Shadowplay s-2

by Tad Williams

  “Come,” said the autarch after they had watched the sweating sailors lower the gun onto a giant wheeled wagon. “How fortunate for us that the old emperors of Hierosol made this fine, paved road for their supply wagons, otherwise we would have to drag the guns through the sand and the waiting would be even more tedious. I will have my morning meal, and then perhaps about midday we will be able to hear our first lovely crocodile speak. Come, Vash. We will attend to all other business as I eat.”

  The autarch had rather conspicuously not said anything about his paramount minister being fed. An hour on dry land had settled Vash’s stomach and he was feeling extremely hungry, but he effortlessly stifled a sigh: all of the autarch’s servitors either mastered the art of hiding their feelings and stifling their needs, or else their cooling bodies were picked clean on the vulture shrines.

  Vash bowed. “Of course, Golden One. As you say.”

  “I ask your pardon for disturbing you, King Olin,” said Count Perivos.

  The bearded man smiled. “I am afraid I cannot entertain you in the way I could have in my old home, but you are welcome, sir. Please, come in.” He waved to the page, who was watching with trepidation: Olin was only a foreign king, but everyone knew his visitor was of an important and ancient Hierosoline family. “Be so good as to pour us some wine, boy,” Olin said. “Perhaps some of the Torvian.”

  Perivos Akuanis looked around the king’s cell, which was furnished in moderate comfort, though not exactly overlarge. “I am sorry you must live this way, Your Highness. It would not have been my choice.”

  “But Ludis wished it so. He must have some hidden qualities, the lord protector, that he has a man as famous as you in his employ.”

  Perivos began to say something, then looked over to the guards standing on either side of the door. “You may wait outside, you two. I am in no danger.”

  They eyed him for a moment before going out. Count Perivos cleared his throat.

  “I will be honest with you, Olin Eddon, because I believe you are an honorable man. It is not so much loyalty to Ludis that keeps me here, although the man did pull the country back into stability after a long civil war, but loyalty to my city and nation. I am a Hierosol man, through and through.”

  “But you are of high blood yourself. Why is it that you yourself did not try to take the throne, or support someone more to your liking?”

  “Because I knew with things being as they are I could do more good this way. I am not a king or even a king’s counselor. I am a soldier, and of a particular kind at that. My science is siege war, which I learned from Petris Kopayis, the best of this age. I knew I had no choice but to use that knowledge to try to save my city and its people from the bloody-handed autarchs of Xis. Thus, I could not afford to take sides in the last throes of the civil war.”

  “I remember Kopayis—I met him when we fought the Xandian Federation here twenty years ago. Gods, he was a clever man!” Olin smiled a little. “And everything I have heard suggests you are his true successor. So you do not bear a grudge against Ludis, you say—and he bears none against you?”

  Perivos frowned. “Never underestimate him, King Olin. He is a rough man, and his personal habits are...are disturbing. But he is no fool. He will employ any man who can help him, whether that man admires him or not, whether that man fought for him or not. He has servants of all shapes and religions and histories. Two of his advisers fought against him in the civil war, and came to their new positions straight from the gallows-cells, and one of his chiefest envoys is a black man out of Xand—from Tuan, to be precise.”

  Olin raised his eyebrow in amusement. “An unusual choice, but not unheard of.”

  “Ah, that is right—you had a Tuani lord as your retainer too, did you not? But things have not gone so well with him, I hear.”

  The March King’s face twitched with pain—it was almost shocking to see in a man so controlled. “Do not remind me, I pray you. I have been told he murdered my son, although I can scarcely believe it, and now there is talk he has taken my daughter as well. It is...agony to hear such things and be able to do nothing—you are a father, Akuanis, you can imagine! Agony beyond words.” Olin rose and paced for a moment, then returned to take a long swallow of his wine. When he lowered the cup his face was precisely expressionless again. “Well,” he said at last, “we obviously have some measure of each other, Count Perivos. If for no other reason, I would give you whatever assistance I honorably can because of the kindness your daughter has shown me. So what do you wish?”

