Shadowrise

by Tad Williams

  Summu had been of the highest blood of our kind, so her eldest boy and girl, as was the tradition then and now, were married to each other to keep the line pure and strong. But these two, Ayann and Yasudra, passed the Fireflower along to their own children, and the gift it bestowed was that when Ayann and Yasudra were dead and their children ruled the People, their children had the parents’ essence in them—not just their spirit or their blood, but their living essence and all their memories. The children then birthed children of their own, Ayann and Yasudra’s grandchildren, and one day those two married and received the wisdom and thoughts of both their parents and grandparents. So it has gone ever since, the king and queen of our people each passing down all that he or she is to the next born. We are a living Deep Library, and so we have what we need to guard our children through the pain of the Long Defeat. The king nodded slowly. You do not know what that means, do you, manchild? We call it the Long Defeat because we Qar are too few ever to contest our once-cousins the mortal men for ownership of this world, so we know it is our fate to diminish and eventually be supplanted by your folk—although, again, I speak too simply of complicated things.

  But here is where we come to the hard truths.

  The Fireflower runs forever in Yassamez because she has not shared it. She has never taken one of her own blood for a lover, so she has not diminished the gift. Some say it is because she is selfish. Others call it the opposite, a sacrifice—they say she has accepted a painfully long life so that she may watch over the generations of her brother and sister’s bloodline. But whatever the truth, Yasammez is what she is.

  Those of us who received the Fireflower from our parents, and must pass it along in turn to our own offspring, have a more complicated path to walk. For one thing, each passing of the Fireflower, each passing of the memories of all the previous generations to the next, takes great strength. We cannot find such strength in ourselves alone—the cost is too great. There is only one place we can go to gain it. To Crooked himself—or rather, to the last trace of him remaining in this world.

  This ultimate trace of the god stands beneath the castle your people call Southmarch, but which was once a doorway into the home of the Earthlord Kernios. It is the last true vestige of the terrible old days when all the gods walked the earth.

  Most of your folk do not even know of it, but some who live in the depths beneath the castle do. They call it the Shining Man.

  “I haven’t . . . I do not know it, Lord.”

  But the drows of your family’s castle do. They have worshipped and protected it for years without every knowing what it truly was.

  “Drows? ”

  He waved his hand. You call them “Funderlings,” I think. It matters not, because now we are at the crux of things.

  For years the place you call Southmarch was occupied by men—warlords and petty nobles ruled it at the behest of other kings, and although we of the People’s ruling family could not come there openly, we knew other ways to reach the Shining Man and gain the strength we needed to keep the Firef lower alive in our blood. My sister Saqri and I made the pilgrimage in the days of the empire in Syan. Our grandparents had been there when Hierosol ruled mankind. But then came the plague years and the humans drove us out of all their lands—lands which had been ours once, but in which we were now interlopers, objects of fear and hatred—and the most painful loss of all was the place you call Southmarch, where Crooked waited in the depths for us. We fought to keep our way to him open but were defeated, in large part by your ancestor Anglin, and forced to fall back to our lands in the north, where humans seldom walked.

  Thus, when Saqri and I began to sicken with age, we could not pass the Fireflower to our son and daughter. A century went by and our plight became desperate. Yassamez, the elder sister of our entire line, counseled that we should make war on mankind to win back the castle, but I feared that we would lose such a contest and things would only be worse. My wife sided with our ancestress. For a long time our family was locked in dispute, until all of Qul-na-Qar was riven by it. At last, hiding their thoughts from their mother and from me, my son Janniya and his sister Sanasu set out themselves for Southmarch with only a small troop of household guards and retainers.

  They were captured, though, and brought before Kellick, Anglin’s heir, the ruler of the March Kingdom. Your ancestor Kellick saw Sanasu, my beautiful Sanasu . . . Here Ynnir stopped, and although his face did not change, the cessation of his quiet, calm thoughts in Barrick’s head was as shocking as if the king had burst into tears. . . . And he wanted her for his own, he continued at last. A mortal man coveted the one who would have become immortal queen of her entire people! And he took her, as a wolf takes a graceful deer, little caring what beauty is destroyed as long as his appetites are slaked . . .

  This time the pause was more deliberate. Barrick, in a sort of helpless dream, watched the king’s pale face harden into something even stonier than before.

  He took her. Janniya, her brother, her intended—my son!—fought for her, but Kellick Eddon had many men. Janniya was . . . killed. Sanasu was taken. The Fireflower could not be passed to the son and daughter. The end of the people was at hand.

  Queen Sanasu . . . ! Barrick thought of her picture in the portrait hall, a face he knew well, strange, haunted eyes, fiery hair, and pale skin. But she . . . was married to the king of Southmarch! Could she truly have been one of the Qar?

