(Shadowmarch #2) Shadowplay

by Tad Williams

  Treason. As he raised his voice to begin the last stanzas, Tinwright felt cold sweat prickle his forehead again. Let Zosim, god of poets, stand beside him now! Why was he worrying about something as far away as a treason trial? He was planning to do something tonight that could get him beheaded without any trial at all!

  He faltered for a moment, just as Perin was about to throw down his cruel, drunken father. Ordinarily Tinwright didn’t think much about the actual gods except as almost inexhaustible subjects for poetry, but there were moments like this when his childhood terror of them came sweeping back, moments when he stood again in their long cold shadow and knew that someday he must face their judgment.

  “Great Sveros, Twilight Lord, roared in his rage,

  ‘How, shall sons spit into their father’s face?

  My curse shall rain like blood on all this age

  And pursue each whelp of my cursed race

  Until Time doth all who now live erase.’

  They bound him then in chains Kernios made

  And cast him into dusky vaults of space

  To drift unfleshed in sempiternal shade

  ’Til thought and feeling both should frameless fade…”

  His legs shaky, as much from misgiving as from being so long on his feet, he spoke the final lines and Puzzle gave a last flourish on the lute. Tinwright bowed. As the courtiers lazily followed Hendon Tolly’s lead, applauding and calling a few words of praise, Elan M’Cory rose from her seat beside the guardian of Southmarch and made to go. For a moment Tinwright caught a flick of her eyes beneath the veil, then Hendon Tolly extended a hand and stopped her.

  “But where are you off to, dear sister-in-law? The poet has labored hard to deliver this work to us. Surely you have a few words of praise for him.”

  “Let her go,” growled Caradon Tolly. “Let them all go. You and I have things to talk about, brother.”

  “But our poor poet, swooning for want of kind words from fair ladies…” prompted Hendon, grinning.

  Elan swayed, and Tinwright had a sudden terror she would crumple, that she would faint and be surrounded by lady’s maids, the physician would be called, and all Tinwright’s careful plans to free her from her misery would be upset. “Of course, my dear brother-in-law,” she said wearily. “I extend my praise and gratitude to the poet. It is always instructive to hear of the lives of the gods, that we mortals can learn to comport ourselves properly.” She gave a half a courtesy, then reached out a trembling hand, letting one of her maids support her arm as she made her way slowly out of the room. The murmur of conversation, which had dropped almost to silence, now rose again.

  “Thank all the gods my wife is not such a frail flower,” Caradon said with his lip curled. “Little Elan has always been the doleful one of that family.”

  Hendon Tolly beckoned Tinwright forward. He produced a bag that clinked and put it in Tinwright’s hands.

  “Thank you, Lord Tolly.” He tucked it away quickly, without testing the weight—to receive anything other than a blow from this man was a gift in itself. “You are too kind. I am glad my words…”

  “Yes, yes. It amused me, and there is little that does so these days. Did you see old Brone squirming when you spoke the part about ‘Ever must the blood of tyrants water That free and sovereign soil of our fair honor’? It was very funny.”

  “I…I didn’t notice, my lord.”

  Tolly shrugged. “Still, it is like spearing fish in a soup bowl. I miss the Syannese court. They are sharp as daggers, there. A good jest is appreciated. Not like here, or in my family’s house, which is like dining with the local deacon in some Helmingsea village.”

  “Enough, Hendon,” said Caradon sharply. “Send this warbling phebe away—we have men’s talk to talk and your childish festivities have wasted enough of my time.”

  Tinwright thought the look Hendon gave his brother the duke was one of the strangest he had ever seen, a combination of amusement and deadly loathing. “By all means, elder brother. You may withdraw, poet.”

  Tinwright, sickened, could tell that Hendon planned to murder his brother someday. He had also seen in that same moment that Caradon himself knew it very well, and that the duke probably planned the same for his younger brother. The two of them scarcely bothered to conceal their feelings, even in front of a stranger. How could one family breed such hatred? No wonder Elan wanted to escape them into death.

  “Of course,” Tinwright said as he quickly backed away. “Going now. Thank you, my lords.”

