(Shadowmarch #2) Shadowplay

by Tad Williams

  “Oh, thank the Great Mother!” this old woman said when she saw them all, then leaned against the wall, gasping hoarsely for breath. “I…I…was frightened I wouldn’t…find you.” She looked at Pelaya, surprised. “Your Ladyship. Forgive me.”

  Pelaya just barely nodded a greeting, irritated by yet another interruption. Eril was right—they needed to get back to Landsman’s Market.

  “What is it, Losa?” asked the round-faced girl, Yazi.

  “The boy who can’t talk, the little brother! He is up in the counting house tower and very…” She waved her hands, trying to find the words. “Angry, sad, I don’t know. He won’t come down.”

  “Pigeon?” Qinnitan sat forward. “He not…hurt?”

  “I don’t think hurt, no,” said Losa. “He is just hiding in that tower, the old broken one near the seawall. I think the…cannons? I think the cannons scare him. He wants his sister.”

  “We’ll come, too,” said Yazi. “He likes me.”

  “No!” said Losa. “He is very scared, the boy. He almost falls when I come. Up very high. If he sees people he doesn’t know so well…” She shook her head, unable or unwilling to come up with the words for such a dire prospect. “Just his sister.”

  The dark-haired laundry girl did not appear to grasp everything said, but she smiled—it did little to hide the anxiousness in her face—and said something in her own tongue to the girl Yazi. For a moment Pelaya wondered if she should go with them to help—Olin had taken an interest in this girl, after all—but she could think of too many reasons why she should not let herself get further involved.

  After the old, scarred woman had led the brown-haired girl out, Pelaya began to move toward the front of Kossope House. “It’s good she’s found her brother,” she said, smiling at the other laundry women. “Family is so important. Now I must go back to mine. May the gods protect you all.”

  The faces of the servants turned toward her as she reached the door. They watched her, silent as cats.

  “I’m sure everything will be well,” Pelaya called to them, then had to hurry to catch up with Eril, who was already striding off in a determined way in the general direction of Landsman’s Market.

  Old Losa led Qinnitan across the courtyard into a section of the palace deserted days earlier by the clerks who had worked there. It was strange to move freely through rooms she had only tiptoed through before, terrified she might break someone’s concentration and earn a whipping.

  “Why would he run away like this?” Qinnitan asked, falling back into Xixian now that the young noblewoman and her servant had been left behind. “And how did you happen to find him?”

  The old woman spread her palms. “I think the cannons frightened him, poor little lad. I heard him calling and found him where he was hiding, but he wouldn’t come with me.”

  “Calling?” Qinnitan said, suddenly fearful again. “But he can’t speak. Are you sure it was him? My Pigeon?”

  Losa shook her head in disgust. “There you go. I don’t know whether I’m coming or going, all this has me in such a muddle. I heard him crying—moaning, that’s the word I meant. Here, go down this passage.”

  “But you said he was in the old countinghouse tower—isn’t it that way?”

  “You see? I can’t think straight at all.” Losa pointed a dirty finger at the low bulk of the almshouse where it hugged the inside of the seawall, the arched doorway of its single squat tower showing dark among the vines like a missing tooth in a bearded mouth. “Not the countinghouse tower but the almshouse tower, the old almshouse. There. He’s there, I promise you.”

  Losa guided her into the shadowed antechamber of the building, which had been abandoned and all its poor relocated a few years before the siege. The mosaics on the floor were chipped and scratched so that other than the hammer-shaped object in one’s hands, it was impossible to tell which of the Trigon brothers was which. Qinnitan suddenly had the awful feeling that the old woman had tricked her for some reason, but then she saw Pigeon staring back at her from the shadows of the stairwell with his eyes wide. Her heart seemed to swell and grow light again. She rushed toward him but he did not move, although she saw his jaw pumping as though he would have much to say if given his tongue back.

