by Tad Williams
Heart of aromatic cedar, head of ice
Face turned away
—from The Bonefall Oracles
He practically had to fight his way through the women to get to her. The physician could feel their resentment, as though . he were some long-absent lover who had put this baby in her and then left her shamed and alone. But the king is the father here, not me, and Olin is not absent by choice.
Queen Anissa had grown so round in the belly that it made the rest of her slight frame seem even smaller. Seeing her in the center of the bed, surrounded by gauzy curtains like trailing cobwebs, he had a momentary image of her as a she-spider, gravid and still. It was unfair, of course, but it set him thinking.
“Is that Chaven?” To make room for him, she pushed away one of her small dogs, which had been sleeping against the curving side of her stomach like a rat dreaming of stealing a hippogriff’s egg. The dog blinked, growled, then stumbled down to join its companion who snored near her feet. “Come here, quickly. I think I will give birth at any moment.”
From the look of her, she might have been right. He was surprised by the dark circles under her eyes. In this room of draped windows, the only light an unsteady glow from the candle-studded altar, she looked as though she had been beaten.
“You need more air in this bedchamber.” He took her hand and gave it a quick, formal kiss.The skin was dry and warm—a little too much of both. “And you look like you aren’t getting enough sleep, my queen.”
“Sleep? Who could sleep in such a time? Poor Kendrick murdered in our own house by a trusted servant, and then plague all through the town? Do you wonder I keep the windows covered to keep out bad airs?”
Calling Shaso a trusted servant seemed an interesting way of characterizing him, and the fact that she had not counted her husband’s absence in her list of worries might also have been thought strange, but Chaven did not respond to her words. Instead, he busied himself examining the queen’s heartbeat and the color of her eyes and gums, then leaned in to smell her breath, which at the moment was a little sour. “The plague is all but spent, Highness, and I imagine you were in far greater danger from your own maid when she had it than from it floating in from the town.”
“And I sent her away until she was better, you can be sure. Didn’t I, Selia? Where has she gone? Has she gone for seeing why I have no breakfast yet? Aah! Must you poke me so, Chaven?”
“Just wishing to be certain that you are well, that the baby is well.” He let his hands move across the drum-taut arc of her stomach. The old midwife was still staring at him in a way that was a little less than friendly. “What do you think, Mistress Hisolda? The queen seems well enough to me, but you have more experience with such things.”
The old woman showed a crooked smile, perhaps recognizing his gambit. “She is stronger than she looks, though the baby is a big one.”
Anissa sat up. “That is just what I am feared of! He is big, I can tell-how he kicks! One of my sisters died birthing such a child—they saved the baby, but my sister died all . . . washed in blood!” She made a southern sign against evil happenstance. She was afraid, of course, Chaven could see that, but there was also a hint of falsity to her words, as though she played up her fear in hopes of sympathy. But why shouldn’t she? It was a frightening business, childbirth, especially the first time. Anissa was already well past twenty winters, he reminded himself, not yet in the time of danger for first mothers but certainly past her prime according to all the learned men who had written about it.
This was also the first time Chaven had heard her refer to the baby as “he.” The royal physician did not doubt that the midwife and her coven of helpers had been at work, perhaps dangling a pendulum over Anissa’s stomach or reading splatters of candle wax. “If I order you a medicinal draught, will you promise to drink it every night?” He turned to Hisolda. “You will have no trouble finding the constituents, I’m sure.”
The old woman raised her eyebrow. “If you say so, Doctor.”
“But what is it, Chaven? Is it another one of your binding potions that will turn my bowels to stone?”
“No, just something to help you sleep. The baby will be strong and hearty, I am sure, and so will you be if you do not sit up nights frightening yourself! He stepped over to the midwife and listed the ingredients and their proportions—mostly wild lettuce and chamomile, nothing too strong. “Every night at sundown,” he told the old woman. He was beginning to doubt that flattery worked on her, so he tried another tack, the truth. “I am a little frightened to see her so restless,” he whispered.
“What are you saying?” Anissa moved herself heavily toward the edge of the bed, disturbing the dogs and setting them growling. “Is something wrong with the child?”
“No, no.” He came back to her side, took her hand. “As I said, Highness, you are frightening yourself without need. You are well and the child is well. The plague seems to have passed us by, praise to Kupilas, Madi Surazem, and all the gods and goddesses who watch over us.”
She let go of his hand, touched her face. “I have not been out of this place so long—I must look a dreadful monster.”
“You look nothing of the sort, Highness.”
“My husband’s children think I am. A monster.”
Chaven was surprised. “That is not true, my queen. Why would you say such a thing?”
“Because they do not come to see me. Days go by, weeks, and I do not see them. “ When she was excited her accent grew thicker. “I do not think they will love me like a mother, but they treat me like a serving maid.”
