Shadowrise

by Tad Williams

  “Tell me who we must fear. Tell me and I can fight them!”

  “That is not the way, Daughter . . . you cannot defeat strength . . . that way . . .”

  “Who is it? Tell me?”

  “I cannot. I am . . . bound. Everything I am . . . is all that keeps the doorway closed ...” And now she could hear the immense weariness, the longing for the end of struggle that death would finally bring. “So I am bound . . . to keep the secret ...”

  His voice fell silent—for a time she thought it was gone forever. Then something came to her, wafting like a feather in a night wind. “The oracle speaks of berries . . . white and red. So it shall be. So it must be.”

  Surely there was nothing left of him now. “Father?” She tried to be strong. “Father?”

  “Remember the oracle and what it says,” he said, his quiet voice now slipping away into nothingness. “Remember that each light . . . between sunrise . . . and sunset ...”

  “Is worth dying for at least once,” she finished, but he was gone.

  When she was herself again, the Yasammez that breathed, and felt, the Yasammez that had lived each painful moment of her people’s millennial defeat, she rose and walked out of the cave. None of the eremites followed her, not even Aesi’uah, her trusted counselor. Death was in her eyes and in her heart. No living thing could have walked with her then and every one of them knew it.

  This was not how Matt Tinwright would have chosen to spend his evening.

  He broke apart the last small piece of bread he had brought with him and soaked up the wine in his cup. Sops, when he could have had eel stew! Still, he was lucky he’d found the wine, and he did not feel the least bit sorry for whoever had set it down. He’d been hiding on the chapel balcony from the evening bell to what must now be almost midnight, keeping an eye on the door that led to Hendon Tolly’s chambers, which was where the physician’s apprentice said Okros Dioketian had gone. What could the man be doing in Tolly’s rooms so long? More important, when he finally came back out, would he return to his own chambers so Tinwright could go and sleep? Surely Avin Brone didn’t expect him to follow Okros into his bedchamber . . . !

  He heard the creak of the door opening before he saw the movement. Tinwright crouched lower, his eyes just above the balcony rail, even though he was a stone’s throw away and hidden by the shadowed overhang of the small chapel.

  As he had prayed, Brother Okros came out of the door, his slight frame and bald head instantly recognizable despite his voluminous robes, but to Tinwright’s surprise he was not alone: three burly men in quilted surcoats bearing the Tollys’ silver boar and spears walked behind the physician, and another man in a dark, hooded cloak went beside him. Just the cloaked man’s graceful movements were enough to tell him who this was. Tinwright’s heart was pounding. Okros and Hendon Tolly, going somewhere together—he would have to follow.

  He felt quite ill at the thought.

  He had expected them to head for the physician’s chambers, but any hope of remaining indoors was dashed when Okros led the little procession out of one of the residence’s side doors. Tinwright did his best to remain well behind, and when he followed them out he tarried a few moments in idle conversation with the door guards, speaking of his own sleeplessness and the need for some cool night air to cure it.

  Cool night air, indeed, he thought as he hurried across the side garden, trying to find his quarry again by the light of the torches they had brought from the residence. In fact, it was bloody freezing. All he had was his woolen cloak over a thin shirt—no hat, no gloves, and not even a torch to keep himself from stumbling. Curse Brone and his wretched, bullying ways!

  He found them again crossing the muddy main road that led to the armory and the guard barracks and began to follow them at a distance. One of the guards was carrying a large bundle wrapped in cloth, and another gingerly held a smaller package—could it be the cockerel? But why would they be carrying the rooster around at this time of the night, unless they planned to use it in some kind of sorcerous ritual? Tinwright felt his blood grow even colder than the night air had already made it.

  A moment later, as the group of men turned away from the main road that led to the Throne hall and instead walked down a winding path beside the royal family’s chapel, the poet’s blood grew even chillier. Tolly and Okros were headed toward the graveyard.

