where the players are to be found. Why say, ‘As well ask the mask whose face it covers?’ Because they know that the matter of life is secrets, and that we players know them all and act them all, if the price is right. Think of old Lord Brone—or our new Lord Havemore! They know who it is who hears all. Who knows all the filthiest secrets....” Hewney’s head swayed. He seemed suddenly to have lost his thread of discourse. “They know what...they know who...will sniff out the truth in the back alleys. And for a little silver, who will tell that truth in the halls of the great and powerful...”
“Perhaps it’s time for you to take a walk, Nevin,” said a voice from just behind Briony, startling her so that she almost squeaked again. Finn Teodoros was standing on the steps of the wagon, his round form almost completely hiding the painted door. “Or simply to go to your bed. We have a long day tomorrow, far to walk.”
“And I am talking too much,” said Hewney. “Yes, Brother Finn, I hear you. All the gods know I would not want to offend anyone with my o’er-busy tongue.” He smiled at Briony as sweetly as a squinting, sweaty man could manage. “Perhaps our newest player would like to come for a walk with me. I will speak of safer subjects—the early days of the theater, when players were criminals and could never set up in the same pasture two nights running...”
“No, I think Master Tim will come with me.” Teodoros gave him a stern look. “You are a fool, Nevin.”
“But undisguised,” said Hewney, still smiling. “An honest fool.”
“If snakes are honest,” said Feival.
“They are honestly snakes,” Hewney replied, and everyone laughed.
“What was he talking about?” Briony said. “I hardly understood any of it.”
“Just as well,” said Teodoros, and then spoke quickly, as if he did not wish to dwell on the subject. “So tell me, Tim... my girl,” he grinned. “How long has it been since you left Southmarch?”
“I do not know, exactly.” She didn’t want to set things exactly the same as in truth—no sense making anyone think too much about Princess Briony’s disappearance. “Sometime before Orphanstide. I ran away. My master beat me,” she said, hoping to make it all sound more reasonable.
“Had the fairies come?”
She nodded. “No one knew much, though. The army was going out to fight them, but I have heard...heard that the fairies won.” She caught her breath. Barrick...“Has anyone...learned more about what happened?”
Teodoros shook his head. “There is not much to report. There was a great battle west of Greater Southmarch, in the farmlands outside the city, and fewer than a third of the soldiers made it away again, bringing reports of great slaughter and terrible deeds. Then the fairies took the mainland city, and as far as I know they are still there. Our patron Rorick Longarren was killed, as were many other noble knights—Mayne Calough, Lord Aldritch, more than anyone can count, the greatest slaughter of chivalry since Kellick Eddon’s day.”
“And the prince—Prince Barrick? Has anyone heard anything of him?”
Teodoros looked at her for a long moment, then sighed. “No word. He is presumed dead. None can go close enough to the battlefield—all are terrified of the fairies, although they have done no violence since then, and seem content to sit in the dark city, waiting for something.” He shrugged. “But no one travels west any more. The Settland Road is empty. No one passes through the mainland city at all. We had to take ship to Oscastle to begin our own journey.”
Briony felt as though someone pressed her heart between two strong hands—it was hard to breathe, hard even to think. “Who...who would believe such times would come?” “Indeed.” Teodo
ros suddenly sat forward. “Now, though, you must brighten a little, young Tim. Life goes on, and you have given me a most splendid idea.”
“What do you mean?”
“Simply this. Here, these are the foul papers of The Ravishment of Zoria. I thought it was finished, but you have provided me with such a daring inspiration that I am adding page upon page. For just the jests alone I would owe you much praise—you can never have too many good jokes in a work where many bloody battles are fought, after all. The one sends the audience back for the other, like sweet and savory.”
“What idea are you talking about?” Did all playwrights babble like this? Could none of them speak in plain, sensible words?
