by Tad Williams
“Nay, Mistress, not this moment, but I thank ‘ee.” He pulled at Chert’s earlobe.”It seems best tha put me down. Smell is a tricksy thing. Fades like stars at sunrise.”
“He’s going to sniff Flint’s shirt,” Chert explained. It seemed to need some additional clarification, but he couldn’t summon any.
Opal, however, seemed to find it all perfectly straightforward. “Let me carry you. I haven’t swept the floors today and I’m ashamed.” She reached out a hand and Beetledown climbed onto it. “Did your queen really send you? What is she like? Is she old or young? Is she beautiful?”
“Brave as a daw and fearful handsome,” said Beetledown with real feeling. “Hair soft as the velvet pelt of a weanling mouse.” He coughed to cover his embarrassment. “We are her special legion, we Gutter-Scouts. The queen’s eyes and ears. A great honor it gives to us.”
“Then we’re honored she wishes to help us,” said Opal as she carried the tiny man toward Flint’s bed. Chert was bemused to see how much better his wife did this sort of thing than he did. “Do you need anything?”
“Is yon great tent of faircloth un’s garment? Put me down, please ‘ee, Mistress, and I will scent what I can.” He scrambled across the folds, then dropped to his hands and knees and pressed his face against the sleeve. He worked his way up to the shoulder, sniffing as he went like a dog. At last he climbed to his feet and closed his eyes, stood silent for a moment. “I think I have it,” he said. “Easier it gives itself to me because I have scented the boy upon the rooftop and un has un’s own peculiar tang.” He opened his eyes, looked at Opal and Chert, then shuffled his feet a little on the sleeve. “No wish am I having to shame ‘ee, but to me un smells nothing like tha twain.”
Chert almost laughed. “There is no shame. He is not our blood-child. We found him and took him in.”
Beetledown nodded wisely. “Found him in some strange place, thinks I. True?”
“Yes,” said Opal a little worriedly. “How did you know?”
“Un smells of Farther Rooftops.” Beetledown turned to Chert. “Is it tha who will carry me now?”
“Carry . . . ?”
“On the track. Too much of un’s scent there is here. Go where there is moving air, we must—even in these danksome caves there must be such a place, methinks.”
Carefully, Chert lifted the little man back up onto his shoulder. He was tired in heart and body, but certainly it was better to be doing something than simply waiting. “Are you coming?” he asked his wife.
“Then who would be here if he comes home?” said Opal indignantly, as though the boy had merely gone to race sowbugs with the neighbor children and would be back any time. “You go, Chert Blue Quartz, and you let this fellow do all the sniffing he has to do. You find that boy.” She turned to look at Beetledown and performed a strange, stiff courtesy, holding her apron up at the hem. She even smiled at him, although she clearly didn’t find it easy, which reminded Chert that he was not the only one who was bone-weary with sleeplessness and dread. “We thank you and your queen,” she said.
He gave Opal a kiss before leaving, wondering how many days it had been since he had remembered to do that. He couldn’t help glancing back as he opened the door, but he wished he hadn’t. In the middle of the room, his wife was rubbing her hands together and looking at the walls as though searching for something. Now that there was no longer a guest in the house, her face had gone slack with grief—it was a stranger’s face, and an old stranger at that. For the first time he could remember, Chert could no longer quite make out the lovely young girl he had courted.
*
Captain Ferras Vansen came back into the chapel like a condemned prisoner walking bravely to the gallows. His expression, Briony thought, was a little like the idealized face of Perin in the fresco above the door which showed the mighty god giving to his brother Erivor the dominion over the rivers and seas On the sky god the face was frozen in a mask of hard masculine beauty; Vansen, although not an unhandsome man, simply looked frozen.
He kneeled before her, head down. His hair was now almost dry, curling at the ends. She felt something almost like tenderness toward him, touched by the vulnerability of his bent neck. He looked up and she felt caught in some indiscretion, had to fight down a surge of warm anger.
“May I speak, Highness?”
“You may.”
“Whatever you think of me, Princess Briony, I ask you again not to bear ill will toward the men who traveled with me. They are good soldiers tested by things that none of us have seen and felt before. Punish me as you will, but not them, I beg of you.”
“You truly are a bit arrogant, aren’t you, Captain Vansen?”
His eyes widened. “Highness?”
“You assume that you have done some great wrong for which you must be punished. You seem to think that, like Kupilas the Lifegiver, your crime is so great that you must be staked on the hillside as an example, to be picked at by the ravens for eternity. Yet, as far as I can see, you have only proved to be a soldier who has muddled a commission.”
“But your brother’s death . . .”
“It’s true, I haven’t forgiven you for your failures that night. But neither am I so foolish as to think someone else would have prevented it.” She paused, gave him a hard stare. “Do you think I’m foolish, Captain Vansen?”
“No, Highness . . .!”
