by Tad Williams
Chains of all sizes and thicknesses hung around the terrible god-thing’s waist and dangled from his neck and shoulders, so that if he wore some other garment it could not be seen at all. Hundreds of strange, round objects hung from the chains. As his eyes became used to the light, Vansen realized that every one of the hanging things was a severed head, some only naked skulls or mummified leather, some fresh, with ragged necks still dripping—heads of men, of fairies, even animals, heads of all descriptions.
The full childhood memory came back to Vansen suddenly, the taunt of older boys to scare the younger ones—“Jack-in-Irons! Jack-in-Irons be coming from the great deeps to catch you! He’ll take your head!”
Jack in Irons. Jack Chain. He was real.
The apparition raised an arm big as a tree trunk, chains swaying and clanking, the heads dangling like charms on a lady’s bracelet. The bastard god grinned and his beautiful face seemed almost to split open as he displayed teeth as large as plates, as cracked and broken as the ruined stones.
“I AM JIKUYIN!” he roared, his voice so loud and so painful that Vansen fell to his knees and then slumped down to his belly with his hands over his ears in a fruitless attempt to protect himself from the deafening noise. It was not until the giant spoke again that Ferras Vansen realized he was hearing the words not with his ears, but echoing inside his mind.
All ordinary thought disappeared in the skull-thunder that followed.
“WELCOME, MORTALS—AH, AND ONE OF THE HIGH ONES, TOO, I SEE. WELCOME TO THE UNDERWORLD. I PROMISE I WILL GIVE YOU A USEFUL DEATH, AND AFTERWARD I MAY EVEN SHOW YOU THE MATCHLESS HONOR OF WEARING YOUR SMALL BUT SHAPELY HEADS!”
18
Questions with No Answers
So then in that great battle matchless Nushash at last pulled the sun itself down from the sky and hurled it full into the face of Zhafaris, the old Emperor Twilight, whose beard caught fire. He was burned into ashes, and that, my children, was the end of his evil rule.
Nushash and his brother Xosh scattered the ashes in the desert of Night. Then, in his generosity, Nushash invited his three half brothers to join him in building a new city of the gods on Mount Xandos. Argal the Thunderer and the others thanked him and swore fealty, but already they were planning to betray him and take the throne of the gods for themselves.
—from The Revelations of Nushash, Book One
ALTHOUGH SHE COULD NOT HAVE SAID exactly why, Pelaya found herself spending more time in the garden than had been her habit, even on days like today when the weather was less than ideal, with heavy gray skies and a biting wind from the sea. It was partly because her father Count Perivos had been so busy lately, busier than she’d ever seen him, with no time at all to give to his children. Sometimes he stayed so late examining the city’s defenses that he even slept in the Documents Chamber and only came home to change his clothes. But much of her interest in the garden was simply her interest in the prisoner Olin—King Olin, however he might mockingly disclaim his title. On the occasions that he and Pelaya met each other she always enjoyed talking to him, although it was never quite as strange and exciting as it had been the first time, when he had been a complete stranger and her companions had watched with horror as she introduced herself to him, as though she had decided to leap off the city walls and swim to Xand.
Still, she enjoyed the grown-up way their conversations made her feel, and he seemed to enjoy them too, although he was always disappointed by how little news she could give him about his homeland. She knew that one of his sons had died, and his daughter and other son were missing, and that his country was in some kind of war. Sometimes when Olin spoke about his children he seemed to be hiding feelings so strong that it seemed he would burst into tears, but then only moments later he would be so coldly composed she wondered if she had imagined it. He was a strange man even for a king, very changeable, unfailingly polite but sometimes a little frightening to a girl like Pelaya, whose own father was, for all his intelligence, a simpler sort of man. She sometimes thought Olin Eddon’s true feelings were as painfully imprisoned as he was himself.
