by Tad Williams
And now at last you see your destination, standing high and pure and proud beside a wild, dark, inland sea. If there was something otherworldly about Southmarch Castle, there is very little that is worldly at all about this other: a million, million stones in a thousand shades of darkness have been piled high, onyx on jasper, obsidian on slate, and although there is a fine symmetry to these towers, it is a type of symmetry that would make ordinary mortals sick at the stomach.
You descend now, dismounting from the wind at last so that you may hurry through the mazy and often narrow halls, but keep to the widest and most brightly lit passages it is not good to wander carelessly in Qul-na-Qar, this eldest of buildings (whose stones some say were quarried so many aeons ago that the oceans of the young earth were still warm) and in any case, you have little time to spare.
The shadow-dwelling Qar have a saying which signifies, in rough translation: “Even the Book of Regret starts with a single word.” It means that even the most important matters have a unique and simple beginning, although sometimes it cannot be described until long afterward—a first stroke, a seed, a nearly silent intake of breath before a song is sung. That is why you are hurrying now the sequence of events that in days ahead will shake not just Southmarch but the entire world to its roots is commencing here and now, and you shall be witness.
In the deeps of Qul-na-Qar there is a hall In truth there are many halls in Qul-na-Qar, as many as there are twigs on an ancient, leafless tree—even on an entire bone-dead orchard of such trees—but even those who have only seen Qul-na-Qar during the unsettled sleep of a bad night would know what hall this is. It is your destination. Come along. The time is growing short.
The great hall is an hour’s walk from end to end, or at least it appears that way. It is lit by many torches, as well as by other less familiar lights that shimmer like fireflies beneath dark rafters carved in the likeness of holly bough and blackthorn branch. Mirrors line both long walls, each oval powdered so thick with dust that it seems odd the sparkling lights and the torches can be seen even in dull reflection, odder still that other, darker shapes can also be glimpsed moving in the murky glass. Those shapes are present even when the hall is empty.
The hall is not empty now, but full of figures both beautiful and terrible. Were you to speed back across the Shadowline in this very instant to one of the great markets of the southern harbor kingdoms, and there saw humanity in all its shapes and sizes and colors drawn together from all over the wide world, still you would marvel at their sameness after having seen the Qar, the Twilight People, gathered here in their high, dark hall. Some are as stunningly fair as young gods, tall and shapely as the most graceful kings and queens of men. Some are small as mice. Others are figures from mortal nightmares, claw-fingered, serpent-eyed, covered with feathers or scales or oily fur. They fill the hall from one end to the other, ranked according to intricate primordial hierarchies, a thousand different forms sharing only a keen dislike of humankind and, for this moment, a vast silence.
At the head of the long, mirror-hung room two figures sit on tall stone chairs. Both have the semblance of humanity, but with an unearthly twist that means not even a drunken blind man could actually mistake them for mortals. Both are still, but one is so motionless that it is hard to believe she is not a statue carved from pale marble, as stony as the chair on which she sits. Her eyes are open, but they are empty as the painted eyes of a doll, as though her spirit has flown far from her seemingly youthful, white-robed figure and cannot find its way back. Her hands lie in her lap like dead birds. She has not moved in years. Only the tiniest stirring, her breast rising and falling at achingly separated intervals beneath her robe, tells that she breathes.
The one who sits beside her is taller by two hands’ breadth than most mortals, and that is the most human thing about him. His pale face, which was once startlingly fair, has aged over the centuries into something hard and sharp as the peak of a windswept crag. He has about him still a kind of terrible beauty, as dangerously beguiling as the grandeur of a storm rushing across the sea. His eyes, you feel sure would be clear and deep as night sky, would seem infinitely, coldly wise, but they are hidden behind a rag knotted at the back of his head, most of it hidden in his long moon-silver hair.
He is Ynnir the Blind King, and the blindness is not all his own. Few mortal eyes have seen him, and no living mortal man or woman has gazed on him outside of dreams.
The lord of the Twilight People raises his hand. The hall was already silent, but now the stillness becomes something deeper Ynnir whispers, but every thing in that room hears him.
“Bring the child.”
Four hooded, manlike shapes carry a litter out of the shadows behind the twin thrones and place it at the king’s feet On it lies curled what seems to be a mortal manchild, his fine, straw-colored hair pressed into damp ringlets around his sleeping face. The king leans over, for all the world as though he is looking at the child despite his blindness, memorizing his features. He reaches into his own gray garments, sumptuous once, but now weirdly threadbare and almost as dusty as the hall’s mirrors, and lifts out a small bag on a length of black cord, the sort of simple object in which a mortal might carry a charm or healing simple Ynnir’s long fingers carefully lower the cord over the boy’s head, then tuck the bag under the coarse shirt and against the child’s narrow chest. The king is singing all the while, his voice a drowsy murmur Only the last words are loud enough to hear.
By star and stone, the act is done,
Not stone nor star the act shall mar.”