“Good. Then we have a starting point. I don’t think I’m foolish either. Now let us move to more important matters. Are you mad, Captain Vansen?”
He was startled and she almost felt ashamed of herself, but these were times when she could not bend, could not be too kind and thus seem weak. There could be no whispering among the castle’s defenders that they would fail because a woman ruled them. “Am I . . . ?”
“I asked if you are mad, Captain Vansen. Are your wits damaged? It seems a simple enough question.”
“No, Princess. No, Highness, I do not think so.”
“Then unless you are a liar or a traitor—fear not, I won’t ask you to deny those possibilities as well, we don’t have the time—what you have seen is real. Our danger is real. So let us talk about why your arrogant wish to be important enough to be punished will not be satisfied.”
“My lady . . . ?”
“Silence. I didn’t ask you a question. Captain Vansen, from what you’ve told me, it seems that not everyone is the same when it comes to this fairy-magic. You said that some of the men were bewildered, even bewitched, and that others were not. You were one of those who were not. True?”
“Or at least very little, Highness, as far as I could tell.” He was looking at her with something like surprised respect. She liked the respect. She did not like the surprise.
“Then I would be a fool to throw a soldier who seemed armored against such charms and snares into chains at a time when we may need that talent far more than strong arms or even stout hearts . . . would I not?”
“I . . . I take your point, Highness.”
“Here is another question. Did you see any reason, any differences in those affected, that might explain why some of you were overwhelmed by the Shadowline magic and some were not?”
“No, Highness. One of my most trusted and sensible men, Collum Dyer, was swept away into a dream very quickly, but a man who is for all purposes his opposite was not touched and, in fact, made it home with me.”
“So we have no way to know who has the weakness until it is revealed.” She frowned, biting her lip. Vansen watched her, clearly masking deeper feelings, but this time more effectively. She wondered briefly what he was hiding from her. Irritation? Fear? “Despite what you think of him, this fellow you mentioned who was not overcome by the fairy-magic must be given a role in preparing to fight this strange enemy. He and all the others who were not poisoned by this strange dreaming. He and your other survivors must all be made captains.”
“Mickael Southstead a captain?" Vansen was chagrined.
“Unless he is the lowest,
vilest criminal ever born, his clear head will be worth more to us than if Anglin the Great himself were to come back from the heavens to lead us, then fall into a bewildered nightmare. As we have agreed,Vansen, I am no fool, and I don’t think you are one either. Can you not see this?"
He bowed his head again briefly. “I can, Highness. You are right.”
“Very kind of you to say so, Captain. We do not know where we will be fighting. It could be we will meet them in the hills of Daler’s Troth in an attempt to keep them away from the cities. It could just as easily happen that we cannot stop them until they reach the walls of Southmarch itself You are the only ones who have seen the enemy and returned to tell of it. You must help us prepare for them in any way you can imagine. I am not happy about it, Vansen, but I need you just as much as I need Brone and Nynor and Tyne Aldritch. The matter of my brother’s murder and your failure is not closed, but until better times I will push it from my mind, and so will you. It could be that if you serve me well if you serve Southmarch well then what is in the ledger of that night can be scraped away, or at least inked over.”
“I will do all that you ask, Highness.” This new expression was hard to unriddle, both elevated and miserable, so that for a moment he appeared to have stepped down from a different fresco altogether.
You are a strange man, Ferras Vansen, she thought. Maybe I was wrong to think you are the sort that has no secrets. “Go, then. Gather those who came back with you. See that they are fed and rested, but in no circumstance let them leave. I will speak to them myself tomorrow morning.”
“Yes, Highness.” He rose, but hesitated. “Princess Briony . . . ?”
“Speak.”
“There is a young woman, too—I believe I told you.”
A cold irritation crept over her. “What about her? We cannot let her go either, even if she is mad and suffering. I regret it. Make her comfortable.” She narrowed her eyes. “Do you have some feelings for her?”
“No!” He flushed: she was certain she had touched a nerve.That made her grow even more chill, although she did not know why. “No, Highness. Responsibility, perhaps—she is like a child and she trusts me. But although she seemed just as lost in the Shadowline dream as Dyer and the others, she also found a way out again for us. She seems to be in some middle ground between the two . . .”
“We have no time or patience to try to make sense out of some unfortunate young woman. If the magic took her and confused her, she is no use to us. Make her comfortable. Bring me the others tomorrow at ten of the clock.”
Vansen bowed and went out, looking not exactly like one reprieved, but perhaps like one who had found out the gallows makers were all ill with a bad fever.
She sat for a long time after he was gone, her thoughts an unsettled swirl. She had only an hour or so before she had to meet with the nobles and make a plan of war. She would have liked to go to Utta—she missed the Zorian sister’s wisdom and calm—but she knew there was a more important visit she had to make. Whatever complicated feelings she might have and whatever terrors might be punishing him, she did not wish to go to this evening’s council without her twin.
