by Tad Williams
She looked around the massive hall, lit mostly by candles even at midday. The dark tapestries on every wall, figured with scenes of dead times and dead Eddon ancestors, made her feel close and hot, as though they were heavy blankets draped over her. Beyond the high windows she saw only the gray limestone prominence of the Tower of Winter with a blessed chink of cool sky on either side. Why, she wondered, in a castle surrounded by the water was there nowhere in that great hall that a person could look out on the sea? Briony felt suddenly out of breath. Gods, why can’t it all start?
As if the heavenly powers had taken pity on her, a murmur rose from the crowd near the doorway as a small company of armored men in tabards decorated with what looked from this distance to be Hierosol’s golden snail shell took up stations on either side of the entrance.
When the dark-skinned figure came through the door, Briony had a moment of bewilderment, wondering, Why is everyone making such a fuss for Shaso? Then she remembered what Summerfield had said. As the envoy came closer to the dais and Kendrick’s makeshift throne, which he had set in front of his father’s grander seat, she could see that this man was much younger than Southmarch’s master of arms. The stranger was handsome, too, or Briony thought he was, but she found herself suddenly uncertain of how to judge one so different. His skin was darker than Shaso’s, his tightly curled hair longer and tied behind his head, and he was tall and thin where the master of arms was stocky. He moved with a compact, self-assured grace, and the cut of his black hose and slashed gray doublet was as stylish as that of any Syannese court favorite. The knights of Hierosol who followed him seemed like clanking, pale-skinned puppets by comparison.
At the last moment, when it seemed to the entire room as though the envoy meant to do the unthinkable and walk up onto the very dais where the prince regent sat, the slender man stopped One of the snail-shell knights stepped forward, cleared his throat.
“May it please Your Highness, I present Lord Dawet dan-Faar, envoy of Ludis Drakava, Lord Protector of Hierosol and all the Kracian Territories.”
“Ludis may be Protector of Hierosol,” Kendrick said slowly, “but he is also master of forced hospitality—of which my father is a recipient.”
Dawet nodded once, smiled. His voice was like a big cat rumbling when it had no need yet to roar. “Yes, the Lord Protector is a famous host. Very few of his guests leave Hierosol unchanged.”
There was a stir of resentment in the crowd at this. The envoy Dawet started to say something else, then stopped, his attention drawn to the great doors where Shaso stood in his leather armor, his face set in an expressionless mask. “Ah,” Dawet said, “I had hoped to see my old teacher at least once more. Greetings, Mordiya Shaso.”
The crowd whispered again. Briony looked at Barrick, but he was just as confused as she was. What could the dark man’s words mean?
“You have business,” Kendrick told him impatiently. “When you are finished, we will all have time to talk, even to remake old friendships, if friendships they are. Since I have not said so yet, let it be known to all that Lord Dawet is under the protection of the March King’s Seal, and while he is engaged on his peaceful mission here none may harm or threaten him.” His face was grim. He had done only what civility required. “Now, sir, speak.”
Kendrick had not smiled, but Dawet did, examining the glowering faces around him with a look of quiet contentment, as though everything he could have wished was assembled in this one chamber. His gaze passed across Briony, then stopped and returned to her. His smile widened and she fought against a shiver. Had she not known who he was, she might have found it intriguing, even pleasing, but now it was like the touch of the dark wing she had imagined the day before, the shadow that was hovering over them all.
The envoy’s long silence, his unashamed assessment, made her feel she stood naked in the center of the room. “What of our father?” she said out loud, her voice rough when she wished it could be calm and assured. “Is he well? I hope, for your master’s sake, he is in good health.”
“Briony!” Barrick was embarrassed—ashamed, perhaps, that she should speak out this way. But she was not one to be gawked at like a horse for sale. She was a king’s daughter.
Dawet gave a little bow. “My lady. Yes, your father is well, and in fact I have brought a letter from him to his family. Perhaps the prince regent has not shown it to you yet . . . ?”
“Get on with it.” Kendrick sounded oddly defensive. Something was going on, Briony knew, but she could not make out what it was.
“If he has read it, Prince Kendrick will perhaps have some inkling of what brings me here There is, of course, the matter of the ransom.”
“We were given a year,” protested Gailon Tolly angrily Kendrick did not look at him, although the duke, too, had spoken out of turn.
“Yes, but my master, Ludis, has decided to offer you another proposition, one to your advantage Whatever you may think of him, the Lord Protector of Hierosol is a wise, farsighted man. He understands that we all have a common enemy, and thus should be seeking ways to draw our two countries together as twin bulwarks against the threat of the greedy lord of Xis, rather than squabbling over reparations.”
“Reparations!” Kendrick said, struggling to keep his voice level. “Call it what it is, sir. Ransom. Ransom for an innocent man—a king!—kidnapped while he was trying to do just what you claim to want, which is organize a league against the Autarch.”
Dawet gave a sinuous shrug. “Words can separate us or bring us together, so I will not quibble with you. There are more important issues, and I am here to present you with the Lord Protectors new and generous offer.”