  Akuanis nodded. “It is about Sulepis of Xis. You have fought against one of the autarchs before, and you have warned about the Xixian menace for a long time. Your suggestions were canny and I am skilled enough at what I do that I have no shame in asking others for help. What else can you suggest that will help me save this city? You must know that the strait is full of his warships, and that already he has made two different landings on Hierosoline soil.”

  “Two?” Olin looked puzzled. “I had heard about his assault on the Finger forts—the guards were full of talk about it this morning. But what else?”

  Count Perivos looked to the door, then back to Olin, his thin face with its two-day growth of beard pale and troubled.

  “You must speak of this to no one, King Olin. The autarch, although only the gods of war know how, has managed to land a sizable force at the northern mouth of the strait, near Lake Strivothos. King Enander of Syan sent a force of twenty pentecounts led by his son Eneas to reinforce the garrison on the fort at Temple Island north of the city, and on their way they met a Xixian army on the Kracian side of the strait. The Xixians fired on them, but luckily for the Syannese the autarch’s men had not set their cannon yet and were able to use only muskets. Some of the Syannese escaped and were able to send us the news.”

  “And grim news it is,” said Olin. “How could the Xixians have got there? Did they slip unnoticed up the strait?”

  “I am cursed if I can tell you.” Akuanis scowled. “But you can see my desperation. If they conquer our forts on the Finger we cannot keep more of their ships from sailing up the western side and reaching the great lake. They will be able to seal in our allies there, especially the Syannese. We will face this siege entirely alone.”

  Olin shook his head. “I would not dare to tell you your craft, Count Perivos. Your reputation has traveled where you have not, and I knew your name before I began my...visit here in Hierosol. I have studied this autarch a little but not fought him, of course—the southerners I fought here twenty years ago were a loose collection of Tuani and others, and although Parnad’s troops fought with them, it was a very different sort of battle.” He raised his hands. “So you see...”

  “But you have been studying him a long time—is there anything you can tell me about this Sulepis, any weakness my spies have missed I might exploit? It goes without saying I will honor my end of the bargain with any news of your family and home I can discover.”

  “To be honest, I bargained only when I did not know you and feared you would not trust me otherwise—I would not knowingly aid the autarch and will do anything I can do to help.” He frowned. “But I am certain a man like yourself has explored every angle.” Nevertheless, Olin spent much of the next hour describing what he remembered of the Xixian military at war and everything he had heard about this young autarch, Sulepis.

  When he had finished the count sat silent for a while, then put down his wine cup and smacked his hands on his thighs in frustration. “It is this news about Xixian marines in Krace that frights me most. He has ten or twenty times our numbers, and if we cannot be reinforced except over land, up the steep, steep valley roads, I fear that Hierosol will fall at last, if only from starvation.”

  “That will take months,” Olin said. “Many things may change in that time, Count Perivos. Other ideas will come, or even new allies.” He looked at him keenly. “If I were free, it is possible I could bring a northern army to help break the siege.”

  Perivo
s Akuanis laughed without anger. “And if I could persuade Ludis Drakava to do something he so profoundly does not wish to do, I would be a god and could save the city by myself.” He reached down for his cup and finished it with a swallow. “I am sorry, King Olin. Even with our enemies all around us, the lord protector still has hopes for using you to make some useful bargain—if not for your daughter, the gods protect her, then for something else. I cannot imagine any trade the autarch would make that Drakava would agree to, despite his strange offer for you. Whatever the case, our lord protector is not done with you yet. Apologies, your Highness, and thank you for your time. Now I have work to do.”

  Before he could reach the door, Olin had sprung from his bench and grabbed the count’s arm. “Hold! Hold, damn you!”