  He at least had the small satisfaction of seeing that Erlon Meaher, another court poet who thought much of himself, had been watching his conversation with the two Tollys. Meaher’s face was twisted in an unhidden grimace of envy and dislike.

  “Get yourself some wine, Tinwright,” Hendon Tolly called after him. “I’m sure reciting poetry is almost as thirsty work as killing—if not quite as enjoyable.”

  It was the hardest hour of waiting he had ever experienced. He knocked on her door while the bells were still chiming the end of evening prayers.

  Elan M’Cory opened it herself, shrouded in a heavy black robe. She had sent away her servants to protect him, Tinwright realized, and he was surprised again by the intensity of feeling she aroused in him.

  It was a touch of lover’s madness, surely—the very thing he had written about so many times. He had always felt secretly superior to the sort of lovesick people found in poems, almost contemptuous, but in these last days, as he had come to realize that he could not sleep, eat, drink, stand, sit, or talk without thinking about Elan M’Cory, matters had begun to seem very different. For one thing, although he had alluded in many a poem to the “happy pain” or even the “sweet agony” of love, he had not understood that the agony could be worse than any other sort of agony—worse than any actual pain of the limbs or organs, worse even than the way his head felt after a night out with Hewney and Teodoros, which he had previously thought could not be outdone for misery. And there was no way to separate a wounded heart from the body it tormented—no way except death.

  He was terrified to realize he now understood Elan’s pain very well, although hers had quite a different cause.

  He reached out to take her hand but she would not let him. “Let me beg you one last time, my lady—please do not do this.” He felt oddly flat. He knew what her response would be, and in fact, he could think of no other way forward at this point except to let the grim machinery turn, but he had to say it.

  “You have been a loyal, kind friend, Matt, and I wish nothing more than it could be another way, but there is no escape for me. Hendon will never loose his claws. He savors my pain too much, and he would kill you in an instant if he thought I cared for you. I could not bear that.” She hung her head. “Soon Queen Anissa will be his, too, if she is not already—he pays court to her as though she were already widowed. Nobody knows the depths of that man’s evil.” Elan took a deep breath, then undid the tie of her robe and threw it off, revealing a brilliant blaze that startled him like lightning. She was dressed all in white, like a bride or a phantom.

  “Do you have it?” she said. She was anxious, but happy, too, like a woman on her wedding day. “Do you have that which will save me, sweet Matty?”

  He swallowed. “I do.” He reached into his pocket and found the swaddled flask. He had replaced the kelp leaf in which it had been wrapped with a square of velvet he had stolen from Puzzle, but it still smelled of the sea.

  She wrinkled her nose. “What is it?”

  “It does not matter. It is what you wished, my lady. My Elan.” He himself was as fretful as the most callow bridegroom. She looked so beautiful in her white nightgown, even though he could scarcely see her through his tears. “I will administer it for you. I will hold your head.”

  She had been staring at the tiny flask with horrified fascination, but now she looked up, confused. “Why?”

  He had not thought about this, and for a moment he was flustered. “So that it does not stain y
our gown, my lady. So your beauty is not…is not spoiled…” He gasped, a sob stuck in his gorge that was so big he feared he would not breathe again.

  “Bless you, Matt, you are so sweet to me. I know I am…I know I am not fit for you or any other gods-fearing man…but…but you may love me, if you wish.” She saw that he did not understand. “Make love to me. It will make no difference where I’m bound, and it would be sweet to have such love from you before…before…” A single tear rolled down her cheek, but she smiled and wiped it away. She was the bravest thing Tinwright had ever seen.

  His heart squeezed him. “I cannot, Lady. Oh, gods, my beloved Elan! I would like nothing…have thought of…I…” He paused and wiped his forehead, sweaty despite the evening chill. “I cannot. Not this way.” He swallowed. “I hope one day you will understand why and forgive me.”

  She shook her head, her smile so sadly sweet it was like a knife in his chest. “You do not have to explain, dear Matthias. It was selfish of me. I had only hoped…”

  “You will never know the depth of my feelings, Elan. Please. Let’s not speak of it anymore. It is too hard.” He squinted, wiped fiercely at his eyes. “Just…let me hold your head. Here, lie against me.” As she nestled against him, her back against his belly, her head against his shoulder, he could feel every place she touched him, through both her clothes and his, like a hot nail through a blacksmith’s glove. “Lean back,” he whispered, feeling as though he were a monster worse even than Hendon Tolly. “Lean back. Close your eyes and open your mouth.”

