(Shadowmarch #2) Shadowplay

by Tad Williams

  Doing good, Pelaya told herself, and then remembered the Zorian injunction against self-importance. Trying to do good.

  The rag had slipped from his mouth down to his chin and the dust was getting in again. Count Perivos spit out a mouthful of grit and then pulled the cloth back into place, but he had to lay down his shovel to tie it. He cursed through ash and dirt. When you had forty pentecounts of men at your disposal, you didn’t expect to be wielding a tool yourself.

  “Smoke!” the lookout shouted.

  “Down, down!” Perivos Akuanis bellowed as he threw himself to the ground, but there was little need: most of the men were down before him, bellies and faces pressed against the earth. The terrible moment was on them, the long instant of whistling near-silence. Then the massive cannonball hit the citadel wall with a bone-rattling crunch that shook the ground and smashed more stone loose from the wall’s inner side.

  After waiting a few moments to be certain the debris had stopped flying, Count Perivos opened his eyes. A new cloud of stone dust hung in the air and had coated everything on the ground; as the count and his workmen began to clamber to their feet he could not help thinking they looked like some sort of ghastly mass rising of the recent dead.

  One of his master masons was already on his way back from examining the wall, which had been pounded over these last days by a hundred mighty stone cannonballs or more.

  “She’ll take a few more, Kurs, but not many,” the man reported. “We’ll be lucky if it’s still standing tomorrow.”

  “Then we must finish this wall today.” The count turned and shouted for the foreman, Irinnis. “What do we have left to do?” he demanded when the man staggered up. “The outwall can only take a few more shots from those monstrous bombards of theirs.” Count Perivos had learned to trust Irinnis, a small, sweaty man from Krace with an excellent head for organization, who had fought—or at least built—for generals on both continents.

  Scratching his sagging chin, Irinnis looked around the courtyard—one of the citadel’s finest parks only a tennight ago, now a wreckage of gouged soil and broken stone. The replacement wall being built in a bowl-shaped curve behind the battered outwall was all but finished. “I’d like the time to paint it, Kurs,” he said, squinting.

  “Paint it?” Akuanis leaned toward him, uncertain he had heard correctly: his ears were still ringing from the impact of the last thousandweight of stone cannonball. “You didn’t say ‘paint it,’ did you? While the whole citadel is coming down around our ears?”

  Irinnis frowned—not the frown of someone taking offense, but more the face of an engineer astonished to discover that civilians, even those gifted and experienced in warfare like Count Perivos, could not understand plain Hierosoline speech. “Of course, Lord, paint it with ashes or black mud. So the Xixies will not see it.”

  “So that…” Perivos Akuanis shook his head. All across the park the men who had not been injured in the last blast, and even those whose injuries were only minor, were scrambling back to work. “I confess, you have lost me.”

  “What good are our arrow slits, Kurs,” said Irinnis, pointing to the shooting positions built into the curving sides of the new wall, “if the autarch’s landing force does not try to come through the breach their cannon has made? And if they see the new wall too quickly, they will not come through the breach and die like proper Xixian dogs.”

  “Ah. So we paint…”

  “Just splash on a little mud if that’s all we can find—something dark. Throw a little dirt onto it at the bottom. Then they will not see the trap until we’ve feathered half of the dog-eating bastards…”

  The foreman’s cheerful recitation was interrupted by the sudden appearance of Count Perivos’ factor, who had been overseeing the evacuation of the palace, but now came running across the yard as if pursued by sawtooth cats. “Kurs!” he shouted. “The lord protector has given the foreign king to the Xixians!”

  It took Perivos Akuanis a moment to make sense of that. “King Olin, do you mean? Are you saying that Ludis has given Olin of Southmarch to the autarch? How can that be?”

  His factor had to pause for a moment, hands on knees, to catch his breath. “As to how, my lord, I couldn’t say, but Drakava’s Rams came for him before I could finish moving him and the other prisoners, Kurs. I’m sorry. I’ve failed you.”

  “No, the fault is not yours.” Akuanis shook his head. “But why are you sure they meant to take Olin to the autarch and not just to Ludis?”