Ynnir pauses for a long moment before he speaks again, with a hesitation that might almost be mortal, but when he speaks, his words are clear and sure. “Take him.” The four figures raise the litter. “Let no one see you in the sunlight lands. Ride swiftly, there and back.”
The hooded leader bows his head once, then they are gone with their sleeping burden.The king turns for a moment toward the pale woman beside him, almost as if he expected her to break her long silence, but she does not move and she most certainly does not speak. He turns to the rest of those watching, to the avid eyes and the thousand restless shapes—and to you, too, dreamer. Nothing that Fate has already woven is invisible toYnnir.
“It begins,” he says. Now the stillness of the hall is broken. A rising murmur fills the mirrored room, a wash of voices that grows until it echoes in the dark, thorn-carved rafters. As the din of singing and shouting spills out through the endless halls of Qul-na-Qar, it is hard to say whether the terrible noise is a chant of triumph or mourning.
The blind king nods slowly. “Now, at last, it begins.”
Remember this, dreamer, when you see what is to follow. As the blind king said, this is a beginning. What he did not say, but which is nonetheless true, is that what begins here is the ending of the world.
PART ONE
BLOOD
“As the woodsman who sets snares cannot always know what he may catch,”
the great god Kernios said to the wise man, “so, too, the scholar may find that
his questions have brought him unforeseen and dangerous answers.”
—from A Compendium of Things That Are Known,
The Book of the Trigon.
1
A Wyvern Hunt
THE NARROWING WAY:
Under stone there is earth
Under earth there are stars; under stars, shadow
Under shadow are all the things that are known.
—from The Bonefall Oracles, out of the Qar’s Book of Regret
The belling of the hounds was already growing faint in the hollows behind them when he finally pulled up. His horse was restive, anxious to return to the hunt, but Barrick Eddon yanked hard on the reins to keep the mare dancing in place. His always-pale face seemed almost translucent with weariness, his eyes fever-bright. “Go on,” he told his sister. “You can still catch them.”
Briony shook her head. “I’m not leaving you by yourself. Rest if you need to, then we
’ll go on together.”
He scowled as only a boy of fifteen years can scowl, the expression of a scholar among idiots, a noble among mud-footed peasants. “I don’t need to rest, strawhead. I just don’t want the bother.”
“You are a dreadful liar,” she told her brother gently. Twins, they were bound to each other in ways as close as lovers’ ways.
“And no one can kill a dragon with a spear, anyway. How did the men at the Shadowline outpost let it past?”
“Perhaps it crossed over at night and they didn’t see it. It isn’t a dragon, anyway, it’s a wyvern—much smaller. Shaso says you can kill one with just a good clop on the head.”
“What do either you or Shaso know about wyverns?” Barrick demanded. “They don’t come trotting across the hills every day. They’re not bloody cows.”
Briony thought it a bad sign that he was rubbing his crippled arm without even trying to hide it from her. He looked more bloodless than usual, blue under the eyes, his flesh so thin he sometimes looked almost hollow. She feared he had been walking in his sleep again and the thought made her shudder. She had lived in Southmarch Castle all her life, but still did not like passing through any of its mazy, echoing halls after dark.
She forced a smile. “No they’re not cows, silly, but the master of the hunt asked Chaven before we set out, remember? And Shaso says we had one in Grandfather Ustin s day—it killed three sheep at a steading in Landsend.”
“Three whole sheep? Heavens, what a monster!”
The crying of the hounds rose in pitch, and now both horses began to take fretful little steps. Someone winded a horn, the moan almost smothered by the intervening trees.
“They’ve seen something,” She felt a sudden pang. “Oh, mercy of Zoria! What if that thing hurts the dogs?"
Barrick shook his head in disgust, then brushed a damp curl of dark red hair out of his eyes. “The dogs?"
But Briony was truly frightened for them—she had raised two of the hounds, Rack and Dado, from puppyhood, and in some ways they were more real to this king’s daughter than most people. “Oh, come, Barrick, please! I’ll ride slowly, but I won’t leave you here.”
His mocking smile vanished. “Even with only one hand on the reins, I can outride you any hour.”
“Then do it!” she laughed, spurring down the slope. She was doing her best to poke him out of his fury, but she knew that cold blank mask too well only time and perhaps the excitement of the chase would breathe life back into it.
Briony looked back up the hillside and was relieved to see that Barrick was following, a thin shadow atop the gray horse, dressed as though he were in mourning. But her twin dressed that way every day.
Oh, please, Barrick, sweet angry Barrick, don’t fall in love with Death. Her own extravagant thought surprised her—poetical sentiment usually made Briony Eddon feel like she had an itch she couldn’t scratch—and as she turned back in distraction she nearly ran down a small figure scrambling out of her way through the long grass. Her heart thumping in her breast, she brought. Snow to a halt and jumped down, certain she had almost killed some crofter’s child.
