Shadowrise

by Tad Williams

  In the past he might have despaired, but now he felt the new strength in his crippled arm, the way it moved without pain. He thought, Anything is possible. I am a story now, like Anglin the Islander, and no one can say what the ending will be—not even these unsleeping monstrosities . . .

  “Come with me!” Pick had turned away from the others and was tugging on Barrick’s arm. “We’ll go to the servant quarters. You will be less obvious there.”

  “Less obvious? I thought they were used to Sunlanders.”

  Pick hurried him down a spiraling hallway. “Things are . . . strange here. Different than I expected.”

  “The master of the house is dead. What did you think to find, a celebration? ”

  They coiled around and down, passing through a garden of pale fronds, dozens of plants that looked as though they should grow at the bottom of a stream. It might have been the light of the mushrooms, but nothing in the house seemed to have any color.

  “In here,” said Pick, opening a heavy wooden door and hurrying Barrick through into a huge, low-ceilinged room. The air had a curious, sour stench, but for the first time in Sleep he found himself in something like natural light—the red and yellow flicker of a large fire burning at the center of a wide stone expanse surrounded by what looked like an empty moat. Confined by this stone ditch, draped over logs and perched on piles of stones, were a dozen or more huge black lizards, each the size of a hunting hound.

  “By the Three, I thought you said servants’ quarters!”

  Pick pulled at his arm again. “We share the fire. The Dreamless do not care for too much warmth and light. See?”

  At the far side of the wide chamber something close to a dozen man-shaped figures sat huddled together in the shadows. Like his guide, they all wore clothes made of rags and patches, and for the first time Barrick realized that Pick did not dress that way by choice: the human servants had clearly been given household rags and had made their own clothes from them. Despite the stinking heat of the room he felt a chill. “I thought you said Qu’arus valued his Sunlanders.”

  “He did! No other Dreamless will even have them.”

  Barrick whirled on the tattered man. “You told me our kind were common here.”

  Pick looked frightened. “In the house of Qu’arus, we are.”

  “You lied to me.”

  “I . . . I did not tell you all the truth. I was afraid to return alone.” He lowered his voice. “Please, don’t be angry with me, friend.”

  Barrick could only stare at the man in astonishment. He wanted to strike the miserable creature, but reminded himself that things could have been much worse: at least he had happened onto perhaps the one house in all Sleep where he could enter without being murdered.

  One of the figures along the wall stirred. “Who’s that with you, Beck? ”

  Barrick raised an eyebrow. “Beck? So you did not even tell me your true name?”

  “ ‘Pick’ is how Master says it—that is what he calls me. I did not lie.”

  “Who have you brought?” the man in the corner asked again. “Come where we can see you.”

  The man apparently called Beck made his way over to the others. As they whispered among themselves, Barrick shook his head and followed. The other sunlanders sat on loose straw, which they had piled together in one place to make a sort of nest. Except for the one who was talking with Beck, the rest looked as though they were half asleep, their eyes empty, their faces slack; a few looked up incuriously as Barrick approached but the rest did not even raise their eyes.

  “Ah, the water flows thinner now, I see,” said the bearded man beside Beck. He looked Barrick up and down from beneath long, straggling brows. “And the birds fly farther.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?” Barrick demanded, settling down into the straw. The stranger had a long, wispy gray beard and the lines in his face looked as deep as if they had been carved with a knife in soft wood.

  “That the gods see all.” The old man nodded briskly. “All they see will be.”

  “Finlae used to be a priest,” Beck said. “He knows a lot of things.”

  “I know too much,” Finlae said. “That is why the gods shot an arrow into my brain to set my thoughts on fire. Because I saw their tricks and sang the stories for the people. I warned them. But they laughed and threw stones and bones. Stones and bones!”

  Barrick shook his head. Small wonder that Beck had lied to bring him back—the company of this old madman must become rather unfulfilling after a while. He looked at the other servants—or slaves, to put the right name on it—and saw little in the way of intelligence in their staring eyes. If they had been bred like cattle, as Beck had suggested, then the breeder had done his work well. They seemed as stupidly placid as any barn full of milkers.