  She shut her eyes. He marveled at her long lashes, which cast shadows on her cheeks in the candlelight. “Oh, but first I must pray!” she said in a small voice. “It is never too late for that, surely? Zoria will hear me, even if she decides to spurn my request. I must try.”

  “Of course,” he said.

  Her lips moved silently for a while. Tinwright stared. “I am done,” she said quietly, her eyes still tight shut.

  He leaned forward then, letting her breath swirl gently against his face, then kissed her. She flinched, expecting something else, then her lips softened and for a moment that seemed like an hour he let himself vanish into the astonishing truth of what he had dreamed so often. At last he pulled back, but not before one of his tears splashed on her cheek. So sweet, so trusting, so sad!

  “Oh, Elan,” he whispered, “forgive me for this—for all of this.”

  She did not speak again, but lay with her mouth open like a child who waited, fearful but bravely patient, for some terrifying physic. He used his sleeve to pull the stopper from the flask, then used the needle ever so carefully to lift a single drop and let it fall into her mouth.

  Elan M’Cory gave a little gasp of surprise, then swallowed. “It does not taste like so much,” she said. “Bitter, but not painfully so.”

  Tinwright could not speak.

  “I could have loved you well,” she said, and a smile played around her lips. “Ah, what a strange sensation! I cannot feel my tongue. I think…”

  She fell silent. Her breath slowed until he could not perceive it any longer.

  One moment Ferras Vansen was there and the next moment the guard captain was gone, tumbled into nothingness without even crying out, torn away so quickly that, like a man whose leg had been blasted off by a cannonball, Barrick Eddon had only perceived the shock but not the loss itself.

  The demigod Jikuyin was bellowing with both his voice and his thoughts, making the air of the cavern shudder and Barrick’s bones throb inside his flesh. “OH! OH, THEY ARE FREE, THE CURSED LITTLE TRICKSTERS!” The giant swung his shaggy head toward Barrick, who crouched panting at the base of the massive doorway, dropped by his guards as they fought Vansen. The demigod’s great eye narrowed and he turned to his lieutenant, the gray man; even the Dreamless seemed to have been caught by surprise. “Ueni’ssoh!” Although he spoke less harshly, the demigod’s words still rattled Barrick’s skull. “Carry on, you bloodless fool!” For the first time, Barrick could hear the actual words Jikuyin spoke, a rumbling, spiky tongue that bore no relation to what he heard in his head. “The gate is still open! Finish the invocation!”

  Ueni’ssoh glided toward him and Barrick stumbled to his feet, but three more guards had fallen in behind the Dreamless, two of them armed with jagged-bladed axes, and he knew it was only a matter of moments until they would have him bleeding like a hung pig all over the threshold of the god’s gate. But his shackles were gone, he realized in wonder: somehow Vansen had struck them off before the darkness took him.

  Down! The warning in his head seemed so close, so powerful, that for an instant he thought it must be the voice of the demigod himself pounding in his skull. Get down! Now!

  Barrick looked around in confusion. Gyir was free of his shackles, too. The fairy-warrior stood on the top of a small rise of stone with half a dozen dead guards sprawled at his feet and something burning brightly in his hand—a flaming skull…?

  If you want to live another moment, boy, the fairy’s voice trumpeted through his thoughts, THEN LIE DOWN!

  Barrick threw himself toward the ground even as Gyir’s arm swept forward and what seemed a tiny comet hurtled across the cavern. For a moment everything seemed to stop—the faces of guards and prisoners lifted and turned like sunflowers as they followed the path of the blazing thing—then a blast of heat and light crashed across the cavern and rolled Barrick violently before dropping him again. He lay in a vibrating silence, unable to get up, as if lightning had struck only a short distance away.

  The rush of ideas into his head was so violent that at first Barrick could make no sense of the demigod’s angry burst of words and thoughts—he felt only a huge hammer of noise pounding at his ears and mind until he felt sure his head would collapse like an eggshell.

