by Tad Williams
Long, confused moments of noise and smoke passed before Barrick and the men around him spurred their own horses up the hill, time enough for the first wave of foot soldiers to reach the top and plunge into the trees. He heard shouts, excited cries, even a few screams, but over everything he heard the unnatural voices of the enemy—keening noises like seabirds, like the howls of wolves and the barks of foxes, but with words buried in them to make the strange sounds even more terrible.
“Briony . . .” he murmured, but even he could not hear the name.
Some of the first wave of soldiers came reeling back, bloodied and shrieking. The fairies had built a wall of thorns. The mounted men behind them pushed on, some wielding axes, hacking their way in and killing many of the wall’s defenders. Arrows were snapping out of the trees at them, but still strangely few, and Barrick could almost feel the mounting concern of Tyne and the other war leaders—was it an ambush, after all? But the hillsides and meadows all around were still empty for this moment, the forested crest seemed the angry heart of the world, an island of noise and struggle surrounded by stillness.
“They break out!” someone called in a throttled, high-pitched voice— Barrick thought it might be his cousin Rorick On the hilltop a knot of men had been forced backward out of the trees, fighting hand-to-hand with a group of howling, white-haired warriors. At the center of the defenders a hugely tall figure stood in his stirrups, slashing with what even from a great distance seemed a bizarre, misshapen blade. The defender was tall, with snowy hair flo’wing free in the wind like a woman’s, and Barrick thought for a moment he must be an old man, but a glimpse of his face showed youthful features, and skin stretched tight over bones sharp enough to cut leather. The Twilight man struck down one of Tyne’s soldiers, then another, spinning the blade in the second man’s guts like a peasant churning butter. One of the mounted nobles spurred toward him, lance lowered, and the white-haired fairy or elf or whatever kind of creature he was knocked the weapon aside before closing with his attacker. Barrick lost sight of them behind a clump of trees as he neared the crest, then the forest was all around him and the men with whom he rode, mist puffing up from their horses’ hooves.
“Forward!” someone else shouted. “But stay together!” Barrick was surprised to realize it was Vansen, that the man had found his way to them through the trees and the mayhem, but he did not have long to contemplate it. A figure suddenly sprang up from the undergrowth—no, two figures, three!—and Barrick had to strike away a hand clawing at his bridle. The sound of many voices echoed through the trees, as many unnatural as natural, and in the cloudy, slanting light a thousand weird shapes loomed between the trunks—shadows and tricks of the light, perhaps, but there were enough real bodies and enough pale, hating faces that he had no time to consider anything except staying alive.
Half a dozen men of Barrick’s party were left of the original dozen, although some of the others had merely become lost among the trees Vansen was one of those remaining and he leaned close to Barrick and asked quietly, “Are you well, Highness?”
Barrick could only nod. He was gasping for breath and there were cuts and scratches on his hands and no doubt elsewhere, but he thought he had killed at least one of the fairy folk—a face that came toward him down a shadowy tree branch, and which he had split with a startled swing of his blade—and he did not seem to have any major wounds. The forest was mostly empty here, although the fearful sounds of the Twilight folk were still loud, and unnatural shapes still flitted between the distant trees.
“I think I hearTyne this way,” Vansen said, then spurred across the clearing. Barrick and the others followed him, all struggling for breath, their necks prickling, not certain when the next attack would come. Barrick felt as though he was peering down one of Chaven’s optical tubes, that everything around him had been bent except for that at which he stared. All his blood seemed to be rushing through his head while his body was coldly numb, hard and unfeeling as iron. It was a strange, terrifying, exhilarating feeling.
Ferras Vansen suddenly reined up beside a patch of deep brush and struck downward with his sword, then swung out of the saddle and began hacking away at something unseen. He was shouting, and although the guard captain’s words couldn’t be heard over the shrilling of fairy voices, there was a wild look of disgust and fear on his face that cut through Barrick’s numbness, clutched at the pit of his stomach. He spurred forward with the others just as a great number of the keening fairies all went silent at the same moment Unearthly voices still sounded, but only from the other side of the hilltop.
Vansen stood upright, his killing finished, his blade dripping with blood and something else translucent as tree sap. His face was a mask of horror. Barrick dismounted awkwardly and made his way to the captain’s side.
He was standing in the midst of what might almost have been a huge nest hidden in the undergrowth, trampled and exposed now, with bodies and body parts piled at his feet, glistening with blood and other fluids. The things lying there, Barrick could see after a moment of confusion at the unusual forms, were naked and mostly manlike, pale as maggots. Those whose heads he could see had huge swollen throat pouches, like frogs. Their dead eyes were solid black, rapidly losing luster.
“What are they?” someone asked.
“Horrible,” someone else said, and it was true.
“The things that made the noises,” Vansen told them. “Listen.” And for a moment they all heeded the silence.
“What . . . what does it mean?” Barrick asked. “Why?”