He was not allowed into the garden very often, only a few days in every tennight. Pelaya thought that unkind of the Lord Protector. She wondered if she dared speak to her father about it—he was steward of the entire stronghold, after all—but although there was nothing illicit in the friendship with the northern king, she didn’t want to draw attention to it. Count Perivos was a serious man; he didn’t think much of things that had no purpose and she doubted he’d ever understand the harmless attraction Olin’s company held for her. Her father had doubtless heard something about the odd friendship, but so far he hadn’t said anything to her about it, perhaps reassured by Teloni, who had decided the whole thing was a boring lark of Pelaya’s and had stopped fussing at her about it. It was probably best to leave things that way, Pelaya decided, and not tempt the gods.
She was pleased to find that King Olin was out in the garden today, looking across the walls from atop a jutting ornamental stone not far from the bench, the one place a person could climb high enough see between the towers of the stronghold over all the Kulloan Strait. He sat cross-legged on the stone with his chin propped on his hands, more like a boy than a grown man, let alone a monarch. She stood by the base of the stone waiting for him to realize she was there.
“Ah, good Mistress Akuanis,” he said with a smile. “You honor me with your company again. I was just sitting here wondering if a man could fashion wings like a gull’s—out of wood and feathers, perhaps, although I suspect each feather would have to be tied in place separately, which would make for a great deal of work—and so fly like a bird.”
She frowned. “Why would someone want to do that?”
“Why?” He smiled. “I suppose the freedom of a gull on the wind has more meaning to me just now than to you.” He clambered down, landing lightly. “I muse, only—I see the birds fly and my mind begins to wander. I beg you not to tell your father of my interest in flight. I might lose the gift of this time in the garden.”
“I wouldn’t do that,” she said earnestly.
“Ah. You are kind.” He nodded, the subject concluded. “And how are you today, Mistress? Have the gods treated you well since I saw you last?”
“Well enough, I suppose. My tutor sets me the dreariest lessons you can imagine, and I will never, never be a seamstress, no matter how many years I try. Mother says my needlework looks like the web of a drunken spider.”
He chuckled. “Your mother sounds like a clever woman. That is not the first thing she has said that made me laugh. Perhaps that is where you come by your own wit and curiosity.”
“Me?” All she could think of were the lessons that Brother Lysas taught, reading at length from The Book of the Trigon, “…Beloved of the gods are the daughters and wives who make themselves humble, who seek only to serve Heaven…” “I’m not curious, am I?”
He smiled again. “Child, you are a fountain of questions. It is often all I can do not to unpack the entirety of my life and let you rifle through it like a trunk of clothes.”
“You must think I’m annoying, then. A child who cannot be still.” She hung her head.
“Not at all. Curiosity is a virtue. So is discretion, but that is usually learned at a later age. In fact, take your shawl—it is a bit cool—while I ask you something about that very subject.” He handed her the delicate Syannese cloth, but did not immediately let go. She was surprised, and started to say something. “Take it but do not unfold it,” he said quietly. “I have put a letter in it. Do not fear! It is nothing criminal. In fact, it is a letter for your own father. Give it to him, please?”
She took the shawl from him and felt the small, angular shape of the letter. “What…what is it?”
“As I said, nothing to fear. Some thoughts of mine about the danger of this threatened siege by the Autarch of Xis—yes, I have heard the rumors. I would have to be deaf not to. In any case, he may do as he wishes with my suggestions.”
Olin smiled as if through something painful. “First, I am at risk also, of course. Second, we are all natural allies against the autarch, whatever Drakava may think, and I believe your father would recognize that. Last—well, it would not hurt to have a man like your father think well of me.”
Pelaya felt quite out of breath. A secret letter! Like something from one of the old tales of Silas or Lander Elfbane. “I will do it, if you promise there is no dishonor.”
He bowed his head. “I promise, good mistress.”