  It took everything he had to keep following. Tinwright had a horror of cemeteries and the overgrown temple-yard was one of the most fearful, with its strange old statues and its mausoleums like prisons for the restless dead. His fear of Avin Brone alone kept him moving—his fear, and a certain curiosity as well. What did Okros plan? Did he mean to invoke the gods here in this lonely place, at this haunted hour? But why?

  The men stopped outside the door of the Eddon family crypt and Tinwright had to suppress a groan of horror. Hendon Tolly had a key around his neck. When the crypt door was open four of the men went down the stairs, leaving a single guard to stand sentry outside. The light of the torches dimmed as they disappeared below, but their sheen still glimmered in the doorway. Tinwright felt very glad that he was not in that house of death with them, watching the shadows jump and crawl along the walls.

  The sentry, who at first stood erect and alert at the entrance to the tomb, after a while began to slump a little, and at last leaned back against the carved face of the tomb and propped his spear against the wall. Tinwright (who would never have imagined himself so bold) decided this would be a good time to creep closer and perhaps hear something of what was being said inside. Surely that would be worth a few extra starfish from Brone—maybe even a silver queen or two!

  He moved in a wide semicircle beyond the torchglow spilling from the door of the crypt until he had almost reached the wall of the chapel. Tinwright could see the sentry’s back, and the man’s slack posture emboldened him to creep forward until he was only a few paces from the doorway. He crouched behind a monument that had been half-immured in ivy creeping down from the temple wall.

  “ . . . But not that way,” someone in the crypt was saying, the words thin but clearly audible—Tinwright thought it was Okros. “It is not the sacrifice here that matters, but the sacrifice there.”

  “You are tiring me,” said another voice—one that Tinwright knew all too well. Suddenly his moment of foolish optimism was over. What was a poet doing here in the middle of the night, playing at being a spy? If Hendon Tolly caught him he would be flayed alive! Only the fear of making noise and alerting the sentry kept Matt Tinwright from turning and bolting back to the residence. He was shaking so badly now he could barely keep his balance where he crouched. “And boring me,” Tolly continued. “It is not my best mood, leech. I suggest you do something to make me interested again.”

  “I . . . I am trying, my lord,” said Okros, plainly anxious. “It is just . . . we must . . . I must be cautious. These are great powers!”

  “Yes, but at this moment I am the greatest power you know. Go ahead. Complete the sacrifice however you see fit—but complete it. We must find the location of the Godstone or we will have no hope of making the power serve us. If we fail this gamble, Okros, I will not suffer alone, I promise you ...”

  “Please, my lord, please! See, I am doing as you ask ...”

  “You are only poking, you fool. Have I promised you inconceivable riches just to see you poking at a reflection? Reach in, man! Make it happen!”

  “Of course, my lord. But it is not so . . . so easy ...”

  And then, even as the physician’s voice grew softer and Tinwright leaned forward to hear him better, a sudden shriek split the darkness, rising so swiftly and so terribly that it did not sound as if it could come from a human throat, then dropping just as quickly into a choking, gurgling noise for the length of a rabbiting heartbeat or two before it vanished beneath the sound of men scuffing and clattering up the stone stairs as they fled the tomb.

  The first one out of the crypt was a guard who fell to his knees at the to
p of the stairs and began to vomit. The second ran past him, holding his own mouth with one hand and waving a torch in the other. The first got up, still spitting, and began to follow him across the temple-yard, the two of them running in awkward zigzags between the monuments.

  The tall, hooded shape of Hendon Tolly appeared in the door of the crypt, the large cloth bundle in his arms. “Go back to the residence,” he told the sentry, who stood now gaping.

  “But ... my lord ...”

  “Shut your mouth, fool, and get moving. Follow that idiot with the torch. We dare not be caught here. Too much to explain.”

  “But . . . the physician . . . ?”

  “If I must tell you again to be silent I will quiet you for good and all with a slit throat. Go! ”

  Within moments they had vanished into darkness, leaving Tinwright gasping and trembling, alone in the shadowed cemetery. The door to the tomb still gaped. Light still flickered there.

