by Tad Williams
She was floating toward sleep, thinking of the damp straw on the floor that would have to be replaced with dry now that wet weather had come, and of how she must also press Onsin to plaster up the cracks around the window of their little house, when she heard the first faint sounds— someone shouting. When she realized it was not the watchman calling out the hour, suddenly all her sleepiness was gone.
At first she thought it must be a fire. It was different living in a town than the village where Finneth had grown up. Here a fire could start so far away that you had never even seen the people whose houses it took first, but still come rushing down your own narrow street like an army of angry demons, jumping from roof to roof at horrifying speed. Was it a fire? Somewhere a bell was ringing, ringing, and more people were shouting. Someone was running through the streets calling for the reeves. It had to be a fire.
She was already shaking Onsin awake when she heard a voice louder than the others, perhaps at the bottom of their own road, screaming, “We are attacked! They are climbing the walls!” Finneth’s heart lurched. Attacked? Climbing the walls? Who? She was heaving at Onsin’s bulk now, but he was like a great tree, too much for her to move. At last he rolled over and sat up, shaking his head.
“War!” she said, tugging his beard until he knocked her hands away. “The reeves are out—everyone’s crying war!”
“What?” He slapped and pinched at his face as though it were not his own, then heaved himself up off their pallet. Agnes was awake and making questioning sounds, crying a little. Finneth pulled the child’s blanket around her and kissed her, but it didn’t soothe her, and Finneth had to see to Fergil as well. The boy was waking but still half in a dream, twitching and looking around as though he had never seen his own house before; for a moment the sight of her confused children brought tears to Finneth’s eyes.
Onsin had pulled on his heavy breeches and, strangely, his best boots, but had not bothered with a shirt. He had his hammer in one hand, the hammer that no one else in the drove road could even lift, and an ax he was straightening for Tully Joiner in the other. Even in this wild moment Finneth thought her husband looked like something out of an old story, a kindly giant, a bearded demigod like Hiliometes. He was listening to the shouting, which had moved down to the end of the street. Now Finneth heard another sound, a rising wail like the wind, and she was filled with a helpless, sickening terror unlike any she had known.
“I will be back,” Onsin said as he hurried out the door. He did not kiss his children or wait for her blessing, which only added to Finneth’s growing despair.
Attacked? Who could it be? We have been at peace with Settland since befort Grandmother’s time Bandit--? Why would bandits attack a town?
“Mama Where did Papa go?" asked little Fergil, and as she squatted to comfort him, she realized she was shivering, wearing nothing but the blanket she had wrapped around her. “Papa went out to help some other men,” she told the children, then began to pull on her clothes.
She couldn’t believe that it could still be the same night—that only just the other side of the midnight bell she had been lying in her bed thinking about Onsin’s snoring, worrying about the sound Agnes was making when she breathed. It was as though Perin himself had lifted a hammer large as a mountain and brought it down on all their lives, smashing everything into powder.
Candlerstown was aflame, but fire was the least of her worries now. The streets were full of shrieking figures, some bleeding, others only running aimlessly mad, eyes staring wide and dark out of pale faces, mouths open holes. It was as though the earth had vomited out all the unhappy dead. Finneth couldn’t think, didn’t want to think—such terror was too large to fit into one head, one heart, especially when she had to cling to a pair of frightened, weeping children and try to find a place where the flames were not burning, where people were not screaming. But there was no such place anywhere.
Worst of all were the glimpses of the invaders, impossible nightmare shapes clambering over walls and dashing across rooftops—some in animal shapes, others bent and twisted as no living thing that could wear armor and carry a weapon should be. As she dragged the children past a pubhc square she saw a tall figure on a rearing horse in the midst of a crowd of Candlerstown men, and that figure looked so much like a man that for an instant she was heartened—here was some noble lord, perhaps even Earl Rorick himself, a person Finneth had never seen despite his importance in her life. Yes, Rorick must have come down from his castle at Dale House to rally the frightened townfolk and lead them against these monstrous invaders. But then she saw that this shaggy-haired lord was taller than any man, that he had too many fingers on his long white hands, and that his eyes, like those of his rearing horse, were as flame-yellow as a cat’s. As for the men around him, the ones she had thought he might be rallying, they were crawhng and moaning beneath his horse’s hooves as he pricked at them with his long spear, driving them like a flock of sheep to slavery or death.
Agnes stumbled and fell and Fergil began to shriek. She caught them both up in her arms and limped away from the square. She was in a part of the town she hardly seemed to know at all, but everything had become something else on this ghastly night it might be her own street for all she could be certain, her own house that she staggered past as barking, whistling shapes came pouring out of the windows like beetles from a split log. Overhead, the stars had vanished Fmneth couldn’t understand that either. Why were there no stars, and why had the sky turned that dull, dark red? Was it blood—was the whole town bleeding up into the sky? Then she knew. It was the smoke of burning Candlerstown itself, hiding what was happening even from Heaven.
