by Tad Williams
“Urm,” it said, while most of the legs were still hanging out, kicking in hopeless protest. “Lovely. Us’ll finish the tale later. Spotted a whole nest of ‘these, us has. Taste just like dead mouse ‘fore it bloats too far and bursts. Shall us fetch you one or two?”
“Oh, gods,” groaned Barrick as he turned away in disgust. “Wherever you are, alive or dead or sleeping, please give me strength.”
The raven sniffed at his foolishness. “Praying for strength be not enough. For us to stay strong, us has to eat.”
PART ONE
VEIL
1
The Sham Crown
“As far as I can discover, there is no place upon the two continents or the islands of the sea that is without legends of the fairy folk. But whether they once lived in all these places or their memory was brought to the places by men when they came, no one can say.”
—from “A Treatise on the Fairy Peoples of Eion and Xand”
THE TEMPLE BELL WAS RINGING for midday prayers. Briony felt a clutch of shame—she was already an hour later than she had promised, in large part because of Lord Jino and his shrewd, seemingly endless questions.
“Please, my lord,” she told him as she rose to her feet. “I apologize, but I truly must go to see my friends.” So hard after months of rough living to get the knack of ladylike movement and speech once more—it felt at least as false as any part she’d played for the theater troupe. “I crave your pardon.”
“By friends, you mean the players?” Erasmias Jino cocked a stylishly plucked eyebrow. The Syannese lord looked like a fop, but that was only the Syannese style: Jino was renowned for his shrewdness and had also killed three men in duels decreed by the Court of Honor. “Surely, your Highness, you are not still pretending that such as you could truly be friends with . . . such as those. They enabled you to travel in secrecy—a clever stratagem when traveling through unsafe country on dangerous roads—but the time for that imposture is over.”
“Nevertheless, I must go to see them. It is my duty.” She had to admit that much of what he said was true. She hadn’t treated the players as true friends, but had kept all that was most important about herself a secret. They had opened their lives to her but Briony Eddon had not reciprocated, nor even come close: they had been honest, she had been the opposite.
Well, most of them had been honest. “I understand you have released all except Finn Teodoros. He claimed to bear messages for your king from Lord Brone. I am Avin Brone’s true monarch and he would not have them kept from me, I know. I would like to hear those messages.”
Jino smiled and brushed his fingers through his beard. “Perhaps you will, but that is for my master King Enander to decide, Princess Briony. He will see you later today.” The juxtaposition of titles was no accident: Jino was reminding her that she stood below the Syannese king in precedence, and would have even in her own country—but she was not, most definitely not, in her own country.
Lord Jino rose with a smooth grace most women would have envied. “Come. I will take you to the players now.”
Father gone, Kendrick gone, Barrick . . . She fought to keep the tears that suddenly trembled on her lower lid from running over. Shaso, and now Dawet. All gone, most of them dead—maybe all of them . . . She tried to steady herself before the Syannese official noticed. And now I must say goodbye to Makewell’s Men as well. It was a strange feeling, this loneliness. Always before she had felt it as something temporary, as something that must be endured until her situation improved. For the first time she was beginning to sense that it might not be temporary at all, that she might have to learn live this way, tall and straight as a statue, hard as stone, but hollow inside. All, all hollow . . .
Jino led her across the residence and then through one of Broadhall Palace’s great gardens and into a quiet hallway built along the inside of the palace’s great wall. Such a vast dwelling—the palace alone as large as all of Southmarch, castle and city. And she knew not a soul here, had no one to trust . . .
Allies. I need allies in this strange land.
The Southmarch players were sitting on a bench in a windowless chamber under the eyes of several guards. Most of them already looked frightened; the sight of Briony, confirmed now as their ruler and dressed in expensive clothes Jino had provided for her, did not make them any less so. Estir Makewell, whose last words to Briony had been angry and unpleasant, even blanched and hunched her shoulders as though she expected to be struck. Of all the players on the bench, only young Feival did not look cowed. He eyed her up and down.