  “Because the chief of the Rams had a warrant, with the lord protector’s seal on it. It said precisely what they were to do with him—take him from his cell and take him to the Nektarian harbor seagate where he would be given to the Xixians in return for ‘such considerations as have been agreed upon,’ or something like.”

  Count Perivos smelled something distinctly unsavory. Why would Ludis trade such a valuable pawn as Olin, unless it were to end the siege? But Sulepis would surely never give up the siege for the single lowly prize of a foreign king, especially the master of a small kingdom like Olin’s, which hadn’t even managed to ransom him from Ludis after nearly a year. None of it made sense.

  Still, there was no good to be gained wasting time trying to understand it. Count Perivos handed his sheaf of plans to the factor, then turned to the foreman. “Irinnis, keep the men working hard—that outwall won’t last the night. And don’t forget that the wall near the Fountain Gate needs shoring up, too—half of it came down.”

  The count hurried away across the wreckage of what had once been Empress Thallo’s Garden, a haven for quiet thought and sweet birdsong for hundreds of years. Now with every other step he had to dodge around outcrops of shattered stone knocked loose from the gate or smoking gorges clawed into the earth by cannonballs: the place looked like something that the death-god Kernios had ground beneath his heel.

  With twenty full pentecounts of the city’s fiercest fighters surrounding his temporary headquarters in the pillared marble Treasury Hall, it would have been reasonable to suspect that Ludis Drakava, Lord Protector of Hierosol, feared an uprising from his own people more than he feared the massive army of the autarch outside his city walls.

  Perivos Akuanis looked bitterly at the huge encampment as he walked swiftly between the rows of soldiers. We have nearly had two breakthroughs along the northern wall since the last sunrise. Neither of them would have happened if these men hadn’t been held back—a thousand out of the seven or eight thousand trained soldiers in the entire city, all they had to counter the autarch’s quarter of a million. The Council of the Twenty-Seven Families had surrendered the throne to Ludis so that a strong man would stand against the Autarch of Xis, whatever the loss of their own power, but it was beginning to look as though they would have neither.

  If the outside looked like a fortress, the inside of the treasury looked more like the great temple of the Three Brothers: half a dozen black-robed, long-bearded Trigonate priests surrounded the transplanted Jade Chair like roosting crows, and like crows they seemed more interested in hopping and squawking than doing anything useful. Count Perivos, who had never liked or trusted Ludis, had lately come to loathe Hierosol’s lord protector with a fierce, hot anger unlike any he had ever felt. He hated Ludis even more than he hated the Autarch of Xis, because Sulepis was only a name, but he had to stare into Ludis Drakava’s square, heavy-browed face every single day and swallow bile.

  The lord protector stood, flapping his arms at the priests as though they truly were crows. “Get out, you screeching old women! And tell your hierarch that if he wants to talk to me he can come himself, but I will use the temples as I see fit. We are at war!”

  The Trigonate minions seemed unwilling to depart even after so clear an order, but none of them was above the rank of deacon. Grumbling and pulling at their whiskers, they migrated toward the door. Scowling, Ludis dropped back onto the throne. He caught sight of Count Perivos. “I suppose I should count my blessings the Trigonarch was kidnapped by the Syannese
all those years ago,” Ludis growled, “or I’d have him whining at me, too.” He narrowed his eyes. “And what kind of stinking news do you bring, Akuanis?”

  “I think you know about what brings me, although it was fresh to me only a half-hour gone. What is this I hear about Olin Eddon?”

  Ludis put on the innocent look of a child—particularly bizarre on a brawny, bearded man covered with scars. “What do you hear?”

  “Please, Lord Protector, do not treat me as a fool. Are you telling me that nothing unusual has happened to King Olin? That he has not been hustled out of his cell? I am told he is being traded to the autarch for…something. I do not know what.”

  “No, you don’t know. And I won’t tell you.” The lord protector crossed his heavy arms on his chest and glowered.