They talked a little while longer about less consequential things like her younger brother’s wretched temper or the dragging negotiations for Teloni’s marriage to a young nobleman from the country north of the city. This pained Pelaya because her father had said he would not find a husband for his younger daughter until the oldest was married, and she was anxious to be a grown woman, with a household of her own.
“Do not be in too much of a hurry,” Olin said kindly. “The married state is a holy one for a woman, but it can be full of woe and danger, too.” He looked down. “I lost my first wife in childbirth.”
“The gods must have needed her to be with them,” Pelaya said, then was irritated with herself for parroting the pious phrase her mother always used. “I’m sorry.”
“I sometimes think it has been harder on my children than on me,” he said quietly, then did not speak for a long moment. His eyes were roving somewhere beyond Pelaya’s shoulder, so that she thought he was watching the gulls again, dreaming of the walls of Hierosol dropping into the distance behind him.
“You were saying, King Olin?”
“What?” He forced himself to look at her. “Ah, I beg your pardon. I was…distracted. Look, please, and tell me—who is that girl?”
Feeling a prickle of something that she would only realize later was jealousy, Pelaya turned and looked across the garden but saw no one. “Who? My sister and the others have gone in.”
“There. There are two of them, carrying linens.” He pointed. “One slender, one less so. The thin one—there, see, the one whose hair has come loose from her scarf.”
“Do you mean…those washing women?”
“Yes, that is who I mean.” For a moment, and for the first time Pelaya could remember, he sounded angry with her. “Do they not exist because they are servants? They are the only girls in the yard beside yourself.”
She was hurt, but tried not to show it. “Who is she? How should I know? A washing woman—a girl, as you said, a servant. Why? Do you think she is pretty?” She looked closely at the slender young woman for the first time, saw that the girl was only a little older than herself. Her arms where they emerged from her billowing sleeves were brown, and her hair, which had spilled free from beneath her scarf as Olin had pointed out, was black except for a small, strange streak the color of fire. The girl’s features were attractive enough, but Pelaya could see little about the thin young girl that should have attracted the prisoner-king’s attention. “She looks like a Xandian to me. From the north, I’d say—they are darker below the desert. Lots of Xandian girls work here in the kitchens and the laundry.”
Olin watched the young woman and her stockier companion until they had vanished into the darkness of the covered passage. “She reminds me…she reminded me of someone.”
Now Pelaya definitely felt a pang. “You said that I reminded you of your daughter.”
He turned, as though seeing her for the first time since the servant girl had appeared. “You do, Mistress. As I said, there is a quality in you that truly reminds me of her, and your curiosity is part of it. No, that servant girl reminds me of someone else.” He frowned and shook his head. “A member of my family, long dead.”
“One of your relatives?” It seemed unlikely. Pelaya thought the captive king was ashamed to have been caught ogling a serving girl.
“Yes. My…” He trailed off, looking again at the place where the servant had disappeared. “That is very strange—and here, so far away…” He paused again, then said, “Could you bring her to me?”
“What?”
“Bring her to me. Here, in the garden.” His laugh was short and harsh. “I certainly cannot go to her. But I need to see her up close.” He looked at her and his eyes softened. “Please, good Mistress Akuanis. I swear I ask you a favor for no unworthy reason. Could you do that for me?”
“That makes two favors in one day.” She tired to make her voice stern. “I…I suppose I could. Perhaps.” She did not understand her own feelings and was not certain that she wanted to understand them. “I will try.”
“Thank you.” He stood up and bowed, his face suddenly distant. “Now I must go. I have much to think about and I have stolen enough of your time today.” He walked toward the archway leading back to his tower rooms—comfortable enough, he had told her, if you did not mind a door that had a barred window in it and was locked from the outside—without looking back.
Pelaya sat, feeling oddly as though she wanted to cry. For the first time since they had met each other Olin had left the garden first. The prisoner had gone back to his cell to be alone rather than share her company any longer.
She remained on the bench, trying to understand what had happened to her, until the first drops of rain forced her inside.