  Matt Tinwright did not want to go down those stairs—no man with his right thoughts would do such a thing. But what had happened? Why was the torch still burning there in the depths, despite the silence? At the very least, he should go and pick it up—he did not want to cross the cemetery again without light.

  Tinwright would never after be able to explain why he did what he did. It could not have been bravery: the poet was the first to admit he was not a brave man. And it was not ordinary curiosity—no mere curiosity could have overcome that terror—although it was something like it. The only way he could explain it was that somehow he had to know. At that moment, in the dark temple-yard, he felt sure that nothing would be more terrifying than to wonder ever afterward what had happened down there.

  He put his foot on the first step and paused, listening. The light in the doorway below him was little more than a smear of yellow. Matt Tinwright went carefully and silently down the dark stairs until he reached the bottom. He could see the niches on either side, like dark honeycombs, and the torch lying on the stone floor. That was all he needed, really, he suddenly decided—let wondering be cursed. The burning brand was only a few steps away. He could crawl to it while staying close to the floor so he would not have to look at any of the empty stone faces atop the sarcophagi . . .

  He saw Okros just as his fingers wrapped around the torch handle. The physician was just to one side, sprawled on his back with legs spread and left arm outflung, a piece of parchment still clutched in his hand. His eyes were impossibly wide and his mouth stretched in a silent scream, the face of a man so terrified that his heart had burst within the walls of his chest. But what was most frightening of all was his right arm—or, rather, the right arm he no longer had: all that remained was a short, shiny length of bone jutting from Okros’ shoulder like a broken flute, the flesh peeled back all the way to his neck, showing the red muscle beneath. Nothing else was left from his right shoulder down except little strings and wisps of flesh, like the torn threads of hemp that remained after a rope snapped.

  Worst of all, there was no sign of pooling blood in that entire wreckage of flesh and bone—not a single red drop, as though whatever had torn his limb away had also sucked his flesh dry.

  Tinwright was still on his hands and knees, heaving out the contents of his stomach, when he felt something cold and sharp against the back of his neck.

  “Look, now,” a voice said, echoing against the walls of the crypt. “I come back for a scrap of parchment and find a spy. Stand up and let me have a look at you. Wipe the vomit from your chin first, there’s a good fellow.”

  Tinwright climbed to his feet and turned around as slowly as he could. The cold, sharp thing traced its way up from his neck, bent his ear in passing, slicing the skin so that it was all he could do not to cry out, then was dragged ungently along his cheek until it stopped just below his eye.

  By a trick of the light the blade of the sword was invisible: it seemed as though Hendon Tolly held him prisoner with a length of shadow. The Lord Protector looked feverish, his eyes bright, his skin glittering with sweat.

  “Ah, my little poet!” Tolly grinned, but it did not look at all right. “And who is your true master, then? Princess Briony, pulling your puppet strings all the way from Tessis? Or is it someone closer—Avin Brone, perhaps?” For a moment, the sword threatened to slip higher. “It matters not. You are mine now, young Tinwright. Because, as you can see, I have lost one of my most important liegemen tonight and there is much still to be done—oh, much and much. I need a man who can read, you see.” He gestured toward the one-armed remains of Okros Dioketian. “Of course, I cannot promise the job is without dangers—but nothing half so dangerous as refusing me. Aye, poet?”

  Tinwright had to nod very carefully with the sword blade so close to his eye. He felt numbed, helpless, like a trapped fly watching the spider step slowly down the web.

  “Then take that parchment from Okros,” Tolly said. “Yes, pick it up. Now walk out ahead of me. Fortunate poet! You will sleep at the foot of my bed tonight—and every night from now on. Oh, the things you will see and learn!” He laughed; the sound was as bad as the sight of his smile had been. “A short time in my employ and you will never again mistake your empty, sickly sweet notions for truth.”

  31

  A Single Length of String

  “Kupilas the Artificer, who figures only briefly in the many tales of the Trigon and the Theomachy, nevertheless seems to figure prominently in many of the Qar’s stories. Some of their tales even suggest he eventually conquered the Trigonate Brothers—part of what Kyros calls ‘the Xixian Heresy.’ In Qar legends, Kupilas, whom they call Crooked, is generally a tragic figure.”

