by Tad Williams
“Yes, I think that’s true.”
Sisel was still puzzled by whatever lurked beneath Barrick’s words. “These are not natural creatures we face, my prince. We should not be troubled at what we do.”
We? “What do you mean?”
“These . . . things. The Twilight People, as they are superstitiously named, the Old Ones. They are unnatural—the enemies of men. They would take what is ours. They must be destroyed like rats or locusts, without compunction.”
Barrick could only nod Rats. Locusts. He let himself be censed. The perfumes in the smoke reminded him of the spice stalls of Market Square, made him wish badly to be there again with Briony, as when they were children and had escaped for a delicious, giggling moment or two with half the household in ragged pursuit.
After he had removed the ceremonial robe, Barrick followed the knights and nobles out of the temple. Tyne Aldritch and the others looked rested and refreshed, as though they had just come from a bath and a nap, and Barrick couldn’t help being jealous that the trip to the temple had given them this comfort—a comfort he himself did not feel.
Earl Tyne saw Barrick’s troubled face and slowed until they were walking side by side. “The gods will protect us, never fear, Prince Barrick. The creatures are uncanny things, but they are real—they are made of flesh. When we cut them, their blood will flow.”
How can you be sure of that? he wanted to ask. After all, the only person in all of Southmarch with any experience of their enemy was that soldier Vansen, who had actually been present for the killing of one of the Shadowline creatures, although admittedly a small and not very dangerous one, and who had also been attacked by a much larger thing that half a dozen soldiers had not managed to harm at all, even as it took one of their company like a child snatching a sweetmeat from an unguarded plate.
Barrick did not share any of these thoughts either.
“The monsters will be frightening, no doubt,” said Tyne quietly. They paused as the temple acolytes pushed open the heavy bronze doors and let the bay air spill in, ruffling hair and clothing and making the candle flames sputter. “Remember, Highness, it is important that we show the men a courageous face.”
“The gods will give us what courage we need, no doubt.”
“Yes,” said Tyne, nodding vigorously. “They did for me when I was a youth.”
Barrick suddenly realized that although Tyne Aldritch was more than twice Barrick’s own age, he was still a great deal younger than the twins’ father, King Olin. He was a man still young enough to have ambitions— perhaps he hoped that Barrick would remember him as a loyal friend and mentor if they all survived, that his fortune would rise even higher if Barrick Eddon became king someday. Tyne’s daughter was nearly of marriageable age, after all. Perhaps he dreamed of a royal connection.
Up until this moment it had been hard for Barrick to think of most of his elders as anything other than an undifferentiated mass, at least those who were not yet dodderingly old. Now for the first time he examined the battle-scarred Earl of Blueshore and wondered what Tyne himself saw when he gazed out at the world, what he thought and hoped and feared. Barrick looked around at Sivney Fiddicks and Ivar of Silverside and the other lords, faces held up, jaws set in expressions meant to be brave and inspiring as the pale sunshine spilled in through the open doors, and realized that every one of these men lived inside his own head just as Barrick lived in his, and that all of the hundreds of people waiting anxiously on the stairs outside the temple for a glimpse of the nobility of Southmarch lived within their own thoughts as well, as completely and separately as Barrick himself did.
It’s as if we live on a thousand, thousand different islands in the middle of an ocean, he thought, but with no boats We can see each other We can shout to each other. But we can none of us leave our own island and travel to another.
This idea hit him with a far stronger force than any of the ritual he had just experienced inside the temple, and so he did not realize for a moment that the crowd of people on the steps was pushing the ring of guards back toward the temple doors, that in their fear over the rumors of war and even more terrifying things, the throng of common folk was only moments away from trampling the very people they expected to defend them Some of the priests began to shut the great doors again. The guards were shoving back with the long handles of their pikes and a few of the crowd were knocked down and bruised. A woman screamed Some men began trying to pull the pikes away from the guards. A few clods of dirt thudded down on the steps, one hit a Marrinswalk baron on the leg and he stared dumbfounded at the stain on his clean hose as though it were blood Rorick shouted in alarm, perhaps as much at the threat to his own cleanliness as the danger to his person Then, as if it happened in a dream—he was still caught up in the idea of people as islands—Barrick watched Tyne draw his sword, heard the rattle and hiss of a dozen blades leaving their scabbards as other nobles followed Blueshore’s lead. The smell of the crowd so close around them was an animal reek, alien and frightening.
Tyne and the others—they’re going to kill people, he realized. It scarcely seemed possible it was happening so swiftly Or the people may kill us. But why? He looked at the faces around him, saw a growing realization reflected between the nobles and commons that things were falling to pieces and that none of them knew how to stop it.
But I can, he realized. It was a heady feeling, although oddly cheerless. He raised his good hand and walked down a few steps Tyne snatched at him but Barrick ducked away.
