by Tad Williams
Vague, apocalyptic prophecy was not what the dowager duchess had come to hear. “Ask about my son,” she said in a sharp whisper. But Utta could tell that a bargain was being struck, even if she did not yet know with whom they were bargaining—the Rooftoppers and their queen? Their god? Or simply this one Rooftopper oracle?
“We have been told that you know something of this woman’s son, O Lord of the Peak,” Utta said slowly and clearly, hoping that if the Rooftoppers spoke her language, so did their god. “Will you tell us of him?”
The woman thrashed again and almost fell from her bed. Two tiny, shaven-headed priestesses stepped forward to hold her as she mumbled and rasped again.
“‘The High Ones took him, fifty winters past,’” the queen said, translating or simply amplifying the Ears’ quiet mumble. “‘He was carried behind the cloud of unknowing mortals call the Shadowline. But he yet lives.’”
Merolanna let out a little shriek, swayed, and collapsed against Utta, who did her best to hold her upright: the duchess was of a size that she would destroy much of the Rooftoppers’ religious quarter if allowed to fall. “She will thank you for this news—but I think not today,” Utta said, a little out of breath. She bent closer to Queen Upsteeplebat. “Can your god not tell us more?” she whispered. “Is there a way to find her child?”
For long moments the Ears lay like a dead woman—much like Merolanna, who seemed to have fainted. Then the tiny shape stirred and spoke again, but so quietly that Utta could only see her lips move. Even the little queen had to lean against the rail of her chariot to hear.
“The Lord of High Places says, ‘The world’s need is great. Old Night pecks at its shell, yearning to breathe the air of Time. This castle’s priest of light and stars once owned a piece of the House of the Moon, ancient and powerful, but now it has been taken. Find where that stolen piece has gone and in return Heaven will speak more of this mortal woman’s son.”
With that the Ears fell into a deep, deathlike sleep. When it was clear she would speak the god’s words no longer, the priestesses wrapped her up again. This time the tiny soldiers moved in and carried the entire bed away into the shadows like a funeral bier.
Utta held Merolanna, who groaned like a woman in a bad dream, and wondered and wondered at the surpassing strangeness this day had brought.
The duchess stirred in her bed and sat up, hands clawing out as though something had been pulled away from her.
“Where are they? Did I dream?”
“You did not dream,” Utta told her. “Unless I dreamed the same dream.”
“But what else did that little creature say? I cannot remember!” Merolanna fumbled for the cup of watered wine on the chest by her bed, drank it so fast that a pinkish rivulet spilled and ran down her chin.
Utta told her the rest of the Ears’ pronouncement. “But I can make no sense of it.”
“My child!” Merolanna fell back against the pillows, her chest heaving. “I gave him away,” she moaned, “and now the fairies have him. Poor, poor boy!” In halting words, she told Utta of the child’s secret birth and disappearance. Utta was surprised, but not astonished—the Zorians did not believe humans could be perfected, only forgiven.
“If the little people’s oracle spoke correctly, that was almost fifty years gone, Your Grace,” she told Merolanna. “Still, we must try to understand the god’s words—if it really was a god who spoke. A piece of the Moon’s House, the little woman said. And that it belonged to the castle’s priest of light and stars.”
“Priest? Do they mean Father Timoid? But he is gone!” Merolanna tossed her head as if in a fever. “Why should some god send this message to torture me?”
“Perhaps they mean Hierarch Sisel.” Utta reached out to take the duchess’ hand, hoping to calm her. “He is the highest priest of all, so…”
“But he is gone too, to his house in the country. He told me he could not bear to see what the Tollys were doing.” Merolanna tried to calm herself. “Would he be the priest of light and stars, though? He is the great priest of the Trigon, and they are air, water, and earth…” She moaned again. “Ah, if only Chaven were here. He knows of such things—he studies the stars, and knows almost as much about the old tales of the gods as Sisel…”
“Wait,” said Utta. “Perhaps that is who it means. Chaven is a priest of sorts—a priest of logic and science. And his is the particular study of light and the stars, with those lenses of his. Perhaps Chaven had some powerful object that is now lost.”
