by Tad Williams
“Then we’re going past . . . past . . .” The boy thought for a moment. “Past the bottom of the tower with the golden feather on top of it.”
Chert stopped, surprised. The boy had not only remembered a small detail on the tower’s roof from the previous afternoon’s walk, but had calculated the distances and directions, too. “How can you know that?”
Little Flint shrugged, the keen intelligence suddenly hidden behind the gray eyes again like a deer moving from a patch of sunlight into shadow.
Chert shook his head. “You’re right, though, we’re passing underneath the Tower of Spring—although not right under it. Once we come up out of the deepest parts of Funderling Town, we don’t go directly under the inner keep. None of the high Funderling roads do. It’s . . . forbidden.”
The boy sucked on his lip, thinking again. “By the king?”
Chert was certainly not going to delve straight into the deep end of the Mysteries, but something in him did not want to lie to the child. “Yes, certainly, the king is part of it. They do not want us to tunnel under the heart of the castle in case the outer keep, and Funderling Town, should be overrun in a siege.”
“But there’s another reason “ It was not a question but a disconcertingly calm assertion.
Chert could only shrug. “There is seldom only one reason for anything in this world.”
He led the boy upward through a series of increasingly haphazard diggings Their ultimate destination was inside the inner keep, and the fact that they could actually reach it from the tunnels of Funderling Town was a secret that only Chert of all his people knew—or at least he believed that was the case. His own knowledge was the result of a favor done long ago, and although it was conceivable someone could use this route as a way of going under the wall of the inner keep and attacking the castle itself, he couldn’t imagine anyone not of Funderling blood and upbringing finding their way through the maze of half-finished tunnels and raw scrapes.
But what about the boy? he thought suddenly. He’s already shown he has a fine memory. But surely even those clever, hooded eyes could not remember every twist and turn, the dozens of switchbacks, the crossings honeycombed with dozens of false trails that would lead anyone but Chert down endless empty passages and, if they were lucky enough not to be lost in the maze forever, eventually funnel them back into the main roads of Funderling Town.
Still, could he really risk the secret route with this child, of whom he knew so little?
He stared at the boy laboring along beside him in the sickly coral-light, putting one foot in front of the other without a word of complaint. Despite the child’s weird origins Chert could sense nothing bad in him, and it was hard to believe anyone could choose one so young as a spy, not to mention plan with such skill that the one person who knew these tunnels would wind up taking the child into his home. It was all too farfetched. Besides, he reminded himself, if he changed his mind now, he would not only have wasted much of the day, he would have to present himself at the Raven’s Gate and try to talk his way past the guards and into the inner keep that way. He didn’t think they were likely to let him in, even if he told them who he was going to see. And if he told them the substance of his errand, it would be all over the castle by nightfall, causing fear and wild stories No, he would have to go forward and trust his own good sense, his luck.
It was only as they turned down the last passage and into the final tunnel that he remembered that “Chert’s luck”—at least within his own Blue Quartz family—was another way of saying “no luck at all.”
The boy stared at the door. It was a rather surprising thing to find at the end of half a league of tunnels that were little more than hasty burrows, the kind of crude excavations that Funderling children got up to before they were old enough to be apprenticed to one of the guilds. But this door was a beautiful thing, if such could be said of a mere door, hewn of dark hardwoods that gleamed in the light of the coral stones, its hinges of heavy iron overlaid with filigree patterns in bronze. All that trouble, and for whom? Chert knew of no one else beside himself who ever used it, and this was only his third time in ten years.
It didn’t even have a latch or a handle, at least on the outside Chert reached up and pulled at a braided cord that hung through a hole in the door. It was a heavy pull, and whatever bell it rang was much too far away to hear, so Chert pulled it again just to make certain They had what seemed a long wait—Chert was just about to tug the cord a third time— before the door swung inward.
“Ah, is it Master Blue Quartz?” The round man’s eyebrows rose. “And a friend, I see.”
“Sorry to trouble you, sir.” Chert was suddenly uncomfortable—why had he thought it would be a good idea to bring the boy with him? Surely he could simply have described him. “This boy is . . . well, he’s staying with us. And he’s . . . he’s part of what I wanted to talk to you about. Something important.” He was uncomfortable now, not because Chaven’s expression was unkind, but because he had forgotten how sharp the physician’s eyes were—like the boy’s but with nothing hidden, a fierce, fierce cleverness that was always watching.
“Well, then we must step inside where we can talk comfortably. I am sorry to have kept you waiting, but I had to send away the lad who works for me before I came. I do not share the secret of these tunnels lightly.” Chaven smiled, but Chert wondered if what the physician was politely not saying was, Even if some others do.
He led them down a series of empty corridors, damp and windowless because they were below the ground-floor chambers, passages set directly into the rocky hill beneath the observatory.
