Shadowplay s-2

by Tad Williams

  The mysterious dark-haired girl had not appeared to him in days. His hours in the cell were long and empty, he was still angry with Vansen, Gyir had shown no evidence of having come up with the promised plan of escape (nor done much at all except sit in oblique silence), and Barrick was desperate for something to distract him from his own discomfort and dread, so he brooded about her.

  He had even begun to wonder if she might have been a herald of his own death—whether, despite all her words about courage and resistance, her presence actually meant he was nearing the end of his life. Perhaps she was some daughter of Kernios, awakened or summoned by the nearness of the monstrous gate. Barrick didn’t know whether Kernios had a daughter—he had never been able to keep up with Father Timoid’s endless recitations of the lineages of gods, even if his family claimed relationship to one—but it seemed possible.

  Still, if the dark-haired girl was an emissary of the ultimate, he was not as afraid of dying as he had thought he would be. This Death had a kind, clever face. But so young! Younger than he was, certainly. Then again, if she was a goddess, how she appeared meant little—after all, the gods could become whatever they wanted, trees or stars or beasts of the field.

  But what was the use of wondering, in any case? Day after day of throbbing pain in his head and blurred thoughts, night after night of frightening visions—Barrick was not even quite certain of what was real anymore. Why had he been chosen for this particular torment? Not fair. Not fair.

  Push against it. He heard her voice again, but only in memory. Escape it. Change it.

  What had Gyir told him? You are only a prisoner when you surrender. Even steadfast, stolid Vansen seemed to reproach Barrick for his weakness—everyone else was so cursedly certain about things they didn’t have to suffer.

  Barrick opened his eyes a little. Vansen was sleeping next to him, the soldier’s thin face now softened by a beard which obscured but could not completely hide the hollowness of his cheeks. Though they drained every drop of the swill Jikuyin’s guards gave them, they were all slowly wasting away. Barrick had been slender to begin with, but now he could watch each bone sliding and moving beneath his skin, see the deformity of his shattered arm in more detail than he had ever wanted.

  For a moment, then, his eyes half shut, he could almost see King Olin’s features hovering before him instead of Vansen’s.

  I hope you’re happy, Father. You were so ashamed of what you did to me that you couldn’t even speak of it. Soon I’ll be dead and you’ll never have to see me again.

  But was it really all his father’s fault? It was the curse, after all, a poison in the Eddon blood they shared, and even his father’s blood was not as corrupted as Barrick’s. For proof, he need look no farther than the days and nights just passed: when Olin had escaped the castle his own curse had become less—his letters had all but said so. Barrick, though, was in the grip of even worse fevers of madness than he had experienced at home.

  He shut his eyes tight but sleep would not come. A quiet shuffling noise made him open them again. The latest shift of prisoners had just come back from their labors and one of the apish guards was coming right toward their cell. Gyir, who had been propped in a corner of the stony cell with his chin against his chest, slowly looked up. Barrick’s heart raced—what could the guard want? Had the time come for the blood sacrifice Gyir had feared?

  The creature stopped in front of the grille, cutting off most of the outside light. Gyir moved toward the door, but with a swift, easy grace that took a little of the edge off Barrick’s fear: he had learned to read the fairy’s movements a bit, and what they said now was not danger but only caution.

  The beastlike guard stood in silence, its face pressed against the bars. Nothing visible passed between the guard and Gyir, but after a dozen or so heartbeats the shaggy creature shook itself and then turned away, a puzzled, perhaps even frightened expression on its inhuman face.

  During the course of the following hours and days, many more guards and more than a few returning prisoners enacted a similar ritual as Barrick watched with fascination. He couldn’t help wondering what this had to do with the Storm Lantern’s talk of gun-flour, since there was none of the black powder to be seen. Instead, it was like watching the Bronzes ceremony at the Southmarch court, when the leading nobles of the March Kingdoms came and laid their weapons at the feet of the king sitting in the Wolf’s Chair and each of their names was marked on a bronze tablet which was then blessed and then laid into the vault at the great Trigonate temple. But the beasts of Greatdeeps were bringing the fairy nothing that Barrick could see, nor were they taking anything away.