“I don’t believe Princess Briony and Prince Barrick feel that way at all, but they are much occupied,” he said gently. “They are regents now, and many things are happening.
“Like that handsome young Summerfield. I heard. Something bad has happened to him. Didn’t I say that, Hisolda? When I heard he left the castle, I said ‘Something is not right there,’ didn’t I?”
“Yes, Queen Anissa.”
Chaven patted her hand. “I know nothing for certain of Gailon Tolly except that there are many rumors. But rumors are not to be trusted, are they? Not in a household already so upset by death and your husband’s absence.”
She grabbed his hand again. “Tell them,” she said. “Tell them to come to me.”
“You mean the prince and princess?"
She nodded. “Tell them that I cannot sleep because they shun me—that I do not know what I have done so they are angry with me?"
Chaven resolved to pass the message along in a slightly less heated form. It might be useful to convince the twins to come and visit their stepmother before the child arrived, for any number of reasons.
He removed his hand, disguising the escape as another kiss across her knuckles, then bowed and bade her farewell. He suddenly found that he wanted to be alone to think.
The little page had been roused from his pallet on the floor and sent to make his bed anew in the outer chamber. They were finally alone.
“What’s troubling you so?” Briony sat down on the edge of the bed. “Talk to me.”
Her brother pulled the fur lap robe up across his chest and huddled deeper into the blankets. It was not a warm night, not with true winter on the doorstep and Orphan’s Day less than a month away, but Briony did not find the room particularly cold. Is he still suffering with that fever? It had been at least a tennight but she knew some fevers did not loose their grip for a long time, or came back again and again.
“Why did you say that idiot poet could stay in the household?”
“He amused me.” Was she going to have to discuss it with everyone? “In truth, I thought he might amuse you, too. He tried to convince me he was writing an epic poem about me—a ‘pangegync,’ whatever that is. Comparing me to Zona hersele. The gods alone know what he’ll compare you to Perin, probably . . . no, Erivor in his seahorse chariot.” She tried to smile. “After all, Puzzle isn’t as diverting as he used to be—I think I’m beginning to feel too sorry
for him I thought it would do the two of us good to have someone new to make fun of. Which reminds me, Puzzle came to me when I was leaving your room earlier today. Told me that on the night Kendrick was killed, he saw Gailon in the hallway.”
Barrick frowned. He seemed not just sleepy but a little dazed. “Kendrick saw Gailon . . . ?”
“No, Puzzle saw Gailon.” She quickly repeated what the old jester had told her.
“He has heard that Gailon has disappeared,” Barrick said dismissively. “That is all. He wishes to be remembered as denouncing him if it turns out that Gailon is a traitor.”
“I don’t know. Puzzle never bothered with politicking before.”
“Because Father was here to protect him.” Barrick’s expression suddenly changed into something vague, distant. “Do you like him?”
“Who?”
“The poet. He is handsome. He speaks well.”
“Handsome? I suppose, in a prettified sort of way. He has an absurd beard. But that is certainly not why I said he could . . .” She realized she had been led astray again. “Barrick, I don’t want to waste any more breath on that callow fool. If you dislike the poet so much, give him some money and send him away, I don’t care. I’m convinced he’s nothing to do with the greater matter. Which is what we’re going to talk about.”
“I don’t want to.” He spoke with all the dolefulness that he had made his art. Briony wondered if other siblings felt this way, sometimes loving and hating at the exact same moment. Or was it only twins, so close that it often seemed she had to wait for Barrick to breathe before she could get air into her own lungs?
“You will talk. You almost killed that potboy Why, Barrick?” When he didn’t reply, she leaned across the bed and clutched his arm. “Zoria preserve us, this is me! Me! Briony! Kendrick is dead, Father is gone—we only have each other.”
He looked at her from beneath his lashes like a frightened child. “You don’t really want to know. You just want me to behave well. You just hate it that I embarrassed you in front of Brone and . . . and that poet.”
She blew out breath in exasperation. “That’s not true. You are my brother. You’re . . you’re nearly the other half of me.” She found his eye and held it, but it was like trying to keep a skittish animal from bolting. “Look at me, Barrick. You know that’s not what happened. The potboy said something about . . . about dreams. About your dreams. Then you tried to throttle him.”
“He had no right to talk about me that way.”
“ What way, Barrick?”
He pulled the blankets even tighter, still deciding. “You said you read the letter from Father again,” he said at last. “Did you notice anything interesting?”
“About the Autarch? I already told you . . .”
“No, not about the Autarch. Did you notice anything interesting in it about me?”
She stopped, confused. “Anything . . . no. No. He sent you his love. He said to tell you his health had been good.”
He shook his head. His face was grim, as though he were stepping out onto some narrow prominence, trying not to look down at a great distance opening before him. “You don’t understand.”
“How can I? Talk to me! Tell me what has you so upset.You tried to kill an innocent man . . . !”
