by Tad Williams
“Aren’t those people cold?" the boy asked. With the sun now behind the hills, chill winds were beginning to run across the waterway, sending white-tipped wavelets against the pillars.
“They’re Skimmers,” Chert told him. “They don’t get cold.”
“Why not?"
Chert shrugged. “The same reason a Funderling can pick something up off the ground faster than you big folk can. We’re small. Skimmers have thick skins. The gods just wanted it that way.”
“They look strange.”
“They are strange, I suppose. They keep to themselves. Some of them, it’s said, never step farther onto dry land than the end of a loading dock. Webbed feet like a duck, too—well, a bit between the toes. But there are even odder folk around here, some claim, although you can’t always tell it to look at them.” He smiled. “Don’t they have such things where you come from?"
The boy only looked at him, his expression distant and troubled.
They were quickly out of the back alleys of Skimmer’s Lagoon and into the equally close-leaning neighborhoods of the big folk who worked on or along the water. The light was failing quickly now and although there were torches at the crossings and even a few important people being led by lantern-bearers, most of the muddy streets were lit only by the candlelight and firelight that leaked from soon-to-be-shuttered windows. The big folk were happy to build their ramshackle buildings one on top of the other, ladders and scaffolding thick as hedgehog bristles, so that they almost choked off the narrow streets entirely. The stench was dreadful.
Still, this whole place has good bones, Chert could not help thinking, strong and healthy stone, the living rock of the Mount. It would be a pleasure to scrape away all this ugly wood. We Funderlings would have this place looking as it should in a trice. Looking as it once did.
He pushed away the odd thought—where would all these big folk go, for one thing’
Chert and Opal led the boy down the narrow, sloping length of Stonecutter’s Way and through an arched gate at the base of the New Wall, leading him out from beneath the evening sky and into the stony depths of Funderling Town.
This time Chert was not surprised when the boy stopped to stare in awe: even those big folk who did not particularly trust or like the small folk agreed that the great ceiling over Funderling Town was a marvel. Stretching a hundred cubits above the small people s town square and continuing above all the lamplit streets, the ceiling was a primordial forest carved in every perfect detail out of the dark bedrock of the Mount. At the outer edges of Funderling Town, closest to the surface, spaces had even been cut between the branches so that true sky shone through, or so that when night fell (as it was falling even now), the first evening stars could be seen sparkling through the gaps in the stone. Each twig, each leaf had been carved with exquisite care, centuries of painstaking work in all, one of the chief marvels of the northern world. Birds feathered in mother-of-pearl and crystal seemed as though they might burst into song at any moment. Vines of green malachite twined up the pillar-trunks, and on some low branches there were even gem-glazed fruits hanging from stems of improbably slender stone.
The boy whispered something that Chert could not quite hear. “It is wonderful, yes,” the little man said. “But you can look all you want tomorrow. Let us catch up with Opal, otherwise she will teach you how a tongue can be sharper than any chisel.”
They followed his wife down the narrow but graceful streets, each house carved back into the stone, the plain facades giving little indication of the splendid interiors that lay behind them, the careful, loving labor of generations. At each turning or crossing oil lamps glowed on the walls inside bubbles of stone thin as blisters on overworked hands. None of the lights were bright, but they were so numerous that all night long the ways of Funderling Town seemed to tremble on the cusp of dawn.
Although Chert himself was a man of some influence, their house at the end of Wedge Road was modest, only four rooms all told, its walls but shallowly decorated. Chert had a moment of shame remembering the Blue Quartz family manor and its wonderful great room covered with deeply incised scenes of Funderling history. Opal, for all her occasional spikiness of tongue, had never made him feel bad that the two of them should live in such a modest dwelling while her sisters-in-law were queening it in a fine house. He wished he could give her what she deserved, but Chert could no more have stayed in the place, subservient to his brother Nodule—or “Magister Blue Quartz,” as he now styled himself-—than he could have jumped to the moon. And since his brother had three strong sons, there was no longer even a question of Chert inheriting it should his brother die first.
“I am happy here, you old fool,” Opal said quietly as they stepped through the door. She had seen him staring at the house and had guessed his thoughts. “At least I will be if you go and clear your tools off the table so we may eat like decent people.”
“Come, boy, and help me with the job,” he told the little stranger, making his voice loud and jovial to cover the fierce, sudden love he felt for his wife. “Opal is like a rockfall—if you disregard her first quiet rumblings, you will regret it later on.”
He watched the boy wipe dust from the pitted table with a damp cloth, moving it around more than actually cleaning it. “Do you remember your name yet?” he asked.
The boy shook his head.
“Well, we must call you something—Pebble?” He shouted to Opal, who was stirring a pot of soup over the fire, “Shall we call him Pebble?” It was a common name for fourth or fifth boys, when dynastic claims were not so important and parental interest was waning.