  “Pigeon?” Something was wrong, or at least odd: she couldn’t see his arms. As she moved closer she saw that they were behind him, as though he had something hidden for her there. A few more steps and she could see that they were tied at the wrists, and the cord looped through the latch of the heavy stairwell door. She reached him, felt him trembling with terror beneath her hands, and turned toward Losa. “What…?”

  The old woman was pulling off her face.

  As Qinnitan stared in terror, Losa scraped the skin off her cheeks, peeling it away in long, knubbled strips. She had straightened up, and now seemed a head taller and a great deal more solid. She wasn’t old. She wasn’t even a woman.

  Qinnitan was so shocked that she lost control of her bladder; a trickle of urine ran down her legs. “Who…what…?”

  “Who doesn’t matter,” the man said in perfect Xixian. Underneath the waxy remnants of false flesh his skin was nearly as pale as King Olin’s had been, but unlike Olin, this man had not a flicker of kindness in his eyes, nor a flicker of anything else: for all the expression he wore, his face might have been carved on a statue. “The autarch sent me.” He straightened up, shredding the shapeless dress he had worn to reveal man’s clothing beneath. “Don’t scream or I’ll slit the child’s throat. By the way, if you decide to sacrifice the boy and make a run for it, you should know that I can hit a rabbit with this,”—he lifted his hand and a long, sharp dagger appeared in it like a conjuror’s trick—“from a hundred paces away. I can put it in the back of your knee and you’ll never walk without a crutch, or I can put it between two of your chines and you’ll never walk again at all. But I would prefer not to carry you all the way to the Golden One, so if you do as I ask, you’ll keep your health.” He kicked away the remnants of the dress, then used the knife blade to cut away a sack he had tied to his waist with rags to give him an old woman’s sagging belly.

  Qinnitan wrapped her arms around Pigeon, tried to stop him shivering. “But…” Faced with this empty, emotionless man, she could think of nothing to say. Somehow she had known this day would come—she had only hoped it would take longer than this brief couple of months. “You won’t hurt the boy?”

  “I won’t hurt him if he does nothing stupid. But he is the autarch’s property, so he goes back, too.”

  “He’s not property, he’s a child! He did nothing wrong.”

  The merest hint of a smile stole across the stranger’s cold face, as if he had finally heard something worth his getting out of bed that morning. “Sit down and put your legs out.”

  She started to argue, but he had closed the distance between them in an astonishingly swift step or two, and now stood over her, the knife only inches from her eye. She sat back on the stairs and extended her feet. He put the end of the knife gently against her throat and held it there with his thumb on the other side of her windpipe, then looped a piece of cord around one ankle. When he had tied the other end, a length of the cord about the distance from her wrist to elbow stretched between her two legs, leaving her neatly hobbled. He took a long dress out of the sack—it was something she had seen some of the chambermaids wearing—and dropped it over her head, then yanked her to her feet. When she stood, the hem of the dress almost touched the dusty tiles, hiding the cord completely.

  “Does the boy understand speech?”

  Qinnitan nodded, dully, hopelessly. Even if the others went looking for her, she had just realized, it would be to the countinghouse tower on the other side of the palace grounds.

  The pale man turned to the boy. “If you try to run away, I will cut off her nose, do you understand? The autarch won’t care.”

  Pigeon looked at the man with narrowed eyes. If he was a dog, he would have growled, or more likely, simply bit wi
thout making a noise. At last he nodded.

  “Well, come along then.” The man landed a single kick that made the boy whimper wordlessly and scramble awkwardly onto his feet so his bonds could be cut. Pigeon rubbed his wrists, unable to look at Qinnitan for the shame of having been part of her capture. “No tricks,” the man said. “It would waste time if I have to kill or cripple either of you, but it wouldn’t change anything important. Move along now.” He pointed to the doorway. “We don’t want to keep your master waiting. He’s much less patient than I am, and much less kind.”