“Look at what they’ve got you up in!” he said approvingly. “But stand up straight, girl, and wear it as though you mean it!”
Briony smiled in spite of herself. “I’ve lost the knack, I guess.”
The reprobate Nevin Hewney was eyeing her as well, frowning in wonderment. “By the gods, they told the truth. To think—had I but tried a little harder, I could have knobbed a princess!”
Estir Makewell gasped. Her brother Pedder fell off the bench and two guards lowered their halberds in case this might be the start of some general uprising. “Blessed Zoria save us!” Estir cried hoarsely, staring at the fierce blades. “Hewney, you fool, you will have us all on the headsman’s block!”
Briony could not help being a little amused, but did not feel she could afford to show too much familiarity in front of the guards and Jino. “Be assured that should I take offense,” she said, “it is only Hewney who would pay the price for his ungovernable tongue.” She fixed the playwright with a stern gaze. “And were I to read out the bill of particulars against him I might start with the time he referred to myself and my brother as ‘twin whelps sired by Stupidity on the bitch Privilege.’ Or perhaps the time he referred to my imprisoned father as ‘Ludis Drakava’s royal bum-toy.’ I think either of those would suffice to put the headsman to work.”
Nevin Hewney groaned, a touch too loud to be convincingly repentant—the man was either almost fearless or stupefied by years of drink. “Do you see? ” he demanded of his comrades. “That is what comes of youth and sobriety. Her memory is horrifyingly sharp. What a curse—never to forget even the slightest bit of foolishness. Your Highness, you have my pity!”
“Oh, shut up, Hewney,” said Briony. “I’m not going to hold you responsible for things you said when you didn’t know who I was, but you’re not half as charming or clever as you think you are.”
“Thank you, Highness.” The playwright and actor sketched a bow. “For, since I think quite highly of myself, that still leaves me with a formidable weight of charm.”
Briony could only shake her head. She turned to Dowan, the soft-spoken giant for whom she had a particular fondness. “In truth, I’ve just come to say goodbye. I’ll do my best to get them to let Finn go quickly.”
“Is it really true, then? ” he asked. “Are you really . . . who they say you are, Mistress? Highness?”
“I’m afraid so,” she told him. “I did not wish to lie to you, but I feared for my life. I’ll never forget the kindness with which you treated me.” She turned to the others and even found a smile for Estir. “All of you. Yes, even Master Nevin, although in his case it was interspersed with lechery and his unending love for the music of his own voice.”
“Hah!” Pedder Makewell was sitting up again, feeling better. “She has scored another hit on you, Hewney.”
“I care not,” said the playwright airily. “For the mistress of all Southmarch has proclaimed I am half of the most charming man in the world.”
“But I am not the mistress of all Southmarch.” Briony looked over to Erasmias Jino, who had been watching the entire performance with a polite smile on his face, like a theatergoer who had seen better work only the night before. “And that is why you must not go back there—not yet.” She turned to the Syannese nobleman. “News of my presence here will reach Southmarch, will it not?”
He shrugged. “We will not keep it secret—we are not at war with your country, princess. In
fact, we are told that Tolly only protects the throne against the return of your father . . . or, presumably, you.”
“That’s a lie! He tried to kill me.”
Jino spread his hands. “I’m certain you are right, Princess Briony. But it is . . . complicated . . .”
“Do you see?” she said, turning back to the players. “So you must stay here in Tessis, at least until I know more of what I will do. Play your plays. I’m afraid you’ll have to find another actress to play Zoria.” She smiled again. “It should not be hard to find a better one, I’m sure.”
“In truth I thought you were coming along quite well,” Feival told her. “Not enough to make them forget me, thanks to Zosim and all the other gods, but nicely.”
“He speaks true,” said Dowan Birch. “You could still make a grand player someday, if you but worked at it a little.” He looked around, reddening, as the others laughed.
