by Tad Williams
“Past the age . . . ?” Puzzle said, a little doubtfully perhaps, or merely wistfully, then fell silent. He was quiet for such a long time that Tinwright finally looked up, thinking that the old man had fallen asleep, but instead Puzzle’s eyes were wide. Tinwright stared around, wondering if perhaps Brigid’s dress had come entirely unfastened, but the old fellow was staring at the tavern door as it swung closed, shutting out the rainy afternoon.
“Curfew tonight,” Conary shouted from behind his table on the far side of the room. “Closing time is sunset bell. The jack-o’-lanterns will be here soon, so drink up, drink up!”
“But I thought . . .” Puzzle said slowly.
“What?” Matty Tinwnght set down his tankard, considered another drink, then tried to decide whether he would prefer a trip to the Mint’s unspeakable privy or to stand in the pouring rain emptying his bladder against a wall on the way back. “What is it?"
“I . . . I just saw someone I know. Chaven the physician—the royal physician. He was talking to that man in the hood over there.” Puzzle stirred. “No, the one in the hood’s gone too. Maybe they went out together.”
“What is so strange in that? A physician of all people must know the good that ale will do—the best physick of all.”
“But he is gone or rather he is not gone, obviously.” Puzzle shook his head. “He has left the castle, gone on a sudden journey. Everyone was surprised. Ah, well, I suppose he has come back.”
“Clearly, he has been somewhere dire indeed, if this is the first place he visits on his return. “ Tinwright heaved himself up onto his feet. He was beginning to think that maybe he had drunk a bit more than he had thought, lost count somewhere. “Come, let us go back ourselves. They are a poor lot here at the Mint, despite the occasional doctor or royal poet.” He helped Puzzle up. “Or king’s jester, of course,” he added kindly. “No, they do not understand quality here.”
*
Briony had always liked Barrick’s rooms better than her own in some ways. She had the view down to the Privy Garden from her sitting room, and that was pretty enough, especially on sunny days, and on rainy days the doves all perched on the windowsill, murmuring, and it felt as cozy as pulling a blanket over her knees But from her window the stony bulk of Wolfstooth Spire took up most of the horizon, so her view was foreshortened, limited to the local and domestic. Barrick, though, could see out across the rooftops from the small window in his dressing chamber, past the forest of chimneys and all the way to the sea. As Briony stared out of her brother’s window now, the Tower of Autumn was glinting white and brick red, and beyond it lay the open ocean, blue-black and moody. The little storm that had just passed had left the sky sullen, but it was still heartening somehow to look out across all this space and open sky, across the roofs of the castle like mountainous small countries, and to think about how big the world was.
Did they give him these rooms on purpose, because he was the son and I was the daughter? For me the gardens, the quiet places, the old walls, to let me grow used to the idea of a life confined, but for him this view of the world that is part of his birthright—the sky, life, and adventure stretching out in all directions . . .?
And of course now her brother was riding out into that world and she was terrified for him, but also envious. It is two separate betrayals, not only to leave me behind at all, but to leave me with the throne and all those people clamoring, begging, arguing. Still, it didn’t diminish her love for him, but changed the powerful connection into something like an overfond child who wouldn’t stop pestering but could not be safely put down.
Oh, and Barrick is in danger, if what that strange potboy said is true. But there was nothing she could do—nothing she could do about anything except to wait and prepare for the worst. And the gods awakening, the strange man said, wouldn’t explain it. What did that mean? What does any of this mean? When precisely did the whole world begin to run mad?
A cloud slid past. A single ray of sunlight angled down, dazzled for a moment on the Tower of Summer, then was swallowed up in gray again. Briony sighed and turned to her ladies. “I must dress.”
“But, Highness,” said Moina, startled. “These clothes are . . . they . . . you . . .”
“I have told you what I will do and why. We are at war, and soon that will be more than words. Mv brother is gone off with the army. I am the last of the Eddons in this castle.”
“There is your stepmother,” Rose offered timidly. “The child.
“Until that baby is born, I am the last of the Eddons in Southmarch.” Briony heard the iron in her own voice and was amused and appalled. What am I becoming? “I told you, I cannot merely be myself any longer,” she said. “I am my brother, too I am my whole family.” She saw the looks on her ladies’ faces and made a noise of exasperation. “No, I am not going mad. I know what I’m doing.”
But do I, truly? A person can fall into a rage of grief or despair and do themselves and others harm. Other madnesses could creep into the sufferer’s heart so stealthily that they did not even realize they had gone mad. Was this really just fury against the scorn of men and a desire to hold her brother close in the only way now left to her? Or was this rage against ordinary courtly dress a kind of fever that had taken her, that had gradually grown to un-woman her entirely? Oh, gods and goddesses, I ache so? They are all gone! Every day I want to weep. Or curse.
She spoke none of this, or let any of it show on her face except perhaps by a certain angry stiffness that silenced Rose and Moina completely. “I must dress,” she said again, and stood as straight as she could, as proudly upright as any queen or empress, while they began to clothe her in her brother’s clothes.