“Because we have been tricked,” said Vansen. Beneath the spatters of blood, his face was almost as pale as the grotesque shapes at his feet. “Only a few waited for us on this hilltop—a few soldiers to cross blades with us, a few deceiving shapes, a few of these making the noise of hundreds.”
“Gods! An ambush, after all?” Barrick looked around, expecting to see dozens more of the strange faces appear in the branches over their heads, grinning savagely.
“Worse,” said Vansen. “Worse. Because they have held us here and stolen a day from us with a very few while the rest of their army rode on around us.”
“Rode on . . . ?”
“Yes. Toward Southmarch.”
34
In a Marrinswalk Field
SWEETNESS OF FLOWERS:
She cannot stop or cry out
She cannot grow
Her bones are in the stream
—from The Bonefall Oracles
It had been a bad night, a night of little sleep. Briony had been up since an hour before dawn with such anger running through her that she could scarcely sit still—anger at Hendon Tolly, of course, but also at herself for her foolish loss of control, at Barrick for not being with her, at everything.
And I stood there, waving a sword at him in front of everyone, and they all knew he could not lift a finger against me—his ruler, and a woman at that. A . . . girl. And they all knew he didn’t need to, either, because he’d already won. What a fool I must have looked!
For a long moment it was all she could do to stay seated at the writing desk—she was itching with embarrassment despite being the only person awake in the room. She wanted to run, to lose herself somewhere in the great castle until everyone forgot what happened. But of course, nobody would forget and she couldn’t run away. She was an Eddon. She was the princess regent. They would be talking about last night’s dinner for years.
There was nothing to do but go on. Nothing. Briony picked up her pen, dipped it into the inkwell, and continued her letter to her father.
“I have not heard from you since Kendrick’s death, and as I said, I can only pray that you received my letter telling you of that terrible day, that this which I write now is not the first you have heard of it. I miss him, dear Father, I miss my big brother very much. Because he was the oldest, he was always certain he was right, and of course that was vexing at times, but I honestly think he tried every day to do right. He wanted to be you, of course, th
at is why. Even before he became the regent, he held himself like a man who will rule one day, who concerns himself with the needs of the least of his subjects as well as the demands of his most powerful allies.
“But, of course, that is what everyone else will remember about him. What I will always remember about our dear Kendrick was the way he would fume and scowl when Barrick and I teased him, but at last would give in and laugh as hard as any of us. Why is it that you and Kendrick could both do that, that you could see your own foolishness and admit it, even laugh about it, but Barrick and I cannot?
“There is more, certainly, that . . .”
She stopped. A memory of Kendrick pretending to be angry at her while struggling to hide a smile had suddenly come back with such power that for a moment she could only sit and weep silently. Rose Trelling stirred in her bed on the opposite side of the room, murmured something, then fell back to sleep. Anazona, Briony’s youngest maid, scarcely ten years old, was snoring like an ancient dog on her little pallet on the floor. It was strange to be awake in the midst of all these sleepers—like being a ghost.
She went back and scratched out part of the last sentence, changed it to read, “. . . that Kendrick could do that and you can do it, too,” because she realized she had put the king, her father, into the past again as though he were dead instead of only imprisoned. The gods willing, it is nothing but a false fear! Still, the whole thing seemed a hopeless exercise. How could she tell him what truly was happening without making him frantic with worry? How could she describe any of it, the terrifying Twilight People, the Tollys’ flirtation with the Autarch, the seemingly unending stream of dreadful tidings? How could she tell her father how frightened she was for Barrick without breaking Olin’s heart?
She put the pen back down and read over what she had written. The greatest problem, of course, was that she couldn’t speak about what was troubling her most—her twin’s terrible story. Since Barrick had told her, it had stayed in the middle of her like a swallowed stone, a great, indigestible lump. Some days the heaviness of it made it hard for her to walk, to talk, even to think. She hoped that by hearing it she had lightened her brother’s load, because he had certainly burdened her. How could such a thing be true? But if it was not true, how was it possible that Barrick, her twin, could be such a liar? And if it was true, how could she possibly write to her father as though nothing had changed, as though she was the same loving daughter in the same, unchanged world?
Either Barrick is the world’s greatest liar . . . or Father is . . .
It was pointless. She had thought she could write to him, but she couldn’t.
Briony was holding the last of the burning parchment to the candle when someone knocked at the door. She immediately dropped the ashes and stub of paper into the candleholder, as though she had been caught doing something wicked. “Who is there?”
“It’s Lord Brone, Your Highness,” said one of her guards through the door. “He wishes . . .”
“Oh, Perin’s bloody red beard, I can tell her myself,” growled the lord constable. “Let me come in, please, Princess. I have urgent business.”
Even this early, with the sky outside still quite dark, Avin Brone was dressed for the daylight hours, although he looked to have accomplished it in a hasty manner. He stared around the room as though searching for enemies but saw only slumbering women.
“We must speak m private,” he told her.
“They are all deep sleepers, but if you fear for their modesty, we can step into the hallway . . .”
