by Tad Williams
“Perhaps. But, as I said, better you than me.”
In truth, Ferras Vansen was almost glad of the distraction. The land through which they passed was less obviously strange than the previous two days’ stretch of road, deserted and a bit gloomy but otherwise about what he would have expected as they neared the halfway point of the journey, and thus not particularly interesting With the largest cities of Settland and the March Kingdoms several days’ ride away in either direction, these lands had emptied in the years since the second war with the Twhght People, leaving only crofters and woodsmen of various sorts and the occasional farmer. The few small cities like Candlerstown and Faneshill had grown up south of the Settland Road, well away from the Shadowlme (These towns were also too far out of the way to be worth visiting this trip, a fact much mourned by Dyer and the rest of Vansen’s men ) Winters were also milder closer to the water to the east or west few felt the need to live out here in such dramatic solitude. The Settland Road passed through low hills and scrub that were even more undistinguished than the lands where Ferras had spent his childhood.
They could see the line again now, just a few miles away to the north, or at least they could see the breakfront of mist that marked it. It was wearying to ride hour after hour with it hovering so close, hard not to think of it as a malevolent thing watching them and waiting for an opportunity to do harm, but Ferras was much happier knowing where it was, able to see that there was still a crisp delineation between his side and the other.
Willow had moved from goats to the topic of her father and swine, and was explaining what her sire had to say about letting the hogs scavenge for mast—for the “oak corns” as she called them. Vansen, who had spent most of the last ten years of his life trying to forget about raising hogs and sheep, leaned over and asked her, “And what of Collum? Your brother?”
Either his guess was correct or she was madder than he supposed. “He would rather pick rushes than follow the pigs. He is a quiet one, our Collum. Only ten winters Such dreams he has!”
“And where is he now?" He was trying to discover if there was any sense or meaning behind some of the things she had said.
Her look turned sad, even frightened, and he was almost sorry he’d asked. “In the middle of the night, he went. The moon called him, he said I tried to go, too—he is just a little one!—but our father, he grabbed me and would not let me through the door.” As if the subject caused her pain, she began talking again about cutting the rushes for rush candles, another activity Vansen knew only too well.
It would not have taken much calling by the moon or anything else to make me run away, Vansen thought. But somehow I do not think this girl’s brother has gone to the city to make his fortune.
Late afternoon, with the sun falling fast, Vansen decided to make camp. The road had led them through the low, sparsely covered hills all day, but they were about to pass through a patch of forested ground. The stand of trees before them was not a place he wanted to wander in the growing dark.
“Look!” shouted one of the men. “A deer—a buck!”
“We’ll have fresh meat,” another cried.
Ferras Vansen looked up to see the creature standing just inside the shadows at the edge of the trees, half a hundred steps away. It was large and healthy, with an impressive spread of antler, but seemed otherwise quite ordinary Still, something about the way it looked at them, even as a few of the men were nocking arrows, made him uneasy.
“Don’t shoot,” he said One of the soldiers raised his bow and aimed. “Don’t!” At Vansen’s shout, even though it had been looking straight at them, the stag for the first time seemed to understand its peril It turned and with two long leaps vanished into the cover of the trees.
“I could have had him,” snarled the bowman, the old campaigner Southstead whose grumbling ways had been the reason Vansen brought him instead of leaving him home to gossip and spread dissatisfaction among the rest of the guardsmen.
“We do not know what is natural here and what is not.” Ferras was careful to keep anger out of his voice. “You saw the flowers. You have seen the empty houses. We have enough to eat in our packs and saddlebags to keep us alive. Kill nothing that does not threaten you—do you all hear me?”
“What,” demanded Southstead, “do you think it might be another girl, magicked into a deer?” He turned to the other guards with a loud, angry laugh. “He’s already got one—that’s just greedy, that is.”
Vansen realized that the man was frightened by this journey through lands grown strange. As are we all, he told himself, but that makes such talk all the more dangerous. “If you think you know better than me how to lead this company, Mickael Southstead, then say so to me, not to them.”
Southstead’s smile faltered. He licked his lips. “I meant only a jest, sir.”
“Well, then Let us leave it at that and make camp. Jests will be more welcome over a fire.”
When the flames were rising and the girl Willow was warming her hands, Collum Dyer made his way to Vansen s side. “You’ll have to keep an eye on our Micka, Captain,” he said quietly. “Too many years of too much wine has curdled his heart and brains, but I had not thought him so far gone as to mock his captain. He never would have dared it in Murray’s day.”
“He’ll still do well enough if there’s something to do.” Vansen frowned. “Raemon Beck, come here.”
The young merchant, who had spent most of the journey like a man caught in a nightmare from which he couldn’t awaken, slowly made his way toward Vansen and Dyer.
“Are you an honorable man, Beck?”