  —from “A Treatise on the Fairy Peoples of Eion and Xand”

  BARRICK HAD ONLY AN INSTANT to draw his sword before the first of the skrikers was upon him. It came out of the darklight as if carried on the wind, pale robe flapping, ragged arms stretching wide. When he slashed at it his blade tore through cloth that seemed no sturdier than a rotting shroud. The pitch of its song changed but the eerie crooning did not stop as he jabbed at it again and again. He could not damage it—his sword touched nothing that felt like a body. Were these Lonely Ones nothing but billowing robes? Were they ghosts?

  He was almost too frightened to think. The silkins had at least been real creatures, whatever they were made of—he could cut them and burn them. But he could not cut these skrikers and he had no fire.

  Again and again the thing swept toward him and then whirled away, its rhythmic song winding in counterpoint around a fainter tune—so where, he suddenly wondered, was the second skriker? Barrick spun just as another undulating shape closed on him from behind. He could hear Shaso’s voice shouting in his head as clearly as if the old man stood beside him: “Don’t let them fix you in place! Keep moving!”

  As he skipped away from this new attack, desperate not to get caught between two enemies, the first skriker suddenly produced something like a horsewhip, although it looked as though it was made of nothing more substantial than mist and cobweb. When it snapped the whip at him he jumped back, but the lash grazed his calf in an icy swipe of pain.

  Now the two skrikers began to circle, trying to catch him between them again. Terror had a grip on him now, getting stronger by the moment: the second creature had also produced one of the strange lashes, and their song rose again, this time with a hurrying tone of triumph. What were these things made of? Why could he see nothing of them but their eyes, like spots of blood on the pale rags of their faces? They had to be more than air—but what were they?

  As if it meant to answer his question, one of the skrikers lunged at him and for a moment its hood rippled open to reveal a nightmare face, bloodlessly white but for crimson bruises around the red eyes and a mouth like an empty hole—a female face without humanity or kindness, stretched into a shrieking mask.

  That horrifying moment was almost fatal: as Barrick stood transfixed, the other creature caught him with the tip of its lash in the middle of his back. Pain crashe
d through him like a thunderbolt and dropped him to his knees. His sword clattered away, he didn’t know where—the agony had all but blinded him. As he desperately sought the strength to stand the first of the skrikers slid toward him, raising its weapon. Instead of retreating toward the other creature Barrick threw himself forward and grabbed his attacker where its legs should have been. There was nothing there, or almost nothing—he felt rags and dampness and a crunching, brittle resistance like icy branches. Cold spread rapidly through Barrick’s arms and within a moment he could feel the chill crawling into his chest, freezing his heart; it was all he could do to pull his arms free and roll to the side. As his fingers closed on his sword the things swept in on him, piping like excited jays, their song clotted with rapid clicking and slurring that might have been words.

  Howling with disgust and fear, Barrick slashed and slashed with his sword, forcing the skrikers back a little way so he could climb to his feet, but his legs were so weak he could barely stand. He swayed, gasping for breath, unable even to keep the blade of his sword level. The situation was hopeless but he was determined to sell his life as dearly as he could.

  Then, as the two things closed on him, eyes narrowed to bloody pinpoints and inhuman voices skirling in cold joy, something black whirled through the air and struck the nearest of the skrikers in the back. For a moment Barrick thought it was Skurn trying to help, but then the creature that had been hit straightened up and let out a weird hoooo of pain or surprise and Barrick saw that small black waves were lapping at its robes—black flames.

  The second skriker had frozen in surprise, as if they were not used to being resisted. Barrick leaped forward and grabbed at it with both hands. Despite its seeming fragility it resisted him with surprising strength, but before it pulled free he was able to force it back just far enough to bring it into contact with its hooting, flapping companion. A moment later a blaze of shadow ran up its sleeves and onto its hood.