  “Where is Marwin?” Beck asked.

  Finlae shook his head. “Carrying jugs and jars up from the cellar. All day the lady was weeping, but only I could hear it. And now they prepare the feast. To send the master’s soul to the other side on tears and smoke.” He turned and fixed Barrick with his weirdly bright eyes. “You have traveled sleeping to the between. He will travel sleepless to the beyond.”

  Barrick let his head ease back against the wall and closed his eyes. All he wanted to do was rest, perhaps sleep for a few hours, and then leave this den of madmen behind. Nothing here would help him—certainly not Beck or the demented old creature named Finlae.

  He came struggling up out of the darkness when he felt a touch on his face—his hand, his injured hand, shot up and grabbed. Somebody—Beck, he realized, it was Beck—whimpered with pain.

  “Don’t . . . hurt me.”

  “Why did you touch me?”

  “I . . . I know you.”

  He opened his eyes wide. Beck was cowering down on the straw. Old Finlae had fallen asleep. “What are you talking about? Of course you know me—I came here with you.”

  “I know you . . . from before. What is your name?”

  He narrowed his eyes. “Why should I tell you?”

  “I know you! I have seen you before. We have . . . I think we have met. In . . . in the before . . .”

  He realized he was still squeezing Beck’s fingers in his own, hard enough that the other man was grimacing in pain. He let go. “In the before? You mean before you came here?” It was possible, he supposed. It was not as though he had been unknown in the world on the other side of the Shadowline. And what harm was there in admitting it now? “My name is Barrick. Barrick Eddon. Do you still think you know me?”

  A look of nothing less than gratitude swept across the other man’s face. “By the gods, yes! I remember! You are . . . you are the prince! By the Three, yes, you are the prince!”

  “Not so loud! Yes, I am.” But it was strange—he did not feel much like it. In the past, for all his unhappiness, he had never doubted that he was the son of a king. Now it seemed to be someone else’s life, a story he had heard but never lived himself.

  “You and your sister . . .” Beck flapped his hands in excitement. “You spoke to me. You asked me questions. After the first time . . .” His face fell. “After the first time I saw the Twilight folk.”

  “If you say so.” Barrick had no recollection of the man.

  “Do you truly not remember? My name . . .” he paused, squinting. Clearly he had not summoned the memory in some time. “My name is Raemon Beck.”

  The name meant nothing to him, but Barrick liked it better that way: he wanted no more reminders of the past. He could remember quite a bit from what Beck called “the before”—names, faces—but the memories were distant and curiously flat, with little feeling attached to them, like the diminished ache of a very old wound. Even thoughts of his sister, which seemed as though they should mean more, seemed instead to be something that had been stored so long it had lost all savor. And Barrick was more than content to leave things that way.

  “What are those creatures?” he asked suddenly, pointing at the black lizards, which la
y clustered around the flames in the center of their pit like Kernios’ slaves in the underworld. “Why are they here?”

  “Salamanders—fire lizards. They are Master’s pets. He likes . . . he liked to feed them.”

  Better than he fed you, I’ll wager, Barrick thought but did not say.

  Raemon Beck had more questions about how the prince had crossed the Shadowline, but Barrick would not be drawn into idle talk and eventually Beck gave up; soon the only sound was the crackling of the fire and old Finlae’s thin snoring.

  In his dream—for it must be a dream, he realized, even though he did not remember falling asleep—the lizard’s eyes were as bright as the flames around it. The black-armored creature sat not beside the fire but in it, crouched in a split log that burned and blackened in the depths of the blaze.

  “Who are you that comes here without Tile or Pool?” it asked him in a voice like music.

  “I am a prince, son of a king,” he told the creature.

  “No, you are an ant, son of another ant,” the salamander lazily informed him. “An insect with the gift of a little power coursing in your veins, but still an insect for all that. Hurrying here and there, soon to die. Perhaps you will see my return. That will be a glory that might lend your small life some meaning.”