He looked at Ferras Vansen in surprise. “Why, yes, I am.”
“Yes, Captain,” grunted Dyer.
Vansen raised his hand it didn’t matter. “Good. Then I want you to be the girl’s companion. She will ride with you. Trying to get sense from her is like sifting a thousandweight of chaff for every grain of wheat, anyway, and you may recognize better than I can if she says something useful.”
“Me?”
“Because you are the only one here who has been through something like what I believe she has seen and heard and felt.” Ferras looked over to where the men were gathering more deadfall for the fire. “Also, to be frank, it is better if the men are angry with you than angry with me.”
Beck did not look too pleased at this, but Collum Dyer was standing right beside him, cleaning his dirty fingernails with a very long dagger, so he only scowled and said, “But I am a married man!”
“Then treat her as you would want your wife treated if she were found wandering ill and confused beside the road. And if she says anything that you think might be useful, anything at all, tell me at once.”
“Useful how?"
Vansen sighed. “In keeping us alive, for one thing.”
He and Dyer watched as a chastened Beck walked back to the fire and sat himself down beside the near-child Willow.
“Do you think we’re in such danger, Captain?” asked Dyer.
“Truly.”
“Because of a few flowers and a daft girl?”
“Perhaps not. But I’d rather come home with everyone safe and be laughed at for being too cautious—wouldn’t you?"
The night passed without incident, and by midmorning the road had led them so deep into the trees that they could no longer see the dreary hills or the looming Shadowline. At first that seemed a blessing, but as the day wore on and the sun, glimpsed only for brief moments through chinks in the canopy, passed the peak of the sky and began to slide into the west, Vansen found himself wondering whether they would have to spend the night surrounded by forest, which was not a comfortable thought. As they took their midday meal of roadbread and cheese, he called Raemon Beck to his side again.
“There is nothing to tell,” Beck said sullenly. “I have never heard so much prattling about pigs and goats in my entire life. If we were to come upon her father’s farm now, I think I might put a torch to it myself.”
“That is not what I w
ished to ask you. These woods—when you were riding through them, how long did it take you? On the way out toward Settland, I mean.” He tried a kind smile. “I doubt you were paying much notice to such things on your ride back.”
Beck’s look was almost amused, but it didn’t hide his misery. “We went through no forest like this on the way out.”
“What do you mean? You traveled on the Settland Road, did you not?”
The merchant’s nephew looked pale, weary. “Don’t you understand, Captain? Everything has changed. Everything. I remember scarcely half these places from my journey.”
“What nonsense is that? It was only a week or two ago. You must have passed through this wood. A road is not a river—it doesn’t flood its banks and find a new channel.”
Beck only shrugged. “Then I must have forgotten this wood, Captain Vansen.”
The afternoon wore on. The cleared space where the road passed through the trees was quiet and gloomy, but there were signs of life—a few deer, squirrels, a pair of silvery foxes that passed through a clearing beside them like midday moonlight before vanishing into a thicket, and a raven that for a while seemed to keep pace with them, fluttering from branch to branch, cocking its head to examine them with bright yellow eyes. Then, one of the men on foot who could no longer stand the raven’s persistence and silence chased it away with a stone Vansen did not have the heart to scold him.
At last, as the sharp shadows of leaves and branches on the road began to blur into a more general murkiness, he decided that they could not go on any longer in the hope of outlasting the forest. It would be dark within an hour. He bade the company stop and set camp at the edge of the trees, beside the road.
He was kneeling in front of the first gathering of kindling, trying to strike a light from his recalcitrant flint, when one of the youngest guardsmen came racing toward them along the edge of the forest.
“Captain! Captain!” he shouted. “There is someone on the road ahead.”
Vansen stood. “Armed? Could you tell? How many?”
The young soldier shook his head, wide-eyed. “Just one—an old man, I think. And he was walking away from us. I saw him! He had a staff and wore a cloak with the hood up.”
Vansen was struck by the young man’s almost feverish excitement. “A local woodsman, no doubt.”
“He . . . he seemed strange to me.”
Ferras Vansen looked around. Work setting up camp had stopped and all were now watching him. He could feel their curiosity and discomfort. “Well, then, we’ll have a look.You come with me. Dyer? You, too. Perhaps we can all shelter somewhere a bit more comfortable tonight, if this old fellow lives nearby.”
The pair climbed onto their horses and followed the young guard along the road, past the point where it turned and took them out of sight of the camp. There was indeed a small, dark figure hurrying along ahead of them. Although the shape was bent,Vansen thought that if he was an old man, he must be a very spry old man.
They left the young foot soldier and spurred ahead, thinking to catch up to the cloaked shape in a matter of moments, but it was growing dark quickly and somehow even though the road curved again only a little, they could not find him.