“Stop!” he cried, but no one could hear his words above the shouting of frightened people most of the faces staring up at the temple portico couldn’t even see him. He turned and bounded back up the steps to where the massive bronze doors still stood halfway open—one of the cleverer priests, perhaps Sisel himself, had realized it would not be a good idea to lock out the prince regent and the other nobles while they were surrounded by a furious mob—then he yanked a pike away from one of the nearest guardsmen, who surrendered it with a look of complete confusion and misery, as though he suspected that for some inscrutable princely reason Barrick was about to strike him with his own weapon. Instead, Barrick used the heavy pike head to pound against the bronze door until the raw echoes flew across the yard. Heads turned and the shouting slowly began to diminish.
Barrick was breathing very hard: it was difficult to wield the pike with only one hand, bracing it under his arm to hammer at the door, but it had worked. Most of the crowd stared openmouthed at their young prince in front of the temple doorway.
“What do you want?” he cried. “Do you want to crush us? We are going out to fight for the city—for our land. In the holy name of the Three, what do you think you’re doing, pressing in on us like this?”
Some of those caught up with the guards stepped back, shamefaced, but others were more entangled; the process of undoing the near-riot was as complicated as unpicking delicate stitchery. A guardsman still grappling with a sullen onlooker overbalanced and fell with a clang of armor and several of his fellow guards moved forward angrily. Barrick raised his voice again. “Stop. Let the people tell me. What do you want?”
“If you and the other lords go, Prince Barrick, who will protect the city?” a man shouted.
“The fairy folk will come and take our children!” cried someone else, a woman.
Barrick made a show of his confident smile. It was strange how easily this kind of thing came to him, this useful duplicity. “Who will protect the city? The city is protected by Brenn’s Bay, which is worth more than any knights, even these fine nobles. Look around you! If you -were a warlord, even the warlord of a fairy army, would you want to come up that causeway and against these high walls? And don’t forget, my sister Briony will still be here, an Eddon on the throne—believe me, even the Twilight People don’t want to get her angry.”
A few of the people laughed, but others were still calling out anxious questions. Tyne made a show of sheathing his sword.
“Please!” Barrick s
aid to the crowd. “Let us get on with this day’s work—we are to ride soon. Avin Brone the lord constable will come back here and speak at midday, to tell you of how we will defend the castle and the city, what each of you can do to help.”
“The Three bless you, Prince Barrick!” a woman called, and the pained hope in her voice was real enough to touch him even to frighten him. “Come home safe to us!”
Other blessings and good wishes rained down, a moment before it had been clumps of dirt and even a few stones. The crowd didn’t disperse, but they opened a path so that Barrick and the rest of the knights could head back toward the Raven Gate and the inner keep.
“You handled that well, Highness.” Tyne sounded a little surprised. “The gods told you the right words to say.”
“I am an Eddon. They know my family. They know we do not lie to them.” But he couldn’t help wondering. Did I truly do that? Or did the gods indeed work through me? I felt no god, that’s all I know. In truth he was not certain how he felt at all—proud that he had quelled an anxious mob and given them hope, or distressed by how easily they could be swayed from one extreme to another?
And we are not even truly at war. Not yet, He had a sudden chill of presentiment, What will it be like when things begin to go bad?
And where will the gods be then?
*
The noise of hammers was almost deafening, as though a flock of monstrous woodpeckers had descended on Southmarch Castle Men clambered on every wall and tower, it seemed, putting up wooden boardings against the possibility of a siege. After the torpor that had gripped the castle in the past months, it was almost a relief to see so much activity, but Briony knew this was no mere attack from a neighboring kingdom against which they must defend themselves. The March Kingdoms were at war with a completely unknown and perhaps unknowable enemy When the men on the walls and towers looked out toward the still innocent western horizon, and they looked often, the fear on their faces was plain even from the ground Not only the workers found their attention compromised the princess regent was so busy watching the work that she stumbled into a low boxwood hedge Rose and Moina hurried forward to help her, but she shook them off, murmuring angrily.
“These cursed hedges! How can a person even walk?” Sister Utta appeared in one of the gallery archways. Despite the cool gray skies she wore only a light wrap over her plain gown. A wimple of the same color covered her hair, so that her handsome face seemed almost to hang in the air like a mask on a wall. “It would be hard to make a knot garden without hedges,” the Zorian sister said gently. “I hope you haven’t hurt yourself, Highness.”
“I’m well, I suppose.” Briony rubbed at her lower leg. She had discovered one of the disadvantages of wearing hose like a man—there was nothing to protect your shins from pokes and bumps.
Utta seemed to know what the princess regent was thinking; in any case, she smiled. “It was kind of you to visit me.”
“Not kind. I’m miserable. I have no one to talk to.” She looked up in time to catch the hurt glance that jumped from Moina to Rose. “No one but these two,” she said hastily, “and I have complained to them so much that they are surely tired of hearing my voice.”
“Never, Highness!” Rose said it in such a clattering hurry to make her feel better that Briony almost laughed. Now she knew that they were tired of listening to her.
“We worry for you, Briony, that’s all,” Moina agreed, and by forgetting to use her mistress’ title she proved that she was speaking the truth.
They are good and kind, these girls, she thought, and for a moment felt herself old enough to be their grown sister, even their mother, although small, yellow-haired Rose was her own age and dark Moina almost a full year her elder.