  He realized that almost a year had come and gone since King Olin had performed the Bronzes ceremony before leaving on his ill-fated voyage. He wondered if Briony would take the fealty of the Marchwardens this year, and was suddenly filled with a homesickness so powerful it almost made him burst out sobbing. It was followed by a wave of loathing at his own helplessness, his own uselessness.

  Look at me! I lie here like a child, doing nothing, waiting for death. And what is my death? A warrior’s death? A king’s death, or even a prince’s death? No, it takes the form of a girl, a doe-eyed girl full of sympathy, and I wait for her like some smitten bard, some...poet. Then, the thought burning like fire in his guts: And even she thinks that I have given up—that I am a coward.

  Barrick dragged himself upright, ignoring the sharp pain in his arm, which was always worst the first time he bent it after having been asleep. He made his way over to Gyir and sat down beside him. The fairy, whose eyes had been closed as if in sleep since the last visitor or tributary had shuffled away, opened them to fix Barrick with the banked fire of his gaze.

  You do not need to sit near me to talk. I could speak to you from the House of the People, almost. You grow stronger every day.

  Why are those guards and other creatures coming to you? he asked.

  I am schooling them in what I need, Gyir told him. I do not want to say more, since we will risk all on this throw.

  Barrick sat quiet for a while, thinking. Why is all of this happening now? he finally asked. Not what I was just asking about, but...everything.

  Narrow your question, please.

  Everything that hasn’t happened before, or at least not for hundreds of years—the Shadowline moving, your people attacking Southmarch and warring against my people. And this demigod Jack Chain, or whatever he is, digging up the palace of Kernios. You can’t pretend those sorts of things happen all the time.

  Gyir let out the gust of bitter amusement that Barrick had come to recognize as a laugh. Your people and my people at each other’s throats is not so unusual. You slaughtered us for years. And, to be fair, we have attacked you twice since then.

  You know what I mean.

  Gyir stared at him, then nodded. Yes, I do. There are things I cannot tell you even though circumstances make us allies—promises I have made to others and oaths I have sworn. But here are some things I can tell, and should. Your companion must hear this, too. The fairy paused. Barrick turned and watched Ferras Vansen slowly push himself into an upright position, woken by the Storm Lantern’s silent call.

  Our time is short, Gyir said. You both must listen well. He spread his pale fingers. There are two ways other than experience that wisdom comes to the People. One is the gift of the Fireflower—this made a an idea in Barrick’s mind he could barely contain, something that was as large and complicated as anything Gyir had ever said—and the other is the Deep Library.

  In the most hidden places within the House of the People, the wisdom of our oldest days remains mostly in the form of the Preserved and their Voices—that is the Deep Library. These Voices speak the wisdom of the Preserved and thus are the People taught and reminded. Gyir’s thoughts were rhythmic, almost singsong, as though he passed on a story that he had learned in childhood. These Voices, along with the wisdom of the Fireflower, which is sometimes called the Gift, are what lifts the High Ones above the rest
of the People and what has brought us dominion over our lands and songs.

  You have heard that the gods have been banished from this world into the realms of sleep. That was the work of the god we call Crooked, and about that mystery I can say little, but it is the foundation of all that comes afterward. The place where those events burned brightest, and where they still smolder thousands of years later, is at the place we name Godsfall—the place your people call Southmarch. Yes, Prince Barrick, your home.

  Barrick stared at him, confused. Was the fairy trying to say that the gods had lived in Southmarch? Or died there? It was so bizarre a thought that for a moment he feared he was dreaming again.

  Only a few years ago, Gyir continued, the Voices began to warn us that the slumber of the gods in their exile had grown very shallow, very fragile. Just as the moon may pull on the earthly tides when he swings close, creating perturbations in the blood of those most sensitive, so the gods, even in sleep, are closer to us now than they have been since they were driven from the waking lands. Gyir paused to listen to something Vansen asked. No, I cannot say more about it now. It is enough to know the gods were driven out of the waking lands, that for a long time they have been gone, almost as though they were dead.