  Qinnitan stepped out into the light of the deserted courtyard, the cord chafing her ankles at each constrained step. She was too shocked and empty even to cry. The space of a few heartbeats had changed everything. Only a few dozen yards away in Kossope House she had friends, a life, all the things she had wanted so badly, but they were all lost now. Instead, she belonged to that madman again—the terrifying, utterly heartless Living God on Earth.

  39

  City of the Red Sun

  So Habbili, son of Nushash, found himself alone in the world after he had been crippled by cruel Argal. He took himself on a journey into the far west, my children, of which only legends speak and where men have never traveled. There it is said he spoke with his father at one end of Nushash’s mighty voyage, and afterward returned to the lands we know.

  To his lordly father he said that one day he would throw down the children of Mother Shusayem, and so he did.

  —from The Revelations of Nushash, Book One

  FOR A LONG TIME THE MAN wandered without a name through a forest of black poplar trees and tall cypresses that swayed in an unfelt, unheard wind. A dark stream wandered near the path, but its course veered away and vanished into the mists again as he went forward. Willows curtained it, drooping and shivering like crying women, their branches dangling just above the silent waters.

  The man had no strength to wonder where he was, or how he had come to this land of mist and shadow. For a long time he could think of nothing to do but walk. The sun was utterly absent, the sky a gleaming emptiness that was neither dark nor light. He thought that he had been in such a place before, a country of perpetual evening, but he also felt certain he had never been in this gloomy country. The only other thing he knew was a quiet fear that if he did not keep moving he would become as still and hopeless as the black poplars that surrounded him—might even sink into the muddy, squelching soil and become one of the trees himself.

  The man wished someone were with him, a voice to sing, or speak, or even weep, anything that would pierce the unending stillness. He tried to do it himself but he had lost the knack of making words and noises just as he had lost his name. It was very quiet in this country. A few black birds walked on the branches above his head, or fluttered from tree to tree, but they were as silent as the trees and the wind and the water.

  He walked on.

  He had been seeing moving shadows on the far side of the stream for some time, misty figures with the shapes of men and women. Now he saw something else on that far shore which made him pause in wonderment, but he was still uncertain. He wished again he had a voice so he could ask for help from those shadow-folk, for he could see no way to cross the water, and although it seemed to move slowly he did not trust its opaque quiet.

  But what do I have to lose even if the water swallows me? He had no immediate answer, but he felt that somehow he did possess something, a truth of some kind he did not wish to surrender, but which the waters of the stream might wash away.

  How can I cross, then?

  You cannot. Or if you do, you will never return from that other shore.

  A small, naked child of three or four years old stood beside him, her pale hair fluttering slowly. His first thought was to feel sorry for her, so tiny and so unprotected from the wind. Then he looked into those eyes like molten gold flecked with particles of amber and knew she was no child, or at least no mortal child.

  Who are you? he asked.

  Her voice was not that of a child either, or at least not of one as small as she appeared. Each word was as measured and golden as her gaze. One who remains after the others have gone. One of the elder guardians of this place—no, “guardians” is not correct. “Guides” would be better. And clearly you need guidance, little lost one.

  But I want to cross the river. I need to. I…I think I see someone there that I know.

  All the more reason to fear it. That is the way most of your kind lose their way in our land, by following someone they know, or think they know. You are not ready. Your time comes soon—all your kind are only a blink away at most—but it has not come yet.

  He did not know what any of this meant. How could he, when he did not even know his own name? But that did not change the things he felt, the pull of the farther side.

  Please. He reached out then, tried to take the child’s hand, but it was as though she stood at the bottom of a stream that bent the light deceptively. Wherever he reached, she was not there. Please. I never told him…I did not…

  Her face at first was tranquil as a marble mask, but it changed as something like pity stole across it. Then you take it upon yourself, she said at last. It is only because you have come here by mischance that it is even possible. You may cross—you may see both how things are and how things were—but you will have to be lucky as well as strong to cross the dark water a second time and come out again.

  He lowered his head, humbled by his greed for something he could not even name, could not quite understand. You are kind.