“Who could ever live in such a place?” Yazi asked, wide-eyed. “You would tire yourself to fits just walking to the kitchen.”
“People who live in such places don’t walk to the kitchen,” said Qinnitan. “They have people like you and me bring their food to them.” She frowned, trying to remember which way they had turned on the inbound trip. Monarchs had been adding rooms and corridors and whole wings onto the citadel of Hierosol for so many centuries that the place was like the sea coral from one of her favorite poems by Baz’u Jev. Qinnitan entertained a brief fantasy that one day she would be able to take the boy Pigeon for a walk on the seashore without worrying she might be recognized, to see some of the mysteries that had so charmed the poet, the spiraling shells daintier than jewels, the stones polished smooth as statues. She had work to do, though, and even if she hadn’t, she couldn’t afford to loiter in the open that way.
“But look at us!” Yazi was from the Ellamish border country so she spoke fairly good Xixian, a good-hearted girl but a little slow and prone to mistakes. “We are lost already. Surely no one can find their way in such a big place. This must be the biggest house on earth!”
Qinnitan was tempted to say that she herself had once lived in the biggest house on earth, just to see Yazi’s expression, but even though she had already told Soryaza the laundry-mistress she had been an acolyte of the Hive, there was no sense in telling everyone else, especially someone as innocently loose-lipped as Yazi. The fact that Qinnitan had once lived in the Royal Seclusion, where she had been one of the fortunate few who had their food brought to them by hurrying, silent servants, was certainly not going to be mentioned either, although the irony of the present conversation was not lost on her.
“I know it’s back this way,” she said instead. “Remember, we came down a long hall full of pictures just after we went through that garden?”
“What garden?”
“You didn’t…? Where you could see the ocean and everything?” She sighed. “Never mind.” Yazi was like a dog that way—the girl had been talking about something, a dream she had, or a dream she wanted to have, and hadn’t even noticed the garden, the one time today they had been out from under the castle roof. Qinnitan had noticed, of course. She had spent too much time kept like a nightingale in a wicker cage to ignore the glorious moments when she was free beneath the gods’ great sky. “Never mind,” she said again. “Just follow me.”
“Breasts of Surigali, where have you two been?” Soryaza stood with her hands on her hips, looking as though she might pick up one of the massive washing tubs and dump its scalding contents
all over the truants. “You were just supposed to take those up to the upstairs ewery and come straight back.”
“We did come straight back,” Qinnitan said in Xixian. She could understand Hierosoline well enough now—the tongues were similar in many ways—or at least make out the sense of most things said to her, but she still did not feel comfortable with her own clumsy speech. “We got lost.”
“It’s so big!” Yazi said. “We didn’t do anything wrong, Mistress. On the Mother, we didn’t!”
Soryaza snorted her disbelief, then spat on the wet floor. “Well, get back to work. And speak Hierosoline, both of you. You aren’t in the south anymore!”
As the laundry-mistress stalked away several of the other women sidled over to find out what had happened. Qinnitan knew most of their names already, although two were new enough she had only seen them and not spoken to them.
“Is she always angry?” asked one of these new workers, an anxious, scrawny young thing with pink-tinged eyes and twitching nose—the others had already named her Rabbit.
“Always,” Yazi said. “Her feet hurt. And her back hurts too.”
“Pah!” said one of the other women. “She’s been saying that for years. Didn’t stop her from picking that boy Gregor up and throwing him out the door when she caught him sleeping in the drying room. Or from kicking over a tub or two when she’s in the mood.”
“Nira, someone said you were a priestess in Xis,” the girl called Rabbit suddenly said to Qinnitan. “Is that true?”
She was always a little slow to recognize her own false name, although she was getting better at it, and speaking Hierosoline slowed her down even more, so it took a moment for the question to sink in. When it did, she felt a chill. By the Dark Queen, does everyone know already? Curse this nest of busybodies, and curse Soryaza—she must have told someone.
