by Tad Williams
29
Bells
At last, after battling each other for a year without stopping, Perin Skylord defeated Khors the ravisher and slew him. He cut the Moonlord’s head from his body and held it up for all to see. At this Khors’ allies fled or surrendered. In the confusion, many of those evil ones called the Twilight People hid themselves in forests and other dark places, but some fled to the chill and deadly northern wilds and raised themselves there a black fortress which they called Qul-na-Qar—home of the demons.
—from The Beginnings of Things
The Book of the Trigon
HER DREAMS WERE BECOMING STRANGER every night, full of shadows and fire and the movements of barely seen pursuers, but all distant, as though she watched events through a thick fog or from behind a streaked and dirty window. She knew she should be frightened, and she was—but not for herself. They will catch him, was all she could think, although she did not know who he was, or who they were, for that matter. The boy she had dreamed about, the pale one with red hair in sweaty ringlets—was he the quarry of the shadowy creatures? But why should she dream repeatedly of a face she did not recognize?
Qinnitan woke to find Pigeon half underneath her. Although the mute boy himself remained happily asleep, his bony elbows and chin and knees were poking her in so many places she might as well have been trying to get comfortable on a pile of cypress branches. Despite the aches, though, it was hard to look at his face and be angry. His innocently gaping mouth with that pitiful stub of tongue behind his teeth made her ache with a love for him unlike anything she’d felt even for her own younger brothers and sisters, perhaps because she was responsible for Pigeon in a way she hadn’t been for them.
It was odd to lie here in this cramped, uncomfortable bed in a foreign land thinking about two people, one the child lying next to her (shivering slightly now that she had made some space for herself ), the other entirely a creature of dream. How had her life come to this? Once she had been an ordinary girl in an ordinary street, playing with the other children; now she had traveled on her own to a far country, fleeing from the autarch himself.
Qinnitan still didn’t understand it all. Why had Sulepis, the ruler of all the southern world, chosen her in the first place? It was not as though she were a rare beauty like Arimone, his paramount wife, or even much of a beauty at all: Qinnitan had seen her own long features enough times, her thin lips pursed, her watchful, slightly suspicious eyes peering back at her from the polished mirrors of the Seclusion, to know that beyond question.
Enough worrying, she decided, and yawned. It must be almost dawn, although she hoped the wheels of Nushash’s great cart were at least an hour from the daylight track: she wanted a little more sleep. She arranged Pigeon so that she could stretch out; he made a scraping sound of annoyance through his nose but allowed himself to be prodded into a less painful configuration.
As she was drifting back down into the warmth of slumber she heard a dull tone so low that she could feel it rumbling in the floor. It was followed a moment later by another, pitched higher. The two notes sounded again, then a third tone joined them—bells, she finally realized, ringing in the distance. At first, in her sleepy confusion, Qinnitan thought it must be the summons to morning service in the Hive, then she remembered where she was and sat up, freeing herself from the complaining boy. Around her others were beginning to stir. The ringing went on.
Qinnitan climbed out of bed and hurried across the dormitory room and out into the dark hallway. A few other women stumbled out with her, clumsy phantoms in their shapeless nightdresses. The bells were so loud and constant now that she could not remember what it had been like only moments before, in the silence of the night.
She clambered up to the passage window, the one that looked east toward mighty Three Brothers temple. The sun hadn’t risen, but she could see lights in the tower windows where the bells were ringing. It was so strange—what did it mean? She looked down to see if anyone was in the streets yet, and by the light of the lantern burning at the corner of the courtyard she saw a smear of pale-haired head as a man—the man she had seen the previous night, she felt certain—moved with a certain casual hurry from below the residence window into the shadows. Her heart felt squeezed in a cold hand. Him again. Watching her, or at least watching Kossope House, the dormitory in which she lived. Who was he? What did he want?
She stood as the first sheen of dawn turned the sky purple, cold air on her face, her skin pebbled with goosebumps. Bells were ringing all over the city. Something terrible was happening.