She found herself in a crowd of people, although it was more river than crowd, a heedless wash of screams and waving arms that flooded down the Marsh Road, past the Trigonate temple. The outer walls and roof of the temple were crawling with something that looked like moss but which glowed like sullen lightning. The priests had nearly all been slaughtered, although some of them were still crawling despite terrible, obviously mortal wounds In their haste to flee, the shrieking crowd was trampling the survivors, which might have been a mercy. Even Finneth stepped on a motionless human figure and did not care—it was all she could do to keep upright. She could not stop, could not turn, certainly could not waste pity on the dead and soon-dead. She was hemmed in on either side and all she could think of was holding Agnes and Fergil tight against her, so tightly that even the gods could not pull them from her.
All who fell now were crushed underfoot. The crowd moved like a single living thing, rushing to the open Eastside Gate and the darkness beyond, toward the blessed cold fields where no fires burned.
Finneth ran until she couldn’t run any farther, then shoved her way to the outskirts of the torrent of people, which was beginning to slow and scatter.
They were outside the walls, knee-deep in the stubble of a harvested field, when she fell to the ground at last, exhausted and helpless. She wondered if she, too, might be dying, she was not wounded, but it seemed impossible anyone could experience such a night and live. She clutched her son and daughter and wept, every sob clawing painfully at her smoke-scorched throat.
Gone, all gone—Onsin, her house, her few possessions. Only these two small, precious, panting creatures kept her from running back to throw herself into the flames of Candlerstown. Most dreadful of all, as she lay with her shivering children on the cold ground just outside the murdered town, she could hear the destroyers of everything she had, and they were singing. Their voices were painfully lovely.
Darkness claimed her then, but only for a while.
28
Evening Star
WHITE SANDS:
See the moon scatter diamonds
His work is bone and light and dry dust
In the garden where no one strays
—from The Bonefall Oracles
She had lost track of how many different Favored had taken her up as though she were an ill-wrapped package, walked he
r to the next way station, and then turned her over to another functionary, but at last she was led into the receiving room of the paramount wife Arimone looked up from her cushions and smiled indulgently as Qinnitan abased herself. “Oh, do get up, child,” she said, although she looked not much more than a girl herself. “Are we not all sisters here?"
If we were all sisters, Qinnitan could not help thinking, I wouldn’t have gone down on my knees in the first place. The invitation had arrived that morning and Qinnitan had spent hours under the expert ministration of a half dozen slaves, a mix of Favored and born-females, until her appearance had been polished to a blinding brilliance like a gemstone, after some consideration, she was then deconstructed and redressed in slightly less formal splendor.
“After all, we don’t want the Evening Star to think we aspire to become the Light of the Morning, do we?" a Favored named Rusha had said with mocking severity. “We shall be beautiful—but not too beautiful.”
Luian, who had been a bit absent of late, as if ashamed of her part in bringing Qmnitan to meet Jeddin, had not been involved in the preparations for the audience, but she had sent one of her Tuani women to help Qinnitan arrange her hair, which was now piled atop her head and held in place with jeweled pins. Qinnitan had been quite taken with her own image in the glass when it was done, but that seemed like pure foolishness now. Arimone, who was perhaps ten years older than Qinnitan, was unquestionably the most beautiful woman she had ever seen or even imagined, like a temple image of Surigal herself, her hair jet black and so long that even in a braid it coiled like a sleeping snake all over the cushions on which she sat. Qinnitan could only wonder what such an amazing cascade of hair would look like untethered and brushed out, she also felt certain everyone else who met Arimone, most assuredly including any whole men, were meant to wonder about that as well.
The autarch’s paramount wife had an arresting figure, small-waisted and wide-hipped, both features accented by her clinging robe, and she also had a perfect, heart-shaped face, but it was her eyes—huge, thick-lashed, and almost as black as her hair—that made her look as though she belonged with the other goddesses in Heaven rather than languishing among mere mortals in the Seclusion. Qinnitan, who was already frightened and felt a bit of an impostor in her fine clothes, suddenly felt not like one of the all-powerful autarch’s chosen brides, but like the dirtiest street urchin imaginable.
“Come, come, sit with me,” Arimone said in a voice so light and musical it suggested years of exhausting practice. “Will you take some tea? I like to drink it cool on days like this, with plenty of mint and sugar. It’s very refreshing.”
Qinnitan did her best to seat herself without tripping over any of the striped cushions mounded at the center of the room. In one corner a young girl played the lute with surprising skill. Several other servant girls, when they were not waiting on the paramount wife, sat talking quietly in the corners of the room. Two youths with the dewy, beardless faces of the Favored stood behind the cushions waving fans of peacock feathers. The decoration of the receiving room seemed designed to remind visitors of one thing and one thing only—a bedchamber, which was after all the root of Arimone’s power. She had not yet given the autarch an heir, but he had spent much of his first regnal year traveling through all his lands, so none of the other wives dared even whisper rumors of unhappiness in the royal bed. Should another year pass without sign of a male heir, of course, they would do almost nothing else.