“No. This is not to be discussed in front of the guards. Not yet.” He looked around the bedchamber once more. “Ah, well,” he said at last. “We must speak quietly, then.”
She gestured for him to sit down at the writing desk, but she herself remained standing. Something in his manner had alarmed her; she felt an almost animal urge toward flight. Although Brone seemed his ordinary dour, distracted self, she could sense something deeper was wrong, and she began to wonder how long it would take the guards to respond if she called out for them. Almost without thinking about it, she took a step back from the lord constable, then another; then, a little ashamed, she turned the movement into a search for a thicker wrap. She was conscious for the first time in an hour that her slippers were thin and her feet were cold.
“Gailon Tolly has been found.”
“Where?”
“In a Marrinswalk field In a ditch, to be more precise, covered over with branches.”
“What?” For a moment she had a mad vision of Gailon in a kind of hiding-hole, playing a child’s game. Then she understood. “Oh, merciful Zona, in a ditch’ Is he . . . ?”
“Dead, yes. Oh, most assuredly dead—along with the men who rode beside him. Half a dozen in all, thrown together into a hasty grave, if you can even call it such.”
She was stunned. “But . . . how . . . ?” Briony forced herself to think more carefully. “What happened? Who found him?”
“One of the last musters out of south Marrinswalk, four or five pentecounts, I don’t recall. They came in late last night, an hour or so after the last bell, hurrying to bring in their news. They had been coming up the Silverside Road outside Oscastle and saw a great number of ravens and other birds swarming in a field. When their leader took them closer they saw something shining. It was a buckle.”
Briony s knees suddenly felt weak; she had to take a step to steady herself. Brone came up out of the chair quickly and guided her to it in his stead. “But . how?” she asked. “Who did this? Bandits? Surely the fairy folk have not moved so far south?” Gailon Tolly, dead. Handsome, self-satsified Gailon. She hadn’t liked him, but she had never wanted . . . never imagined . .
“I can’t say, Princess. Bandits seem the most likely explanation—almost all their money and jewelry had been taken. Horses, too. There are more than a few such bands who range the border between Silverside and Marrinswalk and call theWhitewood their home. The thieves missed a brooch, though, and one of the Marrinswalk men brought it in. That is our only advantage—the discoverers do not know yet whose bodies they found, which has given me enough time to tell you first, before it spreads all through the castle.” He extended his broad fist and uncurled the fingers. A round brooch with a thick pin covered much of his palm, the kind worn at the neck of a riding cloak. The silver was still streaked with mud, but the humped shoulders and horned head of the bull were impossible to mistake.
Briony forced herself to swallow. She felt as though she would be ill. “That’s his. I’ve seen him wear it.”
“Or at least it’s one of the Tolly family brooches. But I think we must assume one of the corpses is Gailon.”
“Where are they?” she asked at last, staring at the muddied silver circle as though it were an actual piece of bone. “The bodies?”
“They have been taken to a temple in Oscastle. Until they got there, the soldiers who found them thought the dead were local men, but no one in Oscastle had any idea who they could be. The mantis in that town thought he recognized one corpse as being Gailon Tolly, however, and being a wise man, he put his fears in a letter and entrusted it to the captain of the Marrinswalk pentecounts for secrecy. Still, the rest of the muster are already telling their story to anyone here who will listen. It is only hours at the most until Hendon Tolly hears of it, and he will have no trouble deciding who these mysterious dead really are.”
“Merciful Zonal. As it was, he all but accused us of murdering Gailon— he will trumpet it from the walls now!”
“Yes, and you did not help things with your foolishness at dinner. Go ahead and throw me in the stronghold, but it must be said.”
She waved her hand. The sour taste in her mouth had worsened. “Yes, yes, and I agree, and now you’ve said it. But what do we do? What do we do when Hendon starts up again, claiming I’ve had his brother killed?”
“Perhaps he won’t.”
“What do you mean?”
“Perhaps he won’t. Perhaps it wasn’t bandits,
or even these Twilight folk. Maybe it was the Tollys’ southern friends.”
It took her a moment. “The Autarch? Are you suggesting the Autarch would reach all the way into the March Kingdoms to murder one of his allies—one of his only allies, as far as we know?”
“Perhaps they didn’t become allies. Perhaps the Tollys turned him down.”
If what Brone told me in the first place was even true, she reminded herself. Briony put her hands to her head. Now that Barrick was gone, she could fully trust no one. “What a dreadful tangle! I can’t make sense of it—I have to think. Perhaps you’re right, but that still doesn’t help us any. Unless Hendon Tolly also suspects the Autarch’s hand and decides he can’t afford to make too much of a fuss . . .” She took a long, shuddering breath, trying to calm stomach and spirit. “I only know that it will make matters worse at a time when I believed such a thing wasn’t possible.” As Briony spoke, she picked up the inkwell and moved it back into the drawer, carefully put away the blotter, then the sealing wax.