The bells in Three Brothers began to peal while Pelaya was saying the Daybreak Prayer in the family chapel, ringing so loud that it seemed the walls might tumble down. She and her sisters, brother, and mother were all crowded into the chapel, and when Pelaya turned she almost knocked her brother Kiril off the bench.
“Zoria’s mercy!” Her mother hurried to the chapel door and handed Pelaya’s infant sister to the nurse as the bells continued to crash and clang. “It is a fire! Get the children to safety.”
“That’s not the fire bell,” Pelaya said loudly.
Despite her fear, Teloni was irritated. “How do you know?”
“Because the fire bell is only one bell, rung over and over. All the bells are ringing.”
Her mother turned to Kiril, Pelaya’s younger brother. “Go and find your father. Find out what is happening.”
“He’s not old enough.” Pelaya was too excited and frightened to stay with her mother and sisters. “I’ll go!”
She was up before her mother could stop her, heading for the chapel door. “You headstrong little beast!” her mother called. “Teloni, go with your sister, keep her out of trouble. No, Kiril, you’ll stay, now—I’ll not have all my children scattered.”
Pelaya was out the door just as Kiril’s bellow of dismay erupted, but it was still loud enough to hear even above the clangor of the bells.
“You’re wicked!” gasped Teloni, catching up to her on the first landing. “Mama said Kiril was to go.”
“Why? Because he’s a boy?” She pulled up her skirts so she wouldn’t trip over them as she hurried up the stairs. Already the stairwell and the landings were filling with people, some still half-dressed in their nightclothes, wandering out like sleepwalkers to see what the clamor was about.
“Slow down!”
“Just because you climb like a cow trying to go over a gate doesn’t mean I have to wait for you, Teli.”
“What if it is a fire?”
Pelaya rolled her eyes and began leaping the stairs two at a time. Didn’t anyone else take note of things but her? That was why she enjoyed talking to the foreign king, Olin Eddon: he paid attention to what was around him, and he complimented her cleverness when she did so too. “It’s not a fire, I told you. It’s probably the autarch attacking the city.”
Teloni slid to a stop and grabbed at the wall to keep herself from falling. “It’s what?”
“The Autarch of Xis, stupid. Don’t you ever listen to what Babba says?”
“Don’t you dare call me that—I’m your elder sister. What do you mean, the autarch…attacking?”
“Babba’s been preparing for it for months, Teli. Surely you must have noticed something.”
“Yes, but…but I didn’t think it was really going to happen. I mean, why? What does the autarch want with Hierosol?”
“I don’t know, what do men ever want with the things they fight wars about? Come on—I want to find Babba.”
“But he can’t get in, can he? The autarch? Our walls are too strong.”
“Yes, the walls are too strong, but he might besiege us. Then we’d all have to go hungry.” She poked her sister’s waist. “You won’t last long without sweetmeats and honey-bread.”
“Stop! You are a beast!”
“But you’ll get better at climbing stairs. Come on!” The jokes rang a little hollow even to Pelaya herself. It was hard to tease her sister, who was good and kind most of the time,
with those terrible bells sounding all across the citadel hill, echoing and echoing.
They found their father in an antechamber to the throne room, surrounded by frightened nobles and patient guardsmen. “What are you girls doing here?” he asked when he saw them.
“Mama wanted to send Kiril to ask you what is happening,” Teloni said quickly. “But Pelaya ran quick like a rabbit and I had to run after her.”
“Neither of you should be here—you should be with your mother, helping with the little ones.”
“What is it, Babba?” Pelaya asked. “Is it the autarch…?”
Count Perivos frowned at her, not as if he were angry, but as if he wished she hadn’t asked him the question at all. “Probably. We’ve had a signal from the western forts that they are under attack, and also reports of a great army marching down the coast from the north toward the Nektarian Walls—the land walls.” He shook his head. “But it may be exaggerated. The autarch knows he can never break down our fortifications, so it may be he simply wishes to frighten us into giving him the right to navigate our waters on his way to attack someone else.”
Pelaya didn’t believe it, and she felt fairly certain her father didn’t either. “Well, then. We’ll tell Mama.”