At the very last the ladies pretended they could not do it, that they did not understand the working of the thing, although it was much more simple than any lady’s garment, so she put on the heavy sword belt herself and buckled it tight across her hips before sliding the long blade into the sheath.
*
If it was a weather change, it was a strange one Vansen stood on the hillside behind the scouts and looked out across the expanse of valley, at the Settland Road winding along at its bottom, and tried to make sense of what he felt. The air was close, but not from the nearness of any storm, although a heavy rain had swept through at midday and the road had been hard going for the rest of the afternoon Neither was it a smell, although the air had a certain sour tang that reminded him of the burning season in autumn, of bonfires now two months past. Even the light seemed inexplicably strange, but for no reason he could name the sky was darkening quickly now, the sun setting behind a slate-colored blanket of clouds, and the hillsides seemed unusually green against the dark pall, but it was nothing he had not seen hundreds of times.
It’s because you’re afraid, he told himself. Because you crossed that line once and you’re afraid you might find yourself behind it again Because you’ve seen what’s coming and you’re afraid to meet it.
All morning and afternoon they had encountered people fleeing the rape of Candlerstown, most merely hurrying ahead of rumors of its end, but some—almost all women and children lucky enough to have escaped in wagons—who had actually survived its destruction. The stories of these last were particularly terrifying and Tyne Aldritch and Vansen and the others had spent much of the afternoon trying to understand what it meant for them, vainly trying to concoct a strategy that could counter such nightmarish madness. The first few refugees’ tales had so unsettled the soldiers who heard them, themselves conscripted farmers little different from the husbands and fathers these families had so recently lost to such ghastly enemies, that with Earl Tyne’s permission Vansen had ridden ahead with a company of scouts to glean what information he could from the oncoming victims and then give them what aid he might before turning them aside to where outliers of the army could give them food and water, hoping to prevent the dreadful stories washing repeatedly across the main body of troops like waves of freezing water. FerrasVansen already knew this secon
d night out from Southmarch would be a grim, anxious camp; no sense in turning it into anything worse.
It was pointless, of course, those who couldn’t stand even to hear about the terrible Twilight People would probably have scant chance of surviving a battle with them, but Vansen hoped that the fact of real combat would give men back their hearts no matter how frightened they were. Any enemy who could be touched, fought, killed, was better than the one you could only imagine.
He turned to Dab Dawley, one of the survivors of his own ill-fated expedition across the Shadowline. It was only with great reluctance and at the express order of Princess Briony that he had increased the responsibility of Mickael Southstead, whom he didn’t trust very much at all—the night he was named a captain he had caused two bad fights back in Southmarch with his bragging—but young Dawley was a different story, cautious and thoughtful despite his years, and much more so since their shared adventure. Had it not been for his own desire to see what was ahead of them, Vansen would happily have let Dawley lead this scouting party himself, despite his lack of experience.
“I think we stay here tonight, Dab, or at least that is what I will suggest to Earl Tyne. Will you take the men down and start looking for water? It seems to me there should be a stream there, beyond that hillock.”
Dawley nodded. The other scouts, wilderness veterans almost to a man, had heard the captain—there was no need for the formality of orders.They clicked softly to their mounts and started down the road.
A few hundred such as these and I might not fear even the Twilight folk, Vansen told himself, but he knew it was not true. Even standing in the midst of a thousand of the stoutest men in the world would not thaw a freezing, terrified heart.
The valley was full of fires.This close to home, they were still eating fresh meat and bread that could be broken without having to saw at it with a knife, which was a rare pleasure on march. Some of the guardsmen from Kertewall were playing pipes and singing. Despite the mournful Kertish tunes it was a pleasingly ordinary sound, Vansen was glad of it and certain that others felt the same.
He was wandering back toward the fire when he saw a figure standing at the crest of one of the low hills, inside the ring of sentries but not near any of them. He puzzled for a moment before he recognized it as Prince Barrick.Vansen was a little surprised, thinking that the prince would have preferred to be in the midst of Lord Aldritch and the other nobles, drinking and being waited upon, but Vansen knew from his experience with the royal family that the boy had always been odd and solitary.
But he’s a boy no longer, I suppose. In fact, Barrick was the same sort of age Vansen himself had been when he first left home to seek his fortune in the city—an age when he had been certain that he was a man, despite no confirming proof. Watching Barrick, he could not help remembering Princess Briony’s fear for her brother. Certainly the lad should be safe enough—he was scarcely two dozen yards from the nearest carnpfire—and Ferras Vansen had a respect for solitude that many others did not, but he couldn’t help being anxious. After all, Collum Dyer was within my arm’s reach when he was taken. It would be horror enough to have to tell that lovely, sad young woman that her brother had died honorably in battle—he couldn’t imagine telling her the prince had been stolen by fairies right out of camp.