“But Chaven is the one who’s lost!” said Merolanna. “He’s vanished! And that means my son is lost forever…!”
“No one simply disappears,” said Utta. “Unless the gods themselves take them. And the Rooftoppers’ god, at least, does not seem to know what’s happened to Chaven, so perhaps he is still alive.” She stood. “I will see what I can discover, Your Grace.”
“Be careful!” Merolanna cried as Utta moved to the door. She extended her arms again as though to draw the Zorian sister back. “You are all I have left!”
“We have the gods, Duchess. I will pray for my gracious lady Zoria’s help. You should do the same.”
Merolanna slumped back. “Gods, fairies…the world has run utterly mad.”
Utta called in the little maid Eilis. “See to your mistress,” she told the girl. “Take good care of her. She has had a shock.”
But who will see to me? she wondered as she left Merolanna’s chambers. Who will take care of me in this mad time when legends spring to life at our feet? Zoria, merciful goddess, I need your help now more than ever.
Even to Matty Tinwright, who had never found it easy to say no to a celebration or a feast, especially if someone else was paying the tally, it seemed a bit much. Surely with an invading force just across the river—an invading force of monsters and demons at that—all these fetes and fairs were a waste, if not worse?
Perhaps Lord Hendon is only trying to divert us from our troubles. If so, he had set himself a hard task, because troubles were plentiful. The creatures across the bay had not attacked the keep, but they had certainly cut off all supplies coming to the overfilled castle from the west, and the short, terrifying war had emptied the valleys to the west and south as well, so there were no cattle or sheep being driven in from Marrinswalk and Silverside and no wool or cheese from Settland, only such supplies as could be brought in by ships, which lay crammed in Southmarch harbor like driftwood against a seawall.
Despite all this, the merriment went on. Tonight, to celebrate the first evening of Gestrimadi, the festival in honor of the Mother of the Gods, there would be a public fair in Market Square and here in the castle a great supper and masked fete, with music and dancing.
And yet surely there has not been a darker Dimene-month since the Twilight folk last marched on us, two hundred years gone?
It was strange, Tinwright thought, that a place as solemn and silent during the day as this should spring to life so feverishly at night, as though the chambers were tombs which discharged their occupants only after sunset, so that they could dance and flirt in imitation of the living.
It was a powerful image, and he thought suddenly that he should write it down. Surely there was a poem in it, the courtiers emerging from their stony dens at nightfall, wearing masks that hid everything but their too-bright eyes…
But Hendon Tolly and his circle will not like it, and these days that is a very dangerous thing. Didn’t Lord Nynor disappear after being heard criticizing the Tollys’ rule? Still, the lure of the idea was strong. He decided that he could write it and keep it hidden until better times, when his foresight would be recognized, and his brilliance (if not his courage) honored.
Poets are not made to be hanged, he reminded himself. They are made to admired. And even if I could only be admired for being hanged, I would choose obscurity, I think. No, he would stay alive. In any case, he had other things to live for, these days…
“Oh, most effective, Master Tinwright!” said Puzzle app
rovingly. Now that he had been picked up by Hendon Tolly’s set, however mockingly, the old jester had developed a loud heartiness to his tone that Tinwright found irritating. Strangely, though, his wrinkled face suddenly crumpled into sadness. “You will captivate many a young heart tonight, that is certain.”
Tinwright looked down at the forest-green hose, which had a disturbing tendency to twist between ankle and crotch so that each leg’s seam looked more like a winding country road than a straight royal thoroughfare. The colors were pleasing, though no real traveling minstrel ever wore such peacockery as this. It was a party costume that had belonged to Puzzle’s dead friend Robben Hulligan, and the old man was actually weeping now to see him in it.
“He was fair of face and shapely of leg, my good old Robben.” Puzzle rubbed his eyes. He had dressed for the masked fete himself in a black mantis’ robe, and it suited him strangely, making his long, dour face seem for the first time to have found its proper setting. “He too loved the ladies, and the ladies loved him.”