  In the wake of that terrible day, the king resumed, Yassamez and others of course brought war to the humans, and for a while even recaptured the place where Crooked had destroyed the last of the gods, but Kellick took my daughter Sanasu and retreated farther into the domains of men until he could find enough allies to fight back. While we owned the castle again, Saqri and I did what we could to strengthen our inner flames, but we knew that without heirs we only delayed the inevitable. Eventually the humans overwhelmed us and forced us back out again, slaughtering so many of our folk that we gave a great deal of our remaining strength to creating the Mantle, a cloak of twilight that would discourage men from following us into our lands. And so we have lived these last years.

  Now the queen and I are both dying. I have loaned her what strength I could while we waited to see how this . . . he lifted up the mirror . . . gamble called the Pact of the Glass played out. But it is not enough. She will not wake again. Unless I give her what little I have left of myself. Unless I give her my life.

  Barrick sat, shocked. “You would have to give your life for her? But that wouldn’t help anything.”

  In any other situation that would be true, but the ways of the Fireflower are complicated and subtle. There might yet be a way to stave off the inevitable end of our line—at least for a little while longer. Perhaps that is what Yasammez thought when she sent you to me. I would like to think she had some intention other than to mock me.

  “I . . . I don’t understand, my lord.”

  Of course not—how could you? Your people have hidden the truth of what happened. But still, at times in your young life you must have wondered, perhaps sensed that something was . . . wrong . . .

  Barrick was beginning to feel a chill now, as if fever was rolling through him. “Wrong with me? Are you talking about me?”

  You, your father, and anyone else who has ever carried the painful, confusing legacy of the Fireflower as it burns in human veins. Yes, my child, I am talking about you. You are a descendant of my daughter, Sanasu, and the blood runs strong in you. In a way, you are my grandson.

  Barrick stared at him. His heart was pounding so swiftly that he felt dizzy. “I’m . . . one of the Twilight People?”

  No, you are less than that . . . and also more. You have the blood of the Highest in you, but to this hour it has brought you only sorrow. Now, however, it might make you the last hope of our ancient people—but only if you make a great sacrifice. You can let me pass the Fireflower itself along to you.

  Barrick could not make sense of it. He stared. The king’s calm face looked
just as it had looked an hour earlier, before he had said these things which turned all the world upside down. “You . . . you want to give this Fireflower to ... to me? ”

  To keep the queen alive a little longer, I will need to lend her my last strength. If I can pass the Fireflower along to you—and it may not be possible—that legacy at least will survive. But even if you survive it, Barrick Eddon, you will never be remotely the same again.

  “But if you do that, what . . . what will happen to you?”

  For the first time in a long while, Ynnir smiled—a thin, weary tightening of the lips. Oh, child, of course I will die.

  35

  Rings, Clubs, and Knives

  “The fairies killed in the great battle at Coldgray Moor were buried in a common grave. Although the local inhabitants shun the place and claim it is haunted by the vengeful spirits of dead Qar, and I was unable to locate the grave precisely, the general area is now a beautiful, flowering meadow.”

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

  THEY HAD TO STOP at the outskirts of Ugenion because the Royal Highway was blocked by a funeral procession bound for the temple in the city. It was clearly a rich man’s leavetaking: four horses pulled a wagon bearing the black-draped coffin, and so many mourners followed it that Briony climbed out of the wagon and joined the other players by the roadside.

  “But who has died?” Briony asked one of the mourners at the back of the procession, a woman carrying a long willow branch.

  “Our good baron, Lord Favoros,” the woman told her. “Not before his time—he had threescore years and more—but he lost his son to the autarch’s cannibals and so he leaves a sickly wife and too young an heir, may the Brothers bless his line.” She made the sign of the Three.

  Briony found herself doing the same thing as she turned away.

  “I have never heard of him,” she told Finn Teodoros quietly as they stood watching the mourners file past. “But from the sorrow I see on these people’s faces, he must have been a good man.”

  “Either that or you see sorrow because they have lost a known quantity for an unknown, in very uncertain times.” Finn shrugged. “Still, I suspect you are right. I do not see too many herring-weepers in the crowd.”

  “Herring-weepers?” The picture it made in Briony’s thoughts made her laugh. “What in the name of goodness are those?”

  “Those who will walk in a funeral parade and cry loudly for a copper crab or two, or who can be hired in a group for a single silver herring. It would be a much-loved man indeed whose family did not have to hire at least a few herring-weepers.”

  They watched the end of the line as it moved slowly past, the children bearing candles, the wagons carrying bread, wine, and dried fish for the temple where the body would lie in state and the priests would pray night and day to ensure the deceased’s rapid progress to heaven. When the last mourners had passed and the last interested onlookers had trailed after the slow parade, Briony and Finn climbed back into the wagon. Dowan Birch snapped the horses’ reins and the wagon rolled up to the city gates with the rest of Makewell’s Men following close behind.

  Once they had negotiated a small but adequate bribe with the guards in the gatehouse they were allowed into Ugenion. They followed the funeral as it wound up the hilly main road toward the temple at the center of the town.