  “…HOW DID THAT MONGREL CREATURE, THAT FACELESS SLUG, GET HIS HANDS ON MY PRECIOUS FIREPOWDER…?”

  Stunned and limp, Barrick thought it might be easiest simply to lie here on his back and let the world end, but a small, nagging voice in the back of his mind kept suggesting that perhaps a prince should meet his death sitting up. He rolled over, trying to get his legs under him.

  Another thunderous crack, farther away this time and followed not by ringing silence but by hoarse screams, proved that at least there was still sound and direction and distance. Barrick sat up and brushed something wet off his arm—a rag of bloody skin, but not his own. The rest of the shaggy guard and his two companions, victims of the first of the flaming things Gyir had thrown, were scattered across several yards of cavern floor. Even in such chaos, Barrick was glad the lights were dim: it was madly strange to see things that were so small and yet obviously part of a person who had been alive only moments before.

  Gyir, who had been surrounded by guards and prisoners, now stood alone in a widening circle as creatures scrambled away from him in all directions. The fairy held a dirt-smeared death’s head in each hand, and Barrick wondered what strange magic the faceless warrior had summoned.

  Get up and run, Barrick Eddon. Gyir’s words echoed in his head and he clambered to his feet almost without realizing. I will keep them back as long as my fireballs last.

  Barrick could not frame the words, but Gyir must have sensed his confusion.

  Exploding devices. I had those I could command pack skulls with gun-flour, seal them with mud, and leave them here for me. This way Jikuyin’s victims will get at least a little revenge! Gyir’s thoughts billowed like windblown flame—he was laughing! For the first time Barrick could feel that the fairy had truly been raised in battle, that it was his element in a way it would never be Barrick’s. Now go, while I hold them at bay! Strike for the surface!

  But Vansen…!

  Is gone, likely dead. All that is certain is that he is lost to us now. You must go. Do you yet have the thing I gave you?

  Barrick had forgotten the mirror. His hand crept to his shirt. Yes.

  Think of it no more. Flee! I will do what I can here.

  But y
ou have to come with me…!

  It is more important that at least one of us escapes, Barrick Eddon. Take it to the king in the House of the People. Now go.

  But…!

  “ENOUGH!” The demigod Jikuyin rose up above a screeching herd of prisoners with flames running in their fur or their ragged clothes. The ogre seemed to grow like a ship’s bellying sail until his head threatened to bump the roof of the cavern. “YOU HAVE WASTED ENOUGH OF MY TIME, STORM LANTERN. THE DOOR TO THE EARTHLORD’S HOME IS OPEN. NO LAW, NOT EVEN THE BOOK OF THE FIRE OF THE VOID ITSELF, SAYS I CANNOT SEAL THE CHARM BY SQUEEZING THE BLOOD OUT OF THIS MORTAL CHILD LIKE WATER FROM A BAG OF WHEY!” Jikuyin took a stride toward Barrick, but Gyir bent and lit another muddied skull from the torch by his feet, then straightened and flung the fizzing, sparking ball toward the towering shape. It spat a great gout of fire and hot air as it flared at the giant’s feet and knocked him staggering, but it flung Barrick back onto his knees as well.

  Run, said Gyir in a small, insistent voice, and then he lit two more skulls and flung them at Jikuyin. Before they had even struck, the fairy was running toward the roaring demigod with a spear he must have taken from one of the guards. Then the giant and Gyir both disappeared in the double-crash of light and sound: Barrick could feel the skin on his cheeks blistering in the heat.

  Barrick got up again, dizzy, with head throbbing and eyes blurred by stinging tears. He was almost blind, anyway—the cavern was full of billowing dust. He stumbled toward what he hoped was the way out, stepping over bodies that squirmed slowly, like dying insects. One of the hairy guards, its face nearly burned away, clutched weakly at his shin with charred fingers. Barrick crushed the creature’s skull with his booted foot, then pulled an ax out of its clawed grip, a weapon he could wield with his one good hand. He half climbed, half stumbled up the slope toward the doorway leading out of the great cavern. All the other prisoners and guards who could do so seemed to have fled through it already: nothing blocked his way but corpses and whimpering near-corpses.