“It is simply this. Your...plight put me in mind of it. Often in plays we have seen a girl passing for a boy. It is an old trick —some daughter of the minor nobility playing at being a rustic, calling herself a shepherd or some such. But never has it been a goddess!”
“A...what?”
“A goddess! I had my Zoria steal out of the clutches of Khors the Moonlord disguised as a serving wench, and thus did she pass herself among the mortals. But with you as my worldly inspiration, I have changed her disguise to that of a boy. A goddess, not merely passing as a mortal, but as a human boy—do you not see how rich that is, how much it adds to the business of her escape and her time among the mortal herd?”
“I suppose.” Briony was feeling tired now, sleepy and without much strength for being talked at anymore. She remembered all Lisiya had said, and could not resist tweaking Teodoros a little. “Here’s another thought for you to consider. What if Zoria wasn’t ravished by Khors? What if she truly loved him—ran away with him?”
Teodoros stared at her for a long moment, more shocked than she thought a man of ideas should have been. “What do you mean? Would you speak against all the authority of The Book of the Trigon?”
“I’m not speaking against anything.” It was hard to keep her eyes open any longer. “I’m just saying that if you want to look at things differently, why settle for the easy way?”
She slid off the edge of Teodoros’ bed to the floor and curled up under the blanket he had loaned her, leaving the playwright staring into the shadows the single candle could not reach, his expression a mixture of startlement and surmise.
28. Secrets of the Black Earth
When Pale Daughter’s child was born he reached his full growth in only a few seasons. He was called Crooked, not because of his heart, which was straight as an arrow’s flight, but because his song was not one thing or the other and flowed in unexpected directions. He was mighty in gifts, and by the time he was one year old he had become so great in wisdom that he created and gave to Silvergleam his father the Tiles that would make their house mighty beyond all others.
But then the war came and many died. The oldest voices remember how the People took the side of the children of Breeze, even though they died like ants before the anger of Thunder and his brothers. And ever after the firstborn children of Moisture hated the People for opposing them, and persecuted them. But in later days those who took Thunder’s side would prosper because of their fealty to Moisture’s brood.
—from One Hundred Considerations, out of the Qar’s Book of Regret
At first Vansen could not even muster the will to sit up. The memory of the corpse-pit was like a weight on his chest.
I will say it again. Rise, Ferras Vansen.
It was not his own name that resounded in his head so much as an image of himself, although it seemed a distorted view, the skin too dark, the features coarse as those of the inbred families of the upper dales he used to see in the market at Greater Stell when he was a child. It was the Storm Lantern’s view of him, perhaps.
What do you want? Let me sleep.
We must try to make sense of what we have seen, sunlander—and there is something else, too.
Vansen groaned and opened his eyes, then forced himself into a sitting position, scraping his back and elbows on the cell’s rough wall. Barrick was still asleep, but he twitched and moaned quietly, as if trapped in a nightmare.
Let him be for the moment. I have words to share with you.
The memory of the pit would not go away. Gods protect us, what are they doing down there to work all those creatures to death?
Gyir nodded. So you too noticed that most of them showed no sign of what killed them. Yes, perhaps they were worked to death. The fairy touched the palm of one hand to the back of the other. Whatever the tale behind it, it is certainly a new page for the Book of Regret. The thought that accompanied the words was not so much of a real book as of a sort of frozen storm of ideas and pictures and feelings too complex, too alien for Vansen to grasp.
What else could it be? They looked like they’d just fallen down dead. No marks on most of them. Vansen was more familiar with corpses than he wished to be, especially those found on a battlefield, each one its own little Book of Regret, the ending written in cruel wounds for all to read.
We must not make the mistake of supposing that which we do not know for certain, Gyir said. The waters in these deep places are sometimes poisonous. Or it could be that they were felled by a plague. Or it might be something else... Even while his skin crawled at the thought of being locked in a massive prison with plague raging through it, Vansen could not help being struck by the quality of the Storm Lantern’s thinking. The creature he had considered little more than a beast, a bloodlusting wolf, was proving instead as careful as an Eastmarch scholar. Something else? What?