Briony, though, wasn’t laughing. She had felt a sharp pang at his words, at the glimpse into an impossible other life where things were different, where she could have lived as she chose. “Thank you, Dowan.” She stood up. “Don’t fear—we’ll soon find you all a place to stay.” And in the meantime, Briony could keep the players close by and consider the idea that had come to her. “Farewell, then, until our next meeting.”
As the players were conducted out by a pair of guards, Hewney broke away from them and came back to Briony. “In truth,” he whispered, “I like you better in this role, child. You play the part of a queen most convincingly. Keep it up and I foresee good reviews for you in future.” He gave her a quick kiss scented with wine—and where had he gotten any wine, she wondered, while in King Enander’s custody?—before following the others out.
“Well, by the sweet Orphan,” Lord Jino said, “that was all most . . . interesting. Sometime you must tell me what it is like to travel with such people. But now, you are called to a more elevated performance—a command performance, as such are called.”
It took her a moment. “The king?”
“Yes, Highness. His august Majesty, the King of all Syan, wishes to meet you.”
Briony would have been one of the first to admit that the throne room back in Southmarch might be dignified, even impressive, but it was not awesome. The ceiling was full of fine old carvings but they were hard to see in the dark chamber except on festival days when all the candles were set blazing. The ceiling itself was high, but only in comparison to most of the rest of the rooms—there were higher ceilings within many of the great houses of the March Kingdoms. And the colored windows that in her childhood had formed her strongest idea of heaven were not even as nice as those in the great Trigonate temple in the outer keep beyond the Raven’s Gate. Still, Briony had always thought that there could not be much difference between her home and the other royal palaces of Eion. Her father was a king, after all, and his father and grandfather had been kings before him—a line that went back generations. Surely the monarchs of Syan and Brenland and Perikal did not live much more grandly, she had thought. But since she had come to famous Broadhall Palace, Briony had quickly lost her illusions.
From the first hour of her capture, as the coach surrounded by a troop of soldiers had passed through the portcullis and gate and onto the palace grounds, she had begun to feel foolish. How could she have thought her family something other than rustic—the same sort of faded, countrified nobles that she and Barrick had found so amusing back home? And now she stood beside Jino in the throne room itself, the voluminous chamber that for centuries had been the heart of the entire continent, and which still was the capital of one of the most powerful nations in the world, and her own witless pretension was a bone in her throat.
The Broadhall throne room was vast, to begin with, the ceiling twice as lofty as that of Southmarch’s greatest temple, and carved and painted in such wonderful, startling detail that it looked as though an entire population of Funderlings had worked on it for a century. (That was exactly what had happened, she found out later, although here in Syan they called their small people Kallikans.) Each brilliant window stained with sun-bright colors looked as big as the Basilisk Gate back home, and there were dozens of them, so that the huge room seemed to be crowned with rainbows. The floor was a swirling pattern of black and white marble squares, an intricate circular mosaic called Perin’s Eye—famous throughout the world, Erasmias Jino informed her as he led her across it. She followed him past the huge but empty throne and the company of armored knights in blue, red, and gold who stood solemnly against the throne room’s great walls, still and silent as statues.
“You must permit me to show you the gardens at some point,” the marquis told her. “The throne room is very fine, of course, but the royal gardens are truly extraordinary.”
I take your point, fellow—this is what a true kingdom looks like. She kept her face cheerfully empty, but Jino’s high-handedness griped her. You do not think much of Southmarch or our small problems and you want to remind me what real grandeur and real power look like. Yes, I take your point. You think my family’s crown is no more impressive than the sham crown of wood and gold paint that I wore on the stage.
But the heart of a kingdom is not small just because the kingdom is, she thought.
Jino led her through a door at the back of the throne room, this one surrounded by a group of guards in different, although complementary, shades of blue and red from those lined along the walls of the throne room. “The King’s Cabinet,” said Jino, opening the door and gesturing for her to go in. A herald in a brilliant sky-blue tabard embroidered with Syan’s famous sword and flowering almond branch, asked her name and title, then stamped his gold-topped stick on the floor.