  But now the gods loom close, pushing into the minds and dreams of both your people and mine, and in countless other ways as well. That would be grim enough— dangerous too, because even in their eternal sleep the gods can still make mischief both small and great, and they ache to have back what was theirs. But by a grave chance, this ominous hour has arrived when another terrible thing was already happening to the High Ones of my folk, a thing that has plunged all of the House of the People into terror and mourning. Our Queen Saqri, the Mistress of the Ancient Song, is dying.

  Barrick had never seen the fairy show much in the way of emotion, but it was obvious from the pain in his thoughts that what he was saying struck him to his core.

  The High Ones, Gyir went on at last, at least those in the Line of the Fireflower, do not die as mortals die. We can all of us meet a violent end, and we are prey to illnesses and accidents just as you sunlanders are, but those of our highest house like Saqri and Ynnir are not like the rest of living things, either in their mortality or their immortality. That is all I can tell you. No, I hear your questions but it is not my secret to share with your kind. I have not the right.

  But I can tell you this. Queen Saqri is dying, and that which she needs most was to be found only in the old sacred place of our people—your people’s home, the castle called Southmarch. Desperation had driven us to recapture it two hundred years before, but we were driven out again. Now desperation has driven us back there once more.

  But this time, there was the matter of the gods’ restless sleep to consider. Your Southmarch is a place that touches closely on the realms of the gods. Even the Voices of the Deep Library agreed that there was a terrible chance that an attempt to recapture the sacred place and use its virtues to save Queen Saqri would wake the gods from their slumber and bring an era of blood and darkness over the earth.

  But why? Barrick could not help asking. Why would waking the gods do such a thing? He looked to Vansen, but even in the dim light he could see that the soldier had gone quite pale, as though he had just been told the incipient hour of his own death.

  “Blood and darkness...?” Vansen whispered. He looked as though he had been stabbed in the heart.

  The gods would not be able to avoid it, Gyir declared, any more than a wolf could let itself starve to death while a piece of bloody meat lay before it. Such is the nature of their godhood—they have been trapped in sleep for century upon century, powerless as great beasts caught in hunters’ nets. One of the gods’ most fearsome attributes is the mightiness of their angers. But even faced with such terror, humans would not easily give up dominion. When the gods lived on the earth in the distant past, mortals were their servants, small in numbers and weaker in selfregard, but they have grown in both wisdom and numbers.

  If the gods wake, there will be a war to end all wars. In the end, though, the gods will triumph and the pitiful survivors will begin sifting the ruins of their cities to build new temples to their greedy, victorious, immortal masters.

  Barrick wasn’t certain he understood everything, but it was impossible to ignore the dreadful certainty in Gyir’s thoughts.

  So in our fear of waking the gods, the House of the People became divided between those who wished to see the queen saved at any cost, led in spirit by my lady Yasammez, and those who sought some other path. That was King Ynnir’s way, and although I fear it will only delay the inevitable, or perhaps make it worse when it comes, his wishes had enough support that a compromise was made.

  We call that compromise the Pact of the Glass, and at this moment it is all that stands between your people and annihilation, because we of Yasammez’s party believe that what we serve is more important than any mercy and is worth any risk.

  Barrick felt light-headed again. And...and you still feel that way, Gyir? That killing every man, woman, and child in Southmarch would be an acceptable cost to reach your goal?

  You will never understand without knowing the true stakes.

  The fairy’s thoughts came to him like drips of icy water on stone. And I cannot tell you all—I have not the stature to open such secrets to mortals.

  So what are you saying? That your king and queen are at war with each other? But they’ve made some kind of truce?

  War is too simple a word, Gyir told him. When you understand that they are not only our lord and lady, husband and wife, but also brother and sister, you of all people may understand something of the complexities involved.

  They’re brother and sister...?

  Yes. Enough. I do not have time to explain the full history of my people to you, or any great urge to defend the Line of the Fireflower against the ignorance of sunlanders. Be silent and listen! Gyir’s frustration was so palpable that his words came almost like blows. The Pact of the Glass is the most fragile of wisps, but at the moment it holds. We defeated your army but we have not attacked your stronghold. But if we must, we will, and I promise you with no joy that if we do the blood will run like rivers.