As he strode up the hill, the wet grass slapping at his legs, Vansen suddenly wondered what the Twilight People wanted. Although there had been few true wars during his lifetime, he had ample experience of violence and knew that there were some men who could only be stopped from taking what they wanted by strength, and some who feared that others meant to take what was theirs even when it was not true, that greed and fear lay at the bottom of most fights. But that army he had seen beyond the Shadowline, that array of the sublime and terrible, that ghastly, glorious host—what could they want? Why had they left the safety of their misty lands after two centuries or more, a time in which their original enemies had long since disappeared and new mortals unnumbered had been born, lived, and died again, all without knowing the shadow folk as anything but the stuff of old stories and evil dreams?
He fought a shudder. They were not men, not even animals, but demons, as he knew better than anyone, so how could a mere man hope to understand their reasons?
Young Barrick turned at his approach and watched for a moment before turning back to what he had been gazing at so intently—nothing, so far as Vansen could tell. “Prince Barrick, your pardon. Are you well?”
“Captain Vansen.” The young man continued staring out at the night sky. The wind had herded the clouds away and the stars had come out. Fer-ras Vansen couldn’t help remembering how, as a small child, he had once thought they were the cook fires of people like himself—sky shepherds, perhaps, living on the other side of the great bowl of the heavens, who called the fires of the Vansen family and their neighbors stars in turn.
“It is getting cold, Highness. Perhaps you would be more comfortable back with the others.”
The prince didn’t answer immediately. “What was it like?” he finally asked.
“What was it like . . . ?”
“Behind the Shadowline. Did it feel different? Smell different?”
“It was frightening, Highness, as I told you and your sister. Misty and dark. Confusing.”
“Yes, but what was it like?” His bad arm was hidden in his cloak, but the other hand pointed at the sky. “Did you see the same stars—Demia’s Ladder, the Horns?”
Vansen shook his head. “I can’t quite remember now. It—it was all very much like a dream Stars? I’m not sure.”
Barrick nodded. “I have dreams about . . . about the other side. I know that now. I’ve had them all my life. I didn’t really know what they were, but hearing what you said about . .” He turned to fix Vansen with a surprisingly sharp glance. “You say you were frightened. Why? Were you afraid you’d die? Or was it something else?”
Vansen had to stop and think for a moment. “Afraid to die? Of course. The gods give us the fear of death so that we won’t squander their gifts too lightly—so that we will use what is given us to the fullest. But that isn’t what I felt there—that’s not the whole of it, anyway.”
Barrick smiled, although there was something incomplete in it. “So we will use what is given us to the fullest. You are a bit of a poet, Captain Vansen, aren’t you?”
“No, Highness. I just . . . that is what the village priest taught me.” He stiffened a little. “But I think it’s true. Who knows what will happen to us in Kernios’ cold hands?”
“Yes, who indeed?”
Now the memories of his days in the shadowland were seeping back, as though the lid he had put on them had been kicked loose. “I was afraid because the world there was strange to me. Because I could not trust my own senses. Because it made me feel like a madman.”
“And there is nothing more frightening than that.” Barrick was darkly pleased by something. “No, that is true, Captain Vansen.” He peered at him again. “Do you have a first name?”
“Ferras, Highness. It is a common enough name in the dales.”
“But Vansen isn’t.”
“My father was from the Vuttish Isles.”
Barrick had turned back to the stars again. “But he made his home in Daler’s Troth. Was he happy? Is he still alive?”
“He died, Highness, years ago now. He was happy enough. He always said he would trade all the wide ocean for a crofters patch and good weather.”
“Perhaps he was born out of his place,” said Prince Barrick. “That happens, I think. Some of us live our whole lives as if we were dreaming, because we haven’t found where we’re meant to be—stumbling through shadows, terrified, strangers just as you were in the Twilight Lands.” He suddenly tucked his other hand under his cloak. “You’re right, Captain Vansen— it’s getting cold. I think I will have some wine and try to sleep.”
The prince turned and walked down the hill.
He is still a boy, really, for all his phi
losophy, Vansen decided as he followed several paces behind, alert for any threat, even here among the campfires. A child—clever, angry, and fearful. The gods grant that he lives long enough for some of that knowing to turn into wisdom.
*
The murmur of disapproving conversation, which at times threatened to become a roar, had begun the moment Briony walked into the room and had not stopped since she took her place at the head of the table. Meals in the Great Hall were seldom quiet or restful, and on any other day she would have taken something quietly in her chambers, but she had decided on a brave show and she would take what came.
Hierarch Sisel sat on her right. Brone, although a few others at the table outranked him, took the place on her left because he was the lord constable and the castle was at war—or soon to be so. The hierarch, after an initial widening of the eyes and pursing of the lips when he saw her, had made polite conversation just as though she were wearing proper womanly clothing; she was not certain whether she admired this or disliked it. Brone was disgusted, of course, but she had come to know him well enough to feel certain that his annoyance had more to do with her making what he considered an unnecessary spectacle of herself at a delicate time than any particular disapproval of this provocative unsexing. The lord constable had other things on his mind he deemed more important, and he clearly meant to use the stir over the arrival of the main courses to speak to her.