Tinwright didn’t say anything. He had heard this Robben-talk before and knew the old man would have his say no matter what Tinwright did.
“He was murdered by bandits, poor fellow,” said Puzzle, shaking his head. Tinwright could have recited the rest of his speech with him, so many times had he heard it. “Taken by Kernios long before his time. Have I told you of him? Sweet singing Robben.”
Tinwright was even thinking of going to the temple for the services, just to avoid the rest of the old man’s maundering, but was saved that ignominious fate by the arrival of a small boy, a page, bearing a message to Puzzle from Hendon Tolly’s squire.
“Ah, it seems I am wanted!” the old man said with a pleasure he could barely contain. “The guardian wishes me to sit with him during the feast, so that I may entertain him.”
The guardian must be trying to keep himself from eating too much, Tinwright thought but of course did not say: he was fond of Puzzle, if a bit tired of spending so much time with him. The old fellow’s recent rise in favor had made him cheerful, but had made him a bit boastful as well, and Matt Tinwright’s more dubious fortunes made it hard sometimes to enjoy his friend’s triumphs. “Does it say anything about me?”
“I fear not,” said Puzzle. “Perhaps you could come with me, though. I could sing my lord one of your songs, and surely…”
Tinwright thought back on the disastrous and humiliating reception he had received the last time he had tagged after Puzzle. That made it much easier to remember something that was true, if not useful to a man in search of advancement: he had decided he truly disliked Hendon Tolly. No, more than that—Tinwright was terrified of him. “Fear not, good friend Puzzle,” he said aloud. “As you pointed out, there are doubtless many fair young faces and firm young bosoms that await my attention tonight. I hope you will have good fortune at the guardian’s table.” He could not help dispensing a little advice, though, since Puzzle these days seemed as innocently smitten of attention as a child. “Be careful of that man Havemore, though. He does not love anyone, and will go to subtle lengths to be cruel.”
“He is a good enough fellow in his way,” said Puzzle, quick to defend any of the wealthy, powerful men who had so unexpectedly taken him up. “When next you come with me, you will see and know him better.”
“Let’s hope not,” said Matt Tinwright under his breath. If Tolly was a predator, Tirnan Havemore was a scavenger, a graveyard dog that would snatch up whatever it could find and hold onto it with stinking jaws. “Be well and be merry, Uncle.”
He waved as Puzzle went out, and then realized he had forgotten to ask him whether Hulligan’s borrowed costume was buttoned correctly in the back. He wished he had a dressing-mirror, but only a rich man—or at least a man who made poems for rich men—could afford such a thing.
Ah, Princess Briony, where did you go? Your poet needs you. At least you appreciated my true quality, if scarcely anyone else did…or does…
The castle was strung with parchment lanterns, and in every corner stood little altars to Madi Surazem covered with greenery, with pale hellebore blooms, firethorn, and holly surrounding white candles, each arrangement a silent prayer that the swelling within the belly of Moist Mother Earth would bear forth in another spring of healthy crops.
But what crops? Tinwright thought And who to harvest them? The fairies have laid waste to all the western and northern lands. It was strange that he should be the one fretting about such things. His father had once called him (exaggerating only slightly, Tinwright had to confess) the laziest and most self-centered youth on either side of Brenn’s Bay. Now he watched the courtiers in their masks and finery trip out into the garden and come back in, soaked from the rain and laughing, only to rush out again, and felt like a despairing parent himself. He wondered if his earlier idea, however poetic, might not be wrong: the dead could afford to make merry, having nothing to lose. The people around him seemed more like children, playing games beneath a teetering boulder.