Kendrick nodded. “Continue.” The prince regent’s face was as empty as Shaso’s, who was still watching from the far end of the throne room.
“The Lord Protector will reduce the ransom to twenty thousand gold dolphins—a fifth of what was asked and what you agreed to. In return, he asks only something that will cost you little, and will be of benefit to you as well as to us.”
The courtiers were murmuring now, trying to make sense of what was going on. Some of the nobles, especially those whose peasantry had grown restive under the taxes for the king’s ransom, even had hope on their faces. By contrast, Kendrick looked ashy.
“Damn you, speak your piece,” he said at last—a croak.
Lord Dawet displayed an expression of carefully constructed surprise. He looks like a warrior, Briony thought, but he plays the scene like a mummer. He is enjoying this. But her older brother was not, and seeing him so pale and unhappy set her heart beating swiftly. Kendrick looked like a man trapped in an evil dream. “Very well,” Dawet said. “In return for reducing the ransom for King Olin’s return, Ludis Drakava, Lord Protector of Hierosol, will accept Briony te Meriel te Krisanthe M’Connord Eddon of Southmarch in marriage.” The envoy spread his big, graceful hands. “In less high-flown terms, that would be your Princess Briony.”
Suddenly, she was the one who was tumbling into nightmare. Faces turned toward her like a field of meadowsweet following the sun, pale faces, startled faces, calculating faces. She heard Barrick gasp beside her, felt his good hand clutch at her arm, but she was already pulling away. Her ears were roaring, the whispers of the assembled court now as loud as thunder.
“No!” she shouted. “Never!” She turned to Kendrick, suddenly understanding his chilled, miserable mask. “I will never do it!”
“It is not your turn to speak, Briony,” he rasped. Something moved behind his eyes—despair? Anger? Surrender? “And this is not the place to discuss this matter.”
“She can’t!” Barrick shouted. The courtiers were talking loudly now, surprised and titillated. Some echoed Briony’s own refusal, but not many. “I won’t let you!”
“You are not the prince regent,” Kendrick declared. “Father is gone. Until he comes back, I am your father. Both of you.”
He meant to do it. Briony was certain. He was going to sell her to the bandit prince, the cruel
mercenary Ludis, to reduce the ransom and keep the nobles happy. The ceiling of the great throne room and its tiled pictures of the gods seemed to swirl and drop down upon her in a cloud of dizzying colors. She turned and staggered through the murmuring, leering crowd, ignoring Barrick’s worried cries and Kendrick’s shouts, then slapped away Shaso’s restraining hand and shoved her way out the great doors, already weeping so hard that the sky and the castle stones ran together and blurred.
5
Songs of the Moon and Stars
THE LOUD VOICE:
In a snail shell house
Beneath a root, where the sapphire lies
The clouds lean close, listening
—from The Bonefall Oracles
Young Flint didn’t seem very taken with the turnip porridge, even though it was sweetened with honey. Well, Chert thought, perhaps it’s a mistake to expect one of the big folk to feel the same way about root vegetables as we do. Since Opal had gone off to the vent of warm subterranean air behind Old Quarry Square to dry the clothes she had washed, he took pity on the lad and removed the bowl.
“You don’t need to finish,” he said. “We’re going out, you and I.”
The boy looked at him, neither interested nor disinterested. “Where?”
“The castle—the inner keep.”
A strange expression flitted across the child’s face but he only rose easily from the low stool and trotted out the door before Chert had gathered up his own things. Although he had only come down Wedge Road for the first time the night before, the boy turned unhesitatingly to the left. Chert was impressed with his memory. “You’d be right if we were going up, lad, but we’re not. We’re taking Funderling roads.” The boy looked at him questioningly. “Going through the tunnels. It’s faster for the way we’re going. Besides, last night I wanted to show you a bit of what was above ground—now you get to see a bit more of what’s down here.”
They strolled down to the bottom of Wedge Road, then along Beetle Way to Ore Street, which was wide and busy, full of carts and teams of diggers and cutters on their way to various tasks, many leaving on long journeys to distant cities that would keep them away for half a year or more, since the work of the Funderlings of Southmarch was held in high regard nearly everywhere in Eion. There was much to watch in the orderly spoked wheel of streets at the center of Funderling Town, peddlers bringing produce down from the markets in the city above, honers and polishers crying their trades, and tribes of children on their way to guild schools, and Flint was wide-eyed. The day-lanterns were lit everywhere, and in a few places raw autumn sunlight streamed down through holes in the great roof, turning the streets golden, although all in all the day outside looked mostly dark.
Chert saw many folk he knew, and most called out greetings. A few saluted young Flint as well, even by name, although others looked at the boy with suspicion or barely-masked dislike. At first, Chert was astonished that anyone knew the boy’s new name, but then realized Opal had been talking with the other women. News traveled fast in the close confines of Funderling Town.
“Most times we’d turn here,” he said, gesturing at the place near the Gravelers Meeting Hall where the ordered ring of roads began to become a little less ordered and Ore Street forked into two thoroughfares, one level, one slanting downward, “but the way we’re going all the tunnels aren’t finished yet, so we’re making a stop at the Salt Pool first. When we get there you have to be quiet and you can’t cut up.”
The boy was busy looking at the chiseled facades of the houses, each one portraying a complicated web of family history (not all of the histories strictly true) and did not ask what the Salt Pool might be. They walked for a quarter of an hour down Lower Ore Street until they reached the rough, largely undecorated rock that marked the edge of town. Chert led the boy past men and a few women idling by the roadside—most waiting by the entrances to the Pool in hopes of catching a day’s work somewhere—and through a surprisingly modest door set in a wall of raw stone, into the glowing cavern.
The Pool itself was a sort of lake beneath the ground; it filled the greater part of the immense natural cave. It was salt water, an arm of the ocean that reached all the way into the stone on which the castle stood, and was the reason that even in the dimmest recesses of their hidden town the Funderlings always knew when the tides were high or low. The run of the lake was rough, the stones sharp and spiky, and the dozens of other Funderlings who were already there moved carefully. It would have been the work of a few weeks at the most to make the cavern and its rocky shore as orderly as the middle of town, but even the most improvement-mad of Chert’s people had never seriously considered it. The Salt Pool was one of the centers of earliest Funderling legend—one of their oldest stories told how the god the big folk called Kernios, who the Funderlings in their own secret language named “Lord of the Hot Wet Stone,” created their race right there on the Salt Pool’s shores in the Days of Cooling.
Chert did not explain any of this to the boy. He was not certain how long the child would stay with them and the Funderlings were cautious with outsiders; it was far too early even to consider teaching him any of the Mysteries.
The boy scrambled across the uneven, rocky floor like a spider, and he was already waiting, watchful features turned yellow-green by the light from the pool, when Chert reached the shore. Chert had only just taken off his pack and set it down by the boy’s feet when a tiny, crooked-legged figure appeared from a jumble of large stones, wiping its beard as it swallowed the last bite of something.
“Is that you, Chert? My eyes are tired today.” The little man who stood before them only reached Chert’s waist. The boy stared down at the newcomer with unhidden surprise.
“It is me, indeed, Boulder.” Now the boy looked at Chert, as surprised by the name as by the stranger’s size. “And this is Flint. He’s staying with us.” He shrugged. “That was Opal’s idea.”
The little fellow peered up at the boy and laughed. “I suppose there’s a tale there. Are you in too much of a hurry to tell it to me today?”
“Afraid so, but I’ll owe it to you.”
“Two, then?”
“Yes, thank you.” He took a copper chip out of his pocket and gave it to the tiny man, who put it in the pouch of his wet breeches.
“Back in three drips,” said Boulder, then scampered back down the rocky beach toward the water, almost as nimble as the boy despite his bent legs and his many years.
Chert saw Flint staring after him.”That’s the first thing you have to learn about our folk, boy. We’re not dwarfs. We are meant to be this size. There are big folk who are small—not children like you, but just small—and those are dwarfs. And there are Funderlings who are small compared to their fellows, too, and Boulder is one of those.”
“Boulder . . . ?”
“His parents named him that, hoping it would make him grow. Some tweak him about it, but seldom more than once. He is a good man but he has a sharp tongue.”
“Where did he go?”
“He is diving. There’s a kind of stone that grows in the Salt Pool, a stone that is made by a little animal, like a snail makes a shell for itself, called coral. The coral that grows in the Salt Pool makes its own light . .
Before he could finish explaining, Boulder was standing before them, holding a chunk of the glowing stuff in each hand; even though it was starting to darken after having been taken from the water, the light was still so bright that Chert could see the veins in the little man’s fingers. “These have just kindled,” he said with satisfaction. “They should last you all day, maybe even longer.”
“We won’t need them such a time, but my thanks.” Chert took out two pieces of hollow horn from his pack, both polished to glassy thinness, and dropped a piece of coral into each, then rilled them with a bit of salt water from Boulder’s bucket to wake the light and keep the little animals inside the coral alive. Submerged in the water, the stony clumps began to glow again.
“Don’t you want reflec
ting bowls?” asked Boulder.
Chert shook his head. “We won’t be working, only traveling. I just want us to be able to see each other.” He capped both hollow horns with bone plugs, then took a fitted leather hood out of his bag, tied it onto Flint’s head, and put one of the glowing cups of seawater and coral into the little harness on the front of the hood above the boy’s eyes. He did the same for himself, then they bade Boulder farewell and made their way back across the cavern of the Salt Pool. The boy moved in erratic circles, watching the light from his brow cast odd shadows as he scrambled from stone to stone.
Although the road had been braced and paved, it was so far out along the network of tunnels that it had no name yet. The boy, only named himself the night before, did not seem to mind.
“Where are we?”
“Now? Even with the gate to Funderling Town, more or less, but it’s a good way back over there. We’re passing away from it and along the line of the inner keep wall. I think the last new road we crossed, Greenstone or whatever they’re calling it now, climbs back up and lets out quite close to the gate.”