“He’s heard us coming and stepped into the trees,” said Collum Dyer.
They rode a little farther, until they could see a clear stretch of road before them. Even in the poor light it was quite clear no one was hurrying ahead of them. They turned and made their way back, riding slowly, peering into the thicket on either side of the road to see if their quarry was hiding there.
“A trick,” Dyer said. “Do you think he was an enemy? A spy?”
“Perhaps, but . . .” Vansen suddenly pulled up in the middle of the road. His horse was restive, pawing at the ground impatiently. A little evening mist had begun to rise from the ground. “We’ve come back two bends of the road,” he said. “Collum, where is the camp?”
Dyer looked startled, then scowled. “You’ll frighten us both, Captain. A little farther ahead—we’ve just mistaken how far in this failing light.”
Vansen allowed himself to be led, but after they had been riding for a while longer, Dyer suddenly reined up and began to call.
“Hallooo! Hallooo! Where are you all? It’s Dyer—halloooo!”
No one answered.
“But we are still on the same road!” Collum Dyer said in panic and fury. “It’s not even full dark!”
Ferras Vansen found he was trembling a little, although the evening was not particularly cold. Mist twined lazily between the trees. He made the sign of the Trigon and realized he had been silently murmuring prayers to the gods for some time. “No,” he said slowly, “but somewhere, somehow, without even knowing it . . . we have crossed the Shadowline.”
19
The God-King
DEEP HOLE:
The sound of a distant horn
The salt smell of a weeping child
The air is hard to breathe
—from The Bonefall Oracles
As usual, the high priest did not enter the dark room until Qinnitan had already been led through an exhausting series of prayers and the steaming golden cup had been set before her. High Priest Panhyssir was another Favored, and was at least as large and imposing as Luian, but seemed to have studied the ways of real men as carefully as Luian had studied those of natural women. He also seemed to have kept his stones until after he had reached manhood—his beard was wispy but long, and he had a surprisingly deep voice, which he used to great effect.
“Has she completed the day’s obeisances?” he demanded When the acolyte nodded, the high priest crossed his arms on his chest. “Good. And the mirror-prayers—has she said them all?”
Qinnitan swallowed her irritation. She didn’t like being talked about as if she were only a child who couldn’t understand, and considering that the hours-long prayer rituals in this small, mirror-lined chamber in the temple never changed, and that she had never been allowed to skip even one of the dozens of intricate chants (those many-named invocations of the different characters of Nushash spoken into the largest of the sacred mirrors, praising the god in his incarnations as the Red Horse, the Glowing Orb of Dawn, the Slayer of Night’s Demons, the Golden River, the Protector of Sleep, the Juggler of the Stars, and all the others) Qinnitan thought it was a bit much for the priest to act as if during his absence she might have been doing something else instead.
“Yes, Great One, O treasured of Nushash.” The subordinate priest, also one of the Favored, had the voice and smooth skin of a young boy, although he was clearly full grown. He was vain, too. he liked to observe himself in the sacred mirrors when he didn’t think Qinnitan was looking. “She is prepared.”
Qinnitan accepted the cup—a splendid thing of gems and hammered gold in the shape of the winged bull that drew Nushash’s great wagon across the sky, worth more than the entire neighborhood in which she had grown up—and did her best to look solemn and grateful. High Priest Pan-hyssir, after all, was one of the most powerful men in the world and probably held her life in his hands. Still, she could not help wrinkling up her face a little as she took the first swallow.
It was lucky that the young priest always said his invocation so loudly— it made it easier for her to drink slowly, and not to worry about the noises she made as she forced the dreadful stuff down. The elixir, the Sun’s Blood as they called it, did taste a little bit like actual blood, salty and with a smoky hint of musk, which was one of the reasons Qinnitan had to force herself not to gag on it. There were other flavors as well, none of them particularly nice, and although it wasn’t spicy, it made her entire mouth tingle as though she had eaten too many of the little yellow Marash peppers.
“Now close your eyes, child,” Panhyssir told her in his deep, important voice as she finished draining the cup. “Let the god find you and touch you. It is a great, great honor.”
The honor came more quickly than usual, and it was no mere brush this time, no dreamy caress as in past da
ys, but more like being grabbed and shaken by something huge. It started as a feeling of heat at the back of her stomach and then spread swiftly up and down her spine, both directions at the same moment like a crackle of fire through dry grass, flaring at last behind her eyes and between her legs so that she would have fallen off the chair if the younger priest had not grabbed her. She felt his hands as though they were far, far away, as though they touched a statue of her rather than the real Qinnitan. The rush of noise and darkness into her head was so powerful that for long moments she was certain she would die, that her skull would burst like a pine knot in a cook fire.
“Help me!” she screamed—or tried to, but the words only existed in her own thoughts. What came out of her mouth instead were animal grunts.