“How is your great-aunt?” asked Utta.
“Merolanna? Feeling better. With these musters of soldiers marching in and all these guests in the castle, she is in her element—like a sea captain in a storm. She’s been looking in on my stepmother, too, since Anissa’s time is close and Chaven has seen fit to disappear.” It was hard for Briony to keep her anger at the physician to a polite growl. Finished brushing the bits of boxwood off her hose and the bottom of her tunic, she straightened up. The smell of hyssop and especially lavender were strong here despite the cold breeze off the bay, but they were not soothing. She wondered if anything would soothe her. “And you, Sister—are you well?”
“My joints are sore—it always happens when the wind freshens. If you wish to go in out of the garden, I will not complain.”
“I can barely hear you with all this clattering, anyway, and it won’t be better anywhere else out of doors. Where shall we go?”
“I was about to go to the shrine and make an offering for the safety of your brother and the rest. It is quiet there. What do you think?”
“I think that would be lovely,” Briony told her. “Rose, Moina—stop making eyes at those men on the wall and come along.”
The castle’s Zorian shrine had none of the ostentation of the Erivor Chapel, let alone the huge and grand Trigonate temple. Little more than a single large room, it stood in a corner of the keep near the residence, just below the Tower of Summer. The altar was simple and only one small stained-glass window brought in the daylight, a rendition crafted in the previous century of Zona with her arms outstretched and seabirds landing on her hands and flying about her head. It was a strangely beautiful picture, Briony had always thought, and even in today’s poor sunlight the colors glowed. The shrine was empty, although Briony knew that an older Zorian priestess and at least two or three young novices lived in the apartment beside the chapel. They were Utta’s friends—her family, really, since her true kin were far away in theVuttish Isles and far in the past as well.
“When did you last see any of your family?” she asked her tutor. “Your blood family.”
Utta appeared startled by the question. “My brother visited me here once some years ago. Before that—oh, my, Princess Briony, I have not seen any of them since I joined the Sisters.”
Which must have been thirty years or more, Briony guessed. “Don’t you miss them?”
“I miss the time when I was young. I miss the sense of being in that house, on that island, and feeling that it was the center of the whole world. I miss how I felt about my mother then, although later I came to feel differently.” She bowed her head for a moment. “Yes, I do, I suppose.”
Briony thought it strange to have to consider whether or not you missed your family. She hid her puzzlement in the act of choosing and lighting a candle and setting it on the altar before the statue of Zoria.This version of the goddess was much more staid than the one in the colorful window; her arms hung at her side and her eyes were cast down as though she looked at her own feet, but there was a faint smile on her lips that Briony had always liked, the smile of a woman who kept her own counsel. Moina and Rose came forward and lit candles also, although they both seemed a little confused and made the three-fingered sign of the Trigon over their breasts as they set the candles down. They were doing their best, Briony reminded herself, fighting annoyance: they were both girls from country families and had barely been exposed to Zoria’s worship or sisterhood at all until coming to live in Southmarch castle.
Merciful Zoria, robed in wisdom, bring my brother Barrick home safe, Briony prayed. Bring them all back safe, even Guard Captain Vansen. He is not such a bad man. And help me do what is best for Southmarch and her people. She looked up, hoping to see something in Zoria’s face that would tell her the goddess had heard her and would honor her request (she was the princess regent, after all—didn’t that count for something?) but the serene features of Perin’s virgin daughter were unchanged.
She suddenly remembered. And bring Father home safe again from Hierosol. She had prayed for that thing every day, but today she had almost forgotten. A quick chill moved over her. Did it mean anything? Was a god whispering to her, trying to tell her something had happened to him? Could it be her fault—had she show
n too much pride in her own abilities as ruler of Southmarch?
“I hoped this place would bring you some peace, Princess,” said her tutor. “But you look troubled.”
“Oh, Utta, how could I look otherwise?”
*
Brother and sister were silent as they rode down the causeway across Brenn’s Bay toward the great field where the mustered soldiers had been quartered, a swath of harvested land an hour’s ride distant, at the southernmost edge of Avin Brone’s fiefdom of Landsend. The day was cold and clear but the wind was rising. It wrapped the new cloak Merolanna had embroidered for him around Barrick’s neck in a strangler’s grip. He grunted as he used his crippled arm to free himself, but still did not speak. He knew Briony wanted him to, but he did not want to hear what she would say in turn. He had heard it enough times already.
From the center of the causeway they could see that the low-tide shallows and mud flats at the base of the castle mount were full of workers— almost another army, it seemed, swarming above the mud on makeshift platforms. They had demolished the ramshackle market town before the gate, and now were pulling apart the stones of the causeway itself beneath the castle walls, preparing to replace it with a wooden bridge that could be torn down in moments, thus completely cutting the castle off from the land and forcing any invader to ride over sucking mud with water up to the horses’ necks, or else find a way to get boats across the bay’s tricky currents under fire from the walls when the tide came back in. Little wonder, Barrick reflected, that Envor of the Dark Seas had always been held the special patron of the Eddons. Who else but the sea god had given them this almost unconquerable vantage?