“Don’t be foolish. He shall have a proper Blue Quartz family name,” she called back. “We will call him Flint. That will be one in the eye for your brother.”
Chert could not help smiling, although he was not entirely happy about the idea of naming the child as though they were adopting him as their heir. But the thought of how his self-important brother would feel on learning that Chert and Opal had brought in one of the big folk’s children and given him miserly old Uncle Flint’s name was indeed more than a little pleasing.
“Flint, then,” he said, ruffling the boy’s fair hair. “For as long as you stay with us, anyway.”
*
Waves lapped at the pilings. A few seabirds bickered sleepily. A plaintive, twisting melody floated up from one of the sleeping-barges, a chorus of high voices singing an old song of moonlight on open sea, but otherwise Skimmer’s Lagoon was quiet.
Far away, the sentries on the wall called out the midnight watch and their voices echoed thinly across the water.
Even as the sound faded, a light gleamed at the end of one of the docks. It burned for a moment, then went dark, then burned again. It was a shuttered lantern; its beam pointed out across the dark width of the lagoon. No one within the castle or on the walls seemed to mark it.
But the light did not go entirely unobserved. A small, black-painted skiff slid silently and almost invisibly across the misty lagoon and stopped at the end of the dock. The lantern-bearer, outline obscured by a heavy hooded cloak, crouched and whispered in a language seldom spoken in South-march, or indeed anywhere in the north. The shadowy boatman answered just as quietly in the same language, then handed something up to the one who had been waiting for almost an hour on the cold pier—a small object that disappeared immediately into the pockets of the dark cloak.
Without another word, the boatman turned his little craft and vanished back into the fogs that blanketed the dark lagoon.
The figure on the dock extinguished the lantern and turned back toward the castle, moving carefully from shadow to shadow as though it carried something extremely precious or extremely dangerous.
4
A Surprising Proposal
THE LAMP:
The flame is her fingers
The leaping is her eye as the rain is the cricket’s song
All can be foretold
—from The Bonefall Oracles
Puz
zle looked sadly at the dove that he had just produced from his sleeve. Its head was cocked at a very unnatural angle, in fact, it seemed to be dead.
“My apologies, Highness.” A frown creased the jester’s gaunt face like a crumpled kerchief. A few people were laughing nastily near the back of the throne room. One of the noblewomen made a small and somewhat overwrought noise of grief for the luckless dove. “The trick worked most wonderfully when I was practicing earlier. Perhaps I need to find a bird of hardier constitution.
Barrick rolled his eyes and snorted, but his older brother was more of a diplomat. Puzzle was an old favorite of their father’s. “An accident, good Puzzle. Doubtless you will solve it with further study.”
“And a few dozen more dead birds,” whispered Barrick. His sister frowned.
“But I still owe Your Highness the day’s debt of entertainment.” The old man tucked the dove carefully into the breast of his checkered outfit.
“Well, we know what he’s having for supper,” Barrick told Briony, who shushed him.
“I will find some other pleasantries to amuse you,” Puzzle continued, with only a brief wounded look at the whispering twins. “Or perhaps one of my other renowned antics? I have not juggled flaming brands for you for some time—not since the unfortunate accident with the Syannese tapestry. I have reduced the number of torches, so the trick is much safer now . . .”
“No need,” Kendrick said gently. “No need. You have entertained us long enough—now the business of the court waits.”
Puzzle nodded his head sadly, then bowed and backed away from the throne toward the rear of the room, putting one long leg behind the other as though doing something he had been forced to practice even more carefully than the dove trick. Barrick could not help noticing how much the old man looked like a grasshopper in motley. The assembled courtiers laughed and whispered behind their hands.
We’re all fools here. His dark mood, alleviated a little by watching Puzzle’s fumbling, came sweeping back Most of us are just better at it than he is. Even at the best of times he found it difficult to sit on the hard chairs. Despite the open windows high above, the throne room was thick with the smell of incense and dust and other people—too many other people. He turned to watch his brother, conferring with Steffans Nynor the lord castellan, making a joke that set Summerfield and the other nobles laughing and made old Nynor blush and stammer. Look at Kendrick, pretending like he’s Father. But even Father was pretending—he hated all this. In fact, King Olin had never liked either priggish Gailon of Summerfield or his loud, well-fed father, the old duke.
Maybe Father wanted to be taken prisoner, just to get away from it all . . .
The bizarre thought did not have time to form properly, because Briony elbowed him in the ribs.
“Stop it!” he snarled. His sister was always trying to make him smile, to force him to enjoy himself. Why couldn’t she see the trouble they were in—not just the family, but all of Southmarch? Could he really be the only one in the kingdom who understood how wretched things were?