  Akuanis had his knife out in a moment and pressed it against Olin’s throat. “I will not call the guards because I still believe you a gentleman, but you abuse our hospitality, King Olin.”

  “I...I am sorry...” Olin let go and took a clumsy step backward. “Truly. It is just...you said something about the autarch trying to bargain...for me...?”

  “Hah!” Count Perivos stared at him carefully. “I assumed your sources had told you already. Sulepis offered the lord protector some piddling promises in exchange for you. Drakava was not interested.”

  “But that makes no sense!” Olin held up his fists before him, not as someone who planned to use them, but as a man searching for something to grasp to keep himself from falling. “Why would the autarch be interested in the king of a small northern federation who has never even met him? I am no threat to him.”

  The count stared at him for a long moment, then sheathed his knife. “Perhaps he thinks you are. Can you guess at why? Perhaps there is something you have forgotten— something I can use.” The weariness and desperation of Count Perivos became evident for the first time. “Otherwise we will have the siege, and fire, and starvation, and perhaps worse.”

  Olin sagged back onto his bench. “Forgive my behavior, but it seems I am to suffer one shock after another. It makes no sense. I am nothing to him.”

  “Think on it. I will send you what I can find of your family. As for your kingdom, I hear it is safe despite all these mad rumors of fairies. Your relatives the Tollys hold a regency as defenders of your infant child, or so I am told.” He looked suddenly stricken. “You did know you had a new son, King Olin, didn’t you?”

  “Yes.” He nodded heavily, like a man who can barely keep awake after a day’s exhausting labor. “Yes, I had a letter from my wife. Olin Alessandros, he will be named. Healthy, they say.”

  “Well, that is one small blessing, anyway.” Perivos Akuanis bowed his head. “Farewell, Olin. The gods grant we can talk again in days ahead.”

  Olin laughed sourly. “The gods? So you fear that Drakava will sell me to the autarch after all?”

  “No, I fear that the autarch will find a way over the walls and kill us all.” He made the sign of the Three, then sketched a mocking salute. “At which point, I will be home in Siris, waiting to die with my family, and you will be meeting your own fate. If it comes to that, the gods grant us good deaths.”

  “I would prefer that the gods help protect you and your family instead, Count Perivos. And mine.”

  The two men clasped hands before the Hierosoline nobleman went out.

  It was actually the middle of the afternoon before the first of the great guns had been assembled and mounted on its mighty carriage behind the walls of the captive fortress. The air was still putrid with the eggy stench of the sulfur, and Vash was just as glad he had only managed to nibble a bit of food here and there—some flat bread, a few olives, a single tangerine.

  “It is impressive, Ikelis, is it not?” The autarch smiled at the giant gun with the doting pride of a father.

  “Gunnery has never had a better tool,” said the Overseer of the Armies, looking sternly at Vash as though the paramount minister might dare to argue. “We will reach the citadel itself with that. We will send the dog Drakava scuttling.”

  “Oh, I will not waste this beautiful machine lobbing stones at Drakava,” Sulepis said. “May my sacred father himself protect Ludis Drakava—I do not want him dead! That might slow this entire venture down to a fatal degree.”

  “I’m afraid I do not understand, Golden One.” Johar’s latest look at Vash was a great deal more humble. He clearly did not have as much experience as the paramount minister at dealing with the autarch’s strange, sudden, and sometimes apparently mad changes of plan. “Surely you wish Hierosol to fall.”

  “Oh, yes, we are going to knock the walls down,” said the autarch. “We are going to knock them down so that we do not have to waste time on a siege.”

  “But, Golden One, I do not think even such missiles as those,”—Johar pointed to the huge, spherical stone being rolled up a ramp toward the cannon’s mouth by a dozen sweating slaves—“can punch through the walls of Hiersol. Those walls are two dozen yards thick, and the stonework is immaculate!”

  For the first time, the autarch’s smile vanished. “Do you think I am unaware of that, High Polemarch?”