“Tell her we should move the family down to the house near the market. Here on top of the citadel it may be dangerous, although even if the autarch manages somehow to take the western forts, the guns cannot reach us here. Still, better to spend your last dolphin on your roof, as my father used to say, just in case it rains. Go tell her to pack up. I’ll be back before the noon prayers.”
Pelaya stood on her tiptoes to kiss his cheek. Only a few years earlier she could only reach his face if he bent almost double. Now she could put her arms around his broad chest and smell the pomander scent in his robes. “Go,” he said softly. “Both of you. Your mother will need your help.”
“We’ll be all right down in the city,” Teloni said as they trotted back down the citadel’s main staircase, weaving through distracted and fearful folk, all scurrying as if the bells were summoning them to the gods’ judgment. “Even if the Autarch does fire his cannons, they can’t reach that far.”
Pelaya wondered what Teloni thought armies carried heavy cannons around for if not to fire them. “Unless he brings that army up to the Salamander Gate and fires into the city from that side.” She felt almost cruel saying it.
Teloni’s eyes went wild and she stumbled as they reached the landing at the base of the stairs; Pelaya had to grab her sister’s sleeve. “He wouldn’t!”
Pelaya realized there was nothing she could do by talking, even about truthful things, except make life worse for her sister, and soon thereafter, for her mother and the little ones as well. She gave Teloni’s arm a quick squeeze.
“I’m sure you’re right. Go tell Mama. I’ll be there in a short while—I need to go do something.”
Her older sister watched in openmouthed astonishment as Pelaya abruptly turned and darted across the hall toward the gardens. “What…where are you going?”
“Go to Mama, Teli! I’ll be there soon!”
She cut through the Four Sisters Courtyard and very nearly ran headlong into a colum of citadel guards wearing the Dragonfly on their sky-blue surcoats, the symbol of the old Devonai kings, still the touchstone for legitimacy in Hierosol centuries after the last of them had reigned. The guards, who in ordinary circumstances would have at least paused to let her by, hardly even broke stride, booted feet slapping on the floor as they hurried on, their faces set in looks so firm-jawed and unrevealing it made her chest hurt.
Surely Babba’s right—the autarch must know better than to try to conquer Hierosol. No one has ever managed in a thousand years! But she couldn’t believe things would be quite so easy. She felt a disturbing thrill in the air, like a wind carrying scents from savage foreign lands. Even the bells finally falling silent did not make the world seem any less strange; if anything, the silence that followed seemed to quiver just as dangerously as it had while the bells clamored.
Olin Eddon was just being led back inside by his guards when she reached the garden. After a few moments’ discussion, he managed to convince them to let him linger for a moment at the wall on the side of the garden that looked out across the low western roofs of the palace and the seawall, out across the strait and, beside it, the wide, green ocean. The water, despite the chill wind that circled through the garden, looked smooth as the marble of a painted statue. She remembered what her father had said about the western forts and looked out toward the peninsula, but she could see nothing there except a bank of mist; the water of the strait and the gray morning sky seemed to blur together into a single vagueness.
“I did not expect to see you today, and certainly not so early.” His smile was a little sad. He looked thinner than the last time she’d seen him. “Don’t you have your lessons in the morning? Sor Lyris will be angry.”
“Don’t tease. You heard the bells—how could you not hear them?”
“Ah, yes. I did notice something ringing…”
She scowled. She didn’t like him saying foolish things and pretending he was serious about them, treating her like a child who needed to be amused. She wondered if he had done that with his own daughter, the one he spoke of so sadly, the one he so clearly missed. (He didn’t speak about his son very much, though, she couldn’t help noticing.) “Enough. I have to hurry back to my family. What of you, Your Majesty?”
“A formal title. Now I am worried.” He nodded his head, almost a bow. “I will be well, my lady, but I thank you for your concern. Go with your family. I have a nice, safe room with bars on the window and a warm coverlet.” He stopped. “Oh, but you are truly frightened. I’m sorry—it was cruel of me to make sport.”