*
The Scourge of the Shivering Plain stood on a hillside at the edge of the line of trees, looking down on the valley and the town that bestrode the river at its bottom. The sun had vanished behind the top of the hills and lamps were already being lit all along the dark valley, even though evening was still an hour away.
Yasammez turned and reached out with her thoughts, feeling back toward the Shadowline. The mantle of shadow, the web of careful, ancient enchantments that had trailed behind her for days like a cape of mists, the vast, mortal-bewildering essence of the Qar heartland that had hidden and protected her marching army, had now stretched to its limits and was beginning to thin. She knew that it would reach no farther into these fields, that where she went from now on she must do beneath the bright sun or the unclouded stars. That was why she waited for night.
The Seal of War glowed on her chest like a coal. Its weight was both comforting and terrifying. For year upon long year she had waited for this hour to come. Whatever befell would have much to do with her decisions in the days ahead, and she would have had it no other way. Still, many would die, and many of them would be her own kind. Like almost all warriors, no matter how fierce, it was not easy for her to see her own killed, whatever the need.
She turned and walked back up the hillside. Although her armor was covered in long spines and the trees grew close together here, she made no sound.
In the woods along the hilltop her army had gathered. With the mantle’s weakening their bright eyes glittered in the gathering dark like a sky full of stars as they watched her pass. No fires had been lit. Later, when she had a better idea of what she faced, had learned something of the mettle of her sunlander enemies, Lady Porcupine might find it useful to let them see her army’s fires burning on the hills and plains, let them count the blazes -with chilling blood—but not tonight. Tonight the People would come down on their foes like lightning from a cloudless sky.
Her tent was a thing woven of silence and thickened shadow. Several of her captains awaited her inside its surprisingly large expanse, seated around the dim amethyst glow of her empty helmet in a circle like the Whispering Mothers who nursed the Great Egg.
Yasammez wished she could send them all away—there was always that still moment before the noise and the blood and she preferred to spend it by herself—but first there were things she had to do and even a few hated formalities she must observe.
Mormng-in-Eye of the Changing People was waiting, her naked chest heaving. She had just run a long way. “What do you bring me?” Yasammez asked her.
“They are no more than they seem, or else they have grown a thousand times more skilled in trickery than they once were. A small garrison lives inside the town gates. There are other small forces of armed folk in the larger houses, and an armory that suggests they can muster more when need be.”
“But the armory is full?”
Morning-in-Eye nodded her sleek head. “Pikes and helmets, bows, arrows—none have been given out. They do not suspect.”
Yasammez showed nothing, but she was pleased. An easy victory would bring its own problems, but it was more important that her army’s first blooding not be too perilous. Even with all those she had mustered, the People were still vastly outnumbered by the mortals who now filled the lands that once had belonged to her folk. She relied on surprise and terror to increase the size of her host tenfold.
“Hammerfoot of Firstdeep?”
“Yes, Lady.”
“It is long since we have come against mortal men or their works. When the village is afire, take some of your women and men and pull down the walls. See to the way of their building. It is only a town, but perhaps we will see something of what we must defeat when we come against the Old Place.”
“Yes, Lady.”
She turned to Gyir, the most trusted of her captains, and for a moment their thoughts commingled. Compared to her or even many of the others present he was merely a stripling, but his ferocity and cunning were second only to hers. She tasted his cold resolve and was pleased, then spoke so that the others might hear. “When we are putting the town to fire and the people to slaughter, it is my wish that a large number be allowed to escape, or at least to believe that they are escaping.” She paused for a moment, considered unflinchingly the horror that would come. “Let them be mostly females and their young.”
Stone of the Unwilling stirred, flickered. “But why, Lady? Why show them mercy? They never showed us any—when they found my people’s hive in the last great battles they burned it and clubbed our children to death as they came out, screaming and weeping.”
“It is not mercy. You should know that I of all the People have no such failing when it comes to the sunlanders. I wish the news of what happened here to spread—it will fill their land with terror. And the females and young we allow to escape will not tak
e up arms as their males might, but in the cities we besiege they will need to be fed and watered, taking resources from those who do stand against us.” She slipped Whitefire from its sheath and laid it beside her helmet. There was no fire in her pavilion of shadow; the sword’s lunar glow gave all the light. “We have not spilled the blood of mortals since we retreated behind the Shadowline. Now that is ended. Let the Book of Regret remember this hour even beyond the world’s end. “ She raised her hand. “Sing with me, for the sake of all the People. We must now praise the blind king and the sleeping queen and swear our fealty to the Pact of the Glass—yes, we will all swear to it together, think what we might—then we will take flame and fear to our enemies.”
PART THREE
FIRE
. . . And Perin went among them and heard their cries, and when they told him, not knowing who he was, of the terrible beast that beset them, he smiled and patted his great hammer and instructed them not to be afraid . . .