I do not know. But I fear the answer more than I fear poison or plague. Gyir looked to Barrick, still murmuring in fitful sleep. I wished to spare the boy talk of the dead we have seen. His thoughts are already fevered with terror and other things I do not entirely understand. But now we must wake him. I have something to say to both of you— something important.
More important than plague?
Gyir crouched beside the prince and touched his shoulder. Barrick, still twitching, immediately calmed; a moment later the boy’s eyes opened. The fairy reached into his jerkin and pulled out a handful of bread he had hoarded from the earlier meal, went to the barred window in their cell door and, as Vansen watched in astonishment, threw it into the center of the outer chamber.
After a moment of surprised hesitation the other prisoners rushed to the scattered bread like pigeons, the bigger taking from the smaller, those of similar size or health fighting viciously among themselves to keep what they had grabbed or to steal what they had failed to get by quickness. In a few heartbeats the chamber outside went from a place of quiet misery to a nest of yowling, screeching mad things.
Now we may talk—at least for a moment, Gyir said. I feel someone is listening close by—Ueni’ssoh or one of his lieutenants, perhaps—but just as noise will cover the sound of spoken voices, enough anger and fear will muffle our conversation from anyone near who can hear unspoken words.
Vansen did not like the sound of that. People can hear us talking in our heads?
Speaking this way is not a secret, sunlander, only a matter of skill or birth—or perhaps in your case, strange fortune. The Dreamless, Uein’ssoh, can certainly do it when he is close. Now give me your attention. He turned to look at Barrick, who still looked bleary. Both of you.
Gyir took something else out of his jerkin, but this time kept his hand closed. I will not show this thing I hold to you, he said. I dare not expose it, even in this chaos—but this will show you its size in case you must take it later.
Vansen stared. Whatever lay in the fairy’s long-fingered hand was completely hidden, small as an egg. What...?
Gyir shook his head. It is a precious thing, that is all you need to know—unspeakably precious. My mistress gave me the duty of carrying it to the House of the People. If it does not reach them, war and worse will break out again between our two folk, and the suffering will not stop there. If this is not delivered to the House of the People, the Pact of the Glass will be defeated and my mistre
ss Yasammez will destroy your castle and everyone in it. Ultimately, she will wake the gods themselves. The world will change. My people will die and yours will be slaves.
Vansen glanced at Barrick, who did not look as dumbfounded as Vansen felt. The boy was staring at Gyir’s fist with what seemed only passing interest. Why...why are you telling us this?
I am telling you, Ferras Vansen, because the prince has other burdens to carry—struggles you cannot know. Yasammez has laid a task on Barrick as well. I do not know it or understand its purpose, but she has sent him to the same place as I go—the House of the People. The Pact of the Glass must be completed, and so I tell you now because I know that even if you do not believe all I say, you will follow the prince wherever he goes. Listen!
He fixed Vansen with his weird red eyes, demanding, pleading: his words swam in fearful thoughts like fish in a swift cold, current. Understand this—if I die here, you two must take this thing from me and carry it to the House of the People. You must. If you do not, all will be lost—your people, mine, all drowning in blood and darkness. The Great Defeat will have a swifter, uglier end than anyone could have believed.
Vansen stared at the strange, almost entirely expressionless face. You are asking me to perform some task...for you? Or for your mistress, as you call her—the one who has put a spell on the prince? For your people, who slaughtered hundreds of my guardsmen, burned towns, killed innocents? He turned without thinking to Barrick, but the prince only stared at him as though trying to remember where they had met before. Surely this is madness.
I cannot compel you to do anything, Ferras Vansen, said the fairy. I can only beg this boon. I understand your hatred of my kind very well—believe me, I have all those feelings for your folk, and more. Gyir lifted his head, listening. We can speak of this no longer. But I beg you, if the time should come—remember!