“Are you hurt?”
It was a very small man with graying hair who stood up from the yellowing grass, his head no higher than the belly-strap of her saddle—a Funderling of middle age, with short but well-muscled legs and arms. He doffed his shapeless felt hat and made a little bow. “Quite well, my lady. Kind of you to ask.”
“I didn’t see you . . .”
“Not many do, Mistress.” He smiled. “And I should also . . .”
Barrick rattled past with hardly a look at his sister or her almost-victim. Despite his best efforts he was favoring the arm and his seat was dangerously bad. Briony scrambled back onto Snow, making a muddle of her riding skirt.
“Forgive me,” she said to the little man, then bent low over Snow’s neck and spurred after her brother.
*
The Funderling helped his wife to her feet. “I was going to introduce you to the princess.”
“Don’t be daft.” She brushed burrs out of her thick skirt. “We’re just lucky that horse of hers didn’t crush us into pudding.”
“Still, it might be your only chance to meet one of the royal family.” He shook his head in mock-sadness. “Our last opportunity to better ourselves, Opal.”
She squinted, refusing to smile. “Better for us would mean enough coppers to buy new boots for you, Chert, and a nice winter shawl for me. Then we could go to meetings without looking like beggars’ children.”
“It’s been a long time since we’ve looked like children of any sort, my old darling.” He plucked another burr out of her gray-streaked hair.
“And it will be a longer time yet until I have my new shawl if we don’t get on with ourselves.” But she was the one who lingered, looking almost wistfully along the trampled track through the long grass. “Was that really the princess? Where do you suppose they were going in such a hurry?”
“Following the hunt. Didn’t you hear the horns? Ta-ra, ta-ra! The gentry are out chasing some poor creature across the hills today. In the bad old days, it might have been one of us!”
She sniffed, recovering herself. “I don’t pay heed to any of that, and if you’re wise, neither will you. Don’t meddle with the big folk without need and don’t draw their attention, as my father always said. No good will come of it. Now let’s get on with our work, old man. I don’t want to be wandering around near the edge of Shadowline when darkness comes.”
Chert Blue Quartz shook his head, serious again. “Nor do I, my love.”
*
The harriers and sight hounds seemed reluctant to enter the stand of trees, although their hesitation did not make them any quieter. The clamor was atrocious, but even the keenest of the hunters seemed content to wait a short distance up the hill until the dogs had driven their quarry out into the open.
The lure of the hunt for most had little to do with the quarry anyway, even so unusual a prize as this. At least two dozen lords and ladies and many times that number of their servitors swarmed along the hillside, the gentlefolk laughing and talking and admiring (or pretending to admire) each others’ horses and clothes, with soldiers and servants plodding along behind or driving oxcarts stacked high with food and drink and tableware and even the folded pavilions in which the company had earlier taken their morning meal. Many of the squires led spare horses, since it was not unusual during a particularly exciting hunt for one of the mounts to collapse with a broken leg or burst heart. None of the hunters would stand for missing the kill and having to ride home on a wagon just because of a dead horse. Among the churls and higher servants strode men-at-arms carrying pikes or halberds, grooms, houndsmen in mud-stained, tattered clothes, a few priests—those of lesser status had to walk, like the soldiers—and even Puzzle, the king’s bony old jester, who was playing a rather unconvincing hunting air on his lute as he struggled to remain seated on a saddled donkey. In fact, the quiet hills below the Shadowline now contained what was more or less an entire village on the move.
Briony, who always liked to get out of the stony reaches of the castle, where the towers sometimes seemed to blot out the sun for most of the day, had especially enjoyed the momentary escape from this great mass of humanity and the quiet that came with it. She couldn’t help wondering what a hunt must be like with the huge royal courts of Syan or Jellon—she had heard they sometimes lasted for weeks. But she did not have long to think about it.
Shaso dan-Heza rode out from the crowd to meet Barrick and Briony as they came down the crest. The master of arms was the only member of the gentry who actually seemed dressed to kill something, wearing not the finery most nobles donned for the hunt but his old black leather cuirass that was only a few shades darker than his skin. His huge war bow bumped at his saddle, bent and strung as though he expected attack at any moment. To Briony, the master of arms and her sullen brother Barrick looked like a pair of storm clouds drifting toward each other and
she braced herself for the thunder. It was not long in coming.
“Where have you two been?” Shaso demanded. “Why did you leave your guards behind?”
Briony hastened to take the blame. “We did not mean to be away so long. We were just talking, and Snow was hobbling a little . . .”
The old Tuani warrior ignored her, fixing his hard gaze on Barrick. Shaso seemed angrier than he should have been, as though the twins had done more than simply wander away from the press of humanity for a short while. Surely he could not think they were in danger here, only a few miles from the castle in the country the Eddon family had ruled for generations? “I saw you turn from the hunt and ride off without a word to anyone, boy,” he said. “What were you thinking?”