“Innocent? That potboy’s no man, he’s a demon. He saw into my dreams, Briony. He spoke about them in front of you and Brone and that mongrel quill-carver!” Despite the chill, Barrick had a thin sheen of sweat on his forehead. “He is probably talking about them still to anyone who’ll listen. He knows. He knows!” He turned and rammed his face against the cushion. His shoulders heaved.
“Knows what?” She grabbed at his arm with both hands and shook him. “Barrick, what have you done?”
He turned, eyes damp, red-rimmed. “Done? Nothing. Not yet.”
“I can’t make any sense of this at all.” She combed a tangle of damp red hair back offhis brow with her fingers. “Just talk.Whatever is -wrong, you’re still my brother. I’ll still love you.”
He let out a snort of disbelief but the storm had passed. He let his head fall back on the cushion and stared up at the timbered ceiling. “I’ll tell you what Father’s letter said. ‘Tell Barrick that he should be glad for me. Although I am a captive, my health has actually been much better this last half year. I almost think it has done me good to get away from the damp northern airs.’ That’s what he wrote.”
Briony shook her head. “What, do you think he means that he is happier being away from us—from you? He is jesting, Barrick. Trying to make light of a terrible situation . . .”
“No. No, he’s not. Because you don’t know what he’s talking about and I do.” The fire in him had died down. He closed his eyes. “Do you remember the nights when Father couldn’t sleep? When he would go to the Tower of Summer and sit up all night with his books?” She nodded. The first few times Olin’s ability to slip away had been the cause of much alarm around the residence, until his family and the guards had learned to look for him in his library in the tower. The king had returned each time from these midnight excursions with an embarrassed air, as if he had been found in drunken sleep on the throne-room floor. Briony had always believed that it was thoughts of his dead wife that tormented him so badly on those nights that he could not sleep: he always spoke of their mother Meriel as though he had loved her very much, even though the marriage had originally been arranged by his father, King Ustin, when Olin and Meriel, the daughter of a powerful Brennish duke, were both very young. Everyone in the household knew that her death had been a hard, hard blow for him.
“And you remember that he would always bar the door?”
“Of course “ Locked out, the guards had only been able to rouse the king by banging on the door until he came to open it, blinking like an owl and wiping at sleepy eyes. “I . . . I think he cried. He didn’t want anyone to see him weeping. Over our mother.”
Barrick showed a strange, tight-lipped smile. “Weeping? Maybe. But not over our mother.”
“What . . . what do you mean?”
He glanced up at the ceiling and took a few deep breaths, as though he were not merely standing on some high, lonely place but preparing to jump. “I . . . I went there one night. I had a nightmare. I think I must even have been walking in my sleep—it might have been the first time—because I woke up outside his chamber and I was very frightened and I wanted him to . to tell me things would be all right I went in and he wasn’t there, even though his servants were all there, sleeping I knew he must be in his library So I went out of the residence by that back chapel door so the guards wouldn’t stop me. It was near Midsummer, I think—I only remember it was warm and it felt so strange being out in the courtyard in my nightshirt and bare feet. I felt like I could go anywhere—-just walk where I wanted to, even walk to another country, as though the moon would stay up and bright as long as the journey would take, and that when I woke up there, I would be a different person.” He shook his head. “It was a full moon, very big I remember that, too.”
“How long ago was this?”
“The year that part of the roof fell off Wolfstooth. And the cook with the skinny arms died and we weren’t allowed to go in the kitchen all spring.”
“Ten years ago. You mean the year . . . the year you hurt your arm.”
He nodded slowly. She could sense that he was balancing something, trying to decide. She tried to sit quietly, but her heart was beating fast and she was unexpectedly frightened.
“The downstairs door was locked, but the key was still in the other side and he hadn’t turned the lock all the way. It popped open when I wiggled the latch, then I went up the steps all the way to the library. There were no guards at the tower, no one there at all. I didn’t think it was strange while it was happening—the whole night seemed like a dream, not just that—but I should have wondered why he’d sent them away, or slipped away from them, just to be by himself. But I wouldn’t have wondered long. When I reached the door, I could . .
. hear him.”
“Was he crying?”
Barrick took a moment to answer. “Crying, yes. Making all kinds of noises, although I could barely hear them through the door. Laughing, it almost sounded like. Talking. At first I thought he was having an argument with someone, then I thought perhaps he was asleep and having a nightmare, just like the one that had woken me up. So I knocked on the door. Quietly at first, but the noises on the other side just went on. So I banged on it with my fists and shouted, ‘Father, wake up!’Then he opened the door.” For a moment it seemed Barrick would continue, but instead his shoulders heaved and he took in a ragged gasp of air. He was sobbing.
“Barrick, what is it? What happened?” She climbed up onto the bed and wrapped her arms around him. His muscles were as tight as the cording on a knife hilt and he trembled as though in the full grip of fever again. “Are you ill?”