She was about to deny it, but suddenly felt warmth in her face. She was terrified she might cry in front of this man who, for all their friendly conversations, was a stranger, a foreigner. “A little,” she admitted. “Aren’t you?”
For a moment something showed through his mask of charming manners—a deep, bleak wretchedness. “My fate is entirely in the hands of the gods.” A moment later he had regained his composure and it was as if the mask had never slipped.
Of course it is, she thought. And my fate is, too. Why should that be so frightening, if we do as they want us to do? Aloud, she said, “But what do you think the autarch wants with us?”
“Who can say?” Olin shrugged. “But Hierosol has stood for a long time. Many kings have tried to pull it down and failed—many autarchs, for that matter. A hundred years ago Lepthis…” He paused, then frowned. “Forgive me, but I cannot remember which Lepthis, the third or fourth. They called this one ‘the Cruel,’ as if that was enough to mark one Lepthis from another, let alone one autarch from the rest of the bloody-handed crew. In any case, this autarch swore he would shatter this city’s walls with his cannon, which were the mightiest guns in the world. Do you know about that?”
“A little.” She took a shaky breath. Olin had seemed genuinely upset to have frightened her, and now she could not help wondering who was making whom feel better. “He failed, didn’t he?”
Olin laughed. “Evidently, for we are speaking Hierosoline and you see no temple of fiery Nushash or black Surigali here on Citadel Hill, do you? Lepthis the Cruel swore to destroy the temples of all the false gods, as he called them, and put all Hierosol’s inhabitants to the sword. He pounded the walls with cannonfire for a year but could not even nick them. The flies and mosquitoes bit and bit down in the valley below the northern walls, and the Xixians died there in droves of fevers and plagues. Thousands more died of fiery missiles from inside the citadel. At last his men demanded he let them go back to Xis, but Lepthis would not hear of such a compromise to his honor. So his men killed him and made his heir the autarch instead, then they all sailed back to the shores of Xand.”
“His own men killed him?”
“His own men. Ultimately, even the most bloody-minded t
roops will not fight when they are hungry and exhausted, or when they understand their deaths will be for nothing except to glorify their commander.”
She stared out at the expanse of blue-green water in the strait, then looked south toward the place where she knew the great city of Xis must lie somewhere beyond the mists, its long walls hot and dry and white as bones bleaching in the desert sun. “Do you think that will happen this time? That we will have to live through a siege of a year—or even more?”
“I do not think it will be so bad,” Olin said. “I suspect that the present autarch mainly wants to keep Hierosol’s fleet occupied and her defenders busy so that he can turn his attentions on other, less well-defended targets—perhaps the Sessian Islands, which still hold out against him.”
For the first time since the bells had begun to ring Pelaya felt a little looseness in her chest, which had felt so tight she feared breathing too deeply. Both her father and Olin said that all would be well. They were grown men, noble and educated men: they knew about such things. “I hope…” she began, then stopped. Without thinking, she raised her hand to shade her eyes then realized that the sun was behind her. It was only the low-lying mist causing that glare on the water, making it so hard to see out into the southern strait.
“Pelaya? What is it?”
She realized after a moment that she was praying to the Three, mumbling words she had known since childhood but which had never seemed as desperately important as they did now. “Look,” she said.
King Olin moved up to the wall and stood beside her, staring out across the strait toward the Finger. “I see nothing. Your eyes are young and strong…”
“No, not there. Toward the ocean.”
He turned, following her finger, and even as he did the bells began to ring again, all across Citadel Hill, loud as the gods clanging spears against their battle-shields.
As it rolled toward them out of the southeast, the great, low-lying blanket of spiky shadow seemed to Pelaya an immense thicket of trees and clouds—as though somehow an entire forest had torn free of the shore and floated out into the middle of Kulloan Strait and was now drifting toward the walls of Hierosol. It was only when she could see the shapes more clearly that she realized they were ships. It took several moments more before she understood that this was the autarch’s fleet, hundreds upon hundreds of warships—thousands, perhaps, a snowstorm of white sailcloth bearing down upon Hierosol out of the fog.