  There was something wrong with the way Ludis was behaving. Drakava was a surprisingly complex man, but Akuanis had never seen him show the least remorse for anything he’d done, let alone act like this—childishly petulant, as though expecting to be scolded and punished. This from the man who had declared an innocent priest (who also happened to have the only legitimate claim to the Hierosoline throne) a warlock and had him dragged from his temple and pulled apart by horses? Why should Ludis Drakava have become squeamish now?

  “So it’s true, then. Is there time to stop it? Where is King Olin now?”

  Ludis looked up, actually surprised. “By Hiliometes’ beard, why should we stop it? What can a milk-skinned northerner like that mean to you?”

  “He is a king! Not to mention that he is an honorable man. Pity I cannot say the same of Hierosol’s ruler.”

  Ludis stared at him malevolently. Count Perivos was suddenly aware of the fact that he was surrounded by troops who owed him no personal loyalty, but who received their pay in the lord protector’s name each month. “You climb far out on a thin branch,” Ludis said at last.

  “But what do you gain by this? Why give an innocent man over to the cruelties of that…that monster, Sulepis?”

  Ludis laughed harshly but turned away, as though still not entirely comfortable meeting the count’s eyes. “Who wears the crown here, Akuanis? Your reputation as a siege engineer gives you no right to question me. I protect what I must protect…”

  He broke off at the sound of shouting. A soldier wearing the crest of the Esterian Home Guard shoved his way through Drakava’s Golden Enomote and threw himself down on the mosaic in front of the throne. “Lord Protector,” he cried, “the Xixies have come over the wall below Fountain Gate! We’re holding them in the temple yard at the foot of Citadel Hill, but we have only a small troop and won’t be able to hold them long. Lord Kelofas begs you to send help.”

  Akuanis strode forward, all thoughts of Olin Eddon blasted from his mind. The temple yard was only a couple of miles from the townhouse where his wife and children waited in what they thought was safety—they and thousands more innocents would be overrun in a matter of hours if the Fountain Gate defenses collapsed. “Give me some of these men,” he demanded. “Let me go and hit Sulepis in the teeth now—this moment! You have a thousand around this building, but they will be like straws in a gale if we don’t keep the autarch out.”

  For a moment Drakava hesitated, but then an odd look stole across his face. “Yes, take them,” he said. “Leave me two pentecounts to defend the treasury and the throne.”

  After all the harsh words, Count Perivos was astonished that the lord protector would give up his troops so easily, but he had no time to wonder. He dropped to his knee and touched his head to the floor—bowing not to Ludis, he told himself, but to all the Hierosoline kings and queens, emperors and empresses, who had sat on the great green throne before him—then rose and hurried off to the taksiarch of the men encamped around the treasury. He could only pray that the engineers and workers he had left behind in the Empress Gardens had almost finished the wall, or holding the wall at Fountain Gate would mean nothing.

  “Make us proud, Count Perivos,” shouted Ludis as Akuanis and the taksiarch got the men into fast-march formation. The lord protector almost sounded as though he were enjoying some theatrical spectacle. “All of Hierosol will be watching you!”

  Eril was so furious with his young mistress that at first he wouldn’t even speak to her, but only followed with his sword nearly dragging in the dust as they set out from the Sivedan temple toward the Citadel Hill. As they climbed upward on the spiraling road, breasting a great tide of folk hurrying the opposite way, he finally found his tongue.

  “You have no right to do this, Kuraion! We will be killed. Just because I am a servant doesn’t mean I should die for nothing.”

  She was surprised by his vehemence and his selfishness. “I couldn’t do it unless someone came with me.” That seemed obvious to her and it should have to him as well, now that he’d been given time to digest it. What did he want, an apology? “The poor king needs our help—he’s a king, Eril.”

  The servant gave her a look that in different circumstances she would have reported to her mother. Pelaya was shocked—old Eril, silly old Eril, acting as though he hated her!

  “Anyway,” she said, a little flustered. “It won’t take long. We’ll be back before supper. And you’ll be able to tell the gods you did a good deed when you say your prayers tonight.”

  Judging by the noise he made in reply, Eril did not seem to find much consolation in the thought.