“Briony te Meriel te Krisanthe M’Connord Eddon, Princess Regent of the March Kingdoms,” he announced, as casually as if she were the fourth or fifth princess who’d come through the door that day. For all Briony knew, she might have been: two or three dozen guards, servants, and beautifully dressed courtiers filled the richly appointed room, and though many of them watched her entrance, few showed any signs of overwhelming interest.
“Ah, of course, Olin’s child!” said the bearded man on the high-backed couch, waving her forward. He was dressed in serious, dark clothes and his voice was deep and strong. “I see his face in yours. This is an unexpected pleasure.”
“Thank you, your Majesty.” Briony made her curtsies. Enander Karallios was the most powerful ruler in Eion and looked the part. He had gone a little to fat in recent years, but he was a big man and managed to carry it well. His hair was dark, almost black, with only a little gray, and his face, though rounded by age and weight, was still strong and impressive, brow high, eyes wide-set, his nose strong and sharp, so that it was still quite possible to see why as a younger man he had been considered a very dashing and handsome prince indeed. “Come, child, sit down. We are pleased to see you. Your father is dear to us.”
“Dear to all of Eion,” said the woman in the beautiful pearled gown beside him. This must be Ananka te Voa, Briony realized, a powerful noblewoman in her own right, but also, and far more important, a mistress to kings. Briony was a little shocked to see her sitting at Enander’s side so openly. The king’s second wife had died some years ago, but the gossip Briony had heard among Makewell’s Men suggested that he had only taken up with this woman recently, after Ananka had left her old lover, Hesper, the king of Jael and Jellon.
Hesper the bloody-handed traitor . . . !
Briony, who had been in mid-curtsy, almost lost her balance as she thought of him. There were few men in the world Briony would have seen tortured, but Hesper was one of them. She couldn’t help wondering whether Ananka had been at his side when Hesper had decided to imprison Briony’s father Olin and then sell him to Ludis Drakava. Looking at the woman’s sharp, hard eyes, it was easy enough to believe.
“You are both very kind,” Briony said, doing her best to keep her voice even. “My father has always spoken of you with the highest regard a
nd love, King Enander.”
“And how is he? Have you had word from him?” Enander was toying with something in his lap and it distracted her. After a moment she saw the bright little eyes peering out from beneath his heavy velvet sleeve. It was a small animal, a tiny dog or a ferret.
“Some letters, yes, but not since I left Southmarch.” She couldn’t help wondering what the two of them were thinking. They acted as though this was any other audience—did they not know her situation? “Your Majesty is doubtless aware that I left my home . . . well, let us say I did not go by choice. One of my subjects . . . no, one of my father’s subjects, Hendon Tolly, has traitorously seized the throne of the March Kingdoms. I suspect he murdered my older brother, as well as his own.” In truth, Kendrick’s death was the one crime she could not with certainty lay against Hendon Tolly, but he had admitted his role in his own brother Gailon’s death.
“Lord Tolly says differently, as you probably know,” said Enander, looking troubled. “We cannot take sides—not without knowing more. I’m sure you understand. Lord Tolly claims you ran away, that all he does is protect Olin’s remaining heir, the infant Alessandros. That is the boy’s name, is it not?” he asked Ananka.
“Yes, Alessandros.” She turned back to Briony. “You poor child.” Ananka was handsome, but she used too much powder—it accentuated the lines of her thin face rather than hid them. Still, she was the kind of woman who had always made Briony feel like a clumsy, stupid little girl. “How you must have suffered. And we have heard such stories! Is it true Southmarch was attacked by the fairies?”
King Enander gave her an irritated look, perhaps because he did not want to be reminded of Syan’s old debt to Anglin’s line in the fairy wars of the past.
“Yes, it was, my lady,” Briony said. “And as far as I know, still under siege . . .”