  He wanted to curse this cruel, arrogant creature, but the lizard’s stare held him prisoner, as helpless as if he truly were the small, creeping thing it had named him. His heart felt cold in his chest. “What are you?”

  “I am and I always was. Names do not matter to my kind. We know who we are. It is only your kind, with blinkered senses and swift lives, who insist on the tyranny of names. But no matter what your wise ones believe, you cannot command something simply by naming it.”

  “If we matter so little, why are you talking to me?”

  “Because you are a curiosity, and although I do not have long to wait now, I have been forced to remain idle for longer than I would like. I am bored, and even a crawling ant can provide amusement.” Its tail whipped a little from side to side, knocking up a spray of sparks. The crackling of the fire seemed to be getting louder—Barrick could barely hear the last of the salamander’s words.

  “I would kill you if I could,” he told the creature.

  The laugh was as beautiful as the voice, singing and silvery. “Can you kill the darkness? Can you destroy the solid earth or murder a flame? Ah, you entertain me most graciously . . .”

  But now the noise of the blaze had become as loud as someone else speaking—no, more than one person. The fire spoke with several voices, the tongues of reddish light leaping up and enveloping the black lizard completely.

  “ . . . When a poor man is trying to sleep,” one of the voices said. “Burbling and bubbling.”

  “Shut your mouth, Finlae,” Beck said.

  “But why would they want to do that?” said a voice Barrick hadn’t heard before. “They do no harm . . .”

  Barrick opened his eyes. Raemon Beck and ancient Finlae were talking to a third man, a large fellow with his hair chopped in uneven swathes like hastily-cut hay.

  “You misheard,” Beck told the newcomer, then saw Barrick sitting up. “This is Marwin.”

  “I knew someone named Marwin,” the big man said slowly. He had an accent a little like what Barrick had heard of Qu’arus. “That’s all I said. Could be it was me, but I can’t remember.”

  “Exactly,” Beck said. “Your memory is bad and your ears aren’t much better, so you must have been mistaken about what you heard just now.”

  The new man turned to Barrick. “I’m not. Mistook, that is. They were talking about them lizards—Master’s sons and Master’s brother, they were talking to the mistress. ‘Then get rid of them,’ she says. ‘I can’t stand the way they smell or the way they talk.’ Then the menfolk went to get clubs and spears.”

  “See?” said Beck. “Marwin is a dullard and he gets everything wrong. Why would she say that? Lizards can’t talk.”

  For an instant Barrick remembered something about a talking lizard—had it been a dream?—then the hairs on the back of his neck began to tingle. “You heard them say ‘lizards’?” he asked.

  Marwin shrugged his wide, sloping shoulders. “They said, ‘o hasyaak k’rin sanfarshen’—that means ‘animals in the cellar.’ ” He looked around the broad, firelit chamber, frowning. “And this is the cellar.”

  “You fools.” Barrick scrambled to his feet, his heart suddenly thumping in his chest. “They are not talking about some filthy lizards—they’re talking about us.”

  “They would not hurt us!” Beck’s dirty face had gone quite pale. “Master loved us!”

  “Even if he did, your master is dead.”

  “When I came out of the trees he sang to me with his eyes,” Finlae said.

  “I don’t doubt it—but I don’t care,” Barrick said. “Help me out of here, Beck. The rest of you may stay and die if you wish.”

  “But I’m so tired,” said Marwin like a cross child. “I’ve been a-working all the day. I want to sleep.”

  “Tired, yes.” Finlae scratched his bearded chin. “The days are long since Zmeos was banished . . .”

  Barrick did not have the time or strength to waste. He grabbed Raemon Beck by the collar and dragged him to his feet. “Then enjoy your sleep. I fear it will be a long one.”

  Beck still looked befogged as Barrick dragged him toward the door, as though he couldn’t quite understand what was happening, but Barrick did not bother to explain it to him again. The huge black lizards did not even stir as they went by, but Barrick suddenly remembered the fiery gaze of something he had seen in a dream and hurried Beck past them as quickly as he could.