“Kendrick wants us,” she said.
Barrick allowed himself to be pulled toward his elder brother’s chair— not the true throne, the Wolf’s Chair, which had been covered with velvet cloth when Olin left and not used since, but the second-best chair that previously stood at the head of the great dining table. The twins gently elbowed their way past a few courtiers anxious to snatch this moment with the prince regent. Barrick’s arm was throbbing. He wished he were out on the hillside again, riding by himself, far from these people. He hated them all, loathed everyone in the castle . . . except, he had to admit, his sister and brother … and perhaps Chaven. . . .
“Lord Nynor tells me that the envoy from Hierosol will not be with us until almost the noon hour,” Kendrick announced as they approached.
“He said he was unwell after his voyage.” The ancient castellan looked worried, as always; the tip of his beard was chewed short—a truly disgusting habit, in Barrick’s opinion. “But one of the servants told me that he saw this envoy talking to Shaso earlier this morning. Arguing, if the lazy fellow is to be trusted, which he is not to be, necessarily.”
“That sounds ominous, Highness,” suggested the Duke of Summerfield.
Kendrick sighed. “They are both, from appearance, anyway, from the same southern lands,” he said patiently. “Shaso sees few of his own kind here in the cold north. They might have much to talk about.”
“And argue about, Highness?” Summerfield asked.
“The man is a servant of our father’s captor,” Kendrick pointed out. “That’s reason enough for Shaso to argue with the man, is it not?” He turned to the twins. “I know how little you both care for standing around, so you may go and I’ll send for you when this fellow from Hierosol finally graces us with his attendance.” He spoke lightly, but Barrick could see that he was not very happy with the envoy’s tardiness. His older brother, Barrick thought, was beginning to develop a monarchical impatience.
“Ah, Highness, I almost forgot.” Nynor snapped his fingers and one of his servants scuttled forward with a leather bag. “He gave me the letters he bears from your father and the so-called Lord Protector.”
“Father’s letter?” Briony clapped her hands. “Read it to us!”
Kendrick had already broken the seal, the Eddon wolf and crescent of stars in deep red wax, and was squinting at the words. He shook his head. “Later, Briony.”
“But Kendrick . . . !” There was real anguish in her voice.
“Enough.” Her older brother looked distracted, but his voice said there would be no arguing. Barrick could feel the strain in Briony’s abrupt silence.
“What’s all that rumpus?” asked Gailon Tolly a moment later, looking around. Something was happening at the other end of the throne room, a stir among the courtiers.
“Look,” Briony whispered to her twin. “It’s Arissa’s maid.”
It was indeed, and Barrick’s sister was not the only one whispering. Now that the twins’ stepmother was close to giving birth, she seldom left her suite of rooms in the Tower of Spring. Selia, her maid, had become Queen Arissa’s envoy to the rest of the great castle, her ears and eyes. And as eyes went, even Barrick had to admit they were a most impressive pair.
“See her flounce.” Briony did not hide her disgust. “She walks like she’s got a rash on her backside and she wants to scratch it on something.”
“Please, Briony,” said the prince regent, but although the Duke of Summerfield looked dismayed by her rude remark, Kendrick was mostly amused Still, he had been distracted from the letter and was watching the maid’s approach as carefully as anyone else.
Selia was young but well-rounded. She wore her black hair piled high in the manner of the women of Devonis, the land of her and her mistress’ birth, but although she kept her long-lashed eyes downcast, there was little of the shy peasant girl about her. Barrick watched her walk with a kind of painful greed, but the maid, when she looked up, seemed to see only his brother, the prince regent.
Of course, Barrick thought. Why should she be any different than the rest of them . . .?
“If it please you, Highness.” She had been only a season in the marches, and still spoke with a thick Devonisian accent. “My mistress, your stepmother, sends her fond regarding and asks leave for talking to the royal physician.”
“Is she unwell again?” Kendrick truly was a kind man although none of them much liked their father’s second wife, even Barrick believed his brother’s concern was genuine.
“Some discomforting, Highness, yes.”
“Of course, we will have the physician attend our stepmother at once. Will you carry the message to him yourself?”
Selia colored prettily. “I do not know this place so well yet.”
Briony made a noise of irritation, but Barrick spoke up. “I’ll take her, Kendrick.”
“Oh, that’s too much trouble for the poor girl,” Briony said loudly, “going all the way acros
s to Chaven’s rooms. Let her go back to assist our suffering stepmother. Barrick and I will go.”
He looked at his twin in fury, and for a moment regretted putting her on the list of people he did not despise. “I can do it myself.”
“Go, the both of you, and argue somewhere else. “ Kendrick waved his hand. “Let me read these letters. Tell Chaven to see to our stepmother at once. You are both excused attendance until the noon hour.”