“I told you the truth,” Chert whispered to the boy. “About not digging under the inner keep, that is. You see, we’ve just crossed under its walls, but not until we were inside this man’s house, as it were. Our end of the tunnel stops outside the keep.”
The boy looked at him as though the Funderling had claimed he could juggle fish while whistling, and even Chert was not sure why he felt compelled to point out this distinction. What loyalty could the boy have to the royal family? Or to Chert himself, for that matter, except for the kindness of a bed and a few meals?
Chaven led them up several flights of stairs until they reached a small, carpeted room. Jars and wooden chests were stacked along the walls and on shelves, as though the room was as much a pantry as a retiring room. The small windows were covered with tapestries whose night-sky colors were livened by winking gems in the shapes of constellations.
The physician was more fit than he appeared: of the three of them, Chert alone was winded by the climb. “Can I offer you something to eat or drink?” asked Chaven. “It might take me a moment to fetch. I’ve sent Toby off on an errand and I’d just as soon not tell any of the servants there’s a guest here who didn’t come in through any of the doors—at least any of the doors they know about . . .”
Chert waved away the offer. “I would love to drink with you in a civilized way, sir, but I think I had better get right to the seam, as it were. Is the boy all right, looking around?”
Flint was moving slowly around the room, observing but not handling the various articles standing against the wall, mostly lidded vessels of glass and polished brass.
“I think so,” Chaven said, “but perhaps I should withold my judgment until you tell me what exactly brings you here—and him with you.”
Chert described what he had seen the day before in the hills north of the castle. The physician listened, asking few questions, and when the little man had finished, he didn’t speak for a long time. Flint was done examining the room and now sat on the floor, looking up at the tapestries and their twining patterns of stars.
“I am not surprised,” Chaven said at last. “I had . . . heard things. Seen things. But it is still fearful news.”
“What does it mean?”
The physician shook his head. “I can’t say. But the Shadowline is something whose art seems far beyond ours, and whose mystery we have never solved. Scarcely
anyone who passes it returns, and those who have done so are no longer in their right minds. Our only solace has been that it has not moved in centuries—but now it is moving again. I have to think that it will keep moving unless something stops it, and what would that be?” He rose, rubbing his hands together.
“Keep moving . . .?”
“Yes, I fear that now it has started the Shadowline will keep moving until it has swept across Southmarch—perhaps all of Eion. Until the land is plunged back into shadow and Old Night.” The physician frowned at his hands, then turned back to Flint. His voice was matter-of-fact but his eyes belied it. “Now I suppose I had better have a look at the boy.”
*
Moina and Rose and her other ladies, despite all their kind words and questions, could not stop Briony’s furious weeping. She was angry with herself for acting so wildly, so childishly, but she felt lost beyond help or even hope. It was as though she had fallen down a deep hole and was now beyond the reach of anyone.
Barrick pounded at the chamber door, demanding that she speak to him.
He sounded angry and frightened, but although it felt as if she were casting offa part of her own body, she let Rose send him away. He was a man— what did he know of how she felt? No one would dream of selling him to the highest bidder like a market pig.
Eighty thousand dolphins discounted for my sake, she thought bitterly. A great deal of gold—most of a king’s ransom, in fact. I should be proud to command such a high price. She threw a pillow against the wall and knocked over an oil lamp. The ladies squealed as they rushed to stamp out the flames, but Briony did not care if the entire castle burned to the ground.
“What goes on here?”
Treacherous Rose had opened the door, but it was not Barrick who had come in, only Briony s great-aunt, the Dowager Duchess Merolanna, sniffing. Her eyes widened as she saw Moina smothering the last of the flames and she turned on Briony. “What are you doing, child, trying to kill us all?"
Briony wanted to say yes, she was, but another fit of weeping overcame her. As the other ladies tried to fan the smoke out the open door, Merolanna came to the bed and sat her substantial but carefully groomed self down on it, then put her arms around the princess.
“I have heard,” she said, patting Briony’s back. “Do not be so afraid— your brother may refuse. And even if he doesn’t, it isn’t the worst thing in the world. When I first came here to wed your father’s uncle, years and years and years ago, I was as frightened as you are.”
“But Ludis is a m—monster!” Briony struggled to stop sobbing. “A murderer! The bandit who kidnapped our father! I would rather marry . . . marry anyone—even old Puzzle—before allowing someone like that . . .” It was no use. She was weeping again.
“Now, child,” Merolanna said, but clearly could think of nothing else to say.
Her great-aunt had gone, and Briony’s ladies-in-waiting kept their distance, as though their mistress had some illness which might spread—and indeed she did, Briony thought, because unhappiness was ambitious.
A messenger had just arrived at the door, the third in an hour. She had returned no message to her older brother, and hadn’t been able to think of anything sufficiently cutting to send back to Gailon, Duke of Summerfield.