  “He was a wealthy man, too, from the look of all this,” said Finn as they had their first look at the entire procession spread out on the road before them. “But I have heard no word of funeral games, which is usual here even after the deaths of lesser men. Perhaps it is the fear of what is happening in the north.”

  “And the south,” said Briony sadly. “Poor Hierosol.” The jolting of the wagon sent her away from the window to sit on the floor. Where was her father this moment? Alive? A prisoner, still? If Hierosol collapsed, would the autarch be willing to ransom him? And what difference would that make if neither she nor Barrick had access to the Southmarch treasury?

  Could it really be true that her twin had come back to Southmarch? That alone would make something good out of the darkest spring Briony Eddon had ever known.

  “You look solemn, Princess,” said Finn. “As if you knew the poor soul who is being carried to the temple.”

  “I’m just . . . it’s all so uncertain. Everything. What will I do when I get to Southmarch? What if the fairies have already taken the castle?”

  Finn turned away from the window. “Then things will be very different from when we left. You cannot try to outthink the Qar, my lady, because they are not like men. Please indulge me in believing this one thing to be true—I know a little of them, after all.”

  “Why? Did you . . . did you write a play about them?” She tried to make it a light remark, but her sadness and bitterness spilled through. “About their charming elfin magic and how they use it to kidnap and murder innocent folk?”

  Finn raised his eyebrows. “I have of course used the Twilight folk as characters in my plays, and in many different ways. If I have erred in portraying them, I suspect it was on the side of making them more mysterious and fearful than they are, rather than using them as quaint purveyors of magic rings and reassuring rewarders of blockheaded virgins. But in fact, I gained my knowledge of them in a very odd and unusual way for a playwright—I studied them.”

  “What do you mean?

  “What I have said, Highness. No disrespect, but perhaps you would rather rest a little rather than talk. You seem to me a bit out of sorts.”

  She closed her eyes and tried to calm the anger that was bubbling in her, but she was not entirely successful. “I’m sorry, Finn. Don’t go. I have good reason to be angry, though and so would you. Leaving out all of my innocent subjects they have harmed, my brother—my own twin!—is missing or dead and it is those creatures’ fault. And they also took someone ...” She hesitated, then wondered what she would have said about Vansen. “Someone I considered a friend. Like my brother, he never came back from Kolkan’s Field. So I am not disposed to hear much good of these Qar.”

  “Fear not—I said I studied them, Highness, not that I became one. Lord Brone set me to finding out all that I could about the Peaceful Ones, as they are euphemistically termed. Paid me well for my work, too—more than I’ve made for any of my plays so far, whether they had fairies in them or not.”

  She laughed a little in spite of herself. “Tell me, then, Finn. What do you know about them?”

  “I know that I do not understand them, Princess Briony. I also know that they have some great interest in Southmarch, but not why that is so.”

  “Because it stands in their way, does it not? Anglin, the founder of our line, was given the castle to be the first bastion against the Twilight People’s return. We have held that a sacred trust ever since.”

  “And where did they first attack this time, Highness?”

  She remembered pathetic young Raemon Beck. “Somewhere on the road to Settland. They destroyed a trader’s caravan.”

  “And if that was where they began, why would they then travel a hundred leagues east from there to attack Southmarch? They could have gone west to Settland, a much weaker target, or if they wanted spoils they could have headed south into the Esterian Valley, full of fat merchant towns far from King Enander’s protection. The northern end of that valley is twice as far from Tessis as the place they took the caravan is from Southmarch.”

  “What are you saying, Finn?”

  “That what they have done makes little sense but for two possibilities. They came against us for revenge, pure and simple, or there is some other advantage they see to conquering Southmarch—and not the entire country, but only the castle itself. They destroyed everything they encountered on their march toward your family’s stronghold, but they left Daler’s Troth, Kertewall, and Silverside untouched.”

  “But why?” It was a moan: Briony did not need any new mysteries. As it was, she struggled just to live day to day with so many unanswered
questions about her nearest and dearest. “Why do they bear us such hatred?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know, Highness.”

  “Then find out. That is your calling from now on.”

  The fat playwright looked startled. “Princess . . . ?”

  “If my father does not return—Zoria grant mercy that he does, but if he does not—then I must have help. I must understand the things my father and even my oldest brother spent years learning. It is obvious that the Qar will be one of the things I must try to understand. I know of no one else who knows even as much as you do, Finn. Are you my subject? ”

  “Princess Briony, of course I honor you and your family ...”

  “Are you my subject?”

  He blinked once, twice, taken aback by her ferocity. “Certainly I am, Highness. I am a loyal Marchman and you are the king’s daughter.”

  “Yes, and until something changes, I am the Princess Regent. Remember, Finn, I count you a friend, but we cannot have things both ways. I cannot ever go back to being ‘Tim’ again. I will never be a mere player, even if for this moment I hide among you. My people need me, and I will do whatever I must to serve them . . . and to lead them.”

  His smile was weak. “Of course, Highness. I shall count myself honored indeed to be the Royal . . . what shall we call it? Historian?”