Something bumped him and almost knocked him to the floor. “Sing us a song, minstrel!” shouted a drunken voice. Swaying in front of him, wearing a mask with an obscenely long nose, was Durstin Crowel, one of Tolly’s closest followers, a red-faced young lord who would have looked more natural, Tinwright thought, on a platter at the center of a banquet with a quince stuffed in his mouth. Crowel stood in the middle of the corridor with four or five of his friends, none of whom looked any better for drink than the Baron of Graylock. He was soaking wet and wearing a dress. “Go on,” Crowel said, pointing an unsteady finger at Tinwright. “Sing something with some swiving in it!” His companions laughed but they did not move on. They had sensed an edge in Crowel’s tone that meant more interesting things might be coming.
“Go to, then!” one of them shouted. “You heard! Entertain us, minstrel!”
“It is a costume, only,” Tinwright said, backing away. At least they did not seem to have recognized him behind his bird mask. Sometimes it was good to be beneath the notice of the great.
“Ah, but my dagger is real.” Crowel pulled something with a long, slender blade from his bodice—the noble seemed to be dressed as a tavern maid. “To protect my dear virtue, you see…” He paused for the laugh, which his friends dutifully provided, “so I’m afraid you will sing—or I will make you sing.” He belched and his friends laughed again. “Minstrel.”
For a moment it seemed as if it would be easier simply to do it—to mop and mow a little for the benefit of these drunken arsewipes, to play the part and sing a sad song of love and let them mock him. He knew enough of Crowel to know the man had beaten at least one servant to death and crippled another, just in the time he had been living in the Tollys’ wing of the residence—surely it was better simply to give the man what he wanted.
But why should I think they will stop at mockery?
“My lord’s command,” he said aloud, and bent his knee in a bow. “I will be pleased to sing for you…another day.”
Tinwright turned and ran for the residence garden. He was out into the cold rain before Crowel and the others realized what had happened.
This was the part of the plan I didn’t think about as carefully as I might, Tinwright admitted to himself as he huddled soaking wet in the lee of a tall hedge. The wind was chill and sharp as a razor—he thought he could feel his skin beginning to turn to ice. Still, he was not ready to go back inside. He was fairly certain that Graylock hadn’t recognized him, so all he had to do was stay away from them just for tonight. He considered sneaking back to the room he shared with Puzzle, but if he didn’t go back through main halls of the residence he would have a long walk back in the biting, bitter wind.
Better just to wait until they drink themselves to sleep.
In any case, he was feeling more than a little sorry for himself when he realized he had not heard voices or seen movement in the garden for some time.
If they’re not looking for me out here, at least I could find somewhere a little more
warm and dry to hide, he thought. He pulled the minstrel’s floppy cap down over his ears again—he had already nearly lost it to the wind several times—and wrapped the thin cape tight around his shoulders, wishing he had picked a more sensible disguise.
I could have been a monk with a hood—or a Vuttish reaver with a fur-lined helmet! But no, I wished to show my legs to the ladies in a minstrel’s hose. Fool.
He found one of the covered arbors at last; it was only when he had thrown himself down on the bench with a loud grunt of despair that he realized someone else was already sitting there.
“Oh! Your pardon, Lady…”
The woman in the dark dress looked up. Her eyes were red—she had been crying. An ivory-colored mask sat on her lap like a temple offering bowl. Tinwright’s heart jumped, and for a moment he could not speak. He leaped to his feet, bowed, then remembered to take off his mask.
“Master Tinwright.” She turned away and lifted her kerchief, drying her tears in a slow, deliberate fashion. Her voice was hard. “You find me at a disadvantage. Have you followed me, sir?”
“No, Lady Elan, I swear. I was only…”
“Wandering in the garden? Enjoying the weather?”
He laughed ruefully. “Yes, as you can see I have quite immersed myself in it. No, I was…well, I must be frank. The Baron of Graylock and some of his friends had taken it into their heads that I should entertain them, and it wasn’t clear how much I should have to suffer for my art.” He shrugged. “I decided that I would entertain them with a game of hide and seek instead.”
“Durstin Crowel?” Her voice grew harder still. “Ah, yes, dear Lord Crowel. Do you know, when I first came here, he asked Hendon if he could have me. ‘I’ll break her for you, Tolly,’ he said—as if I were a horse.”
“You mean he wanted to marry you?”