  Like a man who has stepped one foot over the edge of a bottomless chasm, Ikelis Johar abruptly backtracked. “Of course, Golden One. You are the Living God on Earth. I am only a mortal and a fool. Instruct me.”

  “Someone ought to, clearly. We will fire the cannons at a single place on the wall until it collapses. Then we will land our troops and send them in.”

  “But...but trying to force through a single breach in those wide, wide walls? They will rain fire and arrows and burning oil on our soldiers. We will lose thousands of men in such an assault!” Johar was surprised enough to momentarily forget his own danger. “Tens and tens of thousands!”

  “My destiny—the world’s destiny—rides on my shoulder.” Sulepis’ pale eyes glinted, impossibly alert, impossibly lively. “These men are happy to live for their autarch, why should they not die for him happily, too? Either way, they will spend eternity in the golden glow of my father Nushash.”

  The autarch laughed, the musical trill of someone contemplating with absolute, amused indifference the murder of thousands. “Now, let us see our first Royal Crocodile sing for his supper, eh?”

  Johar, his brown face looking a touch more wan than usual, bowed several times as he backed away from the autarch’s chair and descended from the golden litter, then waved his arms and bellowed an order to his generals. The command was passed rapidly down the chain of command until the gunnery master bowed and ordered a last few creaks of the wheel, lifting the elevation of the snarling, reptilian muzzle. When he was satisfied, the gunnery master stood up straight, wiping at the sweat that covered his face on this chill day.

  “On the Master of the Great Tent’s word!” he bawled. “For the glory of Heaven and of eternal Xis!”

  The god-on-earth waved a languid hand. “You may set it off.”

  “Give it fire!” shouted the gunnery master. A shirtless man dropped the head of a flaming torch on the cannon’s touchhole.

  For a moment the gun was so silent that it seemed to have sucked all the noise out of the world. It was only as Vash realized that the waves were still murmuring in the strait and the gulls still keening overhead that the cannon went off.

  Some moments later the paramount minister of Xis scrambled up onto his knees, certain that he would never hear anything again: his head was buzzing like the hive of the fire god’s sacred bees. A pall of smoke hung in the air around them, slowly being fanned away by the wind. The cannon had rolled back several yards, crushing two unfortunate soldiers beneath it. The gunnery master was frowning at the bloody ruin beneath the wheels. “We’ll have to put sand underneath them, or chain them,” he said. “Otherwise we’ll have to roll it back each time and firing will take even longer.” It sounded to Vash’s throbbing ears as though he whispered the words from miles away.

  “It does not matter,” said the autarch, his voice almost as mu
ffled. “Ah, it was beautiful to see. And look!” He pointed with his gauntleted hand.

  On the far side of the strait a chunk of pale rock the size of a palace door had been knocked out of Hierosol’s great seawall, leaving a darker spot like a wound. Atop the walls tiny soldiers scurried like startled ants, unable to believe in anything so powerful, unwilling to think anything could throw a stone so far, let alone actually chip the mighty, ancient defenses.

  “Ah, they hear us knocking on their door,” said the autarch, clapping his hands together in delight; Vash could barely hear the sound they made. “Soon we will come in and make ourselves at home!”

  A few moments later, and for the first time since the previous day, the bells of Hierosol began to ring again.

  34. Through Immon’s Gate

  With his death, Silvergleam’s house fell. Whitefire and Judgment were banished into the same Unbeing to which old Twilight had been dispatched, and most of their servants slaughtered. Crooked only was kept alive because the children of Moisture coveted his arts. They tormented him first, cutting away his manhood so that he would never spread the seed of Breeze’s children, then they made him their slave.

  Even the victors did not sing of these deeds, but made false tales to hide their shame and grief. The truth could not be encompassed. The true story is called Kingdom of Tears.

  —from One Hundred Considerations, out of the Qar’s Book of Regret