  Although there were still many people on the grounds of the palace and in the stronghold, mostly servants and soldiers, it quickly became clear to Pelaya that Olin Eddon wasn’t one of them. His cell was empty, the door standing open.

  “But where is he?” she asked. She had come so far and taken so many risks for nothing!

  “Gone, Mistress,” said one of the soldiers who had gathered to watch this unusual performance. “The lord protector had him moved somewhere.”

  “Where? Tell me, please!” She brandished her forged letter. “My father is Count Perivos!”

  “We know, Mistress,” said the soldier. “But we still can’t tell you because we don’t know. The lord protector’s Rams took him somewhere. You’ll have to find out from him.”

  “You talk too much,” another soldier told him. “She shouldn’t be here—it’s dangerous. Can you imagine anything happens? It’ll be our heads on the block, won’t it?”

  She led Eril out of the stronghold and across Echoing Mall toward Kossope House, ignoring his complaints. If the servants were still in their dormitories, especially the dark-haired laundry girl, perhaps they’d know where Olin was. Servants, Pelaya had discovered, usually knew everything important that happened in a great house.

  As the echoes of distant cannon echoed along the colonnade, Pelaya saw that whether the laundry women were here or not, many other servants had remained, although they did not look very happy. In fact, many of them seemed to glare at her as though it were somehow her fault they’d been left behind. She was glad Eril had his sword. Pelaya could almost imagine these abandoned servants, if left here long enough, turning entirely wild, like the dogs that roamed the city midden heaps and cemeteries after dark.

  “The one I want to talk to is in here,” Pelaya said, pointing toward the large building on the far side of the palace complex. “Poor thing, she has such a long way to walk each day.”

  Eril muttered something but Pelaya could not make it out.

  When they reached the dormitory they found that the residents were guarding it themselves: three strong-looking young women with laundry-poles stood before the door, and they gave Eril a very stern look before letting him accompany Pelaya inside.

  To her delight and relief they found the laundry girl almost immediately, sitting morosely on her bed as though waiting for a cannonball to crash through the roof and kill her. To Pelaya’s shock, the dark-haired girl not only wasn’t pleased to have a highborn visitor, she seemed frightened of Eril.

  “Follows me!” she said, pointing. “He follows!”

  Eril scowled
. “She never saw me, Kuraion. I’m sure she didn’t. Someone told her.”

  “He followed you because I needed to know where you lived,” Pelaya said gently. “He’s my servant. I had to find you quietly, when King Olin wanted to speak to you. Now, where is Olin? Do you know? He’s been taken out of the stronghold.”

  The girl looked at her in blank misery, as if Olin’s whereabouts were of no particular interest compared to her own problems, whatever those might be. Pelaya scowled. How could she converse usefully with a laundry maid who could barely speak her language? “I need to find him. Find him. I’m looking for him.”

  The girl’s face changed—something like hope flowered. “Help find?”

  “Yes!” Finally, sense had been made. “Yes, help find.”

  The girl jumped up and took Pelaya’s hand, shocking the count’s daughter more than a little, but before she could protest she was being dragged across the dormitory. It was not Olin that the brown-haired girl led Pelaya to, but another laundrywoman, a friendly, round-featured girl named Yazi who seemed meant to translate. The new girl’s command of Hierosoline was not much better, but after many stops and starts it finally became clear that the brown-haired girl hadn’t agreed to help find Olin, she herself wanted help finding her mute brother, who had been missing since the middle of the night.

  “He not go,” she said over and over, but clearly he had.

  “No, we have to find Olin, King Olin,” Pelaya told her. “I’ll ask my father to send someone to help you find your brother.”

  The Xandian girl looked shocked, as though she could not have imagined anyone would say no to her request.

  “Haven’t we had enough of this, Kuraion?” said Eril. “You have dragged me across the city for nothing, risking both our lives. Are we now going to have to search for a runaway child as well?”

  “No, of course not, but…” Before Pelaya could finish, someone else joined the small crowd of women that had gathered around the brown-haired girl and her round friend. This new arrival was considerably older than the others, her face disfigured by what looked like a bad burn.