  Kindness is not part of these laws, especially once you are beyond my hand. The child-face was solemn. There, rules are like the paths of the stars through the great vault, fixed and remorseless. You must not eat any food or accept any gift. And you must not forget your name.

  But…but I can’t remember it. He looked around at the endless grove of poplars, the trunks marching away in all directions. It seemed his name was almost within reach but he still could not summon it no matter how he tried.

  The child shook her head. Already? Then you are all the more a fool for taking such a risk. Only the strongest hearts can enter the city and yet live. She lifted her tiny, pale arm and a boat slid up to the bank, a thing of rusty nails and gray, weathered boards. Very well, this is the last thing I can do. I do it in memory of one like you, long ago, who also put his life in my hands. Your name is Ferras Vansen. You are a living man. Now go.

  And in the next moment he was upon the river. Both banks had disappeared and there was nothing but mist everywhere.

  He was a long time on the black water. Vast shapes moved just below the surface, and sometimes the boat rocked as they passed beneath it; once or twice the things even broke water and he could see their wet hides, black and shiny as polished metal. They did not touch him or threaten him in any way, but he was very glad he was in a boat and not floundering in the dark, cold current with those huge shapes swimming beneath him, drawn to his warmth and movement.

  Ferras Vansen. That is my name, he reminded himself—here on the river he could almost feel it slipping away again as the mists streamed past. It had seemed so clear when the child said it, so true, and yet he knew he could lose it again as easily he had forgotten it in the forest of black trees.

  How did I come to these lands? But that memory was even more lost than his name had been. He knew only that the child had said he did not come the way most men came—mischance, she had named it—and that was enough, somehow, to comfort him.

  Something felt strange beneath his hands, under his feet. He looked down and saw that the boat was no longer made of gray wood, but of snakes—hundreds of dully shining shapes woven together like the twig mats old women made so their husbands and sons and grandsons could wipe the mud of the fields off their boots. But these were not twigs, they were serpents, alive and writhing. He lifted his feet and hands but it was no good: the entire boat was made of snakes and there was nowhere to go to escape them.

  Even as he
stared in horrified surprise, the snake-boat began to unravel, those at the top and along the rails slithering free of their weave and dropping like heavy ropes into the dark, quiet water. They kept peeling away, first in ones and twos and then more swiftly, until the water was coming in on all sides and he rode on nothing more solid than a blanket of cold, thrashing shapes.

  He looked up, staring helplessly into the mists ahead in search of the far bank, a stone in the river, anything that might save him. The snakes fell away. The boat fell away. He tried to remember the names of the gods so he could pray but even those had been taken from him.

  Vansen. I am Ferras Vansen. I am a soldier. I love a woman who does not love me, and could not if she would. I am Ferras Vansen!

  And then he tumbled into the cold swells and swallowed all the blackness.

  He was not in the river or on the shore, but in a twilight street. The lamps had been lit above the cobbles. They burned as fitfully as witchfire, glowing without much illuminating the ramshackle houses. It was not yet full dark but the streets seemed utterly empty.

  What place is this? He thought he wondered silently, but someone heard him.

  It is the City of the Sleepers. The voice of the girl-child who had given him back his name was faint, as if she stood on the far side of the river he could no longer see. There is only one way through, Ferras Vansen, and that is always forward. Remember…!

  And that was the last he heard of her. After that he could scarcely even recall how she looked, how she sounded. He stepped forward and his footsteps made no sound, though he could hear the noise of water dripping and a quiet wind rustling and whispering along the rooftops.

  Most of the windows were dark, but a few were lit. When he looked inside he saw people. They were all asleep, even those who stood or moved about, their eyes closed, their movements slow and aimless. Some merely sat on stools or chairs or leaned against the walls of their drab, dusty chambers, motionless as stones or swaying like blind beggars. Some tried to stir pots under which no flame burned. Others tended children who lay like cloth dolls, limbs a-flop as their sleeping parents dressed or undressed them, small heads lolling, mouths gaping while their parents fed them with empty spoons.