  Barrick was angry now, too. Say your piece, Storm Lantern.

  I do not wish your love, man-child, only your understanding. I am sorry if you thought that friendship between us might change the facts, but the gods themselves could not undo what is coming, even if they wished to do so.

  So why do you tell us all this, curse you? If we’re all doomed, what difference does it make?

  Because as I once told you, things are still balanced on a knife’s edge. We must do what we can to keep that balance from tilting. Here. He reached into his tattered shirt and pulled out a tiny bundle wrapped in dirty rags, held it out in his open hand. This is the thing I told you about but would not show you. Now I must abandon caution, hoping you will understand the terrible danger we face and how important this is. This is the prize my lady Yasammez ordered me to carry to King Ynnir. On this small thing may rest the fate of all.

  What is it? It was smaller than the palm of Barrick’s hand, vaguely round in shape. He stared at it, bemused.

  It is the very scrying glass around which the Pact of the Glass is built. If it does not reach the king soon, Lady Yasammez will renew her attack upon Southmarch, this time without mercy.

  He handed it to Barrick, who was so surprised he almost dropped it. Why are you giving this to me?

  Because I fear that Jikuyin intends to use me in some way to open Immon’s Gate into the palace of the Earthfather. If that happens, if I am lost while I still carry the Glass, then all is lost with me.

  But why me? Barrick shook his head. I can barely stand up! I’m full of mad thoughts—I’m sick! Give it to Vansen. He’ll get it where you need it to go. He’s a soldier. He’s... honorable. He looked over to the guard captain and realized that he meant it—despite everything he had said about the guard captain, every
petty dislike he had expressed, Barrick admired the man and envied his strength and determination. In another world, another Barrick would have given much to have such a person as a friend.

  I intended to, said Gyir, but I have been thinking. There was a brief silence in Barrick’s head as the fairy spoke only to Vansen, then he turned his scarlet stare back onto Barrick. Ferras Vansen is brave, but he does not carry Lady Porcupine’s touch. My lady singled you out, Barrick Eddon and gave you an errand of your own to the House of the People—one that even I do not know. Her command will carry you on when all else would fail. But it will not keep you alive if Fate intends otherwise, the fairy could not help adding, so do not be foolhardy! Ferras Vansen can go with you, but you must be the one to carry it.

  So you want me to do a kindness for the woman who wants to kill all my people?

  Must I have this argument with every sunlander who can draw breath? Gyir shook his head. Have you not listened? If this does not reach King Ynnir, then Yasammez will destroy all in her way to recapture Godsfall—your home— for our folk. If the Pact of the Glass is fulfilled there is at least a faint hope she will hold back, but only if the glass reaches the king’s hand.

  Barrick swallowed. He had spent most of his young life trying to avoid just such situations—a chance to fail, to prove that he was less than those around him, those with healthy limbs and unshadowed hearts—but what else could he do?

  Very well, if we must. He thought of the brown-eyed girl, of what she would think of him. Yes, then! Give it to me.

  Do not look into it, Gyir warned. You are not strong enough. It is a powerful, perilous thing.

  I don’t want to look into it. Barrick tucked the ragged bundle into his shirt, trying to make sure it went into the one pocket that did not have a hole.

  Ah, blessings. May Red Stag keep you ever safe on your path. The relief in the Storm Lantern’s thoughts was clear, and for the first time Barrick realized that Gyir, too, might have been carrying a painful, unwanted burden. Then Gyir abruptly stiffened, becoming as still as a small animal under the shadow of a hawk. Quickly, he said, what day is this? He turned his burning red eyes from Barrick to Ferras Vansen, who both stared back helplessly. Of course, how would you know? Let me think. Gyir laid one hand over the other and then brought them both up to cover his eyes, and for the space of perhaps two dozen heartbeats he sat that way, silent and blind to the world. We have a day, perhaps two, he said abruptly, dropping his hands away from the smooth mask of flesh.