  “Can you kill the darkness . . . ?” the thing had asked him.

  “Which way?” he whispered when they were in the corridor. Beck didn’t answer immediately, but Barrick heard what he thought might be soft footsteps coming toward them down the passage so he pulled the tattered man in the opposite direction. “The boat!” he said into Beck’s ear. “Take me to the boat.”

  Raemon Beck finally seemed to understand the situation. He shook off Barrick’s hand and began to lead him through the house’s underground corridors. As they hastened down a long hall lined with closed doors, each one marked with a different symbol, a dreadful, raw shriek echoed past them, a sound of terror and pain. Beck stopped as though he had been stabbed to the heart. Barrick shoved him forward.

  “That’s your loving master’s family at work behind us,” he said. “Faster! Or we will be next.”

  Whimpering quietly now, Beck led them out of an unmarked door and into a wide wooden building that was dark but for a single row of the glowing mushrooms. For a moment Barrick was badly startled by what looked like a man waiting on the walkway in front of them, but it was only one of the blemmies. The creature, which had been shackled to a post with a heavy chain and left standing, turned to watch them go by but made no move to stop them. Its wide, dull eyes glinted in the mushroom light; the little round mouth low on its belly puckered and stretched as though the monstrosity were trying to talk. For all Barrick could tell it might have been the same creature that had rowed them to the house of Qu’arus in the first place.

  “This . . . this is the boathouse,” Beck told him. “But I do not know how to open the river door.”

  Barrick remembered the cloak and sword he had left in the front of the house. “Is the other boat still out there? The one that brought us?”

  “Master’s skiff? It could be.” Beck was clearly terrified, but doing his best to think. “With everything else that’s happening they might have left it to sit there until morning.”

  “Then let’s go look. Can we get there from here?”

  For once Raemon Beck didn’t waste any time arguing. He led Barrick out of the boathouse and into the greater darkness outside the house, into the darklighted copse of willows that grew along the riverfront. As they rounded the side of the house and sprinted for the
dock Barrick thanked whatever gods had chosen to bless him for once that the Dreamless made their houses without windows. He and Beck had a chance to escape before Qu’arus’ kin could guess where they’d gone.

  It was not to be. Just as he found the cloak and sword Barrick heard voices from around the side of the house: somehow, the Dreamless had found their trail. He hurried out onto the dock, Beck now running right behind him. The black boat still floated there.

  “Thank the gods, thank the gods, thank the gods,” Barrick murmured. He untied the boat and slid the oars into the oarlocks as quickly and quietly as he could. A faint green glow was bobbing through the willows toward them—most likely a lantern being held by the searchers. Now two more joined it.

  “It’s the middle of Repose,” Beck said frantically. “The skrikers . . . !”

  “Curse you, shut your mouth and get in if you’re coming!” When the man still hesitated Barrick began to shove the boat away from the dock with his hands. This helped Raemon Beck make up his mind. He jumped awkwardly into the skiff, setting it pitching so badly Barrick cuffed him on the head in anger even as he struggled to keep the man from tumbling overboard.

  “Get down, you fool!” he hissed. With Beck huddled near his feet, Barrick dipped the oars into the water and began rowing as quietly as he could. The shadowy mass of the house of Qu’arus and the flickering lights of their pursuers slid away behind them.

  Barrick didn’t stop or even slow until they had followed a series of branching canals far enough that even the darklights began to fade and the twilight to reassert itself. As he leaned on the oars catching his breath, exhausted but marveling at the new strength of his formerly crippled arm, he saw that Raemon Beck was weeping.

  “By the Three, man, you can’t be sorry to leave those people,” he snapped. “They would have killed you! They’ve probably already done for your friends.” He himself felt almost nothing in the way of regret. He would never have been able to herd Finlae and slow-witted Marwin out of the house in time. They would have all been caught and Barrick’s own mission would have failed. A simple choice. “Beck? Why the tears? We’re out.”