“Forgive me for waiting so long before having you to visit,” said the paramount wife. “You have been here, what, half a year?”
“More or less, Highness.”
“You must call me Anmone—as I said, we are all sisters here. I have heard much about you, and you are just as charming as I imagined.” She raised an eyebrow that had been plucked into a line as delicate as a spider’s leg. “I hear you are great friends with Favored Luian. The two of you are cousins, are you not?”
“Oh, no, High . . . Arimone We are merely from the same neighborhood.”
The first wife frowned prettily. “Am I so foolish, then? Why did I think she and you . . .?”
“Perhaps because Luian is a cousin of Jeddin, the chief of the Leopards.” Arimone was watching her closely, Qinnitan suddenly wished she had kept her mouth shut. She was even more disturbed to realize that she was still babbling about it. “Luian talks of him much, of course. She is . . . she is very proud of him.”
“Ah, yes, Jeddin. I know him. He’s a handsome fellow, isn’t he?” The Evening Star was still looking at Qinnitan in a way that made her very, very uncomfortable. “A fine, firm piece of manflesh. Don’t you think so?”
Qinnitan did not know what she was supposed to say. The women of the Secluded talked very frankly about men, in a way that virginal Qinnitan often found embarrassingly informative, but this seemed somehow different, as though she were being tested in some way. A chill ran over her. Had the paramount wife heard rumors? “I have scarcely seen him, Arimone, at least since we were all children together. Certainly he could not be as handsome as our lord the autarch, all praise to his name, could he?”
Her hostess smiled as if at a well-played gambit. Qinnitan thought she heard a few of the slave girls giggle behind her. “Oh, that is different, little sister Sulepis is a god on earth, and thus not to be judged as other men. Still, he is very taken by you, it seems.”
The footing was again unsteady. “Taken by me? You mean the autarch?”
“Of course, dear. Has he not had you given special instruction? I hear that you are with that wheezing priest Panhyssir almost every day. That there are prayers and . . rituals of preparation. Arcane practices.”
Qinnitan was confused again. Hadn’t this happened with all the wives? “I did not know that was unusual, Mistress.”
“Arimone, remember! Ah, I suppose it is not surprising that the autarch has become interested in something new. He knows more than the priests, has read more of the ancient texts than they have themselves. He knows everything, my oh-so-clever husband—what the gods whisper to each. other in dreams and why they live forever, the old, forgotten places and cities, the secret history of all of Xand and beyond When he speaks to me, I can scarcely understand him sometimes. But his interests are so widespread that they do not last for long, of course. Like a great golden bee, he moves from flower to flower as his mighty heart leads him. I am sure whatever has taken his interest this time will be . . . short-lived.”
Qinnitan flinched, but she was puzzled and determined to find out why the other wives seemed to think of her as different. “How . . . how were you prepared, Arimone? For marriage, I mean. If you will forgive an impertinent question. This is all very new to me.”
“I imagine it is You may not know, but of course I was married before.” My current husband murdered my only child, then killed my first husband, too, and made his death last for weeks, she did not say, nor did she have to—Qinnitan already knew it, as did everyone else in the Seclusion. “So my circumstances were a bit different. I came to our lord and master’s bed already a woman.” She smiled again. “We are quite intrigued by you, many of us here in the Seclusion. Did you know that?”
“You . . . you are?”
“Ah, yes, of course. A very young girl—a child, really—” Arimone’s smile was a bit cold, “from, let us be frank, an undistinguished family. None of us can quite imagine what it was that lifted you to the Golden One’s eye.” She spread her hands, which glittered with rings. The nails were half the length of her long, slender fingers. “Other than the beauty of your innocence, little sister, which is of course charming and formidable.”
Never in her life, even standing before Autarch Sulepis, had Qinnitan felt less significant.
“Come, will you have a little more tea? I have prepared a surprise for you. I hope it will be a pleasant one. Will you promise not to tell on me if I do something that is a little naughty?”
Qinnitan could only nod.
“Good.That is how it shou
ld be between sisters. So you will not be too shocked if I tell you that I have brought a man into my house today—a true man, not one of the Favored. You are not afraid to meet a true man, are you? You have not been so long away from the streets of your childhood that you view them all as monsters and rapists, do you?”
Qinnitan shook her head, confused and frightened. Did the first wife know about Jeddin? Why else all this taunting?
“Good, good. In truth, he is very harmless, this man. So old that I do not think he could mount a mouse.” She laughed between her teeth and her serving girls echoed her. “He is a storyteller. Shall I summon him?” The question was not meant to be answered: Arimone lifted her hands and clapped. A moment later a bent figure in colorful clothes stepped through one of the curtained doors and into the receiving room.