“This one comes from Sister Utta, my lady,” Moina said. “She sends to ask why you have not visited her today, and if you are well.”
“She must be the only one in the castle who doesn’t know,” said Rose, almost laughing that anyone could be so remote from the day’s events. A look at Briony’s tearstamed face and the lord constable’s niece quickly sobered. “We’ll tell her you can’t come . . .”
Briony sat up. She had forgotten her tutor entirely, but suddenly wanted nothing more than to see the Vuttish woman’s calm face, hear her measured voice. “No. I will go to her.”
“But, Princess . . .”
“I will go!” As she struggled into a wrap, the ladies-in-waiting hurried to pull on their own shoes and cloaks. “Stay here. I am going by myself.” The feared darkness having enfolded her now, she felt no need to waste her strength on niceties. “I have guards. Don’t you think that’s enough to keep me from running away?”
Rose and Moina stared at her in hurt surprise, but Briony was already striding out the door.
Utta was one of the Sisters of Zoria, priestesses of the virgin goddess of learning. Zona once had been the most powerful of goddesses, some said, mistress of a thousand temples and an equal of even her divine father Perin, but now her followers had been reduced to advising the Trigon on petty domestic policy and teaching highborn girl-children how to read, write, and—although it was not deemed strictly necessary in most noble families—to think.
Utta herself was almost as old as Duchess Merolanna, but where Briony s great-aunt was a royal barge, elaborately painted and decorated, the Vuttish woman was spare as a fast sailing ship, tall and thin, with gray hair cropped almost to her scalp. She was sewing when Briony arrived, and her pale blue eyes opened wide when the girl immediately burst into tears, but although her questions were sympathetic and she listened carefully to the answers, the priestess of Zona was not the type to put her arms around even her most important pupil.
When Briony had finished the story, Utta nodded her head slowly. “As you say, our lot is hard. In this life we women are handed from one man to another, and can only hope that the one we come to at last will be a kind steward of our liberties.”
“But no man owns you.” Briony had recovered herself a little. Something strong about Utta, the unassuming strength of an old tree on a windy mountainside, always calmed her. “You do what you want, without a husband or a master.”
Sister Utta smiled sadly. “I do not think you would wish to give up all I have given up to become so, Princess. And how can you say I have no master? Should your father—or now your brother—decide to send me away or even kill me, I would be trudging down Market Road within an hour or hanging from one of the mileposts.”
“It’s not fair! And I won’t do it.”
Utta nodded again, as if she was truly considering what Briony said. “When it comes to it, no woman can be turned against her own soul unless she wills it. But perhaps it is too early for you to be worrying. You do not know yet what your brother will say.”
“Oh, but I do.” The words tasted bitter in her mouth. “The council—in fact, almost all the nobles—have been complaining for months about the price of Father’s ransom, and they have also been telling Kendrick that I should be married off to some rich southern princeling to help pay for it. Then when he resists them, they whisper behind their hands that he is not old enough yet to rule the March Kingdoms. Here is a chance for him to stop their moaning in an instant. I’d do it, if I were him.”
“But you are not Kendrick, and you have not yet heard his decision.” Now Utta did an unusual thing, leaned over and for a moment took Briony’s hand. “However, I will not say your worries are baseless. What I hear of Ludis Drakava is not encouraging.”
“I won’t do it! I won’t. It is all so unfair—the clothes they always want me to wear, the things they want me to say and do . . and now this! I hate being a woman. It’s a curse.” Briony looked up suddenly. “I could become a priestess, like you! If I became a Sister of Zoria, my maidenhood would be sacred, wouldn’t it?”
“And permanent.” Utta could not quite muster a smile this time. “I am not certain you could join the sisterhood against your brother’s wishes, anyway. But is it not too early to be thinking of such things?”
Briony had a sudden recollection of the envoy Dawet dan-Faar, of eyes proud and leopard-fierce. He did not seem the type to stand around for weeks waiting for a defeated enemy to agree to the terms of surrender. “I don’t think I have much time—until tomorrow, perhaps. Oh, Sister, what will I do?"
“Talk to your brother, the prince regent. Tell him how you feel. I believe he is a good man, like your father. If there seems no other way . . . well, perhaps
there is advice I might give you then, even assistance.” For a moment, Utta’s long, strong face looked troubled. “But not yet.” She sat up straight.
“We have an hour left before the evening meal, Princess. Shall we spend it usefully? Learning may perhaps keep your mind off your sorrows, at least for a little while.”
“I suppose.” Briony had cried so much she felt boneless. The room was quite dark, with only one candle lit. Most of the light in the spare apartment came from the window, a descending beam that ended in a bright oblong climbing steadily higher on the wall as the sun dropped toward its evening harbor. Earlier she had felt sure the worst had happened, but now she thought she could feel the shadowy wings still beating